[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: member and Tapa here. Remember all the party here. Remember, right? Phil present members are present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lanko-Kern?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Bramley. Remember Graham. Yes, remember and tapa. Remember all the potty. Yes, remember Ryan fell. Remember so yes Maryland go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Without digging through the data, are we approaching the need for any more kindergarten classrooms?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, that's a whole conversation. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I have the report from last September 8th. And we had 4,207. Interestingly, just three days before that, we had 4,214. So when we say it's fluid, it's kind of wildly fluid at this time of year. Do we have the EL students? Is that a separate category on there? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: And my question is too complicated for this, but I just have a lot of questions about EL students. And when students leave, not just EL students, when all students, when students leave the district, there's not often a, we're leaving, goodbye. And so it's hard to know why they left. We know if they go somewhere else and then that place asks for their transcripts. That's sort of the only way to know, but not all students, that's the case. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did just Google. The F is for full day. I was like, I'm like, what's the F for?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Olapate? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was just looking at the letter again from last meeting, and I don't really feel like we got answers to the question we were asking, which was, what does the grant require? The letter explicitly references a relaxing of requirements. what were the requirements and what are the requirements now is still unanswered. And I went back and looked at the presentations from June and I still don't know how the $29,000 gets spent. I mean, is it $28,995 for one person and a dollar for each other person? I don't know. It's not in any of the presentations we've received. So I'm not satisfied that this answers our questions and I'd like to get those questions answered.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would like last year's Yeah, I mean, because my sense after all these years is it's, it's pretty much been the same for the last eight years. Well, almost whatever the years have been, it's been, we've been paying the staff and everybody about the same. But I don't know who's getting paid what. And that's really not, I mean, if it has nothing to do with us and we shouldn't be talking about the CCSR in any way, shape or form, then let's say that and stop talking about the CCSR. But we talk about it a lot and I have no idea what happens to the money and where it goes. And that's not my opinion as a body that is responsible, acceptable. So last year would be great. And if it's particularly different than the year before that, then I'd like to know that too.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's sort of it there is a line item that pays for Mr. But when there's this relaxation in that letter, does that mean we could perhaps use the grant to pay for him instead of the very limited Medford Public Schools funding? But it says relaxed with no explanation. What does that mean?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'm going to anyways. But this paragraph, like nobody wakes up as they're typing a memo and writes a paragraph that says the foundation has lifted restrictions on the use of grant funds. That didn't come out of thin air. That came out of an email or a letter or a memo that somebody received. Nobody just wrote that for kicks. So I can understand if you're saying that there has in fact been nothing relaxed, but somebody received something somewhere along the line that definitely said restrictions have been relaxed. This isn't a sentence you can accidentally add a and or a not and suddenly get this sentence. This is clearly a paragraph written based on some other thing that exists somewhere. So I look forward to the report on what is
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yeah. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um I have a motion. 2025 dash, I've got to find the number. I'm sorry. No. It's, wait. Yeah, 2025-30. That's the AI one. 30 is the one that I want to take out of order. Oh, yeah. Is that what's next anyways? No.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, let's take, let's, yeah, let's, the motion to take 2025-27 out of order. Thank you. Motion to take 2025-27 out of order by member Rousseau, seconded by member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for doing this. There's a lot of work. I really appreciate that there's, it's not just focused on students. I think that would have been the easy way out. And I don't envy the staff that have to learn all these things that are frankly, changing every day. I think perhaps for students, it's easier to learn all this stuff, perhaps. But did we have a mention of professional development in this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, that's the training is word. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I would just ask that in the next budget that we, I'm guessing that professional development around generative AI will not be free. It might be quite an expensive professional development offering. So just something to keep in mind for the next budget because our staff is certainly gonna need it. But as you pointed out, like different departments and different grade levels will need frankly, very different training. I'm assuming the sciences, probably a lot of those teachers, at least at the high school level, are already pretty aware of a lot of this stuff. But thank you. It's incredibly concise. And I love the use of the word ethical over and over, because that is a harder one to nail down. And I do like the the academic honesty panel. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about why there's this panel's decision is final.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, I mean, it does depend on which tools you're using. Certainly, I use AI all day, every day as a software developer, but, you know, the prompts that I make and the answers that I get I mean, I can look at them going back as far as I want. They don't go away. Now, if you're just using a free web version of something, you probably don't get all those features, which is why using the approved list would be very important. And again, I'm not familiar with all the tools I use, the tools I use, which everybody knows there are many tools every day. There seems to be another tool. but using a tool for which you do not get an audit history of what you're doing seems like an absolute no-go. As I read this policy, if you open a tool and it doesn't let you see what you asked it and what the answer was three weeks ago, You shouldn't be using that tool, because you can't comply with the policy that says here's you when you go to turn in the paper, unless you copied it down at that moment, which is also, you know, That's not how people do work. I mean, you're not gonna ask a question or make this paragraph better and then go off and write some gigantic audit log of your own. That is totally unreasonable. But if you're using a tool that's keeping track of it, then it becomes, it's still a heavy lift. The question is, is it a heavier lift than just doing it all without generative AI, and I suppose it depends what it is you're doing. I would say that in most cases, I mean, I am wildly more productive as a software developer using generative AI than going off and learning an entire new whatever. When I only need a little tiny thing. So, so to me that's the answer. But I obviously was not part of this committee, but I think that, you know, if you read something at the library and you don't write down the reference, and then you have a great memory and you write down exactly what you read. Sent word for word, but don't put any, you don't remember what book it was. It still counts as academic dishonesty, right? So I'd like to think this is actually less work than some of that other stuff that we used to have to do in the olden days, card catalogs and all that good stuff. I'm really aging myself, but that's how I interpret it. Now this is the policy, like policy is not, most of the time is not implementation. So the gory details of how it gets done, like if there's 10 tools that are approved, the answer is probably different for every tool. So our policy is not going to be for this specific tool, make sure you click this after you do a question and you get your answer. And that's just not, that's an option for policy, but it becomes incredibly brittle. And then we're constantly modifying policy
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. No. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, sorry. Chair. I just think I'm not sure all the students necessarily know the whole process for policy approval but we have a second reading at the next meeting, or a following meeting, we can't get it that quickly. Time. Right, so it may not be right away but so the second reading will be. there'll be edits, and then we can either approve it or send it to another meeting for further edits. And then, of course, we can always just vote it down. But just wanted you all to be aware. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Memogram.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member and tapa. Yes, my role of honey. Yes. Memorandum. Yes, never. So yes, Maryland. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: The floor is yours. Thank you. I just wanted to be clear that accommodations does not mean alternative education.
[Paul Ruseau]: We don't provide two educations here. So when a student opts out, they will simply be missing out on their education or the education that we had planned. They will not be getting an alternative. They will whether that's not being class or, you know, it depends of course on the class and the grade level and all that other, we're not sending a kindergartner to sit in the hall, but, or maybe I don't know what we're doing, but I just want folks to understand that that does not mean that every parent can decide they wanna have a separate education for their child. They can decide that their kid will not get some education. I'm wondering about, Parental review of curriculum is, have we gone down the path of what does it mean for review? Like if I have a high school, if I didn't finish high school and my child is in AP physics and I wanna know what the curriculum is. Are we obligated to hand the curriculum over? And I'm assuming, of course, probably inappropriately, but perhaps the parents will not be capable of knowing what the hell they're reading or looking at. What is our obligation to help them understand what the curriculum is? I mean, when I started on school committee, I was like, let's see our sex education curriculum. And I went in and I got it and it was a binder. It was like a thousand pages long or more. Actually, it was multiple binders like this. And that was quite the slap in the face for somebody who doesn't have an education background. Like when I say, let me see the curriculum, that's not quite as simple a request as I thought. So are we saying we will, and I realize this maybe hasn't happened yet, and maybe we haven't worked it out. but are we handing over, and by the way, when I was handed those curriculums, I wasn't like, those are licensed copies. I couldn't take them home because like, they were not, like we had a certain number, they belong to the district. Are we sending parents home with curriculum and being like, well, here you go, or are we helping them understand what's in there? And if that's the case, that seems like a very large, amount of effort on our part. And I realize that this is new, and maybe there isn't an answer, but I'm worried that we're going to be accused of burying parents who are wanting to perhaps opt their kids out of certain things. I'm worried about the teaching staff because all of our curriculum is not like off the shelf curriculum. It's not like there's like a, you know, a lot of our curriculum is because we've been improving and getting it, you know, modernized, but not all of our curriculum is here's the, you know, here's the documents. So what happens to teachers who teach a class that has no specific curriculum, that they've made it up themselves? And I know we have classes like that in high school. do they have, and I keep asking questions and don't let you answer, but I'm just very worried. I'm trying to remember them all. I'll stop talking, but this whole thing is freaking me out, as I'm sure it's freaking you out. And I want, I'll just do one final thing. I hope we're going to keep track of this very carefully, so we understand what it costs us. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When you said it, the impact on the student, I think I'm reminded of our work on discipline that shows that when a student is out and they come back, every other student is negatively impacted by the need to bring that student up to speed. When a student is missing and they come back, they didn't get what they needed yesterday. For whatever reason, the teacher does not have you know, a bifurcation of curricula for every single student. So the student that comes back the next day having missed the content, it's like research has really solved all this, negatively impacts every other student in the class. And so that's one of the reasons we should be incredibly careful about taking kids out of classes for discipline. So I think that I would just also say that we should include that in our conversations, it isn't just that kid who might be removed because of this. In math and science where every single day is building on the previous day, I was never really an English person, so maybe in the humanities as well, but little is taught that is never referenced again. So deciding you don't want your student to receive some content there's not a lot of classes where that's the one time it's ever discussed. So I, I'm glad you're starting with conversations. Because that I hopefully can we can reduce this to a very small number. Thank you. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, so the handbooks will not get published then, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And that just as soon as you said that, I remembered that, you know, until a school committee actually has a policy, you have full policy authority. And so the absence of us adopting an AI policy means you set AI policy. You literally can say, this is our policy until we adopt a policy or, well, that's just the way it works. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? No. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? No. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: And I do wish the AI would figure out how to interpret member Mayor Lungo-Koehn, because what it says is just a horrible, it gets all this wrong.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve the handbooks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? No. Member LaPotte? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will be brief. I just want to remind the superintendent not to need to necessarily that we did adopt a handbook review and approval schedule last year. And so this hopefully can be the beginning of us following that process. So these approved policies should be, somebody should create a copy and we should go through the process we approved so that we do have them approved in plenty of time. I would also like to make a motion to take 2025-30 out of order.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley. Remember Graham. Yes, I'm running top. Remember all about it. Yes. Remember I felt member so yes Marilyn go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just sick of hearing my voice yet? Just kidding. Don't answer that. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Sure, as I hope you approve it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member. Yes. Member. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Sayes? Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley. Oh, one second, I'm putting it in the wrong place. One moment. Okay, Member Bramley with a yes, Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Landau-Kern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve as amended for the year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. One of the questions I have is for the focus indicators, Does the superintendent find that the list, those selected by member Graham in this resolution are acceptable? What do you think about those?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I thought they were appropriate as well, but I figured I should ask you in case you had thoughts on changing any of them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. The mayor also was a person who has done evaluations too.
[Paul Ruseau]: She's not in front of us. So it's, I did want to point that out. And I, I do have templates. I'm a template man. So a lot of, yes. I do think it's important to, you know, one of the things you'll discover doing an evaluation is that, you know, in literally no other setting, probably on the planet, you are evaluating in public on TV. So it is a very, when you have constructive criticism or just criticism, it's a very uncomfortable thing to do. Hopefully we won't have much, but it is a very, I do wish the legislature had found another way to do this. Are they working? Oh, okay. Oh, good. Oh, good. For the time being, right. I don't still think it's beneficial for the superintendent being evaluated. It's not beneficial for us. It's not a beneficial for the students if we're pulling our punches and, you know, and it's just not good. I also will say that our individual evaluations that we provide that gets combined, those are actually discoverable as well. So I mean, public record not discoverable. So, you know, just that'll be included in the instructions that you get, because I have a template for that too. So that nobody gets confused. Because it is, it is confusing. And if you've done any evaluation of anybody in your life, it will have never been like this before.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olipate. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member and tapa. Remember all the party. Yes. Remember I felt. Remember so yes Maryland go curtain. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa is absent so far. Member Olapade. Present. Member Reinfeld. Present. Member herself present. Mayor Langelker.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Say Yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to waive the second reading. I did message these three former members to ask if their ears are ringing. That's the saying, I think. And they were appreciative of this getting its second reading. So I would like to make a motion to waive the second reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. As I've been doing a lot of policy work, as well as contracts, there has been a question about whether or designee is, we've had some contracts where, you'd have one paragraph where it says superintendent or designee, the next one doesn't. And the question becomes then, does that mean that the superintendent is the only decision maker in that example? And I think that at least in all of the stuff I have read, there has been no examples where that actually makes any sense. It's just a matter of, Well, cleanliness and writing the words or designee over and over and over thousands of times in our policies. So I thought this made sense to sort of like draw a line in the sand and say, we will stop saying or designee unless we specifically have to. And the The related policies part there is sort of a way to keep existing policies as is until they get updated. So if a policy does not have this as a related policy, then this does not apply to that policy yet. And I'm not sure everybody knows caregiver in Massachusetts is a legal term. Um, so it's not just like something I made up, and, um, it's certainly a lot easier on forms to say caregiver than parent, guardian, responsible adult or caregiver. If you've ever tried to create a form and for a signature. Um, so that's that's what this policy is for. And I motion to approve it.
[Paul Ruseau]: No. So if this policy is listed as a related policy, and it says superintendent, they would have to say correct, they would have to I said no, but I meant yes, they would have to specify that is only the superintendent. There are so few examples other than the quotes that are coming out of mass general law are probably the biggest example where that I mean, that quote isn't gonna be changed. That's the quote from the law. So those would not apply, of course, but yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, certainly I've not seen that word once in our policies. So the shortcut is to replace words that are in our policies. So I don't know that. I mean, I'm fine with that. Do custodian or custodial parent or custodial, like what's the exact thing that we would be replacing?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it's a good point, especially around There's nothing that I've seen in my time on the school committee where we even referenced the difference between parents when parents have like a custodial parent and one who, for instance, may have no custodial rights. We make no distinction anywhere, although I think school brains might have something for that to like indicate that a parent has no rights. So, I mean, everything just says parent, And I think we just kind of hope for the best in policy, but it's worth noting that we probably should consider that when writing policy, that when we say parent, we don't just mean parent, we mean the one with the rights, which of course isn't even necessarily parents. So, I mean, I'm happy to add a comma and custodial parents
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, the two the two amendments I have are to change want to warrant and adopted to adopted or amended. Was the second one sorry, adopted changed to adopted or amended in the all policies when adopted. should reference this policy, the last line. Yeah, I mean, I adopted is an amendment is adopted, but I think it is clear to say or amended. So why not?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, the summer seems to have destroyed my memory of this conversation I know we've had. Do you have a memory of, I just remember that they had done some stats and there was a lot of these things happening. It's like, because I feel like I don't actually ever see it. I was kind of like, how often does this happen? But it was a huge number. And I didn't get excited about the money. I just got like really angry about how often people are willing to endanger our kids.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, Member Grant.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Here. Member Olapade. Presently absent. Member Reinfeld. Absent. Member Ruseau is present. Mayor Lungo-Koehnly.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade is still absent. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rissell-Guest? Mayor Lundberg?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm on mute and I don't have my camera on, I have no idea. I think it's when I left the room, it must do that by default. Anyways, we don't have anybody who wants to speak, I see. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members say yes, and Maryland occurrence absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you know why?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, and it turns out I am unmuted. Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Atapa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. And Mayor Lungo-Koehnis-Epstein?
[Paul Ruseau]: I can. Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: member. So yes, Maryland occur in his absence.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Are you able to unmute, Jenny? Anyways.
[Paul Ruseau]: Now we can. Yes, now I can. Okay, perfect, sorry. Member Atapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapate. Here. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: member and Papa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the potty? Yes. Remember Rand Phil?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member. So yes, Marilyn go Kurt.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you, Brenda. I have a quick question. So I realize it's a cart before the horse a bit in some of my questions. I mean, could we own buses that are housed at Eastern Bus? Is that an actual option?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, because even adding four, we have had a lot of conversations, I think, for at least six years now about adding some electrification at our schools. We were going to do a carport with solar. We can't do that. We bought all kinds of. When we upgraded all of our equipment for our kitchens, we bought all this electric stuff because the school committee has decided we don't want to buy carbon-based equipment. Well, we had to ship it all back because the building doesn't support that much power use and neither did the utilities at the street. While we could certainly probably afford the utilities inside the building, Us having to pay for National Grid to upgrade their grid, frankly, is a wildly expensive endeavor, if I remember correctly. So will your plans include the fact that National Grid isn't ready wherever we want to put it? I mean, we wanted to put more electric chargers We had to put them in different places in the schools. I think we have one or two in, we have one in most schools, but there are other areas we just couldn't put one, because there's not, the electrical systems that are not meant for public schools, electric systems, are not ready for the amount of power required. So, I mean, I use, I have two EVs myself, My electric bill is startling. And I'm all for that, because I also don't have any carbon output. But the costs to run them and to install the equipment is one thing. But National Grid doesn't seem ready. So will your reports or analysis include if they're going to have to pay for it? They're not going to pay for it, which I think is ridiculous.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, certainly when we build a new high school, I expect there would be lots of utilities work to support a new building. And at that point, sure. But anything before there's a new high school, I think, is where I'm concerned about. Where are we going to charge these?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did move my lips.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Member All the party. Yes. Remember her rifle?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes, Mayor Lingo. Kern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: I burn tapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the potty? Yes. Member right help?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member. So yes, Maryland. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Maybe Zim will get this right someday. My question is, what if everybody opts for, financially, what happens to the program if the vast majority of people choose the 4 p.m. slot?
[Paul Ruseau]: Definitely. Thank you. And my other question was $9 an hour is I still think kind of outrageously low. And you can't get anything for $9 an hour unless you, I mean, you'd have to travel thousands of miles to find anything for $9 an hour, thousands of miles. So I don't know what I think about this. I know that we have done comparisons to other places, but I don't know, I'm just really stuck on $9 an hour. That's just, I can't get past it. And I'll let other people speak, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm new to the zoom thing. I have a question about, you know, I know we have team leads, and I forget if that's the title that that director for the carry has for her staff, but we will have. I mean, inherently, there will be more staff that is part of this equation. There will be more physical bodies that are employed by Medford Public Schools. And there will be people who will say, I can work that 245 to 4, but I can't work till 6. And that's great. We're going to have those people. We're going to increase capacity. But are you going to also have to have more team leads, or whatever it is that you call them? They get paid more than? those folks who are not team leads. And so is the intention to, I mean, I know it's early days, so I know some of this is a bit hard to nail down right now, but is the intention to put more on the existing set of team leads, or is it to add additional team leads where needed? And how much, how has that cost been considered?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I just want to ask my second question rather than going all the way around again. What is the threshold for financial assistance?
[Paul Ruseau]: I was doing some calculations. AMI is $118,000 in Medford this year for a family of four. And that would be what you'd have to make to receive no financial assistance. And so I'm very comfortable with that $15 a day because I mean, I'm not going to comment on people's finances, but if your household brings in $118,000 a year and $15 a day is going to break you, then that's a different conversation, really. It's not for me to comment on that. But we provide assistance, 70% what was it, 50% and 30% of that $15. So that's why I'm quite comfortable with these rates. I think that I would like to know next year when we're having this conversation, what would it look like if these rates were significantly higher? And I don't mean 6%. I mean, the $29.64 a day was $45 a day. The $15 a day was $25 a day. Like, what would that do to the program? What would that do to our ability to offer more assistance to families that were in need? Because again, these are the rates for people who do not meet any financial assistance requirements. These are not the rates for folks that have those income levels. So what happens if we go there? Do we end up with a much greater retention of staff? Do we have the ability to offer retention bonuses? Would that actually change how many staff we retain from year to year? One of the biggest challenges I am concerned about with this is that more staff means more time spent recruiting because that's more turnover. There's no way around it, right? Megan, I don't know if she's doing it all herself still, but spends an enormous amount of time finding staff. And if there's more staff that are employed to fill up the program and that retention is the same as it has been, then there's going to be more hiring required. That's more of her time or somebody else's time. I'm just thinking like a substantial change to this cost, what would it look like next year to our ability to retain people. And, you know, aside from the training costs retaining people has. you know, a lot of value in program consistency and all the other stuff that I don't need to go through. So I'm going to second this motion to go to $15 a day for the clipped shift option. But I am going to ask that by next year, we have a substantially, that we have an analysis of what we can do as a program if we went to $45 and $25 for those two options. keep it in mind. Financial assistance, none of that changes. So that's, I'll second that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Unmuted still good. Um member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember and Tapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh my God, I'm sorry, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, and I said yes too, boy, I got it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I know read it too well to think she ended it in the middle of a sentence. Can you see that X there in the middle of the screen? Yes. I don't know if you have to click that. I don't know what that is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: We do actually have one on YouTube. We should send it to them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Agapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Eric, can I just ask a quick question? Member Ruseau? Thank you. I haven't looked in a number of years, but I do remember probably four or five years ago looking and seeing that the Parent Information Center in Malden, for instance, had I think six staff members and we had one. So I also feel really uncomfortable with the fact I mean I don't know that they need six or whatever they have maybe they don't need that many but it's hard to imagine that one or two is the right number for a district that's not we're not like a tenth of their size or a sixth of their size so I do think that just like with the finance department staffing up requires investment. And this, of course, is different than an investment. But I think that even with this raise, we're paying her less than she could make next door. We might have to have a conversation around that the next budget about what do we need in a parent information center and what's the right size for that budget. Sort of like the city. I know some Councilors want to have a needs analysis. You know, I think that The needs analysis never returns you with a result that says things are good. The only result of a needs analysis is you need a gazillion dollars. That's the only outcome. But it would be nice to know this department is almost the right size and this department is operating on one fifth the number of employees or one fifth the budget that it should have. And there's too many, I think it would be nice if he could get to that and then maybe next year when we're doing this budget because I do agree, Mayor that like. You know, I mean, maybe there's phenomenal candidates that would have jumped into for this job. But I mean, knowing that the look at the other districts to say, even with this raise, this is an underpaid position, I think that that seems unlikely. I know with our union personnel, administrators, like we post. We have to post. It's in their contract. And same for teachers and all these other things. So I think for non-unit personnel, we might want to also consider, is there some kind of a process to land on that we could reuse but not create that same sense of foregone conclusion that Member Graham brings up. And when I was a hiring manager and when I applied for jobs, the first question was, is there already somebody who's going to get this job? As a candidate, we've got lives, we've got things to do. Applying for jobs for which we already know who the candidate is, is incredibly disrespectful in my job, my mind. And sometimes we're mandated, like the law does require in some cases that you post, doesn't matter. If we already know who we're going to give the job to, I think it's not respectful of the other candidates to make them go through all that rigmarole. I'll stop so we can get a roll done. I see Member Intoppa's hand up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Rideville.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Waive, yeah, just waive the reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: He made the motion. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Antafa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lengelker.
[Paul Ruseau]: Neither.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information. Point of information.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, this is in fact a new policy. I just wanted to get that answer done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Go ahead, John.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, next up is me, I take it and. What was my question? Oh, yes. So this is a new policy. So just sort of some background. If the school committee has no policy, the superintendent is the policymaker until we have made a policy. So there's nothing that prevents this from, frankly, being the policy until we approve a policy. So I think that There's no urgency for us to have this done tonight. It can be if the superintendent agrees that this is what it should be until we have said otherwise or approved this one, then there is no policy of the school committee. So I don't think there's any reason to be concerned about. sending this to subcommittee. I just don't want anybody to think we're going to be without a policy until then. So I'll second that motion to send the management of life-threatening allergies policy to the rules and policy subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, I do have some concerns about the and staff expecting five year olds to take care of the adults is what we're talking about here. Um, and I'm not. I'm not real. I've never really thought much about how our students have to, um You know, we have adults in the school who work there who have life-threatening allergies. But whether five-year-olds are properly washing their hands or not, and whether that staff member's life is at risk, I assume that they're at risk. Frankly, and I assume that as an adult, they are doing what they need to do to limit that risk. I don't think having kindergartners bear any responsibility or have any policy that suggests that they have any responsibility to keeping their teachers safe. I just don't know developmentally how that works. And so a policy must be enforceable. That is the basic tenet of policy. And in my mind, and I do think we need to talk about the PTO thing, because what does enforcement look like if a PTO refuses to comply? Are we going to say one school will have no PTO or that certain members of the PTO cannot be a part of the PTO? Because membership in PTOs is not something we have ever had anything to say about. I think the definition of a PTO is all parents. Our members period. So, I think, implement that I'm just really think it's important that whatever we end up with her policy language, it is implement double and enforceable and so the, the inclusion of and staff. As well as that, and when I was reviewing this with Director Silva, the PTO was one of the first things I had to comment on was, well, how do we enforce this? These people don't work for us. We can't take their keys away. We can't write them up. We can't make them come to training. So I'm not saying we don't put systems in place to try and have less of a possible negative outcome. what that looks like should be spelled out, because policy should be enforceable, or it's just us trying to feel good. It's my opinion. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: The motion is to move the management of life-threatening allergies policy to the rules and policy subcommittee as amended to include staff in the policy statement. Invitations will be sent to coaches, PTOs, and other stakeholders.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: And who first and consecutive?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Langenkern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's do that because it's long. It's a field trip policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Honestly, there are so many for which that scenario describes that I don't recall. It might be. I know there was a nursing approval of field trips form policy thing as well, which I don't think isn't clear.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do want to point out that the policy that's in the manual is from who knows when, which is not what people have been doing. So this is one of those scenarios where folks have been operating under a policy we approved but never made it into the manual. So the difference looks massive if you look at our current policy manual, but it is not operationally a huge change.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? You switched the wrong way, John. That's a yes? Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Atapa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lincoln.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, yeah, sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's, thank you. Is the motion to send this to the Policy and Rules Subcommittee to modify this policy or is there specific language to strike?
[Paul Ruseau]: Do it anyway.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh. Member Bradley for now. I was gonna get meatball.
[Paul Ruseau]: How dare you? I'll be honest. That's why I go off camera. Anyways, Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa. Yes. Thank you. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, everyone. So there has been a long-standing requirement, which Medford has probably never once, like most districts, actually complied with, that collaboratives for which we are a member must, the school committee representative, for which I am that person, must provide a quarterly update on the goings-on at the collaborative. This is a Is this monthly or quarterly? I don't actually remember how often the newsletter, I think it's a monthly newsletter, but anyways. So this newsletter is serving that purpose and I have nothing other than the requirement that it shows up in our minutes. That's the regulatory requirement is that it's in our minutes. So if there is a motion to, I will make the motion to acknowledge receive it. Receipt of the sore collaborative. Orderly update.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Sorry, John. Member Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lengelkern?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I think some of this stuff is in fact already in wheels are rolling on this already. I do think there's also something really important to note that It sounds like an excuse, but the ramp at the high school, we looked at that, I think, three or four years ago. It's not safe for any human being, that drop off without a railing. Adding a railing, it turns out that when you do some work for ADA, you kind of open the floodgates where you can't just, we can't add a railing there. We cannot. we must fully remediate the ADA issues. And that goes from being, I don't know, $10,000 for a railing to many millions of dollars. So I think, I don't want anybody to think we don't care, but also spending millions of dollars to remediate the high school when we're gonna, fingers crossed, knock it down would be both bizarre and also we don't have that money. So, you know, these, Look, if I had a mobility disability or issue, I might not be quite as comfortable with, well, we'll just have to wait. I just wish I could say we could find that money. I mean, it's not a million dollars. My understanding is the high school would be many millions of dollars if we decide to open that. And that report we did already get, I feel like was I in a different, was it a subcommittee or something, or did I just read the report? I think we just got it a couple of meetings ago, but the width of doors, the height of Bathroom fixtures, they're not the same as they were in 2000 when those buildings were built. But to spend, frankly, a huge amount of money to lower sinks an inch, to make doors an inch wider, That seems like something you do when you build a building. It's not something you do unless you have unlimited resources to make all of those doors an inch wider. I mean, it's concrete block. I mean, I can't even fathom what it would cost. And cost, of course, can't be the only consideration. I think we can't talk about living wages for some staff and then talk about spending countless millions to add an inch to the width of a door or an inch to lower existing fixtures in bathrooms. I'm very comfortable with these things need to be in place. But there's opportunity costs for everything we do. And I just think this one, unfortunately, it's just such a huge opportunity cost. I'd rather give all of our kids actual free public education before I would rather add an inch to the width of doors. I can say that quite comfortably. So I don't know. I mean, this all kind of sucks. Excuse my, pardon my French, because it's, I mean, we built the buildings at the time complying with ADA. and then it changed. It didn't come with a check from the federal government when they decided that wasn't the current acceptable standards. They just, another unfunded mandate, and supposed to just somehow find the money. It's insane. Anyways, I'll stop talking.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Reynthal?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, there you are, sorry. I didn't have you in gallery. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Atapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapate. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. May I have a roll call, Karen?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lingo-Kirk.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, I mean, on the one hand, I definitely think we need to have something that we can tell the public, we considered this in comfortable with spending any money to do that. Because if you tell me we have a 30 acre site, if you spend money to study at a five acre site, I'm going to be like, what? It's kind of like, you know, you have 12 kids and you're going to study, but you can afford to live in a, whether a one bedroom is the right choice for you. It would be kind of wild. If they were, they were close, I would be like, let's spend the money. But five acres is the larger of those sites. And I just, I don't want us to say, oh, we only spent $100,000 determined by the site. Is that too small for something, but we're already on a 30 acre site that. We should be able to say that that's the case, but I don't think we should spend money.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, I wasn't, I just wasn't there. I was not in that meeting. Um, but did we consider any taking cities like. I mean, I know that the additional cost takings, I don't know, does MSBA help cover those? No, we're in our room. All right, well, everything costs so much today, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: We're not making it easier. We're not spitting a bottle full of money.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, it would be literally.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have to do that. Alumni feel that all night.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, that's just property. Sorry. I think it's also. OK, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I ask a quick question on that? Yeah. When we were selecting an LPM, Brady really had it was unanimous but it wasn't like you were like three times the points as the next person. Does that seem kind of like is the number one usually a little ahead of the number two or is it like typical for number one to be like so far ahead that there's no conversation?
[Paul Ruseau]: And the other thing that I heard, I think it might've been one of you all from that field, is that, look, they're paying for half of this building. Right. So they should probably have a say. So, you know, I mean, the mayor, the superintendent of schools, and whoever we appoint to the school committee can all likely, zero of them will know anything about building a high school. No, totally. But they'll know everything about Medford and what our school district is. But I assume the other 13 members will all have, literally, this is their career. So if I was the person writing half the check for this, I would not want it to be just elected people. one person who's got a doctorate in education deciding anything about the core of who's capable of actually designing this building. Because honestly, I wouldn't know. I mean, I would look at their website. I'd be like, oh, yeah, they're all great. They've done another building. Seems good. Yeah. Yeah. So all right. My take on that? We can't change it. Let's pick her.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, I'm assuming there'll be quickness coaching going on ahead of time. the three folks we sent over, right? Like that you all will be really working them up till they know. We're not gonna talk about that. Okay, go. Well, I just like, I'm assuming each of these three people will have never been to this kind of a thing before.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: I said several things and I have nothing to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I like that a lot because also at least school committee members, I don't know if everybody can get those requests, but we're gonna get asked these questions long before September, you know, just in an email here or there and hold that till September is not a really satisfying response. The other thing though, this is something about the website. During this whole process I have reviewed school building project websites, there seems to be a consistent thing that's missing. And that is that the websites seem to always represent And when we're looking at how did this all play out, there's like getting understanding the entire process starting at the beginning from a school building website seems to be absolutely up to date. So I don't even know what that's looking like. Like you can find the timeline, but like the timeline we just saw is what you can find. And I'm just thinking, is there a way we can like sort of pay it forward a little for other place, other building committees in the future, How do they do that? How do they do that? And they're always asking those questions about the early phases. And we're going to all forget very much about this phase when we have shovels in the ground. We're going to be like, oh, that was so long ago for peers. So that's just something to think about when working on the website is like, it isn't just for the community now. In my mind, it should be to help other school committees and school building committees in the future be able to like, they're going to come in for the most part, probably ignorant of the whole process, all nine yards. And I mean, I've seen some really nice websites, but I cannot get that, because they're all at the end. And nobody looking at them from the outside is ever at the end. They're always at the end.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham. Member Intoppa. Member Olapade. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Herzog, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I stand in front of Eric, because I always do.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, let's do this first, because this is fun.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's awesome. Thank you. I wanted to thank Paul and let him know that I look forward to perhaps having a place to stay in Provincetown. Although I suspect that's a popular request. It's so cheap to stay there. And Dr. Cushing, I wanted to thank you for your never ending ask about self-reflection, but not doing it alone by asking me, you know, how am I doing? And how does this seem? And, you know, that level of openness to criticism I thought was refreshing. And, you know, I could be blunt and honest with you, and you were totally fine with it. And I appreciate that. And I'm going to miss that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, I especially like the, um part about students who do not pass the MCAS and a slightly off topic. It's part of the policy, but, um, going back and getting those kids their diplomas is a big deal. And I just was, um, I see that They wouldn't be students, they'd all be adults at this point, but that they can request this on our website. I don't know where on the website that would be found, so maybe we could make that a little more obvious. if we have students that are interested, I feel like we should do something for them. They're not students, they're all grown-ups, but if they want something and we can do something for them to make it feel special, I would be totally up for that. 2003 is a long time ago to graduate, but I suspect that a lot of folks who would have received a diploma but did not and are now being told they can have one, like probably a very bittersweet thing, but I think that if they're open to, if they want to do something, we should do something for them. So that's not emotion, but just a thought. I just, it really has always bothered me that they could pass all of the stuff we say, but still not get a diploma. And can't really write that wrong from the perspective of how that affected their lives, but we can at least give them a diploma and make it a big deal like it was for everybody else that went to graduation. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: What's the second reading, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, the first reading. Okay, thank you. And who firsted and seconded?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I know we've talked about a stable, the stabilization fund several times I just want to, I don't know what the accounting requirements are to make sure that really happens but I just want to make sure that all the teaser being crossed and eyes are being dotted so that we don't. I'm sorry. I didn't find out that there was like a July one. Oh sorry. We didn't do it by July one, so it can't happen till next time we have certified cash or something. So I just want to make sure that's happening.
[Paul Ruseau]: That means me. Member Branley. Actually, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Atapa. Yes. Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. And Mayor Landau-Kern is abstaining.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. The motion is to move. Meet that the two or the two other only to 22. Okay to move to meet classrooms from the Roberts to the mistook beginning in August of 2025. I'll make that motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The next one is the motion. Do we need to motion to request? We already did that. We've already approved that, sorry. The motion is, excuse me, as amended. So I don't have the language of the unamended, but I'll find that. is to create a strategic space planning task force of staff and caregivers once our space utilization study is completed by HMFH Architects. Oliver, motion that? I did.
[Paul Ruseau]: I also just had my husband. I sent him the link and a text and asked that he could get in. He was able to. And I'm a fly in front of me. I'm not just like losing my mind.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I just say, this has to be the first time a public official has been actually biking while in our meetings. This is amazing. Come on, it's gotta be the first.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Oh, Member Branley froze. And we just lost her. I'll come back to her. Member Graham. Yes, here. Member Intoppa. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, so President and Mayor Lungo-Koehn is mayor. The mayor's not here today, right? Correct. And I'll mark Member Branley back when she gets in.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ntukpa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. And Mayor Septon?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Just want to make sure that the motion is to a point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: These are the, where they're transferring in?
[Paul Ruseau]: Where they're going. Where they're going.
[Paul Ruseau]: You did, um, is there any, um. I mean, I don't see a total here, but that's fine, not required. But is there a point where we just don't just buy our own vans? I know at Shore, we've just reordered a bunch of vans. And I mean, I don't know the cost analysis on that. But I suppose somebody has to drive them is the other catch. At Shore, I believe the staff drive the vans. So it's going to be very different. Just something to think about, I mean, but those numbers per day probably don't come up. I mean, it isn't to say that we can't have staff drive the vans either, by the way. I mean, if it happens at shore, we'd obviously have to negotiate that with our bargaining partners, but I guess there are plenty of people who would be capable of it and who would be open to the additional compensation. So just something to think about, because these numbers, like all transportation costs are going just up and up and up and up. So just a thought.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Oh, you want to say thank you? Could you go back to slide 21?
[Paul Ruseau]: There's an arrow right next to the 24 to the left of it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Something's in the way.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I love that. Anyways, what's on there?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh yeah, try the keyboard. Try the keyboard arrow. Keyboard.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep.
[Paul Ruseau]: There it is. So, nope. Other direction. Oh, this is it, right, sorry. The number went away, so I stopped paying attention. So, you know, the redistricting is always a challenge in every district that's ever existed. And I'm not afraid of a challenge. I'm not afraid of political fallout. that will occur, 100% will occur. I bought a house right next to the school, and now you're telling me my kid has to go to school all the way across the city. And I feel for folks in that situation, I mean, how would you know that we're having this meeting right now? You haven't even had a kid yet, or you have your first child. You're not paying attention to this meeting. So that's all manageable. It's also, in my mind, never-ending cycle. Like, if we just redistrict, then it's just a temporary band-aid. Because, you know, I live practically as far away from the Missittook, which is where my kids went. I mean, I could walk to the Brooks in the blink of an eye. But, you know, the Missittook had to be stretched all over the place. And I mean, I didn't know what school my kids were going to go to, so I didn't care. But my point is just like, if you told me that if I moved two houses over, it would have been the Brooks, and I just glanced at those stupid school rating websites not knowing that they're garbage, I'd be like, oh, I guess I'll buy the house two doors down. And that will just, I mean, folks will continue to do that. not to generalize about who lives in Medford, but you know, the folks that are buying single family homes that are in predominantly West Medford and are Brooks zoned, like they're doing the research for that. So it's going to be, and I'm not saying others aren't, but it's just going to be a problem that we just have to keep revisiting. Now, granted, we're 20, five years now since we've been in the new schools, the old new schools. And there has been a couple of, at least one redistricting, which was sort of just school committee wasn't involved. It's just like the superintendent took the map out and moved the streets around is my understanding. So I'm not a fan of redistricting and not when I see all these other options. If these other options were totally ridiculous and just could not work for zillions of reasons, then redistricting it is. That would be the tool in our toolbox. Two options, the pre-K to four, and then the two middle schools is one I know I've talked about with some of you all before. The pre-K to one, and then, I mean, I hadn't thought of that one, and I think that's very interesting. So there's a lot of talk about continuity in a school. I think that the middle school, lottery process, to me, has shown me that people really want continuity with their student cohort. It's rare to get the same teacher one year after the next, unless there's a reorg and you get really lucky. And so, yeah, you'll have different specialists. You'll have different food service workers and the different secretary if you're in a different school. But you want to be with your classmates. both of those options listed there very much interest me much, much more than redistricting because I just feel like we're just kicking the can down the road now. And you know, like the pre-k to one, like some years that'll be a lot more pre-k to one, some years it'll be a lot less or not a lot, but the fluctuation that occurs will not be impacting other schools, it'll be centralized. It'll be, in my mind, easier to manage. And so will the space study, they're going to see all these options, or are they going to just provide data, and then we're going to think about them? I did have a question.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, OK. All right, well. they're not going to have to do the thinking on this, then all that talking I just did was for nothing. The weighted system, by the way, I'm actually a fan of the weighted system for a few reasons. I don't think families are a fan of such a system, to be clear. But you know, the mixing of our students across the city. Like, we're one city. And this isn't when I grew up. Well, I didn't grow up around here, but I grew up in a place where there were no neighbors. But, you know, the neighborhoods that people, many of the people who live in Medford still remember were, you know, they were all the kids on the street and we all knew each other and we walked to school and all. I really wish we could go back to that, but I know most kids are not roaming the streets at all. It's just shocking to how few kids you ever see on the streets. This notion that your friends that you go to school with have to be the friends that live next door isn't one that I like it, but I think that's the thing that's gone that is never coming back unless we can literally stop having cell phones and game systems. I would love that day. I would too, but I think we all have to continue to mourn it and move on. So mixing kids across neighborhoods and, frankly, socioeconomics and all the other things, I think, is a great idea. However, if there is one system on this list that will cause an endless political firestorm, it is the weighted system. The family who buys a house next to, pick your school, and then it's told they're going to the school on the other side of the city. Every one of those people will be screaming at us at school committee, and then if we don't have enough time for that, they'll go to city council.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I loved the school and I, you know, I don't, my kids didn't go to the other schools, so I can't comment on those schools, but the cultural aspects, the, you know, there was a, at least before the pandemic ruined everything, we had the sort of, it wasn't Thanksgiving, but it was like a big thing with lots of food and all the different backgrounds of folks in the community that sent their kids there came. And it was clearly a fire code violation. There were so many people every single year. It was wonderful. So I do agree with that. But I just think the weighted system is like a pretty nasty surprise for families. I think that once we get full, you're going to have to do that for now. But I would be a big fan of what is it going to take, what's it going to cost to do one of those restructurings. And I mean for 2027, like at the school year 2020, fall of 2026 or something, like there may end up, you know, Looking at these numbers, I know that there's, you know, if we moved like a bunch of kindergartners or preschool kids into the middle schools and to Andrews, that we would run into like, the bathrooms are wrong and all this other stuff that's very expensive. So I'm just super.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I add something? Yes, thank you, Rebecca. I actually really appreciated that, you know, the scenario of Not two schools, but three schools, plus the high school. I mean, you can have kids all over the place, I think is a real concern. I think when I hear your concerns, which when my kids were little, they were two years apart, so would have been plenty of opportunity for two schools. I think our challenge, I mean, the challenge has been explained, I think, pretty succinctly. You know, none of us here would build the Missatuck where it is. That sounds like the answer. But yeah, I mean, we can't make those other schools any bigger. And I think that there's no ideal solution because, I mean, frankly, because of where that building is. There were plenty of other elementary schools when we built those schools that we could have used, but I wasn't around for that. So I do think we're gonna end up, whatever solution we come up with is going to be Constrained I, I think that's a word that's okay to use superintendent doesn't like it. We're going to be constrained. We're going to be constrained by. You know, like, the laws of physics on, like, how many people we can put in a building and I know that you understand that Rebecca. I'm not suggesting you don't, but. And, you know, we may end up with. With, I mean, I think about there are plenty of other school districts that. Even in Somerville that have. I've always thought it was odd that we had such a consistent set of, I mean, great, I didn't think it was odd in a bad way, I thought it was great. Because then you hear about these other school districts, Somerville, obviously Boston, you know, there's K-1, there's 2-3, 4, there's, you know, but then there's also like 1 through 5s, they're like all these different kinds of configurations, which to me sounds Sounded like a nightmare, but I sort of feel like I'm understanding why that is. It's not that it's not a nightmare, it's that it's the only dream we're gonna be able to have. So yeah, I mean, I think transportation costs are definitely going to be a major issue because any of these other options will require significantly more transportation. And I did the math on the current number, it's $1.4 million for 180 days of school. And that's only transporting the kids we do transport. So are we looking at doubling that? I mean, we'll know more once we have the space study and we have ideas. We can probably play that out to say, what will it actually cost? Because maybe it will double the transportation cost. But an additional $1.4 million a year is nothing compared to adding some stories to a building or all the other, you know, physical structure options that frankly are outside the realm of possible at this time. So I appreciate putting the lens on those scenarios, which we did hear plenty when we had the middle school, when we went to the middle school lottery, but this is obviously a lot more complicated because the middle schools are beside each other. So it's a little bit like, yeah, you can drive the extra 12 feet or whatever, but driving across the entire city is a much bigger ask.
[Paul Ruseau]: So moved if you're writing it down.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, yes, um, we don't have the authority anyways. Here is a CYA, uh, vote. Um, so I, I mean, I, I think the superintendent should begin the planning efforts regardless of, I mean, if the school committee voted no, that'd be unfortunate, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member so present, Mayor Langenfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, I know this is early, so I do have some questions. I'm trying to understand how the early pickup helps with capacity. If you could just explain that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'll wait till I hear more because none of that no offense that what you said made sense except that from a like in my mind mathematically, none of that made sense. So I will wait for more information on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's the answer I was looking for. Thank you. My next question, how many people presently work in afterschool? Oh, you would have to- Ballpark.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Oh, she came on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Just two more questions, hopefully. I'm very much looking forward to the consultancy. How much are we paying him, or have we figured that out yet?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I guess I did have another question to, you know, my understanding is the magic bullet is that, like, I think I've been saying since I was elected that we pay them full time wages, they get benefits, they get retirement. And there will be lots of people to come out of the woodwork to do this work if we do that. So I, I'm looking forward to Andrew's very detailed analysis of our situation, but once we get that report, unless there's gonna be a suggestion to do something different here than they did in the other two districts, which was to pay people, frankly, reasonable full-time wages, which will be, I'm not gonna decide ahead of time, we can't do it. But that is a staggeringly bigger dollar figure than we currently pay. Not just the hourly rate, but insurance. I mean, we have some staff, I'm sure, who literally work here because they get benefits for their family. So we'll cross that bridge when we get there. But I mean, I feel like I've been saying, if we pay people $100 an hour, we would have no trouble finding after-school staff. And I've been saying it over and over and over and over and over. And so yay, if that's what we're going to do. Because I do think that if that's the solution, which has seemed obvious for so many years, then I'm all for it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm very excited. I'm happy to see that we're talking about doing something that has been solvable, but has not been solvable for free. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Having been part of the HECAT effort, I guess I'm very concerned about delaying health one. If I thought that in 6th, 7th, and 8th, we were providing truly robust sex part of the health education curriculum. I might be convinced, I might be convinced, not even sure I would, but I'm not sure if we could say that today. I don't know if you could say that today. I don't remember the details exactly, but there was an enormous amount we're not covering in our current curriculums. So I'm just concerned about the impact on students. You know, we already, here and heard during the HECAT efforts that by the time we're learning about this stuff, we've probably already all done it, which is not all students, but an awful lot of them. The point of education isn't to teach people something they already know. So I guess I'm concerned about this not, I mean, why not take away one of the physical education requirements instead? But also, yeah, I'm just very, very concerned about the delay here. And I'd like to hear more thoughts on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Can you, I mean, we just went through this with the scheduling, but can you refresh my memory on the rotation? Like, is that like the first four blocks of each day or how does that work again? Because my kids took it before it was the current format.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I understand that now, thank you. So right now we are planning and have been The students get to experience all of the CTE programs, which is a noble thing to try to do. If we add a bunch of additional CTE programs with a new high school or before then, we are going to run into, like, we can't have students just spend their whole freshman year doing CTE rotations. There's only going to be so many classes and periods to do this. I just feel like at the moment we've been able to expand it so they can take all of the rotations, which, frankly, it's probably a lot easier scheduling wise in the old way we had to pick and choose and then it was like first, second and third choices. It sounds like a nightmare. But once we've added more programs and there are not, it's not going to be. We're not going to take away English and math and and and other core subjects so that kids can rotate through more CTE programs. So it seems to me like the idea would be, well, we're going to face that soon. So let's face that now and pretend that the additional health class is we're going to put that in and have to require kids to pick one or two of the CTE programs they don't rotate through. we're having them rotate through all the programs. And I just, I just, I have a strong sense that students don't actually imagine that they're interested in all of the programs. Now, I do know from hearing from, I think, I think number Graham's kid, like having gone through one of the rotations that would not have been chosen as a rotation, like it was incredibly interesting. And I think that's part of what education is for, but, but health education just can't be something where you're like, well, we want them to be able to try all of the programs in the CTE programs. So we're gonna delay what I think of as absolutely critical health education for post-pubescent students who are discovering themselves. And I just don't know that I think it's okay for us to It sounds like the other folks that have been consulted were saying scheduling-wise. And I think that's obviously very important. But scheduling-wise is not the whole story here. Not that I think they thought that. But I'm just very uncomfortable with this idea right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: The motion is to amend the graduation requirements to require three years for P E two years of health and one additional year of either P or health.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. slightly off topic, I guess, but if we do run into a situation where the funding is not going to come for free meals, this body did vote on December 19, 2022, that they'll be free and meant for public schools regardless. So while I'm really hopeful this does not come to pass, If it does, it's not a conversation for the food services director and the director of finance and the superintendent. This body has to make that decision. And so until we change that, it's free regardless of whether the funds come. Obviously, if that happens, we would need to understand what the impact is and make a decision, but just a clarification on that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Where does transportation go in all of this?
[Paul Ruseau]: I know everybody wants transportation.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that's okay. And where does Megan Fidler-Carey fit into this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Sorry, was there a question?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I put this forward, I noticed actually just now that it doesn't say who put it forward, but, and Dr. Cushing will probably remember better than me why I did that. Sorry, it was a lot of work, but I suddenly forget why. Not because I have a concussion. I don't have a concussion, I promise.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you hear me now?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, well, I'm going to leave that all on, but all the fun things that are going to pop up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I don't know this is an exceptional microphones. Can you just say something that hello. Can you hear me.
[Paul Ruseau]: when we are going into our second meeting where the actual selection will happen. is it just us or are there gonna be people queued up just before us and they could literally choose the person that was our favorite like 10 minutes before we come on?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so y'all gotta be prepared to change your minds in a second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Also, one of the things I was surprised when we were doing the finalists was, and I forget which group, Maybe it was two of the three groups, but they're like, oh, we've been planning for this project for a year now, watching all your meetings. So that was a surprise to me. I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was a surprise that when we issue the RFS or the RFP or whatever, that's not when people find out about this. If that's when they found out, they probably weren't who we wanted anyways because they were not paying enough attention. If we were putting this on a square piece of land like in Revere, you could probably get away with a lot, but this is not.
[Paul Ruseau]: What was that, Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I ask a question? Sure. I've only paid enough attention to know that sometimes the MSBA, because inflation will be generous and make adjustments. But that's assuming the economy is doing okay. So, if inflation, we saw a chart, I don't know whose chart it was.
[Paul Ruseau]: you know, if we do see them at risk, we're gonna call the number and that's gonna be the number. And that's great. But until we've gotten to that point, we have no idea what that inflation, that's not in a year. We're not doing that in a year. So if we look at another 15 or more percent increase between now and then, That's a lot of money. And so I'm concerned that if we set a number too low, things go up 25%, which by the way, is not unimaginable in this weird world we live in right now. We will not, we will instead just be deciding which programs we're cutting. That's what we'll do. That is the only path that will go forward is we will just decide we're gonna skip this vocational program. We're gonna stop having before and after preschool in the building or whatever. Theater, it's tiny or theater.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, yeah, I have no idea.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's my concern is that I don't, a $600 million project today, like if it was just built right this second, is not an appropriate project for Medford's size or its, you know, financial demographics. But what does it look like in five years? Or four years, three years? Whatever number makes baby happy. It's just unimaginable because I think that it's like, if you had told me we were paying $10 for a carton of eggs two or three years ago, I would have been like, you're a lunatic. And here we are. So I don't want us to like, get all the way through and stumble because we decided something what would have been two or three years ago. And maybe we will get to that point, and it'll be $600 million and the voters will be like, we just can't do it. And that's always an option. But I'd rather they have the option to do that rather than to sell a project
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No. No.
[Paul Ruseau]: We'll verify that. is the DSP. I know the DSP is the three folks that go and have their votes. Are they the only ones who actually participate in doing this election?
[Paul Ruseau]: So if you get 30 respondents, only those three people are allowed to sit and do that work.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, that's nice. I mean, even the 10 responses, it's like if it's just, I mean, we added people because there's so much. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley. Present. Member Graham. Here. Member Intoppa. Here. Member Olapade. Present. Member Reinfeld is not here yet. Member Ruseau is present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Loecker?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So this last year we did this for the first time because the MASC two or three years ago made a change because every resolution that had been approved by the body just stayed as a resolution forever to be worked on by the MASC, which, as you can imagine, that list just grew and grew and grew. And of course, if everything's important, then nothing is important. So they changed the rules to require, so the things stay active as resolutions for three years, I'm pretty sure it's three years. And then at that point, they would drop off unless school committees vote to say, no, we really wanna continue to work on this. So these are the three, they were, I think, I can't remember, we got our packets from the association. There was a bunch of them. These are the three that I thought were timely and necessary to continue to work on. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. The last one is because the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education does not allow educators in Massachusetts to be on the board, which pretty much every school committee member and probably every educator thinks is insane. So that's what this is about, is trying to make a change there so that there can actually be some professional educators on the board of education. So it seems reasonable. But if you have any other questions, let me know. Do I have a motion to approve?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You know, I feel like it's been many years where we've talked about, or I've talked about, you know, we have these huge supply lists. Everybody has to descend on target. And the things that people are being asked to buy for the most part are not, they're good for a couple thousand years, probably. I mean, I don't know how long a Rima paper is actually good for, but if it's not in the sun, it's probably good for a very long time. So I just, if we weren't dealing with the schedule change, I would feel like I would say, let's do it now. we should just order a truckload or two of this stuff and have our students buy it from us at a discount, because it'll be cheaper if we were ordering pallets of paper and pallets of three-ring binders than Target's going to sell them for. So next year we should do that, okay? There's so much going on right now, I feel like it's totally not okay to ask for this because it is a logistics piece of work. It's not really, I don't think it costs that much. It's just a, it's a logistics effort and I don't think we have the bandwidth, but something to think about for next year because I do think it's silly that, you know, These things that are the same things that my kids bought when they were in kindergarten are the same things being bought today in kindergarten, and they do not go bad, other than maybe glue. And there's no reason we can't buy them in bulk and have them for our students at a lower cost, or maybe someday at no cost, but that's a different conversation. And I think that it might help teachers also to be like, okay, we have, know 20 students and I need 20 of these and if we can get the parents out of the middle then the teachers can just fill out a requisition to get 20 of those and it just seems really clean and people aren't driving all over on weekends when they're busy and Facebook black market and you know it seems like an awful lot of effort by an awful lot of people when I think that if we took it out of the hands of You know the caregivers, and just teachers fill out a form I want this many things for my classroom for my students, it just seems really straightforward. But next year we should approach that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley is absent. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Member Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Here. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. The motion is to approve this project and send a request to the mayor and council the three options for their consideration with a stated preference for the option with the greatest expenditure of free cash to reduce the annual payments for the district. And I can't be more specific other than to say it's related to security.
[Paul Ruseau]: Was it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Granley is absent. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Einfeld. Yes. And member Rousseau, yes. And Mayor Lungo-Koehn. she drop off again?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't see her on zoom.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member LaPotte? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. And I believe the mayor's still absent, but also couldn't vote anyways.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't want to repeat everything, but I also want to say that I'm grateful for what the override has offered us as a community, but I think also as a community, it's worth noting that we will not be like virtually every other community right now, which is going through a torturous experience of there'll be strikes and there'll be cuts. And this is sort of the year when the hammer came down on COVID and now we'll get tariffs and other things. So I feel very fortunate to be in a community where instead of having a packed room of people screaming at us to not cut this and not cut that, we're instead giving our kids more, which is a wonderful experience. I do find that the negotiations were, they were a lot of long nights, but I felt like I certainly also felt like I had a lot of good relationships building up with the MTA team, as well as of course the administration and vice chair Graham. I appreciate all the work that has gone in. I know that there's much more to do and I look forward to making sure all of our other contracts are also buttoned up nicely. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Appreciate the heads up this was coming. And when we did the policy we also had not contemplated the additional two PD days, which are new, starting in this year. So when we made these changes to the policy we had played them out I believe through 2030 or 2029 and things would work. Um, but something else changed that I don't think we had anticipated at that time. So, um, I have two motions. Um, one is to send the recommendations here as well as, um, a discussion about the religious holidays in the context of how many school days we actually have staff work days there are. Um and then the other one is a motion to approve Option triangle. And now let me write those down.
[Paul Ruseau]: First motion is to approve the triangle option.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? No. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: The motion is to send the calendar policy ICICA. recommendations to the Policy Subcommittee for review and consideration of policy changes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. You had asked Dr. Cushing earlier about this when we created this policy, and we did invite all of the faith leaders.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yeah, we will certainly do that again, because I think we're in a different situation now. We also didn't, I don't believe we even had Juneteenth at that time either.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do think there might be a conversation to be had with our state delegation, at least on the eastern part of the state, where we haven't had five snow days in so long. It's questionable whether we'll ever have five snow days again, but that's outside the scope, I think, right now. So shall I do that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly memorandum. Yes, remember on top of all the potty memory and fell. Yes, remember so yes Marilyn go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Is there an error in the meet tuition charts across the board? There's five days and four days for Brooks, five days and four days for Roberts. And then there's two five days and a four day for Missittook. And that second five day one is hugely more expensive than all the other programs.
[Paul Ruseau]: Because in each of the, there's three MISUTA programs for each of the MEAPs, and there's this one five-day one, which is dramatically more expensive.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I just, when we send this out, we might want to make sure to clarify that. Clarify that for anybody else reading it. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. For Kids Corner, we approved the next two school years, but for me, for only approving the next school year, is there a reason? Just didn't get to it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve the MEEP rates at 3% for the next school year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? never so yes Maryland go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, could we take a five minute recess to figure out Zoom?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think there's still some problems with these numbers, but I think the motion that I would make is that we would accept the rate card with a 3% increase over whatever it is right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I made the motion for the 3% for the before program. I'd also make a motion for 3% for the afterschool program, if there are even separate programs, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll call it twice. Member Grant, this is for before school. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: And for the after school member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't have any questions because they're all answered and I appreciate that, but I'll make a motion to approve the budget transfers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I do have a question about the May 19th date. I'm wondering if you've talked to the administration yet on that. That was something they said they could do.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, then I'll. And I don't want to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, Graham. Yes, remember and Tapa. Yes, remember all about it. Yes, remember right. Yes, remember so yes Maryland.
[Paul Ruseau]: Ever, Graham. Yes, remember and Tapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the party. Yes. Remember, I know. Yes, members. Yes, Marilyn go.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm actually, I'm fine with just adding it to the policy, although I would remove the words further consideration in the next steps and just, and just, or not including the header at all and just all that text minus the header.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: just to strike further considerations and next steps and include that language on that page as part of the policy. This policy is updated every six months anyways. So we'll just scrap whatever we don't need in October when we review it next.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Graham. Yes, remember and Papa. Remember all the party. Yes, remember I'm Phil. Yes, remember so yes Maryland occur.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. folks might be showing up or have shown up thinking that this was when the hearing was. So if you just wanna clarify for anybody who's on Zoom thinking that what they're getting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I just want to say that that's a record probably by three or four times the number of things on a consent agenda we've ever had. So congratulations, everybody. It's like a lot.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olaparte? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It's actually not a question. It's just something I said last year as well. I appreciate that we're getting closer or maybe we are achieving it with this budget, the ability to go. Hello, the ability to move year to year and actually do comparisons. You know this having staff that work in one department paid for out of another departments funds, it's It's the opposite of transparency. And it's really, it does a disservice to the community to be able to read our budget and know which ends what's going on. It also does a disservice to this body and future iterations of this body to be able to look and you know I graph, all of the city's line items. And, you know, the city is different, but Within the schools, I really have never been able to do that because maintenance is used, when I first came on, maintenance budget was shockingly little, not what it is now, but we actually did do emergency maintenance then. We just didn't hire a paraprofessional or we didn't hire this staff member or we, you know, delayed paying raises or all the other shenanigans to make it so that we could actually get the work done. But there's no way to ever understand historically what happened in Medford financially. And I'm excited that this might be the beginning of that ability. As long as there's no more people miscategorized, they're not miscategorized, but they're being paid out of accounts that any person who's not actively working in the finance department would understand that, oh, There are five fewer people in administration. Well, no, there really aren't. There never were those five people in administration. So I'm looking forward to the future when we can look at our budget, understand our budget and make decisions about what's the right way to spend our money. I think that's a major responsibility of this body and it shouldn't require dozens of hours of meetings to figure out. We should be able to look at the budget. So thank you very much to the finance department for your very hard work the last couple of years to make that right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, if I might just fill that in for me. The motion is to approve the budget presented as our budget request pursuant to policy DBC phase three school committee review and approval of budget request.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll second the vote, the number of grams.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think we have to roll call that one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Brandler?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley present. Ever Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly, Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Member and Tapa. Yes. Remember all the party. Yes. Member Reinfeld members so yes Marilyn go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. Could you tell us what turnbacks are?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just, the state assessments, I did look it up and just shy of 8 million of that is actually charter tuition. Just wanted to point that out, not for you, you know that. And Councilor Leming has his hand up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So if the House and Senate actually ever pass a budget before December 31st, which does happen, right? Maybe, once in a while. June 30th, what did I say? You said December 31st. I meant June 30.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I did mean June 30. All of our documentation, all of our budget can be done and signed off before they have actually... They've actually finalized the numbers.
[Paul Ruseau]: I assume that's what we do in years when they're working in July. And when they're working in July and... we get more money. That just is that just comes in and it's just excess. Or does that go into a specific? It just goes into the general fund.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Longo, I believe is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? I'm Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're pretty, pretty light, but I just heard you that time. Member Intoppa? Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, he's not. He's not a host.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I'm here. Thank you. Great. Member Olapade? Here. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member so present, Mayor Lago-Kern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Is there an exact set of language that I should have the motion? Is that why Member Graham has her hand up? That's my question. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I am forever grateful you didn't expect me to type that up as it went, since you went.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Grant?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, each one is.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm in the document, there seem to be duplicates for each school.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'll second it though.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Hruso. Yes. Mayor Lengelkern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: At the bottom right, Jerry, next to the slider.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I don't know if you can see the question from the mayor, but should that actually say FY25 and FY26?
[Paul Ruseau]: Barry?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The shore tuition going up is confusing, because I didn't think we had shore occupying any classroom. So was there money that shore owed us and we just got it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, sorry. I was confused by that. Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lindgren.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. was that a present member Graham? I see your face, so. You're muted. Can you hear me here? Yes. Okay, sorry. Member Intapa. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member so present, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Never Branley. Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member and Tapa. Well, it's coming in again. I'll come back. Remember all the potting? Yes. Remember her right job?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member. So yes, Maryland go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Tapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ntuk. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Bever Bradley. Yes. Member Graham. Yes. Member Ntaba. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: No rush. Peter, can you just, yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: First of all, I think we should have a new rule that you should have to have a baby or a toddler on your lap for any meeting where we discuss something like this. It's pretty dry. But in all seriousness, in keeping with what Vice Chair Graham mentioned, I've been working on policy formats and all this other stuff, and I just realized that we probably should have a similar kind of section on job descriptions so that we know in the future when the job description was approved or amended. So I don't feel like I have anything to actually add to it, but if the committee is fine, I will just draft something to be added to those that would be very similar to our policy format that we've been using. It doesn't need to be a motion unless somebody just thinks that's a bad idea for some reason.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olipate. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to implore my dear colleagues to have written up language when you want to change stuff. It's really hard to write amendments to a full document. I can't write the whole document over into the minutes. I know that it's how this is, I do this too myself. I'm not scolding anyone, but trying to figure out how to write this so that it can actually become part of the minutes is a very big challenge. So do you have thoughts on a sentence? What's the new sentence look like? Would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: My question is, what is their specific language that program through that in the last minute.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call vote on that, please. The motion to waive the second reading of IKF. Member Bramley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Dup? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Long, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Wendell Kern?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley.
[Paul Ruseau]: We're doing the waiving the reading roll call right now. Sorry. Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ntukapa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. And Mayor Langocourt?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. I think I am. Oh, I'm not muted. Okay. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rosetti. Yes. Mayor Lengelker.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, there were two? Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: What was the second one?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, well then, I could always look at that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Got it. Thank you. I'll second this. I don't know if anybody else has.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Tapa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lango-Kern?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, there's an updated agenda, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, I'll read it, sorry. Thank you. The members of the Medford School Committee express their sincerest condolences to the family of Ruth Youngblood, known to many as Cherry. She has been a symbol of love and community engagement, and her ever-present smile and laugh will be missed.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Member Tapa. Yes. Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, power so 22 be Orchard Street mentioned Massachusetts, I just wanted to make a correction that one of the Councilors said earlier. The school committee since June of 2021 has had public participation. It is actually very much similar to the discussion we're having tonight. Any one person, you don't even have to get 25, can add an item to our agenda. And we actually have a determination the superintendent legal counsel make to determine whether it's within the authority and whether it's legal, meaning you can't put a petition to or ask a teacher or a student or any kind of thing that is not appropriate legally. It is literally printed on every single agenda we have had since June of 2021, yet it continues to be repeated ad nauseum that we don't allow public participation. If one person sending an email isn't enough to get you on an agenda, I'm really unclear what is a lower threshold. So I would appreciate it if certain folks could stop repeating something that is just not true. It's true that the school committee does not have a open mic section of our meetings. The school committee meeting is not the people's chamber. It is a business meeting with a long list of legally required business that must get done. if the council goes 10 sessions in a row, 10 terms in a row and doesn't pass a single ordinance. You'll all be fine. We have things that are required by law to get done. And you have some as well, of course, for like other things that you do. But our meetings are business meetings. They're not meetings for the public to come and yell about anything, frankly. But we do provide that ability for you to do that. And it's right on every single agenda of our website. It's policy, B-E-D-H. You can find that on the Metric Movement School's website. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, this is, I think, a super important conversation about this because, I mean, not to poo-poo Medford High School, but, you know, we could get somebody who wants to just take everything out of the box, you know, doesn't actually want to do anything new or interesting, and If it's just like a road activity for them, then of course this should cost less, right? So I think that cost of course matters, but what are we getting? is really the, it's not, I mean, if the only thing we actually think is even reasonably affordable is this out of the box kind of like cookie cutter thing, then, you know, that's our decision. But we don't wanna be tied to the fact that a cookie cutter approach might in fact be half the price, I mean, or whatever, so. I like this conversation. I think figuring out how to get this so that we have the freedom to do this the way we want rather than just, you know, we're not buying, we're not, we're not asking like for bids to buy 10 of some widget that you can get on Amazon.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes, I am wondering though if the in the executive session exceptions. One of them is specifically to consider the purchase exchange release of real property. I'm just wondering if that doesn't provide an exemption. One of the other things I'm noticing here is that when we do a search for a new superintendent in the early phases, those are not open to the public. And this feels very much like that kind of scenario where it being open to the public would be detrimental to our position. So I don't know. I mean, this is, you know, outside of the area that I typically think about when I think about executive sessions. So we'd have to give advice, but doing it in public would be terrible.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham. Member Intoppa. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Reinfeld. Present. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. My understanding, according to the former secretary of the Department of Education, is that we are required to give the student the test. That is not the same as the student is required to take the test. We are required to give students food. If they don't eat it, that's their choice. So I do think it's important that that distinction is made, that bringing the kids in and saying, here's the computer, take the test, is not the same as saying, you have to do this. And I think that's sort of where the no-test movement comes from, is that we are required to give it to them. It does not mean they're required to take it. And so we don't have a policy today on this. at elementary school in particular, this has been an issue. You know, frankly, our computer science curriculum with air quotes is really just to make sure they can take MCAS because they didn't have computer skills in time to be able to do MCAS. But they shouldn't be having computer skills by that age because American Pediatric Association says that's not developmentally appropriate. So there's sort of this horrible cycle that we're on, where we're purposefully giving kids an education in something they should not have, because we're mandated to put them in front of these computers to do something. So it's all a bit of a mess. But I think it's important to understand that the requirement is that we give it to them. It is not required that the kid complete the test or take the test. And obviously, most kids want to perform. Most kids come to school and want to do well. So most kids are going to take it, of course. And I'm not suggesting they shouldn't. But to say that they must take the test is a different thing. It's like, you can't give kids their grades if they don't do the work in school. So they must do the work. But this is not that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. One of the things that I don't talked about a lot is that our students with significant disabilities that took the ALT MCAS, they never received a real diploma. It was not allowed. So they could perform all of the requirements we have. And because they use the ALT MCAS, they would get a certificate, but not a diploma. And I'm thrilled that the end of the MCAS requirement means that those students who have earned a diploma can get a diploma. And I think that that's important to recognize is that that change wasn't really part of the campaign to get rid of the MCAS. I mean, I know some folks were campaigning in that, but for the most part, it wasn't the main push for it. But I think it's a super important feature of getting rid of this requirement.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's not unusual for superintendents to actually just recommend policy updates. And I mean, that hasn't been the practice in Medford for as long as I've been on, but I actually appreciate it greatly. The only thing I would say is that the policy know, it's a lovely formatted document, which is not what our policy service is particularly good at, and it lacks the policy required policy information at the end. So I mean, if the committee is okay with approving this as amended to include the policy information section at the end, then I'm fine with us not having more meetings about it. So That's, I guess, an amendment to the recommendation to approve the policy, first reading?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I kind of do want to just send this still to subcommittee just because like the current policy is, you know, refers to 2004 and 2005 and format wise, like I feel like the whole policy we currently have has to be thrown out and some of that stuff still has to be incorporated. Like are the actual credit requirements that are in the policy, are those still correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, well that's good to know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I mean, I don't really, I mean, based on that, I don't think we need a subcommittee, but I do think that like bringing this back in the proper policy format next time. Sure. Makes sense to me, if that's okay with the members, but I would, well, it needs two readings anyways, so. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I can help you with that.
[Paul Ruseau]: This all says FY25. Should you say FY24?
[Paul Ruseau]: We have actual enrollment numbers. Aren't those?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's FY20. Are these the numbers from last summer?
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's FY24. No, 25. That's FY25.
[Paul Ruseau]: The prediction stuff is that much. Oh, I hate that so much.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Granley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to the January 29, 2025, 3.30 p.m. special meeting of the Medford School Committee. Excuse me. Please be advised that on Wednesday, January 29th, 2025, at 3.30 p.m., there will be a special meeting of the school committee held for remote participation via Zoom. This meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on Medford Public Schools' YouTube channel through Medford Community Media on your local cable, Comcast Channel 9, 8 or 22, and Verizon Channel 43, 45, and 47 channel. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or call-in number. The Zoom link is, one second, see if I can view the link. Oh, https://nps02155-org.zoom.us A, D, D, N, A, W, M, capital L, lowercase g, capital Y. Additionally, comments or questions can be submitted during the meeting by emailing medfordsc at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you're an employee at Medford Public Schools, your question or comment. The agenda is of a roll call. And then we'll be discussing a conflict of interest disclosure with the interim superintendent of schools, followed by adjournment. I could take the role once I find my seat. There it is. Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Grant?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Topp? Present. Member Olapade? He's joining me, but I'll put him as absent for now. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Leung, concurrent. Presently absent. Okay. So next up is the committee of windows. Sorry. It's the discussion about the conflict of interest disclosure from the interim superintendent. I guess we could hand that over to our interim superintendent, Dr. Glusi.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll jump in and say that I certainly, well, thank you for this. I certainly think that we should vote to allow the interim superintendent to participate in negotiations. It would be a challenge as an understatement to not have your voice in the negotiations with our largest labor union. So that's all I have to say. And I don't know if Member Graham can see the screen. I certainly can. So I'll just call on Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Dapa, if I may. So the conflict of interest law includes this whole section that allows for, for instance, the very simple example is that the city council is the only group that can give themselves a raise. They're all in conflict. The conflict of interest law does in fact allow for when no other alternative exists. So if four members of the school committee, for instance, were to have conflicts during negotiations, would not have a quorum that could vote to approve a contract. So in that case, the conflict of interest law has sort of a safety valve. Otherwise, there would be just an inability for government to function. And so in this case, that's how I interpret this situation, is that the The superintendent, if she recuses herself, leaves us with the most important and only valid voice, because she's the only one who works for us. We could not continue with negotiations. So that's my interpretation of how that works.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Grant.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I will read that, but first I'll let member Brandly speak next.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm just going to read this language that we've received from our attorney. The motion, which if somebody can. I'm not really the chair so I can just make this motion and then somebody can second it and I don't have to keep reading it because it's a little long. The motion is, whereas the superintendent of schools has made a full disclosure that her spouse is a member of the Medford Teachers Association and has a financial interest in the contract between the Medford School Committee and the Medford Teachers Association, and whereas the school committee has determined that the superintendent's interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity of the services which the school committee may expect from the superintendent, and whereas the school committee approves the superintendent's participation in collective bargaining with the Medford Teachers Association, pursuant to general law chapter 268A, section 19B. That is the motion. And Mr. Tapa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there any other conversation? Is there any members of the public that would like to speak? I don't think there are members of the public that are meeting. All right, well, and in light of the motion being made and seconded, I'll do a roll call. Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. And Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent. Wonderful. That was lovely. I am really, really glad that there was language redrafted. So I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I second. Who was the first?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Rideville. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lingo Kern is absent. Thank you, everyone. This meeting is adjourned. Have a lovely day.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, member Branley. Remember Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember in Tapa? Remember all a party? Yes. Remember? Reinfeld? Remember? So yes, Mayor Lunker.
[Paul Ruseau]: I appreciate the focus on having us approve all the things you're supposed to approve. How many people who are not residents and not employees actually use this program?
[Paul Ruseau]: Out of how many? I'm sorry, but it's in the report.
[Paul Ruseau]: How many participants are there and how many of them are people who are not residents or employees who pay the higher rate?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I know that the finance department has been working on chargebacks for programs that operate in the school system, such as the food services program to cover administrative costs, HR, electricity, phone, gas. And I would just hope that, I don't know if this program, it doesn't sound like this is already set up for this program, but it should be. And unless there's something, like philosophically different about it being part of community schools, but making sure that these activities that are operations that are happening that are outside of the school budget means that they shouldn't be negatively impacting the school budget, which is what happens when the utilities go up. A minor issue, and I know that there's a bunch of these things that have been worked on already and that it's an ongoing process, but I just hope we can get this one done too, but especially when we're talking about creating a budget, understanding the costs, that the costs should be the costs, not the costs minus everything we order and all this other stuff. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: When we talk about sliding scales, we always have to mean raising the top rate significantly. That's where you get the money for the sliding scale. So if we want a sliding scale, the 275 has to go up, not down. Because you can't have some people paying, if you want some people to pay $100, where does the money come from that? It comes from the people paying more. Well, no, a sliding scale will work fine if you increase the top rate for people that can afford it. If you want to keep it at $2.25 or $2.50, your sliding scale will be, OK, you can't afford it, so we're going to give you $5 off. Well, that doesn't really mean anything. That's how we do after school. The sliding scale, there is a substantial decrease in your rate. But that means that people who can afford it are paying a lot more than if we didn't do sliding scales. That's how it works. A sliding scale is a redistribution of the expense. So we can't redistribute it unless we actually make somebody else pay more. So this conversation about keeping the rates low and having a sliding scale, those are mutually exclusive. So I personally don't think we should put them together in one motion because I don't see the math working out. We need X number of dollars to operate the program today. We need more dollars to be able to give some folks a raise. I haven't had one in 11 years. So the pot has to get bigger. And that would happen if we just did a straightforward increase. but we cannot also do sliding scales at the same time. So I think going high is fine. There are people for which they're gonna pick the program. And just like we've had the conversation on afterschool, no matter what the rate is, they're gonna pay for it because frankly, options are rather slim. And if you are in the income bracket where we're saying, no, you gotta pay the max. Well, you also happen to have all the options. You have the most options and choices of the people that live in our community. So I don't think it's a big burden to expect that people who have plenty of income to pay more so that other folks can get in. But I just think it's important we don't mix those two concepts together because they don't, the math doesn't work.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Longoker.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I have been the shore representative of the Met for public schools represented for the shore board since my first term and. One of the auditors just noted that we're actually every year supposed to be electing me. Apparently none of the other school committees do it either, but so I just figured we'd cross the T's and dot the I's on that, so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Obviously, this is very timely and unlike most policies, which I spent weeks or months wordsmithing, this one was not, time wasn't on our side. So I have a couple of, I think the policy speaks for itself. I will say that pretty much everything in here is how the district operated already. I think that's an important point. Um, so districts that don't pass a policy like this, which, by the way, my understanding is there is, uh, Worcester Public Schools has this policy. And as far as I can find, no other schools do, um, partially because it is just a statement of what is already the law. And so, um, but I think sometimes saying things very explicitly in one place can be very helpful. not to mention how it makes the community feel, which is, I think, an important point. I do want to, Dr. Cushing, do I have share privileges? There's a few amendments. Yeah, it's just easier if I share it rather than. Yeah, okay, thank you. Let's see. Okay, great. So the amendments, so number four under discrimination, harassment, and bullying, our attorney, the school district's attorney, did suggest that we remove this one, and I'm guessing, I didn't have a lot of time to talk to him, but the word unreasonable inquiries is a remarkably vague word. I don't think that's a good. Statement to even having a policy, so, um, I'll just list my amendments and then pick that we can hopefully vote for them all at once. The other amendment is in number five in that section. We did not have disability status, which just is an oversight. And I'm not going to put that one in. So those were my two amendments. There is, I believe, another amendment coming from another member, but I will pause for now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, so in the discrimination, harassment, and bullying number four, it's the district personnel will not make unreasonable inquiries of a student or his or her parents' guardians to expose the child's or his or her family's immigration status, which I can't imagine is something that actually happens. But our attorney didn't like that one because of the words unreasonable inquiries, which in hindsight, I can understand that one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And to specifically answer the question, once we have finished amending it, assuming we approve it, we can certainly waive the second reading. That's in our rules that we're allowed to do that. We don't really have it in our rules that it has to be an emergency, but frankly, if it did, this feels like this would be one. So I will propose to waive the second reading until we've at least finished the first one.
[Paul Ruseau]: We want to speak on this. We can do that before after we well, it should be before.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would like to make a motion to waive the first reading of the policy. Um. Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member and Tapa. Yes. Member Ola Pate. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Never. So yes, Maryland.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Present. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member herself present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham? Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Who first and seconded it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham? Member Intoppa? Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Lungo.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll yield to the most senior member in this room. No, no, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Why? Oh, that was loud. I'll wait for... So to limit myself, I wrote it down, because otherwise we'd be here all night. So over the last seven years, I've had the privilege, I'm sorry, over seven years ago, I've had the privilege to be part of the superintendent search process where we selected our first new superintendent in a generation. And from the very first round of interviews, it was evident to me who our next superintendent should be. And I was pleased that the members of the search committee and finally the school committee agreed with me. Dr. Edouard-Vincent was hands down the right choice for Medford, and I was thrilled when she accepted the job. Working with Dr. Edouard-Vincent has been a pleasure, and I cannot thank her enough for all that I have learned these past seven years. No one could have foreseen what a wild seven years this would be. Dr. Edouard-Vincent's focus on curriculum instruction was what we needed in Medford, and she delivered. She started Learning Walks in the fall of 2019, and I am still sad that I did not get to partake in a Learning Walk thanks to the pandemic. I know that former member Vandra Kloot did, and she spoke very highly of it, but that wasn't meant to be. The pandemic could easily have been the defining event of your tenure with Medford Public Schools, but your focus on curriculum and instruction, which began before the pandemic, continued through the pandemic, and after the pandemic, is what I believe will be your lasting legacy here. And I am pleased to remember you for this great work. Obviously, you didn't do it all alone. There were many other leaders and teachers who were a big part of that, but you had to lead, so. The job of the superintendent is truly massive. The day-to-day lives of thousands of students, staff, and families are in your hands. Dr. Edouard-Vincent gave her all, and no one could ever have questioned whether she was doing what she thought was best for students. The pandemic was a trying time for everyone. Many people lost their lives. Many more lost their ability to support their families. Focusing on providing food to students in need, When access to our school meals program was suddenly shuttered was something I'm proud of. And Dr. Edouard-Vincent was all in on this critical issue. There was no playbook for what to do next when the pandemic began. Dr. Edouard-Vincent led the district through a very trying time. And for that, I am forever grateful. It took a village, but we limited the amount of learning loss as best we could. Expectations for students, teachers, staff, and families about what public education meant were turned upside down. Dr. Edouard-Vincent has continued to lead us as we continue to work to mitigate learning losses caused by the pandemic, and I'm grateful for the focus on the mental health of our students and staff. Education is truly a unique domain. Everything changes every day. That is not hyperbole. Federal, state and local laws, regulations and rulings change how education is implemented with breakneck speed and often little time for implementation. Research on best practices and education is released at a completely uncontrolled speed. Our students, staff and families themselves change too. The saying that the only thing that is constant is change is true in education as well. I would further add that each of us from one moment to the next is not the same nor entirely different. Dr. Edouard-Vincent has led thousands of people for seven years through never ending change and we are better for her efforts. On a personal note, I will miss the welcoming nature Dr. Edouard-Vincent brings to every interaction. She arrives with joy and spreads it liberally. Whether welcoming teachers and students back for the first day in person, for the first day of in-person education during the pandemic, or at a pep rally, or riding school buses, she is always proud to be a Mustang, and in my mind, will always be a Mustang. Thank you, Maurice.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa is absent. Member Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley, yes. Member Graham, yes. Member Ntab is absent. Member Olapade, yes. Member Reinfeld, yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo, current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was really happy to hear that the savings from the improved installation of a replacement was calculated. So over 20 years, that doesn't come to a million dollars in savings.
[Paul Ruseau]: It wasn't anywhere near a million.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay. Well, that's fine. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Have we communicated with our rentals in those buildings or the McGlynn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It's almost a silly question, but I assume much of this equipment is manufactured in China.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Don't leave. I have another question. I think you'll answer. Are companies hedging their bets and increasing prices in anticipation of tariffs? And how does that work contractually? So if we say we want a piece of equipment that will arrive in 24 weeks, we sign the contract. By the time it's on its way over, the price is 25% more. Are we on the hook for that? Or is the company just crying as they hand over a piece of equipment? How does that work with tariffs when you've ordered something before the tariff begins? And if you don't know, just ask.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you have a crystal ball? Excuse me? No crystal ball. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, I appreciate this. This is probably going to be a rather unusual budget, because there's the additional funds, yet we have not identified exactly how they'll be spent. Do you anticipate this being one of those budgets where we're going to kind of get a lot of the way through, and then you'll have to come back and be like, OK, now that we know this about negotiations with the unions and all this other stuff about how we're going to exactly spend the money from the override, that you'll have to come back around with a amended budget or, I mean, it wouldn't be a supplemental appropriation because we will have, we'll know what the number is before that, but how we're gonna spend it seems like that might move in a way that's not normal, except for in these unusual circumstances.
[Paul Ruseau]: And so one other thing that I'm hoping we can do differently this year, and it's based on conversations from the school committee conference, it sounds like we're not alone, but it's definitely not best practice. And from what I heard, it was things only really happening in very small districts, which we are not. And that is we have traditionally voted one number, which essentially gives the authority for the administration to move all the money around between line items as they see fit. I mean, as they need. I don't mean to suggest that they're just willy nilly moving money around. But in the best practice and in most districts of our size and certainly larger districts, we vote on each line item. Not the little tiny detail, but the big sections. We vote each section. And there are probably always the same yeses for all of them. But what that does is that retains for us our authority to say, if you decide you need to take $200,000 out of the elementary school budget and move it to the middle school, you don't just do that. You've got to get our permission. And this isn't necessarily a conversation that we can settle tonight, because it wasn't on the agenda. It isn't in our budget policy. But it's something I hope we can do here, because it was a bit of a surprise to me that that's It explained to me why it is that other school committees that I've observed are always having these things on their agenda to transfer funds from one account to another, and that in my seven years, we have never once transferred a nickel. And now I understand why, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate it. A lot of detail there, I know. And I kind of dumped that on you, but it seemed like a good time to talk about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: The accelerated repair opens on January 13th, but the most important day for us is that it closes on March 21st, which is a tight timeline to actually figure out where we're gonna get the money, get it actually spent, get that assessment done so that we can then write a, we could probably write one ahead of time and populate it, but it's a tight timeline. But I agree that we either hurry it up get it in by March 21st, or we risk being forced to just pay for the whole thing out of our pocket if we can't wait till, I mean, if 2027 is the next time we can apply.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's a lot of years to
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may. Member Ruseau? The replacement of the equipment that's in those closets is not cheap either. It's not a personal laptop.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's not personal laptop costs. It's very expensive stuff.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye to approve proceeding with this with the this with the H back project and recommend that the council the City Council. Proceed with the process with the initial bond.
[Paul Ruseau]: motion is to approve proceeding with the HVAC project and recommend that the city council proceed with the process with the initial bond. Proceed with funding.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: member and Papa absent never on the potty. Yes. Remember, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, Mayor lungo.
[Paul Ruseau]: short of Herculean compared, I mean, frankly, compared to most years as in COVID, this is a monumental amount of work. We have the negotiations, we have the MSBA project, which will, I think, really be kicking off once we're through eligibility. We have the supplemental budget, which I mean, we've probably never done a supplemental budget because we've never had a surprise, not surprise, but a mid-year influx of money. And we have the regular budget as well. And so with those gigantic things, And those are all individually an enormous amount of work, in addition to the everyday running of the district. That's why continuity and minimal disruption in my mind, at least around those things, is important to me. So that's where I'm coming from. And I'll let other people talk.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm ready to make my motion if nobody else wants to speak.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will make a motion. Is there a hand from Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, I'd like to make a, and I'll explain my motion. There's some parts to it. I'm sure some of you will want to know more about, but my motion is to appoint assistant superintendent, Dr. Suzanne Galusi as interim superintendent of Medford Public Schools effective January 18th, 2025 through June 30th, 2026 contingent on a successful contract negotiation. I guess I have a second before we talk about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, just it's like any other meeting, frankly, as weird as that is, because it's not like any other meeting. But I've made this motion, and it's been seconded. So it'd have to be voted on. It could be amended if there was something you wanted to amend, and we'd have to vote on that. And then if you have a different motion, you can make that as well. I think that if this motion is called and passes, you making a different motion for a different person Uh, I'd have to ask Howard how we handle that because we will have voted already, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, one second, I gotta write this stuff down, people, one second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: We did discuss in the subcommittee meeting about the timing of this, and we did feel that we should not be waiting until budget season to I'm hired for this role. This role has a lot of responsibilities that, frankly, it sounds like the district hasn't had a person dedicated to do for, well, ever. And it doesn't sound, when we heard the list of responsibilities, we were kind of, I mean, I can't speak for the whole subcommittee, although I will anyways, because it felt very much like we were all kind of like, that's a lot, a lot of a lot. I can't remember the exact number, was it 11 or 19 people in Somerville public school? 11 in Somerville public schools to just do this work? They're a little bigger than us, like 2,000 extra kids. Or maybe they're a lot bigger, I don't know. So having nobody seemed untenable. So that was why the committee recommended we get this position, get an actual job description drafted and posted after we've reviewed and approved it as soon as possible. So that's what we discussed in the meeting. So I'm not really a fan of just waiting another six months or nine months to post this position. We may not get candidates right away. I mean, this isn't the best time to be hiring at all in the school districts. So it may take a good amount of time to actually hire somebody anyways. But if we wait till we're doing our budget, even though we have an earlier budget this year than we have done in the past, we've often been kind of behind the hiring curve in this district and going to hire, putting a, posting out for June 1st even. It's like all the districts that want to do this have already done all their hiring. So I'm concerned about waiting.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly agree. We need to be very, very deliberate about how we spend our money. I will say, though, that based on that meeting, Even though Director Nwaje is doing an enormous amount of work, she definitely is not doing some work we need to happen. She's not in classrooms, she's not doing stuff with students with the ability to discipline. These are all very important things that this committee for years has been working on that to date still does not have anybody dedicated to that work, and she can't do that work, frankly, because she's not an employee of Medford Public Schools. So I understand your point, and I think that part of the supplemental budget is a good time to discuss this, but I think getting the drafting of a job description, that's gonna take some serious work by somebody in the administration, and I think we should have that drafted and ready to approve whether we're funding it for this year or not, I think is part of the supplemental.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not going to read it. Um, because, um. It actually doesn't think about posting. It says that we will create a new that I won't read the whole long the D I subcommittee recommends that we create a new job description. For a school based the director who will work in collaboration with the city D I director further the. MPs will provide an annual stipend to the D I director to compensate for the by the December 16th meeting, which I think will come at that meeting. So this definitely is not an expense. We're not demanding the hiring of this person, but we have a long history and a member, Vice Chair Graham, motioned, I think, two or three years ago now to have all the job descriptions actually created and which we are, by law, supposed to actually approve all job descriptions for people that work for Metro Public Schools. And we all know that there are plenty of people who do not have those things. So I think we haven't hired this person yet. We should definitely do this before we decide to hire it. Whether we do or not, though, in the budget that we're gonna have to discuss, we need this role. Whether we decide we're gonna fund it now or not, I think is a different Because that's a priorities conversation, but the role needs to exist so we can make that decision. Because I don't think we have a, without a job description, I don't even know exactly what this person is doing. I think that that's part of the job description creation, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to say thank you. My daughter actually went through this program this year. I don't remember exactly when. And she's been driving a lot. And the folks that, my sister has been in the car with her just this past weekend and said she's such a great driver.
[Paul Ruseau]: I let her drive if we're in the car together because I'm the backseat driver.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much though. It makes me feel a lot better, especially knowing that whole like the first time, I mean, I think, I don't know if everybody does, but I remember the first time anti-lock brakes I experienced them, and it is terrifying. It's better if that's not the actual time you need to stop from hitting another car or person, so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Saying that these bathrooms are cleaned. essentially twice a day with this many people, teenagers in particular, and that's it?
[Paul Ruseau]: I was first, right? So I've really been thinking a lot about this bait problem, especially in light of today's Supreme Court arguments, which if the anti-FDA, anti-regulation approach to government that we can expect happens, that we're going to see a massive spike in vape use because every flavor under the sun will become available instead of just menthol and the plain cigarette flavor. And when that happens, I think we're going to have to really think hard about what our comfort level is about detecting vapes on our students. I'm not interested in a metal detectors and I'm not interested in like making the place feel like a prison. On the other hand, the number of, the percentage of students and middle school students already using vapes is very disturbing without all of these flavored e-cigarettes being available. So if the Supreme Court does overturn that and neuter the FDA in this regard, I think we're gonna have to really have some serious conversations about how direct we get about checking every student for vapes. And I know that there's equipment that can actually do that. And I hope we're not there. I hope we don't have to go there. But I'm very concerned that the floodgates will be opened on vapes that will make them irresistible. I'm glad we're having this conversation now. I hope next year we're not having a different conversation. So I certainly support the additional two people to be able to open up all the bathrooms. About the expensive plumbing stuff repairs, aside from the signs, I do think that we should literally just put it in that morning announcements if there's room and it's not a big issue, because I don't think And frankly, until you've owned a home, you don't have a clue at plumbing costs. And so to just say, you know, bathroom, you know, this, the repairs were, you know, $16,000 or whatever they are, and put the bathroom out of water for two and a half weeks or whatever the real numbers are. Because, and I think that there's messaging there that, Well, for many students, those might also be relatively meaningless if you're not paying your own bills. But you could also say, that means we will not have money to do. And then you just graph a little list of things that cost money similar to those amounts. So we're not going to get to do this in the school system, because instead we're fixing pipes because you threw your vapes away. Because this budget is a limited amount of money, and that's just the way it is. I think peer pressure, a healthy peer pressure can be useful here. And, you know, I'm disappointed to hear about how many vapes are going in the plumbing, apparently in the boys' rooms more than the girls' rooms, but we need to make these things real. I think that's, you know, we have a whole financial literacy thing going on. And I think for students that are going through that, will start to get a grasp of what stuff costs when we start to tell them that like, yeah, you threw something in the toilet. And it's costing if you've been through the financial literacy program, you know, four months of your salary or income, you know, that that's when it starts to be like, it costs more than a car. And I think I'm hopeful that that can be useful. Not that I know, I know that getting this information is not like you can't click a button, but I appreciate all your work and hope we can get these vape sensors everywhere and the cameras so we can see who's going in and out of the rooms. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: There it is. Thank you. I had something to say. Sorry, it's getting late. I won't do this right now, but I think that if we were all forced to just decide what 30 seconds was, we would all discover that most of us are wrong. And I think that when safety is at issue, I think that that is acceptable. That's just not a high enough bar. Just flush it for 30 seconds doesn't, I mean, there's not a giant clock in front of every sink with a second hand going. So you know what 30 seconds is. You go to the dentist, they do all these things that have timers everywhere. Why? Because nobody knows exactly what 30 seconds is or 90 seconds So I agree that we should not be relying on that flush recommendation. And I'd like to make a motion to approve the first reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Um I'd like to amend my, um. Approve my motion to approve the first reading by changing the frequency of review from four years to one year. Assuming it's okay with Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I just to clarify, I was just changing the frequency of policy review. That's all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I did look to see if other school committees have a policy on this. There were two school committees that did, don't ask me which ones they were. And one of them was very vague, like, you know, we'll have safe drinking water. Ooh. And the other one, sorry, it was a very unenforceable policy, so I just thought it was interesting. But the other one was actually far more restrictive. It was like every year, every fixture, And I did wonder greatly what on earth they're spending on that or if they're really doing it, but I didn't spend more time on it than that. So there were only two of all of the 349 communities in the school committee manual in Massachusetts that even had anything. Um, so I my guess is most just assume that this is being handled already by the Department of Public Works or Or border health or something. But we did that as well. So that's why I support this. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: The website description, there's actually three underlying links in that description. Look to the words strategic and you'll get to the right place. I did send an email to have that fixed.
[Paul Ruseau]: I, I certainly, um. I don't know how many years we've been talking about bike racks. I'm kind of tired of talking about bike racks. Um, and, um, well, it's. Not a lot compared to a lot of the other things it still surprises me how much bike racks will cost us. Um.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, but this is one we definitely get called on every time it happens, because it's not like a little water streaming down. It's a lot.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do we even have a section for complete?
[Paul Ruseau]: Go ahead, members. Can you remind us what the dumpster situation is?
[Paul Ruseau]: So can I interject on the playground? Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, no, I just wanted to talk about the district wide security upgrades. Is there can we parse that a bit? Because there's a portion of that that I think we should do sooner or consider doing sooner. And that's the the key lists, the IDs to get in, the FOBs or whatever they're called, Peter, you have to fill me in on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: And the doors right Peter. Yes, 1 of them was very expensive and that's is that the doors that are the well, no, it's.
[Paul Ruseau]: Total for all of them. Total for all of them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay and so oh remember so thank you um so the I mean, it is already just about December, but the, and I had to remember July one is the new fiscal year. We don't really do anything in June. Well, we do a lot, but, so do we want the Keyless FOB stuff to be next year or is this year, is it just too late for that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Got it. It does seem like a good summer project. I just from a spending money kind of question, I wasn't sure if we should do it sooner.
[Paul Ruseau]: It makes sense to me. And I do think that's a very high value project, the FOB stuff. We are also going into negotiations. And frankly, I don't want to talk about keys in our negotiations. So I think that it would be good to just get this over with. Again, from a what's the supplemental going to look like, this can wait. I mean, if there ends up being room in the supplemental, then this number here is already too big, isn't it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I agree. And I do think that there's an uncomfortable conversation that has to be had about the Roberts Playground. and the situation there, whether that conversation involves finding an alternative space to park, whether that involves taking of land through eminent domain, there is no solution to that area. whether we do their park, whether we do their playground first, and then we do the others, in the end, when all of these are beautiful playgrounds, one is going to be very distinct, and that's going to be the Roberts, for being utterly incomparable to the others. And I mean, I think it's important, you know, I don't think that the staff should have to park a half a mile away. But, you know, if a piece of property comes available, a street over by it and turn it into a parking lot. And then make the whole parking lot into an actual playground that's the appropriate size for that size student population. And I'm just spitballing. I don't, I don't even know that area very well other than having, you know, been to the school a number of times, but my point is just, I don't. I don't want to go small on the Roberts playground. And we can always get fancier. But the truth is, is there's just as everybody literally here knows there isn't enough room is an understatement, it's just such an understatement and. You know, my children went to the Misatoch, and I have all these fantasies about how we could make all that area dramatically better, and I'm sure a design study would come up with some great ways to change that area. But of course, the truth is, as Dr. Robinson said, There's the field. I mean, it's really kind of an ideal situation, very similar to the McGlynn situation in that there's a lot more space. So I'm okay with us putting the Roberts first, but I also want us to not put it first and not have the hard conversation about we can't make it work if the footprint is the same. that it's just not one of our options. And I don't want to spend a million and a half dollars to make a playground where the kids can't even all be out at recess at the same time because there isn't physically the space. That's absurd. So if it's not, if the Roberts ends up being a dramatically more expensive endeavor because we have to buy another piece of land or whatever, I'm all in. That's just my thoughts on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Wow. I just looked at their website, and it looks like they were involved in the Apple project, you know, the giant round thing and National Museum of African American History and Culture. So they're
[Paul Ruseau]: Alicia, you said it's for sale. Is there an easy way to, I mean, it's not gonna be on Zillow, I'm sure, but is there an easy way to find out what that actually sale price is?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that is the question. Since I don't know if it's an age thing or just too much going in, but when we do the application, How much do we have to say? I guess is my question, because to say we want to do the playground over is one thing, to say we want to do the playground over and we plan to buy a property and we are going to move to like those aren't even things we can say at this point because we I mean we're just spitballing in this meeting not that many of us haven't already thought about these things a number of times but that's not a plan so how much do we have to tell the cpc to actually do an application we have to ask for a specific amount of money what's the limit well so
[Paul Ruseau]: I would agree with that recommendation. And, you know, I also was remembering it when we were visiting high schools, Watertown, at least Suffolk University, and I can't remember where else, has done something that I would never have thought made any sense until I saw it, but they put the well, they're not playgrounds, they're fields there, but they put fields above parking so that there's so much parking, they don't even need to assign spots or care, because essentially the entire ground level becomes parking, and then elevated above it is what would become a very large amount of playground space. The difference, of course, for those places and this is that this is in a neighborhood. But while it ends up sort of becoming two stories, it's barely higher than a roof on a one story. So I don't know. I mean, this isn't the time for the solutions. But if it's $2 million to buy a lot that would, in many regards, not be enough to fully solve the problem, do we have to consider something much, I mean, no concept of what those elevated fields actually cost. So yeah, I think we should definitely make this a priority though.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know, it's $150,000.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, because it's one project.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you want to put it in progress for the bike rack modernization line 28? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great. First year's the hardest doing this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I did voice this during the school committee meeting. And I do have, you know, when school committee members are onboarded, we go through a training and there's a lot of focus on what we do not have access to. And so, you know, the employees of Medford public schools are not employees of the city of Medford. And so I'm concerned about setting a precedent where somebody who is not an employee of Medford Public Schools is, and this is not a, say something about Francis, who I think I have a great relationship with, but I am concerned that we, do we even have any kind of, any document in place that authorizes somebody who is not part of the school system. And also, I have no idea since we don't get a report, which makes sense because we this doesn't seem like the kind of stuff that stuff that that Francis has been involved in doesn't seem like the stuff we would get a report on. But I am curious if there has been any involvement with student related issues and not students like the global, the generalized students, but individual students. Because again, when we go for our training, we are kind of beaten into us a bit. that we can never ask for anything about any individual students. We have no rights to know anything about individual students in our district. And so those are some of my concerns that I'm not saying those things have not been worked out, but they're not worked out in a way where I have any insight or knowledge of. So those are some of my thoughts.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I really appreciate that information about students. And I wasn't assuming you did, but I also felt it was our responsibility to know that. So I feel really much better knowing that. I greatly appreciate the clarity. Would you? be able to estimate, which after everything you just said, the answer is, it depends on the day, I'm sure, is the answer. But how much time are you spending on school-related, if you can come up with an average, which sounds like an impossible request.
[Paul Ruseau]: And who do you have a specific collaborator at in the school system?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, so I appreciate, I especially like that last thing you said, that it's a journey, there's no destination. I feel like that sort of describes a lot of the entire point of education. And I was looking around to try and understand how other districts do this work in their own districts. And of course, just like everything else in public schools, every district seems to have taken a different path. Since everybody started in a different place, that makes sense. I did find it was hard to get a lot of information from districts for which I am sure there is stuff. I find nothing on Malden. There is no chance that Malden has nothing. Their website has nothing. But what I did find was in Watertown, they have a director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the public schools. In Arlington, they have They have a city director and, well, town. And they also have a director for the schools. And I forget the title of the other person that works there. And in Somerville, which, I mean, we're not Somerville. I would like to have their money. I actually would, if you know what's going on in Somerville, I would love to hear a little more. But I don't know if you don't. That's on me to go find out. But they have 11 FTEs in their Office of Equity and Excellence. And at first, I was like, that's a lot. And then I was like, that's not a lot. That's because that means they might be actually getting to do the work. Each school building has a four to eight person committee of staff that's already in the building. Every building has an actual I don't know the title but a member of the that offices staff assigned to that building. I think one of the challenges, Shirley, is that when we talk about reading instruction, we can talk about outcomes. We can look at scores. And that is relatively quantifiable. And frankly, I think that a lot of the work you do, and I bet the work that's going on in these other districts, is also not terribly quantifiable. I mean, if you have a specific problem in the student population you're trying to, or the staff that you're trying to address, if you can name the problem, you can determine, is it getting better? But in general, it's probably a very challenging thing to quantify. As you said, it's the journey. But when I see Frankly, I mean that I wish I could find information other districts because I find it hard to believe that most of the districts don't have some initiatives. I just see a lot of staff and. And. I don't know. I just wonder, you know, we are at a at a crossroads with our passage of the override. And not that that it's not as much money as everybody thinks it'll be gone before we can. link, but I am just trying to understand if having an additional, having an FTE at school focused only is something that makes sense. And I really like that in Somerville and in Watertown, they don't mention the city in the school website, which I think is relatively normal. I'm assuming on the city sides, they also have somebody. But I like that in Arlington, in their Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice, there's two people that are school employees, and there's the city person. And they're all on the website like they're a team. And I think that's how I like to think of this stuff is team. So I guess I'm asking you your thoughts on us having our own FTE to be your colleague. And obviously, we're not talking about hiring. I would imagine if we were to allocate resources for an FTE, we would very much have to have you involved in helping us know, well, what does the job description look like? And how do we hire? And obviously, you, I mean, hopefully you would be involved in the actual hiring process. But you did mention recruitment, and that is something that has been, I'm pretty sure it's on the strategic plan. I think it's one of the, if it's not a current goal, it has been a goal, the superintendent, and it's, you know, and I've been to every one of these sessions at school committee conferences now for years, and there are many challenges. However, one of the, None of those challenges can be solved if you don't invest. It actually costs money to go to places to recruit. You don't just post it on Indeed or whatever the school-based websites are and think you're going to just... That's not how you actually get recruitment to happen. And I'm not saying that's all we're doing, by the way. But Having somebody full-time to work on that initiative as well as other school-based initiatives around culture, I would like to hear your thoughts on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will give you a moment to think of that. You said something really important just now that also... you know, whether we have a DEI director or whatever the title ends up being in the schools, I think it's not, this is hardly the first time this has been a conversation. I realize that my colleagues here are, my school committee colleagues here are new, but after seven years, I can say that this has been a conversation for seven years. And, you know, One of the things that I struggle with is that, as a school committee member and who very much cares about the culture, which when I say culture, I mean definitely employees and students and families, you know, there's a culture that doesn't go out. from the individual. And we will, I mean, I'm sure we had passed policies that require significant amounts of work. I mean, like literally when I was arriving, there were major culture challenges and a culture study. That was seven years ago. And the recommendations of those kinds of things are usually actionable. But they are also not actionable by just anyone. Your training that you're going through continuously is the kind of stuff where, as much as I admire all of the administrators on this call, they're not in training all day. If they were, they wouldn't be able to do any of their other work. I don't see our ability to execute on big culture changes across the system. I mean, we will have an individual, a new principal, for instance, who's focused on the culture, for instance, of the high school. And she makes that a priority, which, I mean, she doesn't work in a silo. She has a boss, and I'm sure they've talked about it. When the school committee decides we want to pass a new policy or allocate money to accomplish something, which we have done several times, actually, on the last few years, getting it done, in my mind, is not because nobody is interested in getting it done. It's because it's not somebody's full-time job. A lot of these things require continuous focus and the administrators on this call, there's no such thing as continuous focus for them. Their day is sort of like what you described, like a call comes in and there's an emergency here and there's something else going on over there and they have to drop everything and go. And that's on top of their very lengthy list of responsibilities that have nothing to do necessarily with this. I have felt very hamstrung as a school committee member in our ability to execute on things around this because I feel inhibited myself, not by other people, in just highly work on to our administrators that I don't want people working 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm a human being and I think everybody here is a human being and I don't think that's right. I hold back on things that I think are important. And as I have told other people, my list of policies and resolutions that I have written over the years that have not been submitted is now just pages long, fully written. I could just put them on the next agenda. But I know that there's only so many hours in the day, and most of those things of course are not related to what we're talking about but some of them are, and I don't want to. just assume that there's going to be room in somebody's day who already, I mean, Joan, you're still at the office. I think Maurice, you're still at the office. Suzanne's at the office. It is six o'clock, and I don't think you all arrived at 11. And I just, from a caring, human perspective really feel like we need additional staff. Where they sit, who they report to isn't the most important thing to me. However, being able to have the school committee direct what is going to happen, not how it's going to happen, that's execution, but what's going to happen and what the priorities are going to be is really important. And I do feel that The school committee, you know, under no circumstances has authority over you, and we shouldn't. You work for the mayor. And that's, it has nothing to do with you, that statement. But, you know, if we pass a resolution telling you to go off and spend the next three months doing something in the schools, fine, we can write that resolution and we can pass it, but you work for the mayor who will decide what you're actually gonna do, not us. And some of this is just like, in many communities authority in the school committee is often ceded to city councils and mayors and town committees and whoever the other, the person who, the city manager, a lot of school committees cede their authority and just don't bat an eyelash. And then when they need to do something, they don't have their authority available to them to actually do their job. And that's what worries me about just having you do more of the work for us, rather than us having somebody we can We can point them in the direction we want them to go, and they're not, you know, they don't have to deal with an issue with the fire department or the police department or DPW like they're none of those issues will ever have anything to do with the work that they're doing in the schools. So that has always been my concern since the very first time we started talking about this at school committee is that I want, we're elected to accomplish goals and so is the mayor, but she's elected to, you know, and your point though that the city and the schools and like we're a community is, I agree, but, not and, I agree, but Medford has transitioned a lot in the last seven years, a lot. And I feel like The city council knows what their actual legal authority is, the mayor knows, the school committee knows. When I was on, it was, nobody knew what, I mean, you know, everybody was just in each other's business. And then everybody let everybody be in everybody's business. And it just made things such a mess. And city council was talking about the schools, and nobody could do anything because nobody knew who was responsible. And so I kind of have become a bit rigid in that I want to be very thoughtful if we cede responsibility, because I have seen that when I joined the school committee where it was like, wait, is the city council still on the school committee, the members that have been on the school committee? Are they still actually here and not on city council? This is a transitionary period for Medford, and I think that's my discomfort.
[Paul Ruseau]: So obviously, I hope there will never be an end to the collaboration. I would be very upset by that. And I certainly want to make sure that we find a way to codify the relationship. with the director and the schools, which I think is sort of the principle point of the resolution. So I certainly want to codify, which is why I offered my motion that codified it through December 31st, so we could stop running in circles in that meeting, because we were going in circles. I think that there's one thing though that, I feel like I want to have that I don't think we can have with Frances. Not because of Frances, to be clear, but because she works for the city. I want somebody interacting with the students directly, and being able to look at student records, and being able to look at discipline issues, and looking at, student complaints about staff and staff complaints about students and doing things that at the moment are definitely outside of the the responsibilities as I'm taking 1,000 notes. But that, I think, is very much that's central administration in the public schools' job. And so I want that. But I also don't want, not because of who the director is, but because of the bandwidth requirements. I think if that is to happen, the bandwidth requirements are are massive. I mean, I do not think that one human being could do both of the jobs, the job that's being done today and the job that I want to see happen. But I also do not want Director Nwaje to not be a part of that. You know, creating a professional community Is that what it's called in education? The professional, yeah, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, that's what I'm talking about, yeah. You know, creating a PLC is something that I know you all talk about and school committee conferences talk about and many different articles that get forward to school committee members talk about. And having a person on both sides both sides is probably the wrong choice of words. But having two people creates a heck of a lot more opportunity for the sharing of knowledge and the training and the whole bouncing thoughts and ideas off of each other with enough similarities. And I don't know if similarities and backgrounds would be a reality, but I would want It to be a collaborative process to create a job description for a school based EI director, which would or whatever the title would be. And in that job description, I would want it to include. That this is a colleague of. Director noisier is, again I don't remember your whole title but that this is not a standalone position that sort of like Arlington that these are two folks that are working together and allowing for the school side person to. to be able to dig into discipline stuff and the kinds of issues that I think are really important to the school committee and I know to the administration and everybody. But when there's a crisis in a city department, that's not going to affect that person. They're still doing whatever it is. That's where I am. I felt like on the floor of the school committee on whatever day it was, it's not the best environment for this kind of a conversation, frankly. Also, I don't think most of us had time to think about and prepare for that conversation. So I'm greatly appreciative of everybody who's here and everything that's been said. And I would hope that there has never been a moment where anybody thought I wasn't appreciative of all the work of Director Nwaje, because that's definitely not true. We have a requirement to send back a recommendation of some sort. And based on the motion that was made by whoever made it. So, I'm just going to make this motion, which is still semi vague purpose that we send a recommendation to the full committee that a new. DEI-like director position be created in the public schools and that the job description will include that this is a colleague of and work in collaboration with the director the full title in the city. And I also do think that the collaboration, you know, one of the things we were talking about in the meeting was the compensation part of the stipend part. And I think that it does make sense now that I have, I actually have an understanding of what the director does. I mean, I had, you know, cursory understanding, but that that seems like an appropriate continuation to have that stipend be a part of the school budget. You know, one of the things, I'm a software developer by training and there's this common mistake made in management where you will add more developers to get a project done sooner. And nobody remembers that the communication costs are exponential. And so, you know, you double the developers, you've not doubled the communication requirements, you've quadrupled it. And so, I don't want us to make that mistake. The actual communication work that Francis would have to do with a new position is real work. It has to be compensated. And not that I think communication would be the only work. So that's sort of where I am right now. And so that we don't just have to keep re-meeting in this subcommittee. I think that's my recommendation. And I don't have the full writing up of that, but that's why it's for coordinating.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct, I think I've got enough of it written down to read it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me read the motion. It's to recommend that Medford Public Schools create a new job description for a school-based DEI director that will work in collaboration with the city DEI director, period. Further, the schools will provide an annual stipend to the city DEI director to compensate for the collaboration and communication with the school department. Because I think that's, you know, Frances has not just communicated. If we had a new DEI director tomorrow, she's not going to just communicate with that person. So I said collaboration and communication with the school department. And further, I love the word further, because it's like another deal with the fact that it doesn't make sense in English. Further, the, Maurice, should I put the superintendent or should I say the director of finance should make a recommendation on the appropriate stipend amount? I mean, we had a number that we were just like, what did we pay for the,
[Paul Ruseau]: And, and those are apples and oranges, and I don't think that whatever we were paying that makes me that was the number I just used in the meeting because I wanted something to happen immediately. And that's, I mean I didn't have time to do research as we were live on TV, but. Would you rather I have you assigned to do that, or should I just have the director of finance?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, in my mind, it's more than the amount we've already talked about. But again, that's I guess it's up to the people who will do some kind of research on this. So further, the superintendent will investigate and make a recommendation. I'm going to skip the investigator. Of course you will. The superintendent will make. A recommendation for the stipend amount effective. FYI, 26 and one more further. It is it. Does it seem OK for everybody? I mean, I I don't know that there is a number in anybody's mind to just. extend what we discussed at the last school committee through the end of the fiscal year and just, you know, use the same amount for that six month period? Is that acceptable? Because otherwise you'll have to come back to us before the end of the year, which if I last looked is like in 15 seconds, it seems, and have done that work. I think it's probably easier if you do that work for the next budget. So, Does that make sense to folks that we would?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. That's a good point. We have two. So I don't expect anybody to spend a month doing research on this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so I'll put, we'll make a recommendation for the stipend amount by the December, one second.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm saying a lot of furthers. I've read them all. I don't think I have to read them all again. Should I read it one more time for the people have to vote?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so the resolution is, this will be the recommendation to the full committee in response to the motion to come here. The motion is to recommend that Metro Public Schools will create a new job description for a school-based DEI director that will work in collaboration with the city DEI director. Further, the Medford Public Schools will provide an annual stipend to the city DEI director to compensate for the collaboration and communication with the Medford Public Schools. Further, the superintendent will make a recommendation for the stipend amount by the December 16 meeting. I'm going to get to the floor. If anybody thinks we missed something, we can just change it then. So that's my motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Ruseau. Thank you. I appreciate the endless work on this. I realize it's your job too, so of course. I obviously think that what's going on in the programs is very important, but Could you describe for me, for all of us, what happens if you don't have the required number of staff for students? Let's say that there's, how many people are typically with a group of students?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, you know, let's say that, you know, you're way under the ratios people called in sick. You don't have a substitute pool. Not that anybody else does for any other area except for, well anyways. And what happens in the district when you are not going to have enough people to be with the kids?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly wouldn't have suggested it was anything but thoughtful. I mean, when the director has to fill in, the director's not doing your other job, which is continuous recruitment, program evaluation and development and all that other stuff. And so when I think about us adding, most school committee members have heard, why don't we just hire tough students or even high school kids or young adults, what is right where it is. And and the answer is, we can't just not have anybody there because they you know, the sports teams is a really good example. I mean, if we use them for our ratios, well, they're gonna go get on a bus and go somewhere to play a game. And can't just have the kids in the room without some adults. And what you know, we don't we don't want to end up with the director and you know, to assistant superintendents and the superintendent and everybody just like having to do after school programming. But if we keep increasing it and we are dependent on people that are not Not that they're not reliable people, but their schedule makes it so that they are not going to be a reliable body to be with the students. I just get very concerned. It's always the solution I keep hearing about. Students, in any capacity, I mean, college gets out before public schools do. My memory is that winter break for colleges is a lot longer than it is for public schools. I'm not saying we shouldn't use them for the way you are using them now, because I think the activities and that all sounds great, but that doesn't solve our capacity problem in my mind. And I just wanted to make that point because we can't be paying you to be filling in as an on the ground person. and also expect you to continue doing your regular job. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm perfectly comfortable, I mean, with us discussing the timeline from our policy. This is the first year with the policy, so I think we all kind of assumed it would not work exactly. The one thing, though, is that part of the policy is to align with the capital improvement plan And I'm trying to just dig into it really quickly right now, because one of the challenges we had was that we had a date that we needed to make sure aligned with the city's budget ordinance. And I can't tell necessarily from this document whether we're going to blow past their date, because those conversations were back in June, and frankly, it feels like five years ago already. I think we do, I can go and back and try and figure out what after look at the minutes but there was an important date here that required a lot of pushing things earlier than I think even we had initially thought we wanted, because we knew this is a very aggressive timeline change. the budget ordinance has a date, which I don't have in front of me. And we don't want to miss that because then it makes that a problem. But I'm not giving you enough information to go on right this second. So I will take that as something to do to go back and find that information so that we can see I mean, the city's budget ordinance is also new. So if it's impossible for us to meet their deadline, then I think that that's a conversation. that we could have with the council, but I just wanted to point that out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to table.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, Member Ruseau. I believe this is, our attorney does not feel like this is actually something we can approve at this time. And I could be wrong, I take the table back. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So is our attorney still being asked to sign something for which he does not think he certainly does not feel comfortable signing at this point? Or is that not based on this?
[Paul Ruseau]: And this will not. put him in a place where he has no options?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, then I withdraw my table, which I think I already did that. Motion to approve. Motion to second.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, can we just say we're approving as consolidated I wrote the language but you're not going to make me read it are you motion to approve as consolidated.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I just posted the dial location instead of the hyperlink. But I'll do that now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Pranley. Moment member Graham. Here. Member Adapa. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rizzo, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I believe Member Branley is now here. I don't know if she can unmute yet.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to sever the minutes for October 28th and approve the rest.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Lapate?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lankford?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ntuka?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Soyes, Mayor Lengelker?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, the votes of the meeting are listed as 5-2, which implies 5 in the affirmative, 2 in the negative. It was actually 5 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative, 2 were absent. The minutes have actually already been updated by Lisa and updated in our drive. But I just wanted to note that. And I'll motion to approve them as amended.
[Paul Ruseau]: Ever been like, yes, never Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. member right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, Marilyn go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. Are you going to explain the requiring assistance or intervention later?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to not clarify, because that's a question. I don't know the answer. But the score itself, I mean, Roberts has, for instance, a 41, which is higher than one, two, three, four other schools. So is it affecting the score or merely the determination of whether we need assistance or intervention?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Does the test cover anything to do with local government at all? And I realize there's immense variability, but I mean, I know within every community, there's a vast misunderstanding of how local government works and what our responsibilities and powers are. And it seems like that would be a great opportunity.
[Paul Ruseau]: It was.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ntuk.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll make a motion to approve the policy. If anybody else wants to speak on it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Ever Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm a gram.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember in topic?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the party? Yes. Remember right now?
[Paul Ruseau]: Members say yes. Maryland occurrence.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I also, just for having a love fest, I love Francis too. I guess my one, one of my concerns, although the appeal question actually is one I had not thought of that member Graham brought up that jumps out at me as something quite important to understand and have a plan for. But the other thing though is, you know, what I don't know is, is Francis up-to-date on all of FERPA and all the educational privacy laws that are irrelevant to the city side. And access to student information and personnel stuff too, but I think that this would sort of put a bow on giving her access to personnel information. I do wonder about access to student information. And I don't know the legal stuff that allows, what the laws are that give, for instance, all of our staff access to student information. But for instance, school committee members do not have access to that. The mayor doesn't have access to that. And nobody in City Hall has access to student information. So how we would consider that aspect of student privacy I think has to be a part of the conversation. And being on the other side of the wall of student information as a school committee member, the answer is you get none. I'm very unaware of how that is managed within the school system already to make sure that only the right people have access to student information. So that is a concern I have as well. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I guess I'm not particularly enjoying the on not veiled threat that tomorrow the work stops if we don't pass this, because that's what it is. I would just say we've never authorized this work in the first place. So we put the cart before the horse here. And that wasn't my decision. And so as a committee member, I'm going to second the motion to send it to subcommittee and not support this until we've had a chance to actually discuss it. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you mean, are you trying to suggest that we skip voting on the amendment before we vote on the motion?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, there's been an amendment offered. We vote on an amendment. That's how it's supposed to work.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I would certainly second the motion to approve this through December 31st of 2024. And there's no reason we can't just do this with $7,500 annualized through that time. But whatever the, what was the number? Well, I mean, honestly, we should just start with July 1. So, I mean, that's my recommendation is, so $3,750 through the December 31 date. And if that's okay with Member Intoppa to amend that, and then.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, so the motion I'm making is to approve 2024-40 through the end of December, through December 31st, 2024, with a compensation of 3,750 for July 1 to December 31. So 7,500, but only for that short time. Yes, that's great, thank you. Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think this is just a different motion, actually.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion for approval by... Can I read it one more time, Mayor, the whole thing?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion is to approve 2024-40 to temporarily authorize the work of the city DEI director through December 31st, 2024 at $3,750 and for work spanning July. One 2024 through December 31st. There's 2024 and send the proposed resolution to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Subcommittee for review and consideration with the recommendations returned to the full committee by December 16th, 2024 meeting. And that was first motioned by a member in Tapa and seconded by me, I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ntabu. Yes. Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rosselli? Yes. Mayor Landau?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Members so yes Marilyn co care.
[Paul Ruseau]: Uh, member Branley, I believe member Graham here, member and Tapa absent member Olapade here. Member Reinfeld here. Members, so present Maryland, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So this is a very long policy. I would never draft a policy of this length. It's so long that we might be the only people to ever read it. But this came from our professional association and came down from a set of lawyers that they contract with regarding Title IX changes. Title IX has sort of been batted back and forth through each of the administrations that we have had White House. So this is the Biden version. Hopefully, we don't have to go through all of this again in the next couple of years. So this is one of many policies that we have been going through related to Title IX. This is the grievance procedure. So anybody who wishes to file a grievance through Title IX would follow this procedure. There is a lot of preamble. And then there are step-by-steps, who has what rights and when. And I will admit that I lack knowledge about prior versions of this. So I can't really speak to what changed. I don't know, Ms. Bowen, if you, I didn't even ask you, but is there any big, giant change that you feel? Or is it just such a wholesale change that you don't?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. So not having the knowledge of the previous one, it sounds like really fleshing out the areas where there was always litigation, because it's like, well, what does that really mean? That's good news. That's good news. If we have an update of this size, it's good to see that. Hello, member of family. So, I mean, I attempted to do an AI summary and I failed because this is too big for the free AIs to ingest. And I wasn't about to pay for a AI subscription just to be able to do it on this one giant policy. So, I mean, we could go through it page by page or section by section and just like this is what this section means. I personally have a strong dislike of the idea of reading it because I did time it if we were to have a Siri or AI read us the policy. It's an hour and 27 minutes just without us stopping or having questions. And that was with a pretty fast voice. So I'm hoping nobody here is desiring that we do that. But the other thing I We'll know in the policy, and this is something new. I've never put this in a policy before. At the very end, there's a statement that I think we might want to put into other policies. It says, updates to contact information of school staff identified within this policy may be made without school committee notification. So I think it's bad form to have in your policies, like the names and phone numbers of individuals. But in this case where it's sort of part of the point of the policy is that that's all there. I thought this was a good workaround. So we are not reviewing this policy every single time a staff member retires or we hire somebody new. But that's sort of the outlier for how the policy language is drafted. So that's the 10-mile diversion.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll make that motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa is presently absent still, I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, it is. So that that language went to the lawyers I forget the law firm that ma SC uses, and they. expanded upon and translated it as much as was actually needed. I didn't read the DESE, I mean, not the DESE, the Department of Ed Language. So if they simply copied it and stuck their name on it, I wouldn't know. But yeah, this is, I did not make changes other than updating the contact information, replacing the district with Medford. And I also, there were a few places of punctuation and, Frankly, there were some typos. But so other than that, I did not change the content. Although, of course, malegal perspective, a comma can matter. I was very cautious. And I use Grammarly. Grammarly has a lot of recommendations to make this thing better. I did not take any of them other than where a comma was necessary or not necessary. It was clearly just a mistake in the drafting of the language. I really didn't like the format. There's so many levels. But again, I felt uncomfortable really making a big change because it did come from lawyers and because Title IX is such a gigantic, complex thing that I don't fully understand. That's where we're at.
[Paul Ruseau]: So would you like me to share the screen?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I think that's a good idea.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just realize you can't see me shaking my head probably because I have this text up. I don't have anything on the preamble.
[Paul Ruseau]: Interesting that. I can search. I'm searching too. Okay, so there's 26 instances of the words sex discrimination.
[Paul Ruseau]: And there's 43 of sexual discrimination. I will say that it is not the only thing in this document that I have similar concerns about. But I don't actually know technically if there are differences between the two. They seem like the same thing to me.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I mean, I'm fine with a fine and replace sex discrimination with sexual discrimination if nobody has any reason to disagree with that.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. We will completely mess up the formatting to add a few characters anyways.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham, are you looking at the agenda?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'm on page three to page... Six. Six. Thank you. Yes. Yep. Again, definitions, I don't think they're particularly consistent, but I don't want us to have to engage lawyers.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I could just kind of give like quick go through the steps process real quick? Sure, that would be great. So starts out with who may file reports, and it's anyone, which I think is interesting. It doesn't have to be the victim or whatever the proper term isn't, according to the definitions. How to report the discrimination is in the These are not steps. Sorry. Again, this organization of this document was a challenge. There's internal reporting that's related to employees. Next is the district response to the report, which, of course, the district will respond. There are five things that the district will do promptly and confidentially, contact the complainant, inform the complainant of supportive measures, consider the complainant's wishes. I don't really know what the point of number four is. And then, The complainant will have, it will be explained to the complainant what the process is for filing the complaint. Next we have filing itself. So this is the actual process. Who may file it? A much longer version. This document is very good at repeating itself. So a much longer version of who may file the process again. in longer words, more words. Did it say step one somewhere? It did, I apologize. Step one. So step two is the consideration of supportive measures. So the complainant and the respondent. Step three is written notice of the allegations.
[Paul Ruseau]: For the rest of us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, there was a section up here about, what was it? Was it up here?
[Paul Ruseau]: Shall I continue?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think the hard thing is, of course, thank you. I think the hard part is, of course, without specific examples, it gets really, this is not easy stuff to draft. Okay, so those are the written notice, what will be included in the notice, there will be a statement for evading retaliation, of course, submitting false information, all the things you'd expect. Step four is the consideration of whether to dismiss the formal complaint. So there are some mandatory, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Even Grammarly didn't notice that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So yes, step four is about whether or not the complaint is subject to mandatory discretionary dismissal. So if the district cannot identify the. Respondent. which is often known as the accused in regular language, then of course there's no way to further deal with the complaint. There is may dismiss, these are the may dismiss. So if the person is not involved in their educational programs and is not involved with the district, we may dismiss, not to say we have to, if the complainant voluntarily withdraws. So then there's more stuff about dismissal. So it's really hard to summarize without just reading it, but I'm not reading it. If the dismissal is appealed, the district will do a set of things, notifying all the right people. When the complaint is dismissed, the district will at a minimum offer supportive measures. Respondent will be notified of the allegations and supportive measures will be offered there as well. Why is this underscored? Okay. And then, yeah, so let's see. And there's more just dismissal. A lot of stuff, but- Six is really important there. Okay, so let me read that one since I can't remember it. Dismissal of a formal complaint for purposes of Title IX nominal exclude the district from addressing allegations under any other relevant district policies or procedures, including but not limited to the civil rights grievance procedure, the bullying prevention and intervention plan, that thing, the student code of conduct and or collective bargaining contract, nor will it preclude the district from addressing the allegations pursuant to the grievance process in section two of this procedure. The Title IX coordinator shall have the discretion to make any such referrals and proceed as appropriate in regard to the allegations. So just because a dismissal within this final line has happened, that doesn't mean it's the end, necessarily.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Next step five is the initial inventory deletion. This is the details on what the district will do. Standard of proof. The burden is on the district. Collection of evidence. Let's see. Presentation of witnesses. We'll have no, there'll be no gag orders. Each party will have one advisor. written notice to seek privacy medical treatment. So the district cannot access medical information in any situation here. Unless of course they can unless they consent to it. the investigator timelines. So speed matters. It always matters to everybody involved in these things. And I think that's one of the changes that did happen that there used to be a 10 day waiting period. Imagine if you're involved in this as the victim or accused or whatever the proper terms here are. And once all the investigations are done, everybody has to sit on their hands for 10 business days. everybody's going to school, everybody's, you know, it didn't make a lot of sense. So I think that was one big change that they made is that that 10 day mandatory waiting period is gone. Let's see.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I don't. No, we don't. I mean, I think that for minor things, I think everybody would think reasonable is, you know, same day, a day or two, but for major, major things, I can certainly see it taking many days or longer once there's lawyers and, you know, all kinds of other things involved.
[Paul Ruseau]: Then there's, this is the opportunity for parties to access and respond to the evidence. The evidence, there's limitation in here. So we have to redact confidential information not directly related to the allegations. FERPA is very much still in effect here. This is an override FERPA. And for anybody in the public that wants to know, that's the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which is, you'll hear school committee members use it when we respond to you about why we can't actually do things you ask us to do sometimes. And everybody is prohibited from disseminating any of the evidence for any purpose not directly related to the grievance procedures. So don't take it and go to Facebook or anything. It is evidence that you have the right to see, but you do not have the right to disseminate.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it's a little helpful. I don't know, Ms. Bowen, if you have any thoughts on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I just want to jump in here also that this is the scenario given there has to be a victim. So a bunch of students getting in trouble for vaping is not Title IX. Even if we decided we were going to say just the girls are going to get in trouble and not the boys. The victim where who's the victim the district enforcing a policy. We're taking action is we, I suppose we could be the perpetrator. as a district, but I don't think this policy considers that the district is actually a perpetrator in violation. I mean, obviously plenty of Title IX things are about the district refusing to, you know, deal with sports and all the other types of things, but there are victims there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, so let me find what page we're on since I've already.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, thank you. Glad somebody's paying attention to that. Okay, so yeah, all right, so let's see.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're welcome. So next up is step seven, completion of the investigative report. Then eight is the parties opportunity to respond to the report. Step nine is directed written questions from the parties. So after the investigative report has been sent to the parties, but prior to reaching a determination regarding responsibility. The decision-maker shall afford both the complainant and the respondent the opportunity to submit to the decision-maker relevant questions of the other party or any witness, provide the party with the other party's and our witnesses' written responses to said questions, and allow for additional limited follow-up questions from each party in writing. Questions that seek disclosure information protected under legally recognized privileges, such as FERPA, will, shall not be permitted unless the person holding the privilege waives their right. So this is, seems pretty standard, not as awful as an actual deposition, but. So, So there is this 10 days to submit directed relevant questions. So again, this is still 10 days. There was that other 10 days on top of that 10 days. It would be hard to feel like things are being taken seriously if we just keep adding two week increments. So let's see. So 10 days to craft your questions, five days to get before your answers are due, another three days, and then another three days. It's really, it's no wonder things take forever, but they have to. I mean, everybody has to do the work and have their rights protected. Let's see. And then step 10 is determination of responsibility. Findings are backed by the decision maker. Who's on this call? Joan is. Oh, did Joan? Did we just lose Joan? I think we did. Oh, no, there you are. Sorry. She's here. She's here. You moved to the top for some reason on my screen. Standard of proof, decision makers' findings, The determination will be written, of course, and sent simultaneously to both parties. There's some more very long time frames here. Section C, remedies. So this is what can be done. So there's the remedies, the elimination of the harassing environment, Next is section D, page will be on 15. Persons doing discipline. So this is about discipline, as you would imagine. However, there is a reference to the two Massachusetts general laws related to behaviors that are attributable to disabilities. We'll go into those, because those stand alone. So then there's the imposition of sanctions. Compliance with the imposition of the sanctions. Okay, so this is sort of important. So, you know, if there was a determination that it had not happened, or that it was not, sorry, not that it had not happened, that it was not considered, am I misreading this? So what does the sentence, this one mean, do you know?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Does that sound right to you, Jo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Lawyers, do you know how to make it hard?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Ms. Bowen, correct me if I'm wrong, but supportive measures could be quite substantial. Like if we felt the student couldn't be in the building, we would be offering them another option for how to get an education outside of the building. It's not that they just get to come to school and we're like, be nice. That's not what we mean. It could be something as significant as that, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. Next up we have, did I finish this section? I believe so. Informal process. So there's an option to have an informal process if the So here's the right words to describe the different people here. Oh, one second, Google is, okay. That was crashing on me. So there is an option to have an informal process. Right. Next is section F emergency removal under Title IX. The district may remove a respondent on an emergency basis at any time that the district one undertakes an individualized safety and And risk analysis two determines that an immediate threat to the physical health or safety of any student or other individual arising from the allegations of sexual discrimination justifies removal and that there is no alternative to the respondent's emergency removal to mitigate the threat presented. And three, provides the respondent with notice and the opportunity to challenge the decision immediately following removal. So that's there. Hopefully we never have to use that. Anonymous reporting. So this is that we may take anonymous reports. Let's see, we can do supportive measures. Cannot provide, oh, I'm sorry. Obviously, we can't do supportive measures if we don't know who is supporting, who is reporting. Let's see, that seems, I mean, if we don't know who the reporter is, that's different than confidentially reporting, but there's really not much, there's pretty significant limitations. and what could actually be done. Anybody want to talk about that one at all?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, so next up is appeals. So there's an entire appeals process, of course. Says who to send the appeal to five days after the determination. The decision maker may not take. Sorry, the decision maker for the appeal cannot take part in the event. Could not have taken part in the investigation. So we do have the original policy as I received it had frankly a lot more decision makers that we have decided to go with. We have some freedom and leeway to do that. And I can see both sides of that, but I'll explain that when I get to that section later.
[Paul Ruseau]: Ms. Bowen, can you answer that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I think what I'm hearing Ms. Bowen saying is that, frankly, all these people are interchangeable. So I mean, if John Bruno was involved, then obviously he's not going to be the investigator or the, I mean, you know, that these are all roles that can just be swapped around to ensure that there's not a conflict. I mean, we'd have to list every person under every section. And then the point is sort of that people know who to call. I think if you were concerned about John Bruno as like you're writing a complaint against him, then obviously you're not going to want him to be the appeals officer. He also wouldn't be a very good investigator. And so these are just sort of like defaults is how I take them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. So where was I on this? Age 15? So let's see, sorry. Okay, so we had finished that section there. Recordkeeping, so obviously just keep records related to this procedure maintained for a period of seven years. I said days, I was confused, years. Pretty much standard stuff. Employment agencies. This is boilerplate stuff. Where to go. Pay is identification of key personnel. So that's this section down here. And the boilerplate code that I originally had had an investigator at each school. I can sort of see the value in that. On the other hand, if somebody's particularly well-trained in that, then maybe they're a better choice. But the other part of that that I was a little bit like, so McGlynn is, of far away from the Missittook. But that means that Mr. O'Brien is going to be doing Title IX investigations over at the Missittook. But on the other side, I also was kind of like, it seems better to have somebody not at your school doing the investigation. So, you know, if we were to do it where we had really, it would have to be an entire table of like, if you're here, this is who you contact. And I think it gets really messy. So I think, you know, Joan's at the top, so Joan's gonna get the calls. So, and this does not preclude an investigator at another school doing it. Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: So this prominently displayed on the district website. I don't know if there's anybody who has an idea of what the word prominently displayed means in legalese. I will ask, I'll send an email afterwards to ask that, that if it's not already there that, you know, Joan is listed as the title and coordinator maybe in the about or section or somewhere very prominently. I don't think on the actual main page, just like right there makes a lot of sense, because that gets very much. We want to have the non-discrimination statement. We want to have the district educational statement. It just gets very long. But that's just my opinion. So we are at an hour, and we have sort of been through it. It's a lot to digest. And we will have another chance at a regular meeting when we do the second reading, which we will not read also, hopefully.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, You know, whenever I tell people what it's like to be on the school committee, I do talk about that the federal, the state, and, of course, the local, everybody's got their hands in the pie, and nobody talks to each other or cares, frankly, what the other one thinks. So we do end up with definitions that can not only be not consistent, but can even be contradictory. And we're just left to sit in that stew. Yeah, it's tough, especially when you're writing, you know, we write one policy, like the bullying one, which comes from the state house, and we are very specific definitions of, you know, aggressor is the word they use. And then here, there's the respondent, which is like the most mild-mannered version of that probably anybody could ever come up with. So I think we just have to live with the fact that in some policies, we are calling those folks the respondent and other ones that are the aggressor. And I think the state one actually has two different words.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. Right. And then, you know, victim isn't even listed in this one as the act in the definition section.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, it's hard and hopefully nobody has to go through any of this, especially if they have to go through it in multiple offices because that would be terrible.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ntuk is absent. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Soyes, Mayor Lungokirn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, um, I know we accidentally did we have 2nd readings 2 meetings ago and then several of us, we already did the 2nd reading. Why is it on the agenda? The 2nd reading has to actually be on the agenda because that's the opportunity for the public to. It's like the 2nd chance it's not for us. It's for the public to be like. Oh yeah, if you're watching the meeting and you see something discussed and you wanna discuss it, you may not be prepared. So the second reading I think should happen at the next meeting. And I will be submitting a clarifying rule update to make that clear, cause it's not clear.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Tapia is absent. Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld. Yes. Members say yes. Mayor Lando Kern is also absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Some of these fixtures, I mean, we were talking about one part per billion, 15 parts per billion. And, you know, we have a sink at Medford High with 967 parts per billion. The thing is, is that all of the really bad stuff isn't at Medford High. I mean, the worst two are at Medford High. 235 parts per billion at the Andrews, 180 at the McGlynn Middle. I mean, there are 176 fixtures over 15 parts per billion. And I'm obviously very interested in mitigation, but I really hope that how we are here and why we are here doesn't get any kind of sugarcoating. No sugarcoating. I don't care. This is not okay. And I mean, 967 parts per billion, I bet DCF would take a kid out of a house. Seriously. Like that's like, well, I can't do that kind of math at this hour that quickly, but hundreds of times over. the maximum amount before you have to shut down equipment. So I look forward to the results of the investigation. I look forward to all the very graphic detailed reports explaining what was snaked and looked at and where every fixture that does get replaced, I want those fixtures saved. need to know where they came from, how they were purchased, how did we end up with them, if it was a fixture. Obviously if it's not a fixture then we got to find the root cause. But I don't want it to just be we replace the 376 fixtures, it costs a million dollars or whatever it costs, and we throw them all in the dump. There needs to be answers. I mean, for the Medford High stuff, the answer is that's what it was when we built it. But for everything else, I want to know who received funding to sell us a piece of equipment that was not necessarily allowed at that point in time, because I just can't believe that these levels are a result of purchasing the appropriate stuff and putting it in front of children. And I do have a question about whether or not it makes sense for the school committee to draft a policy on required testing. One of the things that's very unclear right now is like, what does it cost to test every fixture in our whole school system? I mean, is it $50,000 a year or is it a vastly bigger number? And without that number, it feels like You know, my gut test everything every single year. But if you tell me it's going to cost a million dollars a year, then my gut starts to feel a little less comfortable with that. So I understand that this testing we weren't paying for, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: It was a grant. So I mean, if we can get an estimate for what it would actually cost for us to do this on the regular, I would like to know that. Some of how much on the regular would depend very much on the investigation as to how we are here and why we are here. If we find out that this certain fixtures were purchased and they had lead in them and we replaced them, then it makes sense that we don't have to test those fixtures regularly. But those schools are 24 years old. And I'm looking back at the data on the state's website there are a few from 2016 or 2018 but pretty much nothing ever since. And I want to make sure we're never, we don't leave a future school committee. and certainly kids and staff to discover that they've been consuming this stuff for decades. So that's, I don't know if I have a question, but those are my comments. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Make a motion to waive the reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading of policy GBEB.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think I found it, Jenny. I'll put it in the chat for you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, Member Grant. The FY25 for the Brooks water heater, didn't that come in at $267,000?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Peter, do we know if that included handling I mean, these would be networked. So do we know if that included figuring out how we're going to network at the high school?
[Paul Ruseau]: I would certainly like to be involved in any conversation on that point. Yep, happy to.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I just don't want to disagree with Peter, but we are definitely, you sort of almost got there where I was going, but we're just cutting future kids, not the kids in front of us now, is what we're doing, as if they don't matter anywhere near as much. And that's really, I do think that treating it as, you know, It's a, what's the word I'm looking at? It's a values proposition here. By not cutting from any of the kids now, everybody, the kids, the community can think everything is dandy. And then we end up in full-on crisis when there's nothing left that can be done, which is where we are in Medford. I don't think, by the way, that You know, it's been a couple of years it's been a couple of decades at least. So, yeah, I'm sort of beating that horse but it is, these are these are decisions that I think very much. We need to make and understand that. do things do cost more over time, even if they don't get more expensive, you know, exponentially, at a minimum, they're gonna get more expensive from inflation and all the other things. So yeah, we've got to stop saying no, and we've got to, if we need a million dollars in maintenance costs a year, and we have to choose between maintaining our facilities or taking services away from kids, we need to take services away from kids.
[Paul Ruseau]: The only other thing I see in the bottom list that I think it would behoove us to have as soon as possible is the electrification assessment. But again, I have no clue how expensive that is. It seems like the kind of thing you do at one elementary school and you can copy and paste. And the middle schools as well. I mean, I don't actually think it makes any sense to consider electrification at the high school at this moment in time. But for the other schools, I think knowing what it would cost so we're not dealing with a break fix scenario and don't have a real understanding of the, the gulf between what an electrification option would be and going with gas or whatever.
[Paul Ruseau]: So not $800. Yeah, it's not.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's like project management as well or no?
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, member Graham? Yes. I'm looking at the policy, and you may be going right next to this, but we are supposed to create four lists. Obviously, we have one list all done, which is the all projects. We're looking at it. And then, you know, when we pass this, you know, one of the lists is projects that are eligible for Community Preservation Act funding. net school spending, and then things that are not eligible for either. I'm just wondering, who has the expertise to decide whether something is eligible for CPC funding or CPA funding?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I don't even think, that's not really an opinion, that's fact kind of thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, I think we can.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to continue the meeting to a date yet to be determined.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. To November 19th then. At what time? Do we know that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Five o'clock.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, everyone. I'm Paul Rousseau. I'm on the school committee as well. I've been in office since January of 2018. And I am not going to repeat everything that was just said, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to have a budget where we are not just cutting. We have literally just cut budgets forever, at least for 40 years. And the number goes up, but that doesn't mean it is actually going up because inflation. So I look forward to perhaps having a budget season where we can talk about doing more with more and it's exciting and I look forward to hearing the questions and trying to answer them as best I can. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I would just add to Jenny's rosy outlook is that the We have, as Jenny mentioned, in 2020 when the budgets were level funded, we said goodbye to 40 something people. And when people hear level funded, they often think of their own budgets. You're not gonna just buy anything else. But unlike your own budgets, we have contracts with our union partners and those are still legally enforced. So, When we negotiate with our unions, it's a negotiation. We're partners with them, and we often talk about the annual increase, the cost of living increase of 2.5%, 2%, 3%, whatever it is. I think there's a misconception that that is actually how much the increase cost for that. Let's just use the teachers as an example because I brought that contract up. If we give the teachers a two and a half percent increase, give, we negotiate, it's not a gift. They, each of, except for the teachers that have been here the longest, most teachers are moving up a step, meaning they are a year more of service, and they're getting much more than 2.5 or 3%. In fact, I just did the calculations, and in 2023, a Step 10 teacher, so a teacher who had been here for 10 years, that same teacher, one year later, in 2024, would make between 12.9 and 13% more. That is. nothing weird, that's normal in districts across the, in any contract. You have another year of service, you get paid more. So that's the total for that one staff member, 12 or 13%. It's not the 2.5% we negotiated with the union. So Prop 2.5 really is a problem because even if we stuck to 2.5%, nobody could ever get more than 2.5% in our negotiations. well, that's fine, but everybody's, other than the people who've been here the longest who kind of max out, everybody else is getting more than that. And so that's part of the problem. It's not a problem, it's the way it's supposed to work, but it's also a sort of a misconception. And as for what else would be cut, you know, the 2.2 million or whatever the number was that we didn't even, get to discuss in the spring. That's like a whole elementary school of staff. It's not a couple of people. It's not an administrator. It's not a school committee getting no pay. It's not anything anybody here can think of. It is so much. And we never even could get to that conversation because It's doomsday. So how do you sit around and talk about, OK, so which elementary school are we shutting down? Are we getting rid of all of the arts, and all of music, and all of sports, and still not coming to $2.2 million? Because that is a lot of money. So what the cuts would look like, frankly, we don't have an answer that's very good. I mean, a bloodbath sounds very, very melodramatic, but it's not. It's not an exaggeration if we don't pass these, what kind of cuts we're looking at. And I have my own thoughts on where on earth we would make such major cuts. My personal preference is that everybody hurts, not just one group of students or one level. If we have to do this, because Medford votes against it, then I want to make sure the pain is distributed to all kids and families, because it's not fair to just focus on one one group of folks, everybody should have to suffer equally. So that's, it's dark. It's very dark, but that's also reality.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanna interrupt and say that that is based on our current pay scales. That's not, we're negotiating with our parents, we're negotiating with our teachers, all of those things are gonna go up as they normally would and should. So I think that is an absolute low ball number based on the data from June. And I expect it to be higher if we have to have that.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I will add Jenny covered a lot of that the. Some of the less sexy stuff is we have one HR person. We have one payroll person for 1,100 employees. To put that in context, Shore Collaborative has two HR people and is a teensy, teensy fraction of the size of Medford Public Schools. And so while those are just two examples of where we need to add staff, These are things when we finalize a contract with our union partners, it takes months often to get them their retro pay. Months. Because it is an exorbitant amount of work for one person to do, who's also doing weekly payroll for 1,100 people. It's, you know, we have like the city, you know, Jenny talked earlier, maybe it was Zach about how, you know, the schools, every penny we get, especially in this spring, it was by telling everybody else in the rest of the city, you can't have any of your requests. You know, we have departments with like the one man standing and just like the city, we have some departments where there's just one person left and, You know, if it takes months to get your retro pay after you finally, you know, everybody's celebrating, we finally got that contract done, it's bad for morale. It seems like an edge case, but these are the kinds of things that drive the culture of the school. I mean, from a staffing perspective, the distrust that we can successfully do anything is definitely, in my opinion, heavily influenced by the fact that we lack enough staff to do to execute on many things that in other organizations would just be so mundane and boring, it would never be a conversation. And if the most simple thing is really, really hard because there's one poor soul responsible for two or three jobs, it just isn't good for the kids. It isn't good for the staff. And there's just many, many examples where what we can do to improve things, I mean, busing, it's a long list. The, I think probably the most important thing is the school day, as Jenny mentioned, and we don't know what that will really cost exactly, because we have to negotiate that, of course. We're gonna ask people to work more time. So like anybody else, if your work day got longer, you'd expect to be paid more, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, Jenny already covered it, so I don't need to repeat it. All right. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, so I've been on the school committee for seven years, and while running for office, I heard that Medford had this massive administrative crew of people, vastly more than every other district around us, as is the usual assertion for every claim. And it turns out that, of course, that isn't true. And while we do have two assistant superintendents and a superintendent and a director of finance, What? What other districts often have, if they don't have as many assistant superintendents, is many, many, many more lower-level administrators. In some districts, every single building has, by grade level, a person responsible for curriculum, for math at fifth grade, at this school, a person responsible for science at this grade, at this school. We have none of that. Done. So our administrators are doing the work of, frankly, so many people, it's sort of, again, it's absurd. And the work they're doing is not work that's optional. A lot of times there's enormous amounts of reporting and regulatory stuff that they're involved in. They execute on all the things the school committee asked them to do. And we just do not have a heavy administrative, we don't have a lot of administrators. And administrators, also people have very different ideas on what the word administrator means. We have an administrator's union, which has our directors of curriculum, director of science, director of math. And my entire time I have been on the school committee, we have had people doing double duty, sometimes triple duty. covering three different departments. And, you know, that's just not normal in other school districts that are even remotely better funded. And when you have one person who's responsible for humanities, social studies, and English, and is covering foreign language, First of all, that person usually will have a specialty, which, you know, maybe that's English. So how much are they able to really do in those other disciplines? And, you know, we have great teachers, and often that is the only reason we have continued to have a quality education in Medford at all, is because our teachers are good. So the lack of anybody above, Providing any kind of leadership has often not been the end of the world. But things change. The state changes the guidelines for what is required for social studies curriculum. And these are constantly changing. And when you don't have any leaders to focus on that, because the teachers are busy. They're with the students. If you don't have any of these administrators, then we don't have the ability to get that done. We have been working on the science of reading and that's been an assistant superintendent, a director of humanities and a whole host of other staff and They're not, it's not like a five minute part of their job. It's like a huge, huge effort that's multi-years. So we are not only not administration heavy, I think we are administration light. But again, my inclusion of administration is having enough people in HR and payroll. I think of administration as the people in central office. And I think people have very different ideas of what administration means, but we are definitely, we don't have anywhere near enough. Do we need two more assistant superintendents? No. Do I think we even need another assistant superintendent? No. We need people working under them. that they can delegate to because they are completely swamped with incoming mandates and crises that are normal. They're normal parts of running a school system that can often swallow up anything that they were already in the process of actually doing. So I just wanted to answer that question. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I'm itching to answer the question about short staff. Since the schools are short-staffed, are we seeing high rates of burnout, turnover, and could we use these funds to help improve retention in the schools? So we are. We lost our not treasurer, I forget, the controller to Somerville, making 20 grand more to do the same job. The catch here for that is that because we're missing so many positions, people leaving for better pay, or even if they aren't leaving for better pay, they are leaving for dramatically less work. And I don't mean to suggest they don't want to work or that they're lazy. I mean, A lot of these folks that are leaving are working absurd numbers of hours for the pay. And it's absurd numbers of hours regardless of the pay. People want to actually do something other than just work. And so when we lose somebody like a... Controller, she didn't just leave with the knowledge of what it's to technically do the job of the controller. She left with all the other knowledge for all the other stuff she had been doing because there was nobody else to do it. And so that vanishes. We hire a new controller who comes in to be a controller. And then there's just this gigantic gap. And that has happened many times in my time here. And replacing that person with a better salary, which you often have to do to even recruit somebody, It solves the problem of that slot, but you didn't get what you had before, not even close, because that person rarely was doing the job that is their job description. They were doing much more and it's a huge problem. So when we talk about like, improving retention is often a very expensive endeavor. It isn't just about people giving people a raise, which sometimes that is an answer. It is about adding whole other people, more people to do the work. And that's always a dramatically more expensive. If you can give somebody a $20,000 raise, that's a lot cheaper than buying another person for 90,000 or whatever hiring, not buying. So it's, you know, Some of these problems are truly very expensive to solve. But that's just what it costs to, you know, our business office is understaffed. And I've talked about that so much. But as a school committee member, you know, right out of the gate, I had all kinds of questions. that could never be answered and have not been answered in seven years. Why? Because if we had a modern financial system, somebody would go in, they'd write some little report and click print or email me an Excel spreadsheet. Without those systems, it's weeks of somebody going through multiple systems trying to figure out what's that over there, what's that over there. And I'm not exaggerating. Like we have things, there's a monthly report where we're legally supposed to get every month, a hires and terminations report. All the districts around us get it. And I know about it because of the Shore Collaborative where I'm the Medford School Committee representative. Everybody gets it, the Shore gets it. We don't get it. Why? Because we don't have a modern system. Our HR is not connected to our payroll. And is getting that report worth paying somebody for 40 or 80 hours of work every month? No, it's not. So this burnout issue is a really important one, but it's also very expensive to solve. It is not just a matter of looking at how much does a controller make in other districts and say, oh, we're going to pay them that. they're still gonna burn out because they're doing multiple jobs. Sorry to beat that one down, but it's been seven years of complaining about this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Awesome. You're here. I'm with Jenny on the, you know, it's so long overdue.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to add that. These are great questions. There are undoubtedly 500 other questions that a group this size has. And I know that I certainly, and I'm quite sure the other elected officials here, would be happy to make ourselves available to sit with you one-on-one to answer your questions and to get into the details. As Zach and Jenny and Matt alluded to, some of these things are sort of outrageously complicated. and not very well suited to this kind of a setting. And really, I will make myself available to anyone that wants to have a conversation about understanding something because a lot of the stuff is really, really hard.
[Paul Ruseau]: Bye. Thank you everyone.
[Paul Ruseau]: And the family yes, I'm a Graham yes, never doubt that yes, never about it, yes, never and so yes, ever so yes, Maryland occurred.
[Paul Ruseau]: Are these percentages on this slide?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think I know the answer, but I just want you to confirm the English learners are not the letter name, letter sound inventories is they're not there because of they have a very different.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve the rate card.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: I want to thank you for bringing forward budget transfers to us. I appreciate it. And I wish we could figure out where the extra echo is coming from, but thank you. And I'll second that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Did we already motion to approve the Cummings grant or did we already approve that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Soyes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Dr. Cushing, before you step away, though, are there schools where there's no charge?
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, I would recommend that whatever community standards are developed that first of all, they're written down and then they're passed by our attorney because, um, students do have a first amendment rights, although it's slightly different. Um, and it can't just be a matter of. You don't like it. The principal doesn't like it because that does a pass muster with we are the government. the teachers of the government, we are all the government. And so that is, most people are confused on what the first amendment means, but the government interfering with what can and can't be said well. having varied rules about what can be said based on what the content is is not allowed. So, you know, somebody wants to do a rainbow flag here, that's probably fine, but then you go to certain places in this country and the same rainbow flag might get you, you know, expelled. So it's an example of the need to be very careful here. some things are offensive to some people and they're not to others. And it is not going to be up to the school to decide what's offensive and what's not. So I think that's a danger here I think that is deeply concerning for me. and uh i don't know that we have thought that part out it can't just be that the principal doesn't like it or you take a vote of administrators that those those are not options so having clear explicit guidelines ahead of time not afterwards ahead of time where you can say here are the guidelines And from the guidelines, any rational person could say that's in or out of bounds. That's how you avoid a First Amendment case here. So I'm going to guess that other schools that have the painting thing have already been through this, probably didn't get it done beforehand and then had to deal with the consequences. But we really should find out what other districts are using for guidelines, the exact language and see if... we like any of that, because that does worry. It'll just eat up huge amounts of resources and time and lawsuits, God forbid, but lawsuits cost a lot of money. So I'm very worried about that. I'm also... I'm concerned about, I'm not concerned about the $75 to paint. I'm concerned about the $75 to park. And I know that it was mentioned that we would set some money aside to help kids that couldn't afford it. But as some of you have heard many times, Okay, not all, there's a lot of new members here. So most of you haven't heard a lot of the things I've had to say. But by the time you're in high school, if you don't have the resources, you're not asking for help. That's not how it works. When you spent your childhood being aware that you don't have the resources, you've learned to just stop asking because that's not for you. That's for the kids with the resources. So I'm opposed to charging $75 to park, $75 to paint, I'm still open to that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think there's another relevant to the vote. But having funds available for student activities is is a budgetary issue that, you know, right now it's everybody just raise all the money you can, any which way you can, rather than just providing you a reasonable amount of student activity money. And I think that that's an issue we need to address. Hopefully, if the overrides pass, we can put a small amount of money, small budget-wise, not necessarily small if you're a student and you want to use student activity money, but money directly into that rather than just relying exclusively on, using all your free time to raise money, which I mean, all of us were teenagers once, some of us very recently, and you probably could do something else with your time other than raising money for your favorite clubs, like doing the activities in the clubs. So I hope we can get to that point where we're not expecting that of students. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to waive the second reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. So this, as I mentioned in our last meeting, is one of many policies I'll be putting forward to deal with the Title IX changes. Title IX? Thank you. Title IX changes that came from the Department of Education recently and our professional association provided templates well they provided the language um and so this is one of many they they come together and sort of as a set but rather than making us have to pass um 45 pages of policy in one night um they're broken up so i assume everybody can read but it's on harassment and retaliation
[Paul Ruseau]: I also, you know, I was talking to a friend who lives in Cambridge about this question, and it was interesting because she's a highly engaged voter, an attorney. She had read the actual state packet. There's a little booklet. The booklet that comes out and explains it. And she had read it, and her impression was that it removed the MCAS. And I haven't received mine yet, so I haven't read it yet, so I don't know what the language is exactly, but I think it's such an important thing. We, first of all, in Massachusetts, cannot end. If it's not MCAS, it has to be something else, because the federal government requires that we do this testing. The federal government does not require that it be a graduation requirement. we could not, the state could not end MCAS. I mean, if they did, they just have to institute something new and give it a new name that would be MCAS. So I think anybody who's afraid that we're going to stop being able to compare Medford to other districts, if that's something you want to do and you want this one test, you'll still be able to do that. But it does mean, and you know, it's... it's talked about as it's not a common thing but it does happen where students are excellent students they are engaged they get great grades but they are for whatever reason just incapable of passing this test they cannot get a diploma in this state which is insanity teachers assess their students all the time and if the professionals with masters and PhDs think that this student is, is competent. I don't know why that isn't good enough, rather than a test that was written by, frankly, not educators in, you know, some offices somewhere. And why did Desi move? I don't know where, I don't know where they moved. that they're the wrong people to determine that this person is ready for graduation. And before that, before we had the MCAS requirements for graduation, we were still at the top, Massachusetts as a whole, was still at the top for education. It's not like the MCAS made us number one. We were number one before. So I think the harm that the stress, the pressure, the teach to the test, all that other stuff, it's just negatively impacting education. That's not exactly news. And I'm very supportive of getting rid of the MCAS requirement. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I need a giant screen, but then nobody will be able to see. It is, okay. Member Branley. No. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intapa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Orso, yes. And Mayor Lungo-Koehn has abstained due to conflict of interest.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I actually submitted two policies and the other one got dropped by accident because somebody thought it was the same policy. So on the next agenda, there will be a different one, which is around use by students and staff.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the amendment is to add to the listing of the products to include, what is it?
[Paul Ruseau]: They wouldn't be prescribed a pouch.
[Paul Ruseau]: No second or a vote. Also motion to sever the capital purchases.
[Paul Ruseau]: Capital Purchases.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just was looking for a report on, I'm assuming this is for the Brooks boiler hot water heater.
[Paul Ruseau]: If we could just delay the vote on the capital purchases until we get to that item in the agenda, if that's okay?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to table, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sure you know what I'm going to ask, that we get the field trip form. and all that Corey details at a subsequent meeting. This is happening before our next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just I'm not suggesting we don't let them go, but we do a policy requiring that form to be approved before the field trip. So I'll pretend that about the policy for a minute, I guess, but just, you know, let's not put these forward without including all the proper paperwork. So we don't have that problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: we haven't had time to approve it because this is our first meeting and the field trip is next week how does that work policy-wise just curious i just honestly don't know remember um so i mean if the field trip was planned before the end of the school year for the beginning of the school year then it could be submitted then i would say that we should have a special meeting with a one-item agenda we can be in and out in 10 minutes but we we do have that policy because Well, I don't want to rehash history, but that's why we do require that we approve the form with, you know, the nursing looked at it and the nursing has signed off on it and all the other stuff. And I'm sure that will all happen, but we are also supposed to give the sign off on that. So that's how I would. Now, of course, you know, this could have come up literally a week ago. so i think you know we don't exercise special meetings that often we just save them for like emergencies but i think we should use them more often um for things such as this so we can comply with our own policies there's a motion for approval by member reinfeld seconded by member brandley all those in favor all right all those opposed motion passes enjoy um the field trip to our 23 students
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Were you fully staffed?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's a problem not many people probably have. Right. And when we survey whether people are going to participate, do we ask them why if they say no?
[Paul Ruseau]: It just sounds like something that might be interesting just to make sure there's not something that you could do differently that would increase.
[Paul Ruseau]: The number's growing so much. Can you talk about why?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. And Title III pays for all of this, you said?
[Paul Ruseau]: Fabulous. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I noticed the comment in the teacher feedback that four days was fun, but the two weeks we did before was great. What is this two weeks we did before?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. And so Desi's paying for the meals and the time in the school and all that stuff, right? And they're not covering transportation. So I think that, you know... that doesn't mean that we couldn't, I mean, you know, we don't have lots of money laying around, but that doesn't mean we couldn't do it. And so when the invitations go out, I'm assuming there's lots of people who do not accept the invitation. Are we asking them why? And is that useful information for planning in the future?
[Paul Ruseau]: So you're saying Gessie didn't even come out with the grant early enough?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to thank all of the staff and teachers that have spent their whole summer doing all this stuff. A lot of this stuff happened in places that weren't the coolest facilities either. So it's one thing to spend your summer working with kids. it's another to do it when it's too damn hot in the buildings. So thank you to all of the, too many people to list, but thank you to all of this wonderful staff and the administration for making it happen too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Could you just send line CC to the school committee when the October 1 report goes to DESE? I mean, it's not gonna look terribly different, but it's good to have, you know, I keep these reports, but I also know that there are so many of these reports that they're not the important reports, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'm putting it on my list for the budget season because options are the ever nightmarish redistricting, which is not a permanent solution. It's sort of like in my mind, it's like a 10 year solution because people who think that they need to go to a specific school will simply buy a house in that district. It will be a painful experience for people who bought a house near a specific school knowing that that's where their kid was gonna go. And then they go to register and they find out that's not where their kid's gonna go. So, I mean, every district that has ever redistricted, it's not a good experience for the process, but it's necessary. In my time on the school committee, we have moved programs all over the city because for one reason only, the Roberts was too full or the Brooks was too full. We were never doing it because it was right for kids. It was always, we were just too full. And so, you know, some kids ended up on buses. The newcomers program has been all over the place. making decisions that are right for the kids should be how we're approaching these things. But that does also mean we're going to have to all experience some pain in redistricting if that's what we decide to do. So I'm adding it to my list, my short list of things for us to consider budgeting for in the upcoming year, because it isn't like we just get a map out and just start drawing. You hire a company, a consultant who is specialized. There are consultants that specialize in exactly this thing. and they figure out things like what happens to busing and like you draw the line here and all there's these three new babies that were born this week on that street. Like they do all that hard work. And I think we're long past the need to do that because we have to do what's right for kids. And if the Roberts is literally, I mean, the scenario of like a bunch of new people just move in, to that district that we're in bad, bad situation in that case. Because if we decide those new kids have to go to another school, well, they might live right beside the Roberts. And meanwhile, people who are really far from the Roberts, right at the edge, they're getting bused to the Roberts. It's not tenable to just avoid this very challenging and politically very unfun experience, because as you said, we're maxed out. And there are other things. I mean, not that I don't think the principals all do great jobs, but we have principals making about the same amount of money. One has 177 more students to manage. and I don't think they should get paid differently. I think we should resolve that problem. So, well, I guess we'll be talking about that more soon because we can't keep going. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe that there's some members of the public who want to speak on this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate that you tried to get answers. It doesn't sound like B2Q actually wants to give an answer to the question I asked about. After 15 years, my question was pretty straightforward. Is there any reason to believe that when this equipment must be replaced, that the electric replacement equipment in 10 to 15 years will be any cheaper than it is today? There's going to be a day when we're not going to be able to replace this stuff with... with fossil fuel based equipment. And when I look at expenses like the electrical upgrade, the infrastructure upgrade that's gonna be required if we chose the electrical option, well, that number will get bigger and bigger every year. I mean, that's a lot of labor and big equipment. So every year that number will continue to go up. So in 15 years, I don't know, double, triple, whatever it will be today. um on top of inflation so um i mean my estimate you know is that we are looking at just being fine with an additional 185 000 pounds of carbon emissions by choosing the gas option over the electric option I really wanted them to do an analysis, like just pretend electric rates don't change between now and 15 years from now. Pretend the gas rates don't change. Because we can't know those two things. But what would it cost to operate these two pieces of equipment over 15 years? I don't know why that was too hard for them. Based on the response, it sounds like they didn't want to be bothered. Because this sentence here, frankly, is really obnoxious. It says... uh sorry where's that sentence essentially they're saying all that we should care about is cost that that's what they're saying they're assuming that the only thing this committee this community and humanity should care about is how much it costs and if that's the case we should all get some coal going because coal is probably cheaper than everything else um so i i don't find their answer particularly satisfying. And I hope that in the future we can decide that we're not going to accept their answer until they actually give us an answer that answers our questions. It's not inappropriate for this committee to want to know this information as we are about to take a vote to pollute an additional 185,000 pounds of carbon into this atmosphere for one boiler at one school. I just think it's, I think it's absurd that they don't see this as anything other than a cost analysis. I don't know how else to be more ticked off about it than that. I'll let my colleagues ask their questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: What was the subcommittee?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: This just dawned on me when somebody mentioned, I think you mentioned kitchen and electrification. Okay, sorry. Yeah. I mean, we did buy stuff that we have to send back because our electrical infrastructure can't handle it. So you know, we when we decide we want to replace the Brooks's kitchen equipment with induction everything. we will be paying this expense then because we won't be able to do it then. So it's kind of like every project that is around electrification, we will either decide that we're just gonna, well, I guess we can't do it, it's too expensive, but it's like the same big expense in the middle of all of those decisions. And which year we decide, which budget do we decide, when does the city ever really have enough money to do that stuff? That's... Those are big questions, but we're never going to get to our goals around carbon emissions if we just, every time we have the decision, we're like, well, we can't afford it right now. We're never going to afford it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, we do need to approve the... capital planning, that the capital purchase, I'll make the motion to approve it because they need a boiler.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Thank you. know i'm just reading an article um from this last year about worcester and their um they they got no bids so they decided to purchase at least 13 buses and that's sort of the trial of bringing busing inside i think that the The elephant in the room here is that we want workers to work for $20 or $25 an hour. And for every parent that has ridden on a school bus for a field trip, you know that is utterly insane because you couldn't pay me enough money to ride on a school bus every day. No way. So, you know, if we want to solve the problem, and I don't think solving the problem is expecting Eastern Bus and all the other bus companies to find these magical people to work for, frankly, not very much money for terrible hours. I mean, they're not 40 hour a week jobs. you know, a solution that I'm going to ask you, if you know of districts that have brought all transportation inside, do they really run into these problems or do they have to pay their workers living wages with a pension and healthcare? And I mean, I don't know whether the bus companies do all that stuff. Well, I do know that they don't pay them enough, but do districts that have brought this stuff all in house and have a union and all that other stuff, do they have these problems?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I mean, it's just, I don't know either.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I certainly don't think we can do that for this upcoming contract. That would be impossible, I think. And I don't know that it's a solution. I mean, you know, the efforts that Eastern Bus and all the other bus companies are going through to find people to work in these jobs. I mean, I heard, I don't even know who I had the conversation with. I don't think it was you, but like during the pandemic, all these workers went to work for Uber and They're not interested in coming back to a job paying less that is, you know, I won't say worse because, I mean, obviously lots of people who drive buses probably enjoy it. I would not be one of them, but they all went someplace where they got paid even more with a lot more flexibility and all the other stuff. So thinking we're going to get them back. if we keep paying them the same. And this is the same conversation we have with afterschool. We really wanna solve the afterschool, and it's 50, it's 60, it's $70 an hour, and you can raise your eyebrows, but do you wanna solve the problem or not? Because we're not making new people, so we gotta get people to quit existing jobs to take these jobs. It's really basic, simple math, it's capitalism. So if we want to solve these kinds of problems, they can be solved, but they are not gonna be cheap. The taxpayers have to decide, do we wanna solve the problem or we just wanna complain about the problem because the two cannot, or just complain about how much it costs because you can't have both. Well, you can, but you don't get a solution.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to, you know, the bathroom work is great, but we have all been to many bathrooms outside of schools and somehow the uric acid is not what you smell. So I would like to hope that there's regular maintenance that can keep it from being where the grout has absorbed all the way to the board, the blue board in the back. because that's not actually what happens in most bathrooms in most places you go to. And I've been to bathrooms in other schools like at Shore and they don't have to tap people in to do that kind of work because it's cleaned. daily.
[Paul Ruseau]: Wonderful.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just, Bailey. Apparently, this was news to me because I don't follow this level of detail with food, but the USDA has regulations on the number of calories. And I have a friend who has a son at the high school who's like, you know, a man, an athlete. And the same number of calories have to be given to that person to somebody like me or somebody who doesn't need many calories. And it's really kind of bonkers that like 850 calories, it doesn't matter what on earth you as a human being need is the way it has to go. And I mean, I just... just found this out i found it rather unfortunate but that's those are the usda rules i guess and um i think it's crazy frankly i mean some of these you know i was not an athlete as you probably could have figured out but if I was like 850 calories is a snack for some of these kids and that's supposed to be their lunch. And I just think it's really unfortunate. I just wanted to mention it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I want to warn everybody that the rest of the Title IX policies which we'll be receiving in the coming weeks make this look like a paragraph. Some of them are like dozens of pages long, unfortunately. So maybe we'll want to think about how we get through that in a meeting because we do have to at least read it once. But anyways, for this one, this is one of... many policies that we have to, this is when we're updating for Title IX. All of our other Title IX policies don't exist. Let's put the past in the past. They should have existed. But so I don't, I think the policy speaks for itself. And there is a number of cross-references. Almost all of those don't exist in our policy manual right now, but those are the ones that are coming before you in the coming weeks. So that's that.
[Paul Ruseau]: All those in favor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Did you ask if it was at all those in favor? We didn't take a vote. I know.
[Paul Ruseau]: We did. I didn't write it down. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: yes um we this is a relatively new thing for this committee the consent agenda i believe we just created that last year and i believe these are additional two types of approvals or things that we just approve so um i think it was the last meeting our meetings in june where we're like oh shouldn't this just be in consent agenda and i think everybody sort of thought it should so that's why i'm suggesting we amend this is there a motion on the floor
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading of the amendment to BEDB.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second. Member Brandman.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Here. Member Olapade. Present. Member Rahm.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Ranfro. Yes. Member, so yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Grant. Yes. Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Risseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member, so yes, Mayor Langoca.
[Paul Ruseau]: If you don't mind, I'd let Member Olapade go first.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember yourself. Thank you very much. Um. So I don't really know much about city year other than recipient of services or however you would describe that, I think that's awesome. I'm curious, I did read the entire memo and I'm wondering what the stipend is for 45 hours of labor per week. I'll ask my questions and then I can go back. Somebody has answers. I'll just get them all out once. How do we ensure that they're not doing any work that is currently covered by any of our CBAs with our union partners? We can't take union work and give it to non-union members, and I'm concerned about that. wonder what of the $100,000 is used, what percentage of that is used to pay the employees, which I don't, I don't know if they're considered employees since the word stipend is a very specific legal thing used, which I typically dislike that word stipend when people are gonna be working full time. And then I'm, I mean, I've read a couple of articles, it seems to suggest that City Year folks spend a significant amount of time talking about City Year while they're in the schools, drumming up support for future City Year participants. And I guess I would ask Member Olapade, how did you hear about City Year? If I could ask through the chair.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Are these fellows considered employees or, and therefore getting, you know, Social Security benefits and all that stuff contributed?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, so they would be paying both sides of Social Security, Medicare out of the 27,300. So that, you know, when we think about most minimum wage workers, they are also getting the employers paying for all of that stuff.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, you do pay the employer's share?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, so they're, okay, thank you. I was a little confused on that, thank you. And as for what they would do in the school, and I realize these are early days in this conversation, but I've heard people say they could be substitutes, they could help when their paras are out. And those are, well, I don't actually think substitutes are part of any of our CBA, any of our contracts, but I am deeply concerned that we're going to have them fill in for work because we can't find employees to fill jobs that we have posted in our schools. And, you know, that's just not allowed. You can't just have non-union workers taking over union work, regardless of why. So, I mean, and I don't think that's, that's certainly not a question for you, Ms. Roberts, because that's a superintendent issue and perhaps a school committee discussion as well. And so $100,000, a team of six at $27,300, I mean, that's not even covering the cost. So where does the rest of the money come from?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I appreciate member and tapas point about. Adding anything an additional new expense at a time when we're. About to have a discussion about our budget and the layoffs that are involved in that. I think that's an exceptionally good point and a little embarrassed. We didn't get to that one already, but, um. The, um. I feel like there's significant critical questions we need answers to aside from the funding. I think knowing that our union partners are okay with this is not unimportant. And the deployment, I feel like a plan should, even a, generic, you know, wireframe plan of what this would look like without, obviously, you won't have the information about which teachers raise their hands. I mean, you know, you're not going to have that happen until after we're already like, yes, we're going. But, you know, after school, that sounds fine, except that they can't be the after school people that are replacing the other adults we would want to have and expanding afterschool for one year so that next year we are going to be in crisis mode because we are going to have fewer people to staff it. I mean, it's one thing to be on a wait list and to be like, I wish I could have gotten afterschool care. And then it's another thing to get it and then 12 months later, be told you had a spot, you don't have a spot anymore because we just can't recruit enough people to fill those spots. And that concerns me about any times we talk about expanding after school is that I feel like after school, the staff spends an enormous amount of time trying to find staff. And that's just a permanent problem of afterschool programs everywhere. So the idea of having more space is delightful, I think, especially if you have a kid and you need it, but I don't know that we want to make a bed of crisis that we're gonna have to all lay in a year from now or a year after when the city year has not continued. And, you know, I do just have some, you know, those are my big concerns and I feel like I would rather have answers before we approve continuing with this. So if we could get those answers at another meeting, I think that would be a better time to motion to approve this. So, I mean, I'd like to motion to table it to our next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I didn't get a second, thankfully. And, you know, the housing point is one that's quite moving, frankly, for me. So, you know, this is not gonna be money that's going to be in our budget. I mean, because our budget is being presented tonight. So, you know, there's an assumption that we're gonna find the money in these revolving accounts, which we have all of the totals in the actual budget presentation. Although those are the end of last fiscal year totals, not the current totals. If Mr. McHugh believes he can find the money and if he can't find the money, if the city can perhaps provide the money out of the quote free cash, you know, that's all, you know, somebody has to write the check and it's not the school budget. We're not cutting anybody else to do this and I mean, as member Branley pointed out, I mean, it's like, this doesn't look good. I remember in top, I believe, I'm sorry, I forget who said it, but, you know, my concerns about union work remain. I'm not particularly pleased with the amount of money that these folks will get paid. I believe they'll be the lowest paid workers in the district and, But I also can't ignore the needs in the afterschool program, which is only a portion of the day. So we've talked about that extensively, but there's the rest of the day, they have to be doing something. So I think that if we can have answers to that at a meeting in July, I would be moved to the point where I could agree to approve this, just because I do think that If you know tonight, then folks can perhaps get into the July one hunt for a place to live rather than the August one, which is the exact same time when all of the college students in Medford are, the Tufts are all looking for housing. So my concerns remain. I would like us to have a meeting to discuss them, but I would be moved to a yes vote on this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members have yes, may I one go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld? Yes. Yes, Maryland. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. As I understand this statute, this will simply mean that you all can start having conversations about doing this work, that absolutely no sharing of resources occurs when we agree to this, that if we want to share any resources, those individual decisions will come to the school committee and the city council, and we will vote whether we agree or not. Is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not understanding. So you're suggesting that this paper allows the superintendent and the city to get together and decide that maintenance will now be a city function, that utilities won't be charged to the schools anymore, we'll just have them charged out of the schools, that we'll move any of the functionalities, information systems, IT department, those that you and who else gets to decide that that is now just a city function?
[Paul Ruseau]: So facilities being the obvious one, and you've mentioned it, and I think everybody assumes that that's what we were talking about. So if we approve this, that means the school committee no longer has oversight of facilities, as is the case in Somerville. During the pandemic, the school committee lived through hell because they did not open, the city did not open the schools because the schools were 100%, facilities-wise, were a part of the city of Somerville, and that is still the case today. If we have any maintenance challenges, the rational thing for the community to do is to bring up the school committee, at which point we will say, sorry, not our job, call City Hall. And I just want that to be clear that that's the situation we'll be in. And if we are unsatisfied with how the city is doing the maintenance in our buildings, which I have no reason to believe that's the case, that would happen. But if that happens, our only option would be to sever, to end this entirely, abruptly, just decide that no longer the city has any responsibility for facilities. Is that how you understand this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. And my last question is, so this person will not report to the superintendent or has supervision within the school system, correct? If our director of facilities was reporting to the director of DPW or whoever it would be, director of facilities at the city, that person would be doing their review, the contractor would be a mayor, signs the contract, not the school committee or the superintendent.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll let me tell you what I wrote down. Motion to approve 2024-30 and require school committee approval for any plan before sharing resources.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rutenfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? No.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Leopold.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Remember Reinfeld? Yes. Remember Rousseau, and the mayor is absent?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm going to just quickly go through. I had a lot of questions. I'm trying to keep them brief. I just wanted to comment that in the message from the superintendent on the third paragraph, it does say that we've fully funding programs and positions formally funded with our ETRA grant. And I believe there are still a couple that we did not continue. Is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's fine. I just wanted to be sure. Thank you. And thankfully I put tabs, which this is a lot easier in person to do this stuff. I wanted to comment on page seven under federal grants. I see this sentence in here, which made me very happy and I just wanted to thank you. It says, when these grants are received during the course of the fiscal year, the actual grant amount received will be presented to the school committee for acceptance. I am very thankful for that. We have not done that in the past and it doesn't change anything financially, but it does keep us more informed about what's coming in, where it's going.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's that. There's that, right? I didn't mean to shush you on that. I came across wrong. Yeah. On page nine, the Bedford Family Network, there's a negative balance of $70,000. Yeah. Quite surprising and wondering Where does the money come from that goes in there? And how are we operating the Family Network?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. On page 11, under the funding summary, the Last sentence of the first paragraph says with this in mind, the superintendent submitted a budget recommendation of 76.6 million. And then it says increasing the base budget by 8.2 million. And I think that is the 8.2 million. I don't know where you get that from 71.2 to go up to 76 and get 8.2. Well, the 76 included the $2.2 million savings plan. Got it. Thank you. That makes sense. Next up. So I'm a little confused by, so we have on page 12 that we had five elementary teachers that were included to be cut in this. And when I go across the actual schools, I come up with, and then it says that we restored three, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: So that should leave three elementary still cut. But when I go through the rest of the document, I show seven cuts to elementary teachers. I mean, I can tell you exactly where they are, and you can tell me if maybe I'm misunderstanding them. On the McGlynn Elementary classroom teachers, I see two teachers are cut, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, well, then that form on it seven minus four is three so minus four three yes i'm I feel like that makes sense now, thank you, I do what I really appreciate this listing of positions and then the little. Like know at the bottom about like minus to reduce by to tease or whatever I think that really. was very helpful. Although this issue of adding things after the budget is approved is always the wonkiest part because like for all, you know, I went through the Medford Public Schools budgets going back into the 80s. This year, last year, this year, earlier this year I went to the library and there were a couple missing but almost all of them were there. And you know, being on the school committee, I know that this is the plan how we're going to spend money and has, in many regards, is not a reality. And, you know, at the highest level, it's a reality. But, you know, all the positions we have in there, and we couldn't find somebody or we didn't actually have the money, like, it doesn't tell the story that most people rationally would think it tells. And so, you know, last year we added kindergarten teachers after the budget was set, because we do that often when kids just show up and register. And I'm just wondering if you have recommendations, not for today, but for, you know, whether there's a policy recommendation you could have, where there's some kind of a a document or something that we can create that will help the future school committees and maybe the community if they're so interested to really know, okay, this was the plan, this is what happened, was short of my memory and you know, the people in the room, it just disappears into history as this unwritten thing. And it's really a problem because sometimes I, you know, many of us have had arguments on online about like, well, that's not what really happened. Well, they're looking at the document we published that says, this is what's going to happen. And we might know that didn't happen. But how do we communicate that? And yeah,
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Of the 18 positions that are still cut, assuming that number is right, and if it's not exact, were all of those positions actually positions with people in them?
[Paul Ruseau]: But most of them did have people.
[Paul Ruseau]: I can probably figure it out. It's only been so many hours in the budget, but some of them would have blanks in there, which I think implied that they were open, like there was not somebody in them. I'm not going to ask for a report. I asked for too many hesitations. I do want to, and I don't know if this is just something for the payroll folks or HR to fix, but on this, under district-wide instruction and assessment, we have coordinator of world language, coordinator of art, and coordinator of music. When we settled their contract, they are no longer called coordinators, they're called directors. obviously their pay is correct and all that other stuff. But I think that for a newbie reading this, you'd be like, oh, coordinator. And I thought there was a director and just to synchronize those things where appropriate. Those are the only three that I found where the title change would actually be necessary. And I know that one of them were not funding anyways, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then, so, I know there was a very long, not long, it wasn't terribly long, there was a memo explaining the kindergarten teacher situation and There's a lot to that conversation, but I just want to repeat something I think is what I'm understanding is, you know, when we have to do layoffs, we have to do them in a certain order according to the contract in that at the Missittook, because the staff was newer, they were the folks who we had to lay off, correct? Now, I'm not necessarily all of them, I'm not suggesting, I mean, the non-professional status staff are by default.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. So it's just the point is it's really quite complicated.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'll let some other people speak. I have a motion to make, but I'll wait on it. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'd like to make a motion at this time. I'd like to motion that Vice Chair Graham will work with the financial task force on behalf of the school committee to request additional supplemental funding in fiscal year 2025 to increase the substitute pay addition of K teachers to lower class in order to lower class size, increase after-school capacity, and to fund recruitment of permanent substitutes for all schools. And the substitute pay, that's the end quote. And I know that in some communities, or maybe even many or most communities, substitute pay is actually part of a contract. In Medford, it isn't. So I think that that is, both good and bad, if it was in a contract, maybe it would be higher already, but because it's not, we can actually be, if we can secure more funding and we can target it that way, we can increase our substitute pay to whatever we want, well, assuming we can find the money, to really solve what is a crisis, I think, in some places where there's just no substitutes. And, you know, whether it's a pay problem or not, I mean, you know, the way our lives are created and oriented nowadays and the cost to live in Medford and all the other things makes it hard to find people for sure. But when there are some number of people doing this work and they have choices, Medford at one rate and then one town over, you know. 100 yards away for dramatically more money, it's kind of hard for anybody to rationally choose the worst pay. So that's my motion. I'm happy to repeat it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I can, yes. Vice Chair Graham will work with the City Financial Task Force on behalf of the School Committee to request additional supplemental funding in fiscal year 2025 to increase the substitute pay addition of K teachers to lower class size, increase afterschool capacity, and recruitment of permanent substitutes for all schools. And I'm gonna drop it in the chat so any member that wants to, likes to read can do that. Once I figure out how to do this for all.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just suggesting that might be the language you could use.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. Vice Chair Graham will work with the financial task force on behalf of the school committee to request additional supplemental funding in fiscal year 2025 to increase the substitute pay, addition of K teachers to lower class size, increase afterschool capacity, increase funds available to additional funds to increase stipend pay in negotiations with our union partners, and recruitment of permanent substitutes for all schools.
[Paul Ruseau]: How many things can I do at once?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remembering Papa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, Mayor is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: It was. There's a motion by member of Brandling.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that was a yes. Memogram?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Papa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve the teacher line item in the budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: Abstain. Oh, right, sorry. I shouldn't have even asked. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. John, I missed that. Yes, okay. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Soyes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Ranfell?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Rousseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, only that you must need a drink of water now. I was looking for any kinds of typos and stuff like we had in the last one and I think we made it through. So yeah, so this was the work of the strategic planning subcommittee. We kind of outlined the important dates and I was tasked with taking those four or five little notes and turning them into a policy and they are lining up with the city's budget ordinance, which is that March 1D isn't actually listed there, but that's why some things have to be done by the 28th of February, but also lines up with our budget policy we just approved a week or two ago. So I'm happy to answer any questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, those lists really are to prioritize. Well, in my mind, each of those lists should be individually prioritized, which is actually the next step. And then if we're asking for funding from the CPC, then even if it's something that could be covered under net school spending, it would be in both lists. items will be could be in multiple lists. Okay yeah I wasn't. Yeah so these items not eligible for Community Preservation Act or net school spending would be any major physical upgrade or something that's more than $150,000 that CPC doesn't cover. So I think that these lists is also a way to communicate to the well aside from to the council but to the community it's like here's the real list of projects that we can't do, which is whether it's because we don't have the capacity financially or infrastructure of staffing or something.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. We're going to send it and we're going to, it'll be added, I think it goes to the city clerk. And if the council wants to pretend we didn't send it, they can do that. I mean, obviously they can't just write a check either. It's for their budget process.
[Paul Ruseau]: We actually have to do it the other way. We have to approve the second reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: As amended by Member Reinfeld. As amended, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. So yes, Mayor, we'll go there. Absolutely.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes, Mayor Wendelkirk, absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Paul? Yes, I want to feed everything from this. But when I think about the community involvement, several people have mentioned that we are somewhat limited by our own experiences and knowledge, well, we are completely limited by our own experiences and knowledge. And so, Unlike the community, we're going to go around and look at lots of schools. The whole of Medford is not like this. And so I think it's, well, to be expected, reasonable to think we have an outsized impact on what's possible. Now, I mean, obviously, I'm not serving the community, and I look forward to the professionals that kind of do that, doing that, because, like, I don't envision them providing us with a list of things to do with this building, this room, like, they're going to be providing, in my mind, a set of values, what's important to them, and have feedback from there to create a vision. But to ask the community, will be self-selected, it will absolutely be not representative of the community, that's 100% not an option, to somehow generate a vision, I think it will be great. I just don't see that as something to happen. And that's sort of, in my mind, I mean, I'm on this committee, because I have a search for new things that I need to make sure we don't stop talking about, stop thinking about. And I assume everybody here was on here for people had to but they're not investing in five to seven years of their lives getting it. So I really do care very much about what everyone else is saying, but like me, I went to a one-level school in Borough of New Hampshire. It was a regional school and built in 1970 or so. And to me, that's what high school is. I sure hope we don't do that here, but until we start this, I don't know what you're going to do. It's possible. So I look forward to that opportunity. And then sharing what we're experiencing with those tours. Like, we saw this thing, like, far like a van, these tunnels that are like as big as this, from the ceiling to the first floor, going through the library, provide light, natural light, everywhere the library came. That's kind of weird, to be honest. But also, like, never seen such a thing and thought it was cool to go there. But I'm excited for all of these visits, because I suspect we're going to find in every visit things that we want more. And we're like, let's not do that. Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: I can tell you right now. I think it's one word. Yeah. Luke? Since COVID, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Member Intoppa? Here. Member Olapade? Here. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, present. Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember and tapa absent. Remember all the party.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, right. So, yes, member. So yes, Marilyn goker.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Around the invitations to parents, caregivers, I suppose there's no way to confirm receipt, of course, and spam filters and all the other things that get in the way of our actually getting to an email. Assuming that we're not inviting 1,000 people, can we include in the process to investigate any affirmative declines to understand why. Because I think that's something that, you know, understanding why we've offered a service, you acknowledge that we've offered the service, and then you say, no, I think it would be helpful to understand why so that we can perhaps in a future year, it'll always just be useful information in general, because we don't have a lot of opportunities for that kind of information. but really understanding why people would decline it. Cause I'm sure that's going to happen. I mean, maybe they're away on vacation that week or. But there are plenty of reasons for which we can do nothing about and that's fine. But are there reasons like transportation or they have to watch a sibling during the day? Those are the kinds of things I think that could be useful information. And as we think about students that have been identified as needing services, making sure they can get them is super important. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, the only other issue is we don't get to decide.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. So he could bring in I will say though, a few years ago, I was bringing in folks to $200,000 a year, which is what's kept us afloat in tough times.
[Paul Ruseau]: Don't you just remember everybody's name?
[Paul Ruseau]: And on top of that, I feel like I can't remember if it was the Oklahoma school that we saw the video for, some of us saw, but we did go to, I've been to Arlington, I drive by the Watertown High School being built right now, and I drove by Winchester's when they were being built, and all of these schools seem to have something in common, that school is the walls, But there's no integration in nature at all. There's no, I mean, we have probably more than most of those places because we have those corridors. And I just feel like, while intentional spaces for the classroom do seem important, I just feel like students should walk through the doors of a school building and then get completely encapsulated and start to walk out the doors, like nature grants climate is getting hotter, but there's no integration with nature at all. There's no intention that the students are in and out of the building in any way in any of those schools that I described. They're very much in the clinical field. And I don't know if we have any good examples I don't know how that works.
[Paul Ruseau]: share if I can say, are we going to build a place?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. I know that. Cultural stuff. I don't know what your conversation is. Well, Peter, we're going to get cows here, you guys.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I just wanted to thank you for bringing that up. I'm not sure where it's at. I mean, Medford does lack a lot of community spaces, and we're not going to be able to supply enough for everyone. So, you know, it's about, like, how we segregate portions of this building, many different segments of it, even at a time. Because, like, those girls down here, if we find a place to put our troops, we can't do it at home. turn this into, you know, that open campus idea, I don't really know much about it because it's a lot, but the idea of the school community sector or education, community education, for all of these, there's so many more things.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present. Member Reinfeld. Present. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa absent. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Could we get that presentation sent to us, please? Thank you so much, wonderful.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I brought my kids to the old playground when they were little and even did skate, not on skates, but it was definitely skating material. And it's really, I did get to tour it and it is, while it is, when I toured it, it's far from done. It is shocking that it's the same, footprint really that's sort of the thing that's hard to really wrap your head around is that the old one felt frankly small and this just feels so big it's like a like a TARDIS or something from Doctor Who it's like how on earth did you get all this in here doesn't feel crowded it's really amazing and I cannot say enough good things about it, and I'm super excited for the stuff that's yet to come. I know that there's a lot of stuff that looks tar color, but that's going to be colorful. And I can't remember, I think it was Ms. Pelequin who explained the way the color differentials will help those with low vision and just the thoughtfulness around things. Because when you first glance at it, you're like, there's all these opportunities for kids to fall. But of course, we want kids to have the opportunity to fall. The old playgrounds make them so safe that they are, can't possibly skin a knee, but also they're boring is thankfully becoming a thing of the past. Cause like I drive through Belmont every day and they have a beautiful playground. It looks like architecturally like gorgeous, but it's all brown and it is all that style of nobody can get hurt in our playgrounds. And I'm sure it costs probably more than our playground. But I'm glad we're not going there and that it's going to be a place the kids can't get enough of. And my kids are way too old to enjoy it. So I'll just go by myself. But thank you so much for all the work. And it's really an enormous number of people involved. And I want to thank the mayor and and the residents for funding it through the CPC because It wasn't the cheapest thing we could have done is an understatement, but I think our kids are really going to benefit from it. And not just the kids at the McGlynn, like my kids didn't go to the McGlynn, but we went there anyways. So I think that the kids of the entire city are gonna drive there. There's parking, especially on a weekend. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have no questions other than, is there actually a bet whether we can be the fastest at this project in the history of the state? Because I mean, we had documents done before we begun, which has to be unusual. So I'm excited by Vice Chair Graham's ability to keep the gas pedal accelerator, excuse me, pressed to the floor in a way that amazes me. And I feel like nobody's getting run over, which is also kind of impressive. So I wanted to thank you for that because every time I come to a meeting, I can't believe We're done with that document already? We are less, we are, what, 30 days into, we have 172 days, I think? Yeah, so we're doing good, but I'm excited, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: For first reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'll read it. Let's see if I find any typos or anything as I go through. All right, this is, Policy DBC, which is really hard to say. Budget preparation and schedule. Preparation of the annual budget will be scheduled in phases with attention to specific deadlines. This policy aims to increase transparency into how the public school's budget is developed to ensure the school committee is appropriately involved in budget development and to increase public participation and understanding of how their tax dollars are spent educating the children of our great city. Phase one, planning, target dates of October 1 to December 15th. One, enrollment projections, staffing, current and required, recommended policy changes. Three, expenditure projections of the costs of this year's operation at next year's estimated prices, adjusted for enrollment changes and other cost information. Four, revenue projections, including best estimates of federal, state, and grant funds. Five, facilities information, especially projected surpluses and deficits in classroom space and future needs for repairs. Six, cost effectiveness and other special studies of designated programs, activities, and policies. Seven, draft of the basic school allocation rates and factors and other proposed changes. Phase two, budget request formulation. Target dates of December 15th to February 1st. Within the framework outlined in phase one, the budget is formulated as follows. One, issue budget manual for next fiscal year, procedures and forms, including school allocation and factors, and conduct orientation. Two, principals discuss budget needs with school councils and provide feedback to the superintendent. Three, conduct school committee of the whole meetings with public input to discuss priorities and possible initiatives. Four, conduct administrative review of budget requests including discussion with principals. Five, inclusion of net school spending eligible portions of the capital improvement plan. Six, develop the proposed budget for the member public schools. Seven, submit the proposed budget to the school committee for its review. Phase three, school committee review and approval of budget request. Target date of February 1 to February 28. The budget is presented to the school committee for its review and for public testimony one budget presentation by the superintendent to public hearings will be scheduled pursuant to master law chapter 17 section 38, and three school committees budget decision meetings for our final school committee decision and approval for submission to the city council. Phase four, superintendent and school committee received projected municipal allocation. Target date, March 1st. Number one, the municipal leadership will notify the superintendent and the school committee in writing of the projected municipal allocation. Phase five, proposed reconciled budget developed in response to the proposed projected municipal allocation. Excuse me. Target date of March 1 through May 1. The proposed reconciled budget, including all required cuts to meet the projected municipal allocation is presented to the school committee for review and public testimony. One, if the projected municipal allocation is less than the budget request, A, the superintendent will develop a proposed reconciled budget with cuts to meet the projected municipal allocation. B, the proposed reconciled budget reflecting cuts required to meet the proposed reconciled budget Hmm, that should actually say projected municipal allocation, sorry, will be made available to the school committee and the public. C, if the proposed municipal allocation is more than 1% less than the budget request, a public hearing will be scheduled pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 17, Section 38N. Section six, school committee transmission to city government. Target date, May 15th. One, the school committee budget request and presentation will be forwarded to the mayor and city council. Two, the proposed reconciled budget in response to projected municipal allocation will be forwarded to the mayor and city council. Three, a cover letter written by the school committee will be included with the above name documents. Phase seven, city council review and approval. Target date, May 15th through June 30. Let's hope it's never that late. The city council approves the municipal budget with the final allocation for member public met for public schools, one review and approval by the city council phase eight school committee of review and approval of final budget target date June one through June 30. The school committee finalizes a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. One, the municipal allocation received from the city council. If the municipal allocation is the same as the budget request, the school committee will meet to provide approval for the final budget. Three, if the municipal allocation is less than the budget request, A, the superintendent will provide any updates to the proposed reconciled budget presented in phase five. B, the updated proposed reconciled budget reflecting the recommended cuts will be made available to the school committee and the public. C, if the municipal allocation is more than 1% less than the budget request, a public hearing will be scheduled pursuant to Mass General Law chapter 17, section 38N. D, if a public hearing is required, a regular or special school committee meeting will be scheduled no less than five days five business days after the public hearing to approve the proposed reconciled budget. E, if a public hearing is not required, a regular or special school committee meeting will be scheduled to approve the proposed reconciled budget. And then four, the final budget will be posted to the Medford Public Schools website. There's a few definitions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I just speak on it real quick first? So, most of this is actually stuff we already do, especially the budget preparation stuff and the planning. And, you know, those are sections that are for the administration, so obviously any changes, additions, subtractions that they would like. I obviously I think we would be happy to consider those changes. The dates are were difficult, because the city council passed the budget ordinance that says on March 1, that the mayor's office will tell the school district, or I don't know if it tells city council or the school district, what the. potential allocation will be. So we had to really, the dates on this really had to be planned around that date. I mean, to pretend we don't get a number when we get a number doesn't make any sense. So that's why a lot of this stuff is sort of backed up and that March 1 date is so important in this. And then, you know, one of the things in this current budget cycle that I think I don't know if everybody agrees, but I certainly think many people in the community would want to know is like when we had our presentation of the budget last time or the time before, and we we cut 2.2 million and still had 2.7 million left to figure out how to cut. And I understand why we did that, because, like, it was probably very hard to even wrap our heads around where we would make those cuts, but it's June, and if we still had to make those cuts. that's not a lot of time for the community to respond, for us to respond, for staff to be like, all right, we've just decided we're laying off another 50 people, they got families and mortgages. And so I felt it was really important that when we get an allocation, a projected allocation, that we take it completely seriously, and that we have a document that says, if that's our number, here is how we'll get there. We still don't have that now and I understand why and I, I actually support that, because this gap was so phenomenally large, but in a normal year even if there's a gap, we need to be able to say. This is how we're going to do it now we aren't going to put names and say these people are getting laid off all the way back in February that would or March that would make no sense. But, you know, how are we going to get from what we need to what we think we may get the public should know that we should know that, and not a few weeks before schools out. So that was sort of my. my point in all that and then also telling the city council I mean the city council has traditionally received our budget book that we get. And that's, that's the, that's the recommended budget from the school committee that's not what will actually happen. And I think that if we have the budget request, which is that this is what we would like. If we only get that projected allocation, this is what it will look like. And a letter that says, here's how we did it. And no we don't like it, but I think that they need that for their deliberations because I know the superintendent was in the hot seat. And, you know, it's too big of a. The budget is too big to just drill you for an hour or two even, and think that that's enough, that's that's not. It's just too much for the city council to actually take all that in, and to get to all their questions really. There is this other thing in here of having the budget hearing, possibly up to three times, and that is to say, if we are really going to have to make cuts. that are bigger than I just picked 1% because I looked at the math and thought that's, that's still a lot. If we have to cut 1% or more than the public should be able to have a say, just like with the regular budget hearing, which is why we have to have the budget hearing so that the public can say what they think about it. And so that's the overview of this. And I apologize for it being so long and wordy, but I just felt like I couldn't, this is shorter than it was, but thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, you know, it is Phase one and phase two, frankly, are the superintendent's office, and they could have just been called phase one. So, those dates, you know, between October one and February one. Honestly, I don't, I don't think anybody cares where and how you have to switch that around so you know the December thing really bothered me when I was doing it because I'm like, It's like December 31st, well, like it's the holidays or winter break or whatever you call it. And I know that that wasn't a lot of time. So certainly if you wanna move the dates around or move things in phase one and two around, I think that's fine. Some of this language I did get from Cambridge Public Schools, which frankly, they were the only school system I could find that had anything. Everybody had the same block paragraph that we all inherit from MASC, which essentially says, we'll do a budget. Gee, thanks. So yeah, so definitely that stuff feels very much squishy and whatever you recommend for changes, I'm sure we would be fine with, or I would be fine with, I can't speak for the committee, but that's how those came about.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You know, in my seven and a half years now, we've done budgets, this will be the third way that we've done them. And when I started, the way we did them, I mean, it was just the way I've been done, I was new, was that every department head, every principal came before the committee. They told us what they wanted, but of course, we're not their boss. The superintendent's their boss. So everything that they were presenting, the superintendent already had, of course, like vetted, or I assumed. I mean, it made no sense that we were being presented with something that the superintendent had already said, yeah, that's fine, as if we were going to somehow, be a decision maker at it. It was informational, but the biggest flaw in that was that, you know, if a department head had like a big spend, they wanted to really do something big with the department and the superintendent after talking down about how much money there was, was like, we can't do it this year, or we never hear about it. So, you know, if we were hearing about those things that we weren't gonna get to do, because we didn't have the resources in those meetings, then that could have been useful and helpful. So that was the first couple of years. And then remember Graham got on and that got turned upside down where it was, here's the list of things we would do if we had the money. And we did that, I think, two years and then we have this pandemic thing that happened. Oh, actually, no, I got my time right a little off. But anyways, we had a laundry list of things we would do if we could. And many of those things were not like know nice to have they were things you're like wait the public schools doesn't do that stuff like how are you operating a public school and not doing that which was sort of the whole point was to have that in black and white um and this year we haven't we sort of done it a different way because we just because we knew how big the the budget gap was so a lot of that stuff kind of fell to the ways to the side as We could have done it, but honestly, what was the point? It sort of felt like this year, like what was the point? So I forgot what my point was in response to your question. What was your question?
[Paul Ruseau]: That, sorry, thank you. So I guess part of the problem with that type of transparency is that the, I mean, it isn't really appropriate to think department heads and principals are gonna come and essentially just ignore what their boss said and say, here's what we think that the priorities for science should be. And if the superintendent doesn't agree, I don't think we should hear about it because that's not transparency. We hire and supervise the superintendent. And if she believes that's not the way to do it right now, or we can't afford it, I think that's not transparent for us, but it's on the other side of a veil that is like etched in stone in the law. And, you know, we can, dig and we can, you know, throw the fishing hook in and try and pull that stuff out. And we will hear from the community and other folks like, you know, science, which is doing great, by the way, but I'm using it as an example. Science has a problem like we did before we bought FOSS. And maybe we can push, but I just think having, it really felt like a dog and pony show where department heads and the principals told us stuff. And every year they seem to sort of have everything they needed. And it was like two months of committee of the halls. It was like on top of school committee, two months of committee of the halls, where at the end you were just like, okay, I know what's going on, but there's no strategic anything involved because it's already been decided by the superintendent, which is appropriate. So, I understand that desire, but I also feel like getting that desire satisfied is in some ways outside of our jurisdiction, if you will, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, and so that means my audio should be going over the world.
[Paul Ruseau]: Not yet. OK. Because they just seem like a group that- Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: My experience is that custodians actually run into a lot of things. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: custodians are in every room hall every day so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Usually not, which makes the numbers, but also I'm thinking that like so we as a full committee would set out and put our stamp of approval on the capital improvement plan annually. And there's a bunch of input. Before we get to that meeting, we don't need to know about the paint fixes here and there and the water filter replacements. And obviously, when Dr. Cushing goes through all of the training and reporting, he'll be able to give us a report that's a meaningful starting place. As a committee would approve it and that the individual items, you know, we would send that over presumably to the city for a request for the funds. They would give us a certain amount, but they would not get to decide the order of that list like we we've decided this is the order of what we're going to do. And this is the request that we're putting how much we want, and you give us as much as you can. And then we starting at the top of our list go down, but then each of those projects actually seems like would be things that would go into their buildings and grounds committee to monitor and check on progress and like, how is it happening? That's just my thought.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that intersection, what our priorities are, that intersection is a very interesting one, because there there may be projects that are on our plan that the city in whole manages in every imaginable way. And then projects that we are managing in whole and then projects where we're both managing it. So like what it looks like on their plan is an interesting question. Like, I mean, cause do we want their plan to just have like a, you know, if it was a pie, like there's a pie slice and it just says schools, or do we want their pie to have our, you know, like our list may in fact be a hundred items long.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. That's where taking it back is really the point.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's not recommissioned at the end of the process.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great news. I like that. That makes a lot of sense. I also like you know the if we can do the recommissioning studies pretty much all at once then we don't end up with a scenario where one school is getting
[Paul Ruseau]: Lots of lovely things, while there are things that are more serious at other schools that just haven't been put on the list yet. Right. And, you know, that having all those at once will allow us to prioritize from a district perspective.
[Paul Ruseau]: I never even heard these words.
[Paul Ruseau]: Am I wrong to just, you know, just to check me on this, like that any OPM and anybody we hire to do this is gonna provide us a reasonably functioning, the reports not look terribly different from one to the next.
[Paul Ruseau]: Because some of that stuff will not be stuff that can be waiting for.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I think this timing works well because we will actually sort of know. We'll finish the budget. We will have an idea. I mean, pre-cash will have been certified. Anything going into stabilization fund will have been completed by July 1. So we will really be
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you mind sitting over here? We have a video right there. Oh, I see.
[Paul Ruseau]: Now, because the McGlynn is two schools, is that limit in place if we really just do something like in one of the sides?
[Paul Ruseau]: But then the limit is not 300 for that. It'd be 150. OK, great.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would have to look it up. That's a feedback thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Automatic dimming, I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it just changed last year.
[Paul Ruseau]: We thought they were going to cost $80,000. What were they actually?
[Paul Ruseau]: The one here is pretty cool. There's stuff that is never going to be gone until they demolish this building.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is that stuff still there too? Probably.
[Paul Ruseau]: What was the July 31st date?
[Paul Ruseau]: And I don't need your notes to write this up. Yes, I couldn't. This is where the audio is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, we do think you're nuts, but that's not really.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I certainly have enough information to actually draft a policy. Based on. Repeating it all for Jerry. And then I can. Do we want to have another meeting here or should I just like.
[Paul Ruseau]: School handbook policy, like that format feels like that would be good for this as well. You know, date ranges, phases, who's responsible. And, you know, literally a sentence for each phase is sort of like, why are we doing this? And then bullets about the things that will have to happen, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll add that in there, sure. I mean, because I think we, what we thought was, Terri, was that the buildings and ground would sort of like get the projects to, once they are in action, like once they're funded. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: So one of the things we talked about earlier was they do the bidding too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, that's I like easy. Not cheap, but I mean.
[Paul Ruseau]: So one of the things we talked about was we're going to have the school's capital plan. And the Collins Center document has just all, it's separated, but it's still, it's like this big mashed pile of capital for the whole community. And one of the things I'm curious about, if you've seen in other places is like, so we have our capital plan and then the city has a capital plan. And do we like the budget? Like the Medford Public Schools budget will just be school department, a number. Is that kind of what you think happens in other communities where in their capital plan, it says school department and a number, or do they have our plan sort of like blown out into theirs?
[Paul Ruseau]: But the actual spending and all that, your office is essentially who deals with that stuff. So, cause I'm for the, I was going back to the definition. So if it's actually capital, it's not in our budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm glad I don't have to do this stuff daily.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's only three of us, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld. Present. Member Ruseau. Present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Student rep. You're asking us also, Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's on the agenda and it's quite long. I'm happy to talk about it too, but if you wanna read it, you're welcome to.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. So the, sorry, as I have to take the minutes at the same time, give me just a moment.
[Paul Ruseau]: So on When did we actually meet on May 8 to discuss the process for doing school handbooks the school committee is required annually by law to approve school handbooks, and we have. done that some years and not done that some or many years. So we worked up a process we reviewed I reviewed, I took some example policy from other districts, notably Cambridge, and worked up a timeline policy that we, the rest of the committee members. fleshed out the synopsis is that there's three phases of the handbook process that we would like to see implemented. The first phase is the initiation of the handbook update process, which the superintendent's office will manage. And there's quite a long date range of August 1st to September 30th for them to accomplish that. Then those go over to the school council the site camp, school councils excuse me at each of the buildings, and those individual councils one of their required, but one of their tasks as a school council is to draft changes to the handbook, and they get a pretty big. October 1 to January 31 is the expected time when they would do that work. And then finally, this comes back to the school committee for approval sometime between February 1 and April 30. There's a whole, there's a lot of language, but those are the most important things, is that there's dates and there's expectations. And I think that the big improvement here, aside from having dates, the big improvement is that there's these two memorandums that will accompany these changes. So the laws change every year, court cases, et cetera. And so we often have to update our school handbooks because we don't have a choice. But when the school councils, and I've heard this from school councils, they make these changes and they don't have any idea why. So there'll be a memorandum that goes to them explaining exactly why these are changes that you don't really have a choice on. And then if the school council wishes to make further changes to the handbooks, you know, things like school pickup at elementary schools, they would also write that up so that when we get the actual handbooks for approval, we're not reading them like just this gigantic set of documents with no idea what changed from last year. So hopefully that will improve the process and make it so that we actually do the approvals. Because I mean, all the school handbooks stacked together is quite a thing. And having no clue what changed year to year is, is sort of a monumental task. So that's the policy proposal. The We didn't have administration in the meeting, and that was on purpose, because we wanted to just focus on what the school committee wanted. So if the dates do not work for the administration or the school councils, we're certainly happy to hear feedback on that, and adjust those dates. So that is the synopsis.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve first reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. So the last school committee meeting was the last one, I believe. Actually, it's in here. On April 29th, not the last school committee meeting, there was a resolution to have the subcommittee discuss the possibility of co-locating the Curtis Tufts with the Medford High School when we are actually re-imagining slash rebuilding Medford High. And there were a lot of reasons for that, such as some of the more obvious ones is that The Medford High students not at Curtis Tufts would be in a beautiful facility and the Curtis Tufts is if you've seen it is not exactly that. But facilities aside, they were all these opportunities that Curtis Tufts students cannot actually participate in or it's very, very difficult to get across town between classes and club participation is low. At the last meeting there was also the director of the program in Somerville, and they used to have a separate program like Medford does, and they co located when they built a new Somerville High School. And the reviews were amazing. You know, students, their therapeutic learning program are captains of sports teams, participating in all of the clubs. So the quality of educational experience for those students went very much through the roof. So we listened to, you know, I believe it was a survey or just maybe just gathered information from current students, staff were in the meeting of the Curtis Tufts, and the, in my opinion, the unanimous opinion of everyone who participated was that this made sense to make this recommendation. So, this is the recommendation of the subcommittee that we co locate the Curtis Tufts, at some point, probably when we do the high school over with the main campus.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. I just want to comment that I feel like I see Jonah more than some of my own children. Everywhere I go I see Jonah whether it's in a play or at the State House on May 10 or the ninth. sixth, whatever, he seems to always be everywhere, which is sort of what you'd expect from our students who are, and not just Jonah, there are several other students who are also at the Statehouse, and I don't think that's a CCSR project, but you know, they're participation doesn't just start and end with the club times. And I think that's really impressive. I do wonder how anybody manages that much in their schedule, but thank you for all of your efforts.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. The headliner for me was actually the survey, and while there's lots of good stuff in there, but in the survey data, everything went in the right direction, everything. And I think that's really awesome. This is your first principal ship right first, so I think there's, you should be very proud. I mean, one, not even a full school year, and it's, I'm impressed so I just, there's a lot in here that's, we could talk all night about but the survey data I've been waiting with bated breath, and thank you for the great work you've been doing, and I look forward to what you can do in the future.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Number Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember on top. Yes. Remember all about it. Yes. Remember rental.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember. So yes, Marilyn go.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I greatly appreciate the presentation. The additional clarity is always welcome. As I said in the last meeting, I am deeply grateful that you have removed some of the removed the veil of solvency that we have lived with in Medford for a generation or more. When we have an expense of $2 million, we have a line item of $200,000 to pay for it, and we pay the $2 million, it is reasonable for the public to conclude that we didn't need that money. But we got that other $1.8 million by scraping it out of this leftover grant for, know, reading or whatever we you know we scraped it up from all of these other places, and so that when you look at our budget, you think we spent $200,000 on an item that actually costs $2 million, and that is the opposite of transparency in any and every sense of the word no matter what you think transparency means. And believe me, everyone in this room has a different definition of transparency. We all do agree probably that if something costs $2 million, we will tell you it costs $2 million, and we'll put a $2 million item in the budget to pay for it. And that has not existed in Medford public schools for as long as I've been here for seven and a half years and my understanding is for long before that. And it's an incredible disservice to the community to continue thinking that something that costs $2 million is only going to cost us $200,000. And that is the, you know, as horrible as this budget is that is. frankly, I can never thank you enough for that, because it is something for my seven and a half years I have been asking for, and it has not been something that I've been able to get. So in light of that, and in light of the fact, you did say one other thing that, you mentioned whether it was a reasonable request, the $79 million, and we can, Your job is your job. But in my opinion, the request is the school committee's request and we sort of decide what's reasonable. And, you know, in light of that, I'm going to make a motion that the Medford school committee budget request in the amount of $79,399,774 for the responsible operations of the Metro public schools. In 2024 2025 be submitted in writing to the member city council and the mayor of Medford within 48 hours of this motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly, so I'll read the language and then explain it. Zoom keeps coming in and out for me. The Medford School Committee budget request in the amount of $79,399,774 for the responsible operations of the Medford Public Schools in 2024-2025 be submitted in writing to the Medford City Council and the Mayor of Medford within 48 hours of this motion. So that is the number that was calculated and displayed at the last meeting. It is the number that was on one of these slides. And I do have a spreadsheet that I've shared with Dr. Cushing, if he could put it up, which actually explains that. Did you get it? That's because my Zoom is in and out. Sorry, one second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, member Bramley. Member Ruseau. Thank you. I just want to clarify, ask a question. So as the finance, technically the finance director right now, right? Yes. You made none of these decisions, correct? Pardon? Did you make any of these decisions?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think that, you know, all of us here have received many emails. And some of us here have discussed disliking, well, we all dislike the cuts. I think that, you know, if in fact, we do not get more money from the mayor, from the city budget, this is nowhere near enough cuts. And even if we got enough to avoid additional cuts, any additional, if we decide to keep any position, it is a different position that must be cut, well, equivalent amounts of money. So I think it's important to remember that, and that group of people, just to clarify, Mr. McHugh, did not include school committee members, correct? Did not. That's right. I think that's important because, you know, there's, not to be defensive, but as the senior member, which Paulette used to do that, I guess it's on me now. It's really important to note that we're not in the rooms making these decisions, that we hire the superintendent and it is the superintendent's job to present a budget. And we can vehemently disagree and we can vote or not vote for the budget. In the last budget hearing, I made a statement that in Massachusetts, no school committee has refused to pass a budget. So there was no understanding of what happens on July 1 if we refuse. In that intervening two weeks, Uxbridge actually did not pass a school budget. They are sending out layoff notices to all their staff. And the state has said on July 1, they have $0 and will not have a school district. So let's really hope for Uxbridge that somebody passes a special law to find a way around this for them. I do not envy them. But unfortunately, the answer we now have from their disaster they're going through is that if we do not approve any budget on July 1, the Medford Public Schools closes every employee, HR by the way included. So if you have a question about your benefits, too bad. the superintendent, everybody goes home until we figure out how to pass a budget. So we are not in a situation where we can grandstand, and I don't mean that in any way, but sometimes, well, I mean, frankly, all of us grandstand at different times, but we can disagree with this all we want. But if we do not pass a budget by July 1, there will be no public school system. And that's kind of hard to wrap your head around because you're like, It's the law, there has to be one, but the state just clarified in the last two weeks to Uxbridge that no, there actually, you will have zero dollars to spend. Nobody will get a paycheck. There will be no HR person when you have a change in benefits. It's kind of a catastrophic level of anarchy almost that is hard to comprehend, but, you know, And I'm sort of glad it's not us that's going through it. But, you know, we're going to try and get more money. That's what my motion is for, is to do that level service budget, so that we have dramatically fewer layoffs. But at the end of the day, if that number is how we are given, we either pass a budget that we dislike immensely, or there's no map for public schools on July one. Those are the two options. And so I have a spreadsheet I shared with Dr. Cushing if he wouldn't mind sharing it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct, level service. Okay. And it also adds, Well, some of these things were things that were savings like for literacy interventionists we don't actually have any right now, even though we had budgeted for them so this adds them back in. And then for professional behavioral specialists as well. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: We've been asking for additional payroll and business staff for years now. And we are the ones that hear that we pass a union, we get a ratified union contract and it can take months before people get their check. And maybe in 1950, that was 100% reasonable. In this day and age, if it's less than a week, something's really, really wrong. You type the numbers into a computer system, it does the calculations, but we don't have that in Medford. And so, considering how manual it is at the moment, We need more staff because so folks should not have to wait weeks or months, get a partial for the retroactive stuff and then another month goes by and they get their longevity from three years ago, and it's like nobody can figure it out if you're especially on the receiving end. Last, I believe it was last year, we had a presentation. I forget who gave it to us, but we had asked for a, what would it cost for Medford public schools to become modernized computer systems, munis is the is pretty much what everybody buys. And it was. 18 months and like 1.7 million I think if my memory is correct to buy the software to train all of the staff to have the consultants helping all of the staff because you know like the payroll will have to happen the day after we have Munis and with all the training in the world you can't just like walk in and just make it happen so we definitely you know and if we had Munis we might We may be able to reasonably have conversations about adding staff, but when I look at other districts, Malden I believe has 20 people in their business office, they're not much bigger than us. Is that right? Six. Six. There's not less work here. There's more work here because we don't have the systems. So I know that choosing between nurses, administrative assistants, administrators, teachers, and the business office is a pretty ugly choice to have to make. But when people are, become employed here, it'd be nice if they could start getting a paycheck within a reasonable number of weeks of actually being an employee. Or when you retire, it'd be nice if you can find out, hey, can I retire now? And we can help you instead of by the time you get an answer, you've already decided, well, I guess I'm not retiring this year. So it is an ugly choice, but it is one we have been pushing for for several years. And I hope we can keep that in the budget because In addition to everything I just described, the school committee has asked for reports that are not possible with the staffing levels we have. Some of them are possible because of the systems and the software can't just push them out. And these reports are not just another report to throw in the recycling bin. They're reports to help us guide the district and understand where we want Medford Public Schools to go. And without that information, You know, it's you're steering without a map and it's just not a good situation. So I appreciate that they're in there. I hope we can keep them in there. But I also just hope we can get the 79 million and stop being all worried. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'll just be quick because Darren actually said something really important about time. And Jerry, have you already begun projections for next year? for FY26 on, you know, I mean, some of those things you can just stick them in a spreadsheet, find out here's what the teacher contract says, here's what the custodial contract says, here's how much it's going up. Have you started that already?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, for FY26, you can see into the future on some things. Open contracts, you can't necessarily, but you can make a guess. Am I correct that we will have a very similar nightmare next year if we do not dramatically increase revenue?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think that's important for anybody who might be on the fence about an override, because if we don't, then what we're doing right now is gonna seem like the good old days, because once we've, if we have to go through with these cuts next year, like, all those things are gone already. What else is it we're cutting. And, you know, I said in the last meeting, arts, and I don't mean all of arts this year, obviously, so $1.75 million. But if we are multiple millions of dollars short next year, we're not cutting math, we're not cutting science, we're not cutting English, and we're not cutting history. Can I get all of those? Those aren't really, those are not options. We're not getting rid of elementary schools or middle schools. So when you look at what we will not be in trouble with with the state, if we cut, we all know what programs those are. And there's a lot of people here from those programs. And so we have this nightmare to get through right now, but the moment we finish and pass some budget, we are, it's like. Rinse and repeat. If we do not find dramatically more revenue for the city and the state is not going to come and save us at all. They are really aren't. And I think, you know, I certainly advocate with my, my state senator and state rep, and, you know, there's some improvement, but as I said in the last meeting. The, there's no formula to fix Medford, because our property taxes and everybody wants to say their property taxes are too high because nobody likes taxes, but our property taxes are the seventh lowest in the state. You may not feel it, I may not feel it and I certainly don't look forward to paying more in taxes, but the facts are the facts, so the state will not fix this problem. So if we do want to have a public school system we'd be willing to send our kids to, we have to pay more in property taxes is the only actual option. The only option. Because we don't wanna say to the teachers, oh, you're gonna get 0% for the next three years. Everybody's like, you get 2 1⁄2 every year, that's too much. And then in the same breath, we're gonna give teachers 3% a year. And I'm not saying they don't deserve it. But second grade math says, you get 2 1⁄2% more, you're gonna give out 3% more. Where's this supposed to come from? The answer is, it's supposed to come from increasing property taxes going up more than 2 1⁄2. That's not a school committee problem to solve, although we can scream about it till the end of days. That's a city problem. You know, Mayor and City Council problem and then the voters, and hopefully lots of you all will join in the drive to get people to vote. Next year we're going to have this conversation again, and we're not going to be cutting a coordinator or a non filled theater teacher, if we have to cut many millions of dollars next year. I mean I don't I don't want to say those words out loud, but we all know it is not math it's not science it's not English and it's not history it's arts. That's what it is. So I hope we can get past just tonight and this budget and recognize this is your engagement has got to continue. Because showing up once a year isn't gonna fix it. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember it. The motion was the member school committee budget request in the amount of $79,399,774 for the responsible operations of the member public schools in 2024 2025 be submitted in writing to the member city council and the mayor of Medford within 48 hours of this motion, it was. I made the motion of a second if I remember all the party.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Voting on the bottom involved. Correct. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: to make it today because of the prior commitment to work. So I am going to get us going. So wait, it's 301. All right, good. And I'm trying to figure out, my kids aren't home. So hopefully that will remain the case. Thank you, everyone. This is the May 15, 2024 subcommittee of the Fever Health and special education subcommittee meeting for three o'clock. This meeting is being held via Zoom only. It will be recorded and is being broadcast onto Zoom as we speak. And I do hear that I'm not alone anymore. The YouTube link is in the meeting notice. It is https://mps02155-org.zoom.us slash u slash A-D-D-N-A-W-M capital L-G capital Y. I think they thought that was better than the old way. I don't know if I agree. Anyways, if you have any questions or comments you want to send during the meeting rather than speaking up, you can send those to me directly at PRUSEAU at medford.k12.ma.us. Please include your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment. The agenda for today, as approved by the committee on April 29th, 2024, item two, Item 2024-22, be it resolved that the Special Education Behavioral Health Subcommittee will meet to discuss whether the Curtis-Tufts School should be co-located with the Medford High School campus to improve educational outcomes for Curtis-Tufts students. Say that three times fast. Be it further resolved that the subcommittee will invite current and former students and staff to provide comments, but it also resolved that the committee will report back to the school committee on whether the credits test program should be co-located no later than June 3rd, 2024, because this information is critical to the progress of the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee as it completes the district's educational profile. That's a mouthful. I'm going to take the roll. Member Intapa is absent. Member Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: And member Rousseau is present, two present. We have a quorum. We have lots of people popping on. This is lovely. We usually have zero people on subcommittees other than those of us that have to be here. So that's nice. So, you know, I was trying to figure out how to run this meeting. And I will admit it's an unusual subcommittee meeting because there's not like some policy we're updating or, but I thought maybe we could go around and introduce ourselves, those of us that are here so that you can say like why you're here, just for my notes, but also so we can have a sense of how to move the meeting along. And I'll start at the top for me, which is of course different for everyone and that'd be Suzanne.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Olapade, I just want to say who you are in case everybody doesn't already know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Dr. Edouard-Vincent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. There's a little fly running around, so I'm not losing it. I just like can't get it. Next up, I have Jess Ferley, Healy, excuse me. And if you don't wanna introduce yourself or anything, that's perfectly fine too. And actually.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Jess. And I have Lori, but I believe there's more than one person there, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will. She's at Travers Ed right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Wonderful. It's good to know is in the room, little easier when we're actually in person, but then we all can make it so. So, at the school committee meeting where we had this motion made. really wasn't the point of the topic or the conversation going on, but there was, I forget the person's name, who is not actually able to make it here, is the director of the program over at Somerville. And I believe in Somerville, they used to have a program separated very much like we have. And then when they rebuilt Somerville High, are they actually done? It's been the longest project in history, it seems. But when they rebuilt Somerville High, they added I don't know if it's a wing we haven't actually taken a tour yet for their alternative high school students and apparently it has been beyond wonderful he described. dramatic increases in participation of those students in extracurriculars, you know, sporting and club presidents and things that are very difficult when you're not located with the rest of the student body. And obviously we'll want to take a peek at that if we do make this recommendation so we can have that information for our MSBA project for a re-imagined high school. But that was sort of, It was nice that he came because it was very surprising. I really had no strong sense of this issue, other than the facilities of the Curtis Tufts are challenging. I wrote Four things, three things down, opportunities for students, which I just spoke to, facilities, which, you know, facilities at Curtis Tufts versus Medford High is one thing, but the facilities of the Curtis Tufts at a perhaps glossy, beautiful, new Medford High would be a different juxtaposition. This little fly is gonna make me crazy. So anyways, And, you know, we talked, I had talked, I can't remember with who about, you know, if we did bring the school over. bring them together, maybe we can have a separate entrance, separate start and end times, some kind of partitioning if that actually is appropriate and okay and works. But there were ways to retain, what I have heard is that the students in the Curtis Tufts and at other alternative high schools, the key for them is they're not with the rest of the student body or maybe even some of the staff, that they are in fact not there, that's the point. I think I'm done talking and I would like to hear what anybody else. Oh, Ms. Bowman, would you like to give us a little history lesson?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, that was helpful. I was not on the school committee in 1982. I was 11, but so that's wonderful history. I would just ask, do you have any data on the size of the student population served during that time? And I realized it varies dramatically even within a single year, but did it used to be much bigger or was it just two or three students when it started?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. That's great. I mean, mostly I know about the Curtis Tufts when we used to go for the delightful Thanksgiving dinners, which I, no pressure, but I would love it if those started again. It's really very nice. So I'd like to hear from the staff, I think is really an important folks too, who are there every day.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have questions. Member Olapade, anybody else have questions before I go? The buffer wasn't good enough. Really, that's a key element of this conversation, frankly. Can you describe what it was like there that I mean, was it just everybody came through the same main entrance of the schools or how was it laid out? And I'm not asking for an architectural drawing or anything, but help me understand.
[Paul Ruseau]: It was, I mean, honestly, like the number of things to consider, like the fire drill location for these students, honestly, it would never have occurred to me, not that I'm asked to, but clearly there are a million and one little things that have to be considered if this decision is to co-locate. It's not just a matter of a set of classrooms.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That was a remarkably helpful set of information. I think that, you know, when we're reimagining Medford High School, whether we rebuild or renovate, obviously nobody's surprised to know that I want to rebuild the new building, but, you know, like a separate entrance, that was like my thing. There are really a long list, by the way, if we make this decision, I think it might be helpful for current Curtis Tufts staff. to just open a Google doc and start writing all the things you can think of, which may be important inputs to a design of a structure that, you know, those of us that are not there wouldn't consider because while we're not at the phase now where we're not doing the feasibility study right now and what the building might look like or where it would be or any of that stuff, that's all gonna come and that's gonna happen it's gonna just, once we get through this first phase of eligibility, which is proving that we can do this work, it feels like that's gonna happen just like all at once. And so any headstart you can get on a list of things that you think are important considerations in the design of a space, if that is inside or co-located. We don't know the rules. We don't know if the state would physically a separate building right on the same property. I don't think any of us know the answer to what they think is acceptable. I think about things like food services, you brought up nursing. There are other services for which having that, whether it's a separate wing or whether there's a little bridge, we talked a lot about bridges in one of our meetings. Everybody wants a bridge to their own program now. which why not, right? But yeah, if you can, I'm guessing that like most of us, you will think of something you wish you had said later. So write those things down. You can send them to me or open a Google doc for your staff. Cause I think that'd be great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. Lori, did you want to speak on anything?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yeah, that rule of 30. Yeah, that's, I mean, it'd be interesting to, I mean, Aaron was a student not so long ago, but my guess is that 30 years is long gone, but I suspect that reputation is still there.
[Paul Ruseau]: So- So having it in the same location would actually make a big impact on this.
[Paul Ruseau]: That used to be one heart, by the way. Zoom just changed it. That was a flutter. It was awesome.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I'm happy you've made that choice, because I think choosing something is different.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just trying to keep an eye on the time. Anybody else want to add anything? This isn't like the only opportunity you'll ever have, by the way. So, you know, I think that what I'm hearing, and frankly, so far I've heard really nobody arguing against us recommending this, you know, We, you know, the way this would work is that one of those two school committee members make a motion and second it, and then presumably we would vote for making that recommendation that would go to the full school committee. The school committee would make the policy decision that that is the goal. It's not like, you know, this isn't happening in September or anything like that, and that From there, that would become part of our educational profile for the new building. And then of course, we're gonna probably have to really spend, we already spent a lot of time together, the people in this Zoom with me, but we're gonna have to spend even more time together to really, until we have like a site study and that stuff that happens in the next phase where we like, well, where could we put the building? you know, could we renovate, which, whatever, you know, those are the kinds of starting points it feels like, you know, I like the bridges idea all over the place, metaphorically as well, but, you know, depending on where it is, it may not be possible. So I feel like, you know, we're gonna have to really dig in once we get to that point. I don't know that for the eligibility phase, for the educational profile, I don't know how much detail we have to actually go into in that, but we'll meet and discuss that, assuming that it passes tonight and that the full committee supports it. I took copious notes, although there was so much more said, I'm sure. And I will try to write these up and just kind of highlight the, you know, The key points in the event that the full school committee wants to really get into a dialogue about it. And if they if they don't they just want to like, I don't say rubber stamp because that's that's such a negative connotation but if they just want to like yes we agree and move on, then we won't necessarily go through this whole presentation at the school committee meeting. this certainly will not be the last. I feel like this is just the beginning, frankly, of this conversation. And it's not a six-month or a year-long conversation, which I think is good, because I really appreciate it. I try to remember who said this. might've been Lori, forgive me, I forget who said this, but I do strongly believe that every one of these kinds of opportunities, whether it's a new high school, whether it's bringing the Curtis Tufts into the same campus, that there is no reason for us to not be an exemplar to other communities. And even why limit ourselves to Massachusetts? I was just looking at a video from a school in Oklahoma Now, very different kind of a setting and they have a lot more land and all this other stuff. But there's no reason that when we're all done and we're all moved into a nice high school or new high school, that communities around the state and country aren't going, oh, look at this place, we could do this. I mean, sometimes it would be difficult to put into a fun video when we're all done you know, that makes a news story. It's hard to put some of this stuff in particular into that. I mean, you know, are we going to really, is it, you know, is the news, you know, very, very brief stories going to include stuff like we brought our alternative, Joan, correct me, is it alternative high school therapeutic? Therapeutic. Thank you. I got to stop and fix that. I have a note to remember to start calling it that. therapeutic program into the main campus, that stuff's not going to make it. But that doesn't mean we can't have a white paper when we're all done and say something so we can really help people. Because we're reaching out to other school committees and other districts a lot. How did it go? What do you recommend? So they're going to be doing that to us. And I think if we can really show that we did this and we did it really well, you really should consider it. I think that does a service beyond just our students in Medford. And I greatly appreciate it when other places do that for us. And they are very giving, sometimes surprisingly. Oh, can we have five hours to roam your school with you? Yeah, and then you have half their staff and they're like, don't you all have other things to do? But so if nobody has anything else they want to add, if member Olapade would like to make a motion to recommend that the Curtis Tufts, I'm writing it down, the Curtis Tufts be co-localized, I am in love with that by the way, co-localized with the main Medford High School campus, because it is part of Medford High still, you know, I just, does that language sound okay to the folks that understand this stuff in detail? Good, okay, I saw a thumbs up. So if member Olapade would like to make that motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: just typing it, but I wanna have Mr. Don't vote if we don't know what we're saying. Recommendation to co-localize Curtis Tufts with the main Medford High School campus by member Olapade, seconded by member Rousseau. Member Olapade. Yes. member so yes to win the affirmative the motion is approved um and anybody have any final words or we're going to get two whole minutes back all right i appreciate everybody's time today and uh this has been a fabulous meeting especially since i was completely convinced i have no idea what we're going to talk about um so thank you all take care thank you thank you have a good night i've got to adjourn member al-fadi motion to adjourn
[Paul Ruseau]: Hey, it's not good.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. When we met, we sort of felt like this would be a living document rather than something to get through. As we move through the process, like, you know, when we've got shovels in the ground, some of these things may be irrelevant, but we want to make sure that it's not overwhelming, but actually appropriate for something to do. seats. And so, I don't know if that was actually written somewhere. It is at the bottom right. So we would just modify as we did. So anything that you think should be there, should let Jamie or me or somebody else add it. It has to be a meeting conversation. Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: They were remarkably like- they reached out a whole bunch of other projects they were involved with, and I was looking for rules, so I didn't ask about any of the documents.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. The event table, I like that a lot. I do think there are a number of businesses get a lot of foot traffic where we put things up as well, like Colleen's scoops. Yes, there's probably others as well, be very supportive and have a lot of foot traffic. You know, I mean, I'm shocked. My daughter works with colleagues. I'm shocked how many people are in and out of that place. It's wild. So, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for that. One of the things that I worry about is the people who are like coming at us with stuff about the feasibility of reimagining they want to do now is, you know, when we get through that gate, we'll get through it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, we will. We're getting through that gate. It isn't the time to then start engaging the community to start thinking about reimagining because like the race began and catching all those people in their reimaginings and interests even though we can't do anything with them right now, so that on day one of that process, they're all queued up, ready to be hauled, because, well, I mean, it is just a lot of paperwork right now. If we don't hook them and keep up, because frankly, none of them are probably interested in paperwork. On day one, I mean, I know, when I run for office, two full years, I have people contact me and they support me, and then time to start my campaign up and I'm like, who are all those people again? And I just don't want us to, I mean, I don't know if we create a shared document where we just add names of people who have interests, maybe a little note, how did you meet them? What was their interest? So that when we have a reason to meet them, We're not all just like digging through our memories of this long process of reading documents. And I know that my own, like, intent to do that every day falls flat. So I think about that as a committee, something to formalize.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, it's Wednesday.
[Paul Ruseau]: Paul? The very stuff is just part of the ISP. But it seems different because it's a separate program. It's got its own name, and it's in a different location. But it's part of it. So I think that's how we're going to dodge that point. I hope it won't be a problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we'll have to feed all of that back into this before it's done. Paul? The other thing about having space for kids from other communities, and I believe this happened with Everett, I don't know if this is before your time, but we have them. Everett is coming. And Everett is like, wow, we're sending, I don't know, 10 kids over to Medford. Maybe we should have our own program. They start their own program, and then suddenly we don't have those 10 kids all at once. Like this year, we no longer have them. It's not a risk-free thing to build capacity for surrounding communities, especially if they have any capability to actually do it themselves. If they don't have a case, if they don't have a vocational school at all, obviously the risks are very different. But when they have something, or it's a program where the upfront costs are not exorbitant, just need a teacher, those I think of as more risky because it's not they just, they would want to keep their money too. So, yeah, there's no easy path, but like, I don't know if plumbing is one of the ones where there's no way to send kids anywhere. Figuring out how to get a plumber to teach would be a problem, but there are opportunities, but they're not all risk-free.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, everybody. This is the ad hoc subcommittee handbook evaluation. for May 8th, 2024 at three o'clock. And we will be having this meeting through Zoom. The meeting can be viewed live on the Medford Public Schools YouTube channel, as well as through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel nine. 8, 22, or Verizon 43, 45, and 47, the meeting will be recorded. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in using the following information. Interestingly, it says Zoom link, I don't have the actual URL. Let me see if I can.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, why don't you, if you could read that out for me, since I don't have it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Any questions or comments can be submitted to me, pruseau, P-R-U-S-E-A-U, at medford.k12.ma.us. And of course, if you have any questions, you can raise your hand, it's presently just us. So to submit any questions, you will need your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you're an employee, please indicate that, and your question or comment. The agenda for today is as approved by the committee on February 4th, 2024, item number 2024-8, Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee will establish an ad hoc subcommittee to establish a process and norms around annual handbook review for the resolution passed unanimously on 11-20-22. 2024, which was item 2023-26. And if anybody hasn't lost yet, I'm impressed. That one said, be it resolved that the subcommittee will establish at the February 5th school committee meeting, we're a little late, and we'll work to complete the process as close to the original deadline of April 1st, 2024 as reasonably possible. So I'm going to take the role. Member Intoppa? Present. Member Reinfeld? Russo present three present we have a quorum so um you know um our charge is to draft well a document in other words a policy about how we would like to proceed with our handbook reviews each year and um I did search other school systems and not surprisingly slash not surprisingly, actually, I couldn't find anything. It's very interesting. So the law does require us to approve them each year. And my guess is some years we do it in Medford, some years we don't. I'm betting that a lot of school systems are in the same boat, but hopefully we can lay that down and that. So I have a draft. that I have been writing today that I will share.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So I do that's thank you because while there's nobody watching right this moment, there might be somebody in YouTube and certainly people might watch this later. So the way the intent is that school councils will draft a recommended update to the handbook and then those will come to the school committee for approval, presumably in the spring for the following school year. I think that historically in Medford there, I remember one time approving handbooks or maybe two times in my seven years. And it was sort of like, here are the handbooks, you have to approve them. Okay. And they were at that time, they were all very different handbooks. And obviously middle schools and high schools and elementary schools have different handbooks, but for all four elementary schools to have different handbooks was kind of, It wasn't just that they were formatted differently with different fonts and colors. There were actually some policy and content differences that could not be correct. The School Committee has a policy, and in some of the books, it was the policy. In others, it was something drafted long ago or by a principal or a superintendent. So the need to clean that up has been an ongoing process. Now, I will say that we are in much better place now than then. The elementary school handbooks, for the most part, are the same. Content-wise, I believe they're pretty much the same. I think one of them is still formatted very differently, but honestly, that is not a hill to die on. um i have a guess as to which one that is but we don't need to talk about that but i have it in front of me as well um but you know again i i do honestly feel like format and you know like some schools have they're named after a person others are named after a river you know like to have your handbooks look different i i could get behind that um but the content needs to comply with policy, law, regulations, et cetera. And that's sort of the point of this meeting is to get a process in place. So when we review things, first of all, we know that all of the handbooks we've approved are, in fact, complying with that stuff. You know, there's always more interesting things like, you know, how does each school handle a drop off in the morning and pick up and, you know, every school's got a different physical structure. So those would be different, but it's sort of the baseline stuff that we need to make sure we have and that we are doing the approval that we're supposed to do. That's the number one most important thing is that we are supposed to by law put our signature on these things. And so we're gonna lay that out tonight, how we get there. So can you see this okay?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I am drafting a different policy which we're not here to discuss tonight and it just happened to have it was a schedule timeline kind of a policy which I'm not going to tell you about because of open meeting law, but I realized that it was sort of useful here. And so there's. three phases in my mind. Obviously, this is a dialogue between us. There's the initiation of the update process. These are dates that I just walked back in my mind when I thought would make sense. I do expect the administration to have opinions on this, and we can change the dates, obviously, during the regular meeting. So in my mind, sometime time between August 1 and September 30. The process will begin, and this is to begin the handbook update for the following school year, so I have that the superintendent will create a digital versions of each hand school handbook. I know using the word digital here is kind of annoying, but I just wanna make sure we are clear. We are not talking about printing huge binders of paper that we're expecting to get anywhere. And so this is just a copy of the current, this is the current handbook that will be in use this particular school year that this is happening. So I'm going to use dates. I'm just gonna say during school year, 2024, which began in 2023, this would be the current handbook we're using right now. So then the superintendent's office, and this is one thing where I'm not clear if maybe it's somebody else in her office or whatever, but that these copies, which I'm calling drafts, will be updated. Somebody in the office will go through them, looking at school committee policy that has changed within the last year, any district policy and for the uninitiated. So school committees have a lot of authority over policy. The way the law is written is that if we do not actually say what our policy is, then the superintendent is the policymaker. Just anything the superintendent says, goes as policy, I mean, obviously within the law. So that's why I've separated them out here because there are plenty of things for which we may have a policy on, or we may make a statement about what we expect and want, but then there's lots of things we don't. Now, whether we should or not is unrelated to this conversation. So then district policy is, I didn't want to put superintendent because sometimes it actually ends up being the principal, or it could be at a departmental level of like a science policy. I mean, so I just put district. I do think the word district, it might be a better word, but I don't know what it is. But anyways, any of the changes that have to happen because of changing policies, laws, regulations, legal rulings, those need to just be put into the drafts by the central office. We don't want seven or eight schools running around trying to find out what legal rulings there were this year, what school committee policies changed. I mean, that's just silly. And that would be school councils doing that. Those are just volunteers from the school. I don't think that's the right way to go. I mean, there's teachers too. So a draft, that incorporates all of that stuff will be created by the central office, a memorandum detailing each of those changes. Now, I do not mean, I don't think anybody here expects to include in the memorandum corrections to spelling and punctuation, but each substantive change, there should be an explanation for what it is. And then a copy of the handbooks originally, which are the current operating handbooks, the draft one, the memorandum explaining the changes, and a copy of this policy. will be sent to each school principal. So the Roberts will get their version of their handbook with the required things and each of the schools will too. You know, each of the handbooks do not necessarily contain, you know, the high school handbook may contain things that the elementary one does not and vice versa. So this is the initiation of the process. I suspect administration will have some tweaks to this and you know, The point is it starts within some reasonable timeframe. And the most important things in my personal opinion are this memorandum of changes so that we are not being asked at the end of this to read a whole manual from a school and just guess what changed from the previous year. It's an impossible task. So next, those things go over to the principal. The school councils and I'm not outlining how school councils get created and all that other business that's all the schools have them already. They're expected to draft what I'm calling the recommended. Handbook, so they'll go through it. They'll have the document that includes all of the changes that had to happen. And these are not changes that the school council is expected to. I mean, they'll have opinions on I mean, everybody has opinions, but these are not changes. They're going to if the superintendent makes an update because school committee changed the policy. The school council doesn't undo it. It's, this is just, they can make all of the other changes that they want. And there are many changes school councils recommend. So they will go through the handbook. They will not be confused about why this language suddenly changed because it will be in the memorandum explaining it. And they will generate what's called, John, go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, not feedback, the school council is responsible for providing it. I mean, they may provide us, there's also this school council changes memorandum. So if they make a change, You know, a substantive change. I'm really struggling with examples. Make a substantive change. Not again, not regarding the laws and policies and regulation stuff. They make a change to the handbook and.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Thank you. And if it's not controversial, they're just gonna say, we've changed this and the principal and everybody thinks this is gonna work better. And that's one sentence and everybody's happy. If there's anything more challenging, then I can certainly see dialogue going on there. But the goal here is also that the school councils don't have to come and stand before us as a school committee for hours on one night. That's not expected of them. It's also not reasonable.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. I mean, they can have a concern, but the policy change isn't going to happen in time for this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, the school councils, I think, are constantly in that mode all year long. And so I've not been on a school council, but I imagine that things are piling up. And then when it's time to start this work, they've got their pile of things that they need to work through. And it's between them and, well, the principal is part of the school council, I believe. The listing is in the law, but I forgot it. Yeah, but so this is, you know, this is in every way divorced from school committee so far. So they'll create a memorandum as well that just explains their changes, not the required changes. And then they will send that recommended handbook and the memorandum to the superintendent for review and submission to us. I didn't put it in here that the superintendent may have opinions on it, but my thoughts on that are this. The superintendent and central administration staff are not 16, 25, 40 people. If a school council and a principal have all approved this, I can't foresee the central administration sitting down to review and decide whether they agree on everything. It's a universe of endless availability of time and resources that doesn't exist in most places, I'm sure. So anyway, so I just want it to be like, superintendent gets it. The review is if the superintendent really even wants to review it, and getting it to us. Next up is our review. So I put a pretty big timeframe here, but I did wanna make sure it happens before we're in May. So for school committee members and you both are, this is your first term, but May has many names in school committee council, school committee circles, because that is when we get 750 invitations to every performance at every grade, at every school, and every art show and every presentation from the social studies and the humanities and every single award ceremony. And May is both joyful and absolutely impossible for school committee members. So in my mind, thinking about all the other responsibilities we have, I want this thing to be out of the way before May hits because May, I like May, if we're able to just focus on the students and the successes of that school year. If we also have to fit in countless other meetings, which we do, but let's limit it if we can. So anyway, so that's the purpose of the timeline. So I put that the item on the agenda would be review and approval of school year, and then obviously the number of handbooks. It'll be put on a regular school committee meeting. digital copies of the handbook prior to changes, the recommended handbook, the mandatory changes memorandum, and the school council's changes memorandum will be in our packets. School committee will take action such as approval amendments or postpone approval to a subsequent meeting or subcommittee meeting. So, you know, I can envision that like early on, you know, the first year, maybe even first two years, we may be like, this takes a lot more time. But ideally, after we've done this, maybe even only one year, we'll be like, we'll all know to flip to the memorandum, we'll read the memorandum, we'll be like, oh, okay, well, that all makes sense, both of the memorandums. And then we won't be going line by line through, you know, dense handbooks from multiple schools. I mean, obviously people are free to do what they want with their time. But I think that obviously the first time you ever review a handbook, it's probably a good idea to read the whole thing. But considering most of the content doesn't change, it's not a very efficient use of anybody's time to read it again from scratch. So, but in the event that, you know, like title, Title IX, is that the one that's got major changes that just happened? There will be lots of changes that will come into our handbooks. We may, and how that language gets transmitted from the law, I think that's regulation, but how it gets transmitted from the regulation into language that the superintendent is putting into the manual. we may have a real interesting set of conversations that need to be happening. So that may be like, we send that to a committee of the whole or a subcommittee just to discuss that specific piece, like how this really works in Medford or what we think. I mean, a lot of times we will have no choice. And I know that during the previous, presidential administration, there were changes and we did not like them, but we also didn't have a decision. There was no decision making for us to do. So I just wanted to make sure we had it out that at the end of this meeting, we will do one of these things to make sure we eventually do approve them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, we only can approve the whole handbook. We can amend it. So is there a better wording for that, you think?
[Paul Ruseau]: We can approve one at a time. We can just say they're all good and go.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't mind that except in a lot of other districts, all the elementary schools have one handbook. I think there's a lot of value to that.
[Paul Ruseau]: As you know, both all of us as well as the future school committee members will be like, what did they mean? Did we, how do we do that? It's like, that's the whole purpose of this meeting so we can stop that conversation.
[Paul Ruseau]: What does... I think that the school council's approval of the handbook is procedural. There's no, that doesn't make it the handbook. So I don't think sending it back is a thing. We just can change what we want within the, you know, excluding the legal stuff. But you know, being collaborative, I would certainly much rather us be like, let's invite them over to discuss this in a subcommittee, rather than just whole cloth, like tearing out something that they took pains to create. You know, that's not really ever something we want, unless, you know, in the weird situation where as a council creates something, and as a committee, we just, a majority of us disagree. And, you know, we could make such a change. I don't know that we've done that before, but again, we've also not approved in a meaningful way before, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, right. I think that The, so if we assume for instance that there's nothing, when the superintendent in the first section is making updates, let's say that the superintendent does not feel that there's any conflict in that particular school's manual and that there's no update required. You know, the thing about school councils is they are volunteers and they are, and with anything where there's a volunteer where you rely on volunteers, there's gonna be people who, the people who volunteer are interested. And why people are interested varies very greatly. There may be people, there could be a whole pile of people who are volunteering for school councils right now because they disagree with how we did discipline policies. And so when they draft language around that, they may interpret our policies in ways that as a majority of the school committee does not. see that that is how we did it. So that's the thing about language. No matter how hard we try to be as precise and clear as we can be, there's honest interpretation involved. And then there's, of course, always not good faith interpretation involved. And so In my mind, if there's something going on in a handbook that is not a good faith interpretation of what we have in policy, well, then we would use our authority to make the change to the handbook. But I mean, my hope is that that's just not a regular occurrence or something we really need to worry about. I mean, I am grateful to these school councils that there's all this extra work that they're doing. And, you know, it's some of our staff. So, but there's always going to be an opportunity for disagreement between the school council and the school committee. And even though the law lays out this whole process, it is our approval that is required. So in my mind, at least I'm pretty sure that's the case, it is really up to us what they say. I think nobody writing the law was gonna say school committee sit down and write a school manuals every year. So that's... I think that's the root of that. But again, a superintendent could also read the changes and be like, that doesn't really comply with the intent of the policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. because I think that that's, in a district where we had endless resources and that might be a thing, but none of us believe that that's coming anytime soon. I would certainly, I would be happy if the superintendent's office had the capacity to read all of these things and really confirm that they comply with all of our policies, but it's a huge, huge undertaking. So I think that, Getting us through this the first time is the part that's going to be hard because it's going to be more work for every single group involved. But I think that once we're through it once, it should be dramatically easier. Aside from the fact that there'll be examples of what the memorandums should look like. People will perhaps number their sections of their handbooks so they can refer to them. There'll be page numbers everywhere. Some of those things just happen naturally when you have to start writing about another document in a document. And that won't be easy the first time. But again, like anything, like all policy, we go through this, we do it for a year, and we're like, oh, that just stunk. What were we thinking? Let's change it. definitely happy to change it, happy to throw it all away if it turns out it was just not a good idea. But the most important thing to me is that we can approve these handbooks and approve them knowing what we're approving. That's sort of the unfair thing. Like a Friday we get 400 pages of handbooks. I'm a slow reader, but I think for fast readers to get through it by Monday is a challenge.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I would love this. We could just use track changes, but I don't want us to get into the specifics of the technology. And then it also requires that school councils are all using Google. And then they don't necessarily have Google accounts with the district. And it just goes wild from there.
[Paul Ruseau]: I like that, a new phase three, superintendent, I'm just gonna put that as- I think it's just, what is the superintendent review?
[Paul Ruseau]: But that's a heck of a job for the first time through. Yeah, well, that's right. How does that, just making it number four instead of a whole other? That makes sense. Yes. Great. It's a really important point and one that has come up many times in my time as well. And it handbooks, the, recess and homework. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. And I think that you just said something reminds me, like we want to make sure also that this policy is you know, if all the hair books were perfect today, we'd want this to still be the policy and we don't have to like keep coming back and changing it. So yeah, and that's why I like that consistency language. But you know, the superintendent can, with this first phase, which I don't honestly know that happens at all right now, but if this first phase isn't happening and it begins to happen, And I don't mean the superintendent herself, but under her direction. But this cleanup of inconsistent language can happen. She's going to create a draft to send to them. And if it's already corrected in there, kind of getting out ahead of it. But that's a process between her and I think the principals and school councils. What else we got?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, absolutely.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I think that might be a very, that might be a resolution we should work on is that we will draft a, a handbook schema or whatever the right word would be. You know, we do it for our agendas and for other things. We say like, this is the structure we want. And some, you know, some handbooks, you open it up and there'll be like, mass general law quoted. Like, I think most everybody can agree that no, If you want to include it, put it in an appendix, but in fact, maybe just don't put it at all and just say what the law number is, because exactly two people per year are going to read it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, but it can be at the end.
[Paul Ruseau]: Stability of our handbooks, some of them is,
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. No, that's true. Yeah, and I think a nice, addendum would be great, but some of them it's very much like, welcome to this school, and then you see language on the Mass General Law website, and you're just like, what does that even say? It's not welcoming. I think that handbooks really do need to be welcoming. And I can't remember who was recently talking to about this, but they're like, you should open the handbook and read the first page and have a really a strong sense already of your expectations as a student. Like it shouldn't be that you have to go 42 pages in, start to kind of grasp what's expected of you because nobody reads the whole thing. But that's a different conversation, I think. either for another policy or just for the councils to have themselves. I believe the high school principal is actually working on a whole new format for that one. So I haven't seen it or anything, but I'd be very interested.
[Paul Ruseau]: Part of this is to prevent some of that from happening too. I think it's helpful when policy respects all of the people in the process as people who have lives and other things to do. And when I got that binder that the rest of us got, it didn't, and frankly, it just didn't feel very respectful. Like, really, we're gonna go through this and know what's different this year from last year. and not to be unfair to anybody, but like the process as it's currently happening is not respectful of anybody's time. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not saying we couldn't get hard copies. I'm just, but you know, do you want to read four elementary school handbooks when in fact, much of it will be the same. You're a fast reader though, I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, honestly, that is sort of the expectation, that everyone is reading every handbook. And in my mind, once we've done this once, everyone will just need to read the memorandums.
[Paul Ruseau]: yeah you know we've talked about onboarding of new members i'm going to move don't mind my. screen going my video going out, because I need to plug in but um. The onboarding of new members has been a topic. And actually, I have a Google Doc with a very long list of things for new members. I did send some of the things out. But the reality is that there's too much. And so figuring out how to deal with that is a problem. It's too much. It's just, I mean, I would say it's an impossible list of things. And you know, when you go to a school committee conference and when you go to the, the, the, the, the. Charting the course. Charting the course. There is a, I'm pretty sure it's a conversation that happens. I mean, I've been to several of them, but you know, there's this whole concept of becoming an effective school committee member and it's, It can sound a bit snotty or snooty, and it's not meant that way. It's just that the depth and breadth of knowledge you need to bring all year long to every conversation and things that are changing is frankly staggering. What that means is you're adding more each year you're in office. Nobody, I don't believe, and I would doubt anybody who says otherwise, nobody in the history of school committees has been elected and been effective immediately, maybe on an issue, for sure. but not like on the breadth of things that we are required to approve. Our list of presentations on our policy manual is several pages long. We're supposed to receive all of those each year and all of us are supposed to understand and approve them. It takes you a while just to read the list. So I think that, What we decide to include in onboarding, which I know we're slightly off topic, is we might want to have a subcommittee meeting on at some point, a different one. Because how do you bring people up to speed so they are effective as quickly as possible? Because the truth is, is the whole committee benefits when the new members are effective as quickly as possible. We all do, you know. You know, it's not that you won't have to ask the questions for which everybody else in the room already knows the answer to. That's always going to happen. And that's fine. But, you know, there are some basic things, and I don't just mean Robert's Rules and Open Meeting Law, that you kind of have to know. And there's nobody out there teaching them. They don't teach them at Charting the Course, because every district's different. It's a really good question and a hard one to answer in my opinion. All right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. And I mean, our approval, by the way, I mean, I gave us a February, March and April, three months. If we get these handbooks and we get the memorandum, it's, we just do it in one weekend. It's not, we don't need three months. So if they say they need more time in certain sections of this process, we have it to give to them. We'll just cut some of our time down here. I just wanted it, I like going early and having them pat tough. more time. Otherwise, the councils are meeting in March to start talking about the handbook. And then, you know, and then we're approving handbooks the last week of June at best or just not doing it. So I don't know if this October to January school council thing is reasonable at all. Again, I haven't been on a school council. I don't even know when they form and I'm sure they form at different times with each school and whether or not, if everybody's just coming over and staying around for another year, then, you know, oh, it's born, we agreed, and we're just going to keep the same council versus a whole turnover.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, you know, I, this is a, this is a, in my mind, this is a draft policy that if we report out of here positively, then the committee and the administration can respond to and I, I will. If we do approve it tonight to go to the full committee, I will ask the superintendent when I send her this document to send it to principals for their feedback, you know, to come to the committee or to email all of us so we can bring our notes on how we might want to change it at the meeting. and it's a policy so it would be you know first reading and then this is not what we would want to just waive the second reading we want people to have a chance to let it soak in.
[Paul Ruseau]: The only time it is not or designee, we actually would say, we'd have to specify that only the superintendent can do something.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I think that's, you know, part of that is that also the superintendent is the only person we actually can have, we have authority over. So, um, yeah, but no, we, we don't have to say that. Um, it's something that I very much wanted. I, for a while when I was writing policy, I always went or designee. And then I'm like, Oh my God, it's like putting the words Medford in our school committee policy everywhere. I have to remind myself to go take the words Medford out. It's the Medford school committee policy. Obviously we don't mean Belmont. we'll do this. And the length of this thing matters greatly. As someone who reads very, very slowly, I'm very attuned to this becoming too verbose. Verbose enough, but not... I mean, there's also this... other conversation, we're off topic slightly here again, but like just saying the committee is actually sufficient. But whenever we're talking about things like this, where there's a school council, that's when I decide we need to go verbose because, you know, like with the school building committee, you can't say the committee, do you mean us, the school building committee? Do you mean the school committee? No, I see that, that's... But it's hard to find consistency because you'll end up with some policies where you're like, oh, you said school committee everywhere here. Well, but there was a reason. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, is it? Can you not see it all? Let me.
[Paul Ruseau]: Where do I have three to mandatory? What's wrong with that? Just kidding.
[Paul Ruseau]: Funny, I thought I copied it and I had mandatory here. Where's my I paid for? What's my call it? Thing that should find all my typos.
[Paul Ruseau]: I thought so too, but I don't see it. I must have turned it off by accident. Oops. I'm gonna have to look at that, I do rely on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, yes, but again- No, I want this done by May 1st.
[Paul Ruseau]: As I wrote it, I was like, how can I connect those things? And I'm hoping is a better way to describe. I like to not use the word digital. OK. And I'd like to assume that it's implied.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, we'll leave that. Actually, I'll say there's copies of the handbook. I'm not going to specify the format because some members prefer digital, some prefer papers. I'll leave that out of there. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: How's that sound? I'm going to resist giving it a name, because it's one that we may never see. Yeah, no, it's good.
[Paul Ruseau]: Much better than finding out what I typed later was like, didn't make sense.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, we would, so let me stop sharing. Once I can find that, stop share, great. So I had to move to my bedroom where my power cord is. I'm not going to do that horrible thing where people have meetings from their bed. So the, I have too many windows open, sorry. So the motion, the basic motion would be to report out Policy, BC, whatever the policy ID was, I just had it in my face a second ago. That's fine. H-C, C-H-C-A-dash-B, C-H-C-A-dash-B. To report policy. It's not positively, what's the word?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, so to report policy blah out to the full committee for... Adoption? Adoption with subcommittee, with unanimous, well, not with subcommittee recommendation. Let me read it out loud. To report policy CHCA-B out to the full committee for adoption with subcommittee recommendation for approval. What was the other thing that we were just talking about?
[Paul Ruseau]: A copy of the recommended policy will be sent to central administration and school principals, I'll just say principals, so they may provide feedback at the regular school committee. meeting where the policy will be considered. How's that sound? Do you want me to read it one more time or do you all get that? I can read it one more time. I never like people- Second reading, no. So the motion, which one of you all would have to say so moved, to report policy CHCA-B out to the full committee for adoption with subcommittee recommendation for approval. A copy of the recommended policy will be sent to central administration and principals so they may provide feedback at the regular school committee meeting where the policy will be considered. So moved.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. So, on the motion Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, in the affirmative, the draft policy is reported out. Thank you all for this wonderful work. I honestly don't look forward to having to actually do all this work on the first time through.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't honestly see this, we'll be doing any of this this school year.
[Paul Ruseau]: I really don't. I mean, nobody's gonna be able to draft any memorandums at the timeline we're in right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, what we do this time around, I don't know. I mean, I think we may in fact, you know, if folks get time to read them all, somebody definitely should make an emotion to approve them, but they have to be on the agenda for us to do that, and they aren't. So, you know, it's fairly awkward for me to say out loud in a meeting, especially recorded, that maybe we end up doing the proper thing in approving them this year. Alas, we have also not done that for many years. So it's not like I'm suggesting we break the law and do something that's never been done before. I think that, yeah, we can talk, you know, maybe you and I could talk offline about how we would want to do this, or you could talk to another member and say, like, so how do we get these approved? Do we want to approve them?
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct, that's correct. And, you know, looking around other districts, all they have is that same language, they have to be approved. No comment about when, what happens if they don't, no comment about
[Paul Ruseau]: It's not too late, but it's also not necessary because unless policy specific, I don't know if this is the law, but I'm, this is definitely how everybody operates. Unless a policy says effective immediately, it is intended, implied to begin the next school year, July 1.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, well, let's take a peek.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, you're right. Rule 46, the policy will take effect immediately unless another date is specified. However, I should point out that immediately, we're already past the end date of this implementation on this. So immediately does mean August 1st. We can echo back to April.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I'm just making it up as I go, of course. But since all these dates are now passed, I don't think we could reasonably think that we have to have done this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we passed the policy on out-of-school suspensions, we actually passed it in December, and we specified implementation for September 1 of the following year, because we expected there to be substantial effort to be in compliance. But it's a really important question, is when does something start? And thanks for bringing it up and for reminding me that the policy I wrote, the rule I wrote, actually I had backwards in my head. So unless there's any other discussion, is there anything?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't think we would do that because it wouldn't be on the agenda. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, probably. Probably. But we have not received yet the three updated handbooks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Timing me.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, good. So then yeah, that seems like a really good time for us to get around to actually approving them.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's outside the scope of our agenda of this meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: We didn't make any decisions. So is there a motion to adjourn? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, so yes, thank you all for a lovely and productive meeting and have a good evening and this meeting is adjourned.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't think be voting to adjourn a meeting, because you need a majority of the folks to adjourn. Sorry, I live on the train tracks. And I think that the end of the meeting, people are tired. And, you know, one of the things that has happened in open meeting law is that failures to properly adjourn a meeting, there's plenty of open meeting law violations around that. like whole town councils, the annual meetings, they have to come back together to vote to end the meetings, really dumb. So I just wanna make sure that the ending of the meeting is fully crystal clear. The only squishy thing here is that the beginning of the meeting, whoever's taking the role does have to have like a voting member, non-voting member on the piece of paper or the document they're doing. so that they can make sure there's a quorum of voting members to begin the meeting. So it's very doable. It's just a little more complicated than I think I'd imagined. So I don't have anything else other than this. If there's stuff people think needs to be added or changed, let me know.
[Paul Ruseau]: I already got it, John.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I changed the chair to actually be the SBC email.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I like it. I mean, I think I've read that language before, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Where am I looking at?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I'm fine with just email. Okay. Yeah. Uh, comments and writing by email to the SBC. Um, okay. I'll replace that with the name of the actual email address once we have one.
[Paul Ruseau]: And, you know, well, Robert's Rules of Order does say that. But one of the most common mistakes about understanding Robert's Rules of Order is that literally all of the rules can just be changed on the fly by the chair. there's a set of rules of which can be completely thrown out the window at the blink of an eye, which, you know, if you haven't thrown them out the window, then we should be following them. But, you know, my personal opinions on this is that for subcommittees and, you know, I don't think we'll have committees at the whole kind of a thing for this particular, for the school building committee, but, you know, I personally prefer first names and just the collegiality that we'll have in a small group. I do think in a large group, when there's no public present and we're not making a big decision, you know, we're working through documents and, you know, I just, I tend to prefer more collegial, you know, collegial is not the right word, but, you know. Informal. Informal, thank you. But then, you know, we are being recorded and broadcast. So I'm very much open to always using, you know, the proper, you know, member, all the party member team, you know, I mean, we don't, there's a lot of benefits to both in my opinion. And it sometimes depends on who the folks are. that you're actually, who is the rest of the committee? So, you know, like if we don't have any kind of significant personality conflicts in the school building committee, I'll just, I don't know how else to describe it. Like everybody gets along with everybody, nobody's interrupting anybody, you know, being less formal seems real easy. If the chair has to wrangle the group, on a regular basis, then that becomes more, it becomes less, you know, Paul, stop talking is much less, you know, doesn't sound great compared to, you know, remember or so your time is up or, and I feel like we don't know that stuff yet. I'm all over the place, but that's just my thoughts.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry, Tracy, I hate to ask you to repeat that. The train was going by and I disconnected.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sounds great. I did, well, I think it was while Tracy was speaking, I realized there might be two exceptions I just wrote in there. I don't know what you all think on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's correct, right.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's a great question. You know, as a non-voting member, I actually, I don't personally feel like I need to make my vote known how I would vote if I had been a voting member. I think the reason I don't feel that way is that when there is, as in the item just above it, when there's debate, I mean, it's pretty uncommon that people are going to be speaking on a topic and nobody knows how they actually were gonna vote. And that's, in my mind, the role of the non-voting members is like, if I'm going to have any influence, it's going to be in what I have to say so that the voting members may choose to vote a different way or vote the way I want. So I don't really feel the need for us to record all the non-voting members' opinions. But obviously, when we go to the full committee, there can be a different opinion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I don't know how long it is. You're missing a lot, but that's because it's ridiculous.
[Paul Ruseau]: I put this one in here, Jenny G. It's actually something we frequently have even in school committee. And to me, it's always new members that are confused by this, but once the voting has begun, there is no motions allowed, no amendments, no conversation of any sort. And you can vote no and then, you know, Then talk about it or make a different motion, but it's just a constant problem even with a small group of seven so I do worry about a large group. Yeah, being like I got one more thing after we started to take the role.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. Yeah, I know. I agree, except I do think it's important to include the most important caveat there is the only members that may actually do that are those that voted for the thing. No, in the winning thing. So if a motion was on the floor and it passes, the only members that may in fact redo this are those that voted for it. If it fails, the only members that may do that are the members that voted for it against it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do agree with that, yes. And as I say one too many times, these are living documents. We literally can change them on the fly in our meeting with a majority vote. Perfect is not a thing. I'm just going to say that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. The school committee rules can be bound in a book.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I thought about this and, you know, one of the things that I struggle with a bit is, well, first of all, we're sort of onboarding as we go right now. Everybody is a current member. And so, you know, we might be able to just like, I'm sure we have a list of things we could say we should have on that list, but it feels more like it should be just a living document as we like, somebody, as we are doing meetings and we're like, oh, you know, if somebody knew, if somebody was just thinking and paying attention to like, a new person coming in today without this information, they're coming in in a month, I should say, without this information, Yeah, they really need it. So there's the onboarding of like, this is our set of rules that we just approved. This is, you know, this is the chair. This is the superintendent. Here's everybody's names. Here's our email addresses. Those things are basic things for a checklist, which I think we should draft, of course. But then thinking about making sure that they're effective and then they could be coming in in year four of this project for crying out loud. It makes me feel like that needs to be a living document. When we finish all of eligibility and somebody starts two months into the next phase, we may wanna like flush things off that list rather than saying, here's your 7,000 pages to read now that you're a new member. That's just my thoughts.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, I don't, um, I would rather just refer to it from here and have it be someplace else. Um, you know, cause I mean, you know, who would maintain it? I mean, We certainly can start one now and have a list of, you know, the things that are going to stay the same throughout the entire process. Payroll, you know, like the kind of thing you did if you were joining a company, then you sit at your new desk and you have no idea what ends up, even though you've got your account now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I mean, but, but. Oh, I like that. And then we can, you know, meet as needed when we realize, hey, you know, this is no longer what the current list looks like.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you see my?
[Paul Ruseau]: You never know when I do that. So we have OML. We have Roberts. Well, I'm just going to say that. SPC rules. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: SBA process overview. Issue email address. Add to distribution list.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I don't know about a press release every time we add a new member. I mean, hopefully that doesn't happen often, but I do think.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I think that, Thinking about coming from this meeting and going to the full membership, I think my preference is that we actually, this is what we send them. And then that the checklist isn't, they don't approve the checklist. We want their feedback if they have ideas for more things, but it should just be such a living document that just changes on the fly as anybody and everybody thinks, oh, well, what about that? Rather than it being a policy that we have to vote on.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I can certainly also, you know, if we're not gonna vote on this one, I'm not gonna vote obviously, but like, if this is not something we're sending to them for approval, then I can work on this list and making it look like something useful offline. But I don't know if we have anything else to add to this thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Should we take the chair may limit to two minutes? This is the public comment. We want to keep that.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's not the members thing. It's down below. Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's like we've got something good here. I will You know, even though I assume that we all will make a vote emotion and vote for this. I will go through real quick and just even after the meeting and just make sure we don't have any typos or anything.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. One more time, sorry. Stoneham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Arlington.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's very interesting as I looked around, I have very little time left.
[Paul Ruseau]: Winchester.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it looked better before.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know. I mean, there was.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mohawk, did they do one? That's not it though. There it is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, my subcommittee on that will be reviewing that, I forget, is it next week maybe, the week after? Because they did do that and, I don't know, I have too many meetings, I can't find it. It's not tomorrow, I hope, no.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I do wish they were a little stricter once you weren't a school committee member, but that's.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I mean, the actual act of deciding, I mean, of selecting an additional member is not going to be in here. And I think it's also not going to be, there's not going to be one path. I don't know if Jenny spoke about it in our last meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. So, you know, like if we lose, you know, some kind of specific kind of engineer, and we have another specific, that same kind of engineer in the queue of people who applied, then, you know, the chair will probably want to replace them with that person. So it's hard to formulate, be formulaic about that stuff. Yeah, so. I mean, obviously that, you know, when the chair's asking somebody if they want to take a seat, you know, the meeting schedule will be important so that they can stay with the meetings. But yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'm not a voting member, but I'll just, I mean, actually there's two school committee members here. I don't have to tell you all how to make a motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Present. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Sohir, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just would like to note that both of the student reps are actually here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you for the best presentation I think I've had in seven years. The worst one at the same time, of course, but I understood it in a way that I feel like I've not understood our finances before.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's just one of my goals. I wish it was a presentation about wonderful things and it was just as clear, but that's not what we got tonight. In last year at this time, I was on a little bit of a rant about how every single year on page eight, you have this correction to all of our fake spending. So in every budget that I've been through, we would say that homeless transportation was 100,000, even though it was 500, 600,000 the year before, because we had to get to the number. So we would put a number in the budget that was completely a lie and everybody knew it. And last year I ranted because we had the, what did we spend in the previous year? What were we actually budgeting? And they were, it was like no other thing I've ever seen. Like to see us spending 1.1 million and then budgeting 250,000, it was really kind of like, and I was ranting, I'm like, here we are, next year we're gonna be in the same exact spot. So you made me a bit of a, I'm glad to be wrong for the first time on that. Unfortunately, that does mean that the budget is reflecting actual expenses, which everybody can agree is what we would want. It's just, that means that we can't, this budget does not represent a fantasy so that we can get to the number in the city. And I greatly appreciate that as hard as that has made this.
[Paul Ruseau]: And we still have the custodial contract to settle, which would be 2021 through 2024, and additional for the next coming year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. And I think there's a couple of things I just want to say about budgeting that I'm going to go back to the option to have a penny of additional spending outside of an identified revenue source. But there's this other thing, when we're talking about this undistributed salaries, because we're in the middle of negotiations, if we set aside $600,000 for what may be the cost to settle a contract, and then we don't have it settled before the end of the fiscal year, all that money just flows right back to the city, and then the following year, the smart accounting would be whatever you think you need for this year, plus the 600,000, because you're going to still need that. And we've had years where we would have $1.5 million set aside for contracts. We wouldn't finish the contracts. We would send it back to the city. And the following year, we budgeted $250,000. There's no world where that math makes sense. That problem, some of that problem can be solved by the school committee getting contracts done on time, which we are working very hard on. But it creates this very lopsided thing when you look at our budgeted allocations. So the budget goes up $1.5 million. We didn't even spend it. It went back to the city. And then the next year we got, whatever the increase was, it doesn't tell you the story because that was money for three years ago contracts. So when we look at that graph that shows percentage increases year over year, it is a, It's not that it's not important, but it does not mean really what it says it means. And even if we were to do one of actual expenses year over year, well, in this year, if we paid three years of contracts, that's this year's expense. So it looks like we spent way more, but it's really settling contracts from years ago. So all those numbers are very, very funny, frankly.
[Paul Ruseau]: I wish we could keep it open for as many years as we have outstanding contracts. I'm gonna just go through my list. Thank you for my colleagues who've answered some of the, have asked some of the questions already. In the enrollment trends, how many of the I'm slightly confused on the kindergarten situation. So this year we had to add some kindergarten classes because we had some like literally August and September, like, I don't wanna say onslaught, that sounds terrible, but like an awful lot more registrants than we expected. And so we added those kindergarten teachers. Now we are not expecting that number to go down in the fall. Are we not including those kindergarten teachers in this budget? And then we're just gonna over the summer as a registration makes it too much for the current in for the kept kindergarten teachers, we're just going to go hire new kindergarten teachers. That's the plan.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was just slightly confused on how that was working. On page 13, we have four literacy coaches. We are not continuing. They were actually vacant. My question is, so do we have any literacy coaches at all? Unfortunately, no. We have zero literacy coaches as we have focused on literacy for five straight years. Oh, I see the assistant superintendent saying we actually have one. We have one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. Thank you. On page 14, member Olapade had brought up, I think he was bringing up like, you know, Special Education Services, and I'm the Medford representative, I'm the chair of the Shore Educational Collaboratives Board of Directors, and you know, and actually it's like, it feels like it's actually just the Chelsea special ed department, because it's like, I don't know, two-thirds or maybe even three-quarters of all of the SHORE students are actually from Chelsea. And of course, SHORE is in Chelsea, so that's probably not a coincidence. But when we're in our SHORE meetings, we have talked about how districts come to SHORE seeking assistance. And there are a number of types of specialists, for instance, that are truly unicorns. I believe there's some for the blind that are like, you know, there's like two in the state or something. And so when we think about in-district services versus out-of-district services, cost is always an issue, but sometimes cost is not the issue at all. And I know Shore just hired somebody and I forget her title, but she does something that like all the districts around are very excited because they need those services for a student. So like, it would make no sense to hire this person full-time. to serve one student. And there are very few of them. So we will be getting that service from SHORE, and they will employ that person. So it's very complicated. I believe Chelsea also has space constraints for their special ed students. So there's a lot of reasons to do things in district, a lot of reasons to do things out of district, and certainly the least restrictive environment is important. But a least restrictive environment for which you can't actually provide the services Well, that's, I don't know what to say about that. But if you literally cannot hire a person to do the services that are necessary for a student to progress, then, you know, that's sort of a tough spot to be in, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, they are meant for public school students, although I know that some, I believe most of those district placements are also students of the district that form.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Page 15. Wait. You know, this issue of the two new positions for HR or payroll, you know, in my seven years, I have asked for more reports than is probably reasonable. Okay, it's definitely reasonable. And I'll go out on a limb and say 90% of those reports are not things that we can get. They're questions like, How much are we spending on overtime? And Medford, both in the city and in the schools, does not have a modern information system for their finances. So Munis, which is just one company, but it's the one most people have, is very expensive. A year ago, I believe it was a year ago. Maybe it was two. We had a presentation. It was going to be $1.7 million to implement in Medford public schools alone. And that would be a capital expense and a massive training effort for a number of staff and like a 18 month project. So we don't have that. So a lot of times we ask questions so that we can talk about efficiencies or the direction of the district or lots of other questions for which you need payroll or HR information for which the answer is you just can't have it. Because we're not gonna have like a staff member and especially in a lightly staffed department spend weeks and weeks pouring over data to type up a spreadsheet for you. I mean, you can do that if you have tons of staff, but then you probably would just have mutants if you have that kind of money. So I'm very grateful for this because every time we have an increase for teachers or anybody, any other of our union partners and we settle it, and then two and a half months later, they haven't gotten their retro pay. I mean, the new members haven't had this experience yet, but we get lots of emails as if you all are just like on vacation. And in reality, when you have to give retro pay for three years for somebody who got a diploma in the middle of that and then increased in their step and then increased in their longevity, it is a painful manual process. And I believe Munis actually makes a lot of that stuff very easy. And adding these two people for $150,000 is, I'd rather take these people and get Munis, but I don't see us coming up with an additional $1.7 million anytime soon. I wanna get questions answered that we as a school committee really need. One of the reports that I've harped on now for six years, I think, is a hires and terminations report, which my understanding from when I go to the shore, all the other members of the board are from different districts in the area, no other Medford folks. So I get to hear how things operate everywhere, which is fascinating and wonderful and really upsetting at the same time. They all get a hires and terminations report. Some of them monthly, some of them quarterly. Shore gets it every single meeting. And it says, who, what are the open positions? Who left the district and why? You know, not like gory details, but like designed, you know, medical or retired. Who do we hire? A really important report for school committees. For Medford to do that, it is not a report that you can do because our payroll system is separate from our HR system. Somebody would have to literally sit down and spend countless hours just to give us this report. And countless may not be the right number. If you go on our website, there's a staff directory. Do a search for somebody hired in the last few months. They're not there. Do a search for somebody who left last year. They're still there. Why? Because that and every other district is fed by the HR system. or the payroll, whatever, or Munis. In Medford, somebody has to have it on their to-do list in the HR or the payroll group to go in, run a report, probably make it look pretty, send it over to Lisa at, you know, and the web design team who will then like have some students work. I mean, it's like weeks of work for something that should just be automatic. So I very much support these positions, even though I understand, you know, that there's a cost and there's an opportunity there that we're, there's a loss because we're including these. HR also does all of the certification, teacher certification stuff. We used to have a deputy superintendent that did that, which from a financial perspective is probably not the most fiscally responsible person to be doing that. But now we have HR doing all that and it's like, We're not talking about an HR department, like, you know, 12 people. I tried to look it up and my vague memory is that payroll alone in Malden Public Schools, which isn't that much bigger than us, was four staffers. And so to say we're lean is really an understatement. And when we can't get the job done and, you know, I'm not gonna put words in your mouth, Jerry, but let's be honest, when there's not enough staff to get the work done, it doesn't get done in a timely manner, which I'll save that comment for later. So I definitely support that addition. And I actually believe this is the third year in a row where we've been like, let's add them then because we hear the problems. Somerville's technology budget is $5.4 million. So we're talking about going from 30 to 100,000. So Somerville has 500 more kids than us. So it's really staggering, frankly, to think of a school district with, what is that, 10-fold, more than 10-fold, 45-fold what we have for a small fraction more. It's not really anything to discuss. We know we need to bring that number up, but we don't need to bring that number up $100,000 a year, because by the time we have a reasonable budget, Somerville's technology budget will be a billion dollars. I mean, we'll never get there. So that's an investment I really think we have to make. put it on the list. I mean, that's the problem when there's not enough money, it's put it on the list and then you sort the list. And then these are the things that will never make the list, never make the actual funding.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly agree. It's mission critical. This is my seventh year. I still can't use the internet when I go to Medford High. And I've sort of wore myself hoarse trying to actually get that to happen. you know, I have a computer science degree and I feel like anybody says that's not possible, like, I just can't. It's like, it's possible. I mean, so is it possible for free? The answer is obviously no. So, you know, I did look at the number of nurses and changing gears a little here. Somerville has actually about 800 more students than us. This is a year ago. They do have 17 nurses, and we're going to be down to 11. I do think I am concerned about that. The guidance Councilor ratios or whatever it was, the National Association of Guidance Councilors, we were better than that number. But I always wonder about how those numbers are created. Are they like serving the whole country, finding the average and saying, hey, that's the right number? Because you have states where there's 10,000 kids per guidance Councilor or something, like not maybe 10,000, so many thousands of kids for one guidance Councilor. And same for nurses, frankly. So that's sort of like, that's interesting information, but is that the right, number is sort of I think the question I think other people have sort of said as well is like, what is the right number, you know, and you know when when I talked to like, just people in the community about the budget and how how it's the most insane system ever invented was public school budgeting, because we have to have our budget done before the state tells us even how much you're gonna get. Can you imagine setting your budget before knowing what you actually have for income? And the feds, they're always a year and a half late or whatever. But we also have the, I don't think there's any other scenario where students can just show up This is my big thing about calling charter schools public schools. If that's true, then anybody can just show up and enroll their kids, and that's not true. But tomorrow morning, 15 kids could show up, and we will educate them. Maybe not tomorrow morning, maybe the day after. And it doesn't matter what our budget was. And one of those students could require significant medical care. And it doesn't matter if that's $50,000 a month or even more. And I believe the number I heard was the highest was there was a student was running us $400,000 a year. Like, that's, I mean, we still should be doing it. That's what we have to do. However, when that student shows up in January and we set our budget in May of the previous year and we didn't have enough money then. we still have to figure it out. And so it's, I'm not, this has nothing to do with the students at all here. But my point is just that unlike any other endeavor where you can be like, well, we just won't do it this year. It's like, oh, there's a road and it has a pothole and you're like, everybody's complaining. You're like, we don't have any money. You wait for the next year and then you do it. And that's literally not an option for schools. We will always do it. And if those students that show up mean that we have to increase the number of classrooms here or there, and it makes it so that we don't have enough resource, then we will actually cut somewhere else, because negative isn't an option. Because as you pointed out, you don't want to be Brockton. And I don't know if everybody knows what's going on in Brockton, but they had a $22 million deficit in the current year. To be clear, that means that unless their city just rides in with a check, people are losing their jobs mid-teaching a class. Like, goodbye tomorrow you don't have a job and we'll figure out what to do with the students stick them in study halls, I mean I don't know what's really going on in their schools, but you don't cut $22 million in the middle of a school year without it being a bloodbath frankly that that's that's probably what it is. And so, I greatly appreciate that you have sort of set the bar there is that we will not be. this, like Brockton, and I don't know anything about their system and their school committee and their city and how they came to their budget and how they lost all that money. It's nothing to say negatively about them, but we can't be them. And there's lots of other districts that have gone through this much smaller scale, but I'm glad we won't be in that situation. So I just wanted to, there's one other thing I've heard a number of times, and I was just laid off in December after 26 years from my employment, which I hadn't really disclosed publicly, but, and it's not been easy. I've never been laid off. And frankly, I kind of thought I was in this job till I was retiring because big company and I liked the work and it was always work. And, there's this amusing thing that happens in layoffs in private companies. And I sort of hear it happening here is what are we gonna do with the work? What are we gonna do with the work? And it's fascinating. Like I had a great boss and I think a lot of people were like, well, we got to transfer the work from this person to that person who's already working completely maxed out. But we don't ever just come to terms with the fact that maybe the work won't get done. And obviously, students in your class, as a teacher, that's not really the scenario. But when I talk about, like, if we have to cut $2.7 million, I mean, I don't know where it's coming from. But if it doesn't come from classrooms, then maybe there's nobody cleaning the classrooms anymore. Like, that would be a worst case scenario. But like, the idea that the work will always just get done is ludicrous. It's ludicrous. It's just not, you know, I look at these administrators and secretaries and other people who are doing work and whether there's too many of them for the amount of work and all that stuff is an important consideration for the administration. And if, you know, this is public money, we have to be good stewards, but they were doing something and, you know, all those administrators, their work, will it actually get done or will we simply put it on their plate? And then that plate will just grow like, some of those folks already were doing more than one job. And in particular, I've been on the HECAT, the Health Education Curriculum. whatever the AT stands for, for the last year or two, I can't remember how long we've been doing that. And we finished the analysis and I feel like we're ready to start talking about picking one and implementing one. And the person running that is one of the people who is no longer gonna be at least in that role. I mean, I understand with the way movement happens that they may still work here, but they won't be working here in that role. So that work certainly doesn't belong in that. If you're running the health curriculum and now you're running math, which makes no sense, you aren't gonna be doing the health curriculum too. And even if we did say, hey, you gotta keep doing that, they gotta do math. So we just spent all this time, we've heard from the community, the health curriculum here is not where we want it. And now I feel like, is it just, hope and a prayer until maybe someday we have enough money to actually implement a health curriculum that our students will have some clue what's going on before they're adults. I'm just deeply worried about that because we did just invest so much time and I just don't see how it happens without the staff. I seem like I'm talking and not asking a lot of questions, but I do think it's important just to And I know that we have regulatory requirements. So we do have to say, oh, the work is going over here. But we also have to just be a little more honest about it actually isn't gonna get done though, because there's just so much time in a day, and it's just not gonna get done. And I do wish we were more able, without getting the regulators on our back, to say, here's the pile of work, we put it over there, and let's identify all the work that will not get done. Because then that's kind of a story to tell the community when we say, we need more money with an override or something. And they're like, you have now half the administrators, and you're getting it all done. Why would you need more money? That's insane. If you can get it done with half the people, why would we give you twice as much money? And we just tell that story. Instead of saying, no, there will be nobody doing this work. And here it is on the pile of things that we might do if the city was to have an override and it was to pass. But we don't do that. And I think that's a missed opportunity to be honest and transparent. We talk about transparency sort of endlessly, everybody has their own definition of transparency that, by the way, this is the most transparent presentation I've ever seen, but transparency does mean different things to different people. And so I think of transparency, especially around this job consolidation, as we're not doing the work. Instead of saying, this administrator is picking up two other administrators' jobs, and they're gonna get it done. I'm just not able to buy that. And so this presentation to me represents a disaster. I think the $2.7 additional million in cuts represents a catastrophe, although I didn't use the dictionary to know the exact differences. if we have to make the additional 2.7 million in cuts. I'm saying it out loud because, again, for transparency purposes, there are limits. We can't have too many kids in a classroom. We have a teacher's contract, maximum size classroom. We're not gonna be in one of these districts with 40 kids sitting on heaters around the building. That's never gonna be met, at least with our current teacher's contract, and hopefully just never. So if we're not doing that, and we can't, you know, we have minimum manning for the custodial, which is reasonable, at some point we have to start looking at programs. And nobody wants to say it out loud, but if anybody thinks we're getting rid of math or science or English or history, y'all need your heads examined. That's not happening. What's happening is the arts, the sports, those are going, and those are not 2.7 million probably altogether. So we need more money, and I hope to never have to vote on another $2.7 million cut.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, it is three minutes, but if people could just give their name and address where I can try to keep up rather than watching the whole of the meeting again. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know if everybody in line is all the people that wanna talk, but I do, the three minutes is not meant to cut anybody off, but nobody wants to be speaking at midnight, so if we can try. I wish we had a timer like you see in the State House, and I really, just not to scream at you when your time's up, but so you know, because I'm the talker, I go on and on.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that's fine. I just, you know, it's hard three minutes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. In my seven years, I have heard that our administration is bloated 7,000 times probably. We have one superintendent and two assistant superintendents. There's not another 30 people hiding in the corners anywhere. And while sometimes there are districts that do have different levels of these folks, they are almost always staffed by adding countless other people at lower levels. You know, in many other school districts, every building has a grade level administrator, a grade level and disciplined level administrator, so a fifth grade science administrator. We have none of those people in this district, none. And so, I mean, everything that the speaker had to say, agree with almost everything, but the myth that we have this gigantic bloated administration, it's just a myth. We have one superintendent, we have to have a superintendent. We do have a director of people services, which is a legally mandated position for special ed and a few other things that she does. And then we have an administrator for all of academics for the whole district. And look around, nobody has one person responsible for academics K to 12, other than Medford. And then we have another administrator who is essentially doing operations, innovation, and I forget all of his titles, but so we are not bloated. And in fact, I can't really fathom how we could have less administration and this school committee and all the school committees that I've been on in the past so far, like we throw countless things at these folks to do far greater than they could actually get done, they do try. And so I just think it's important to point out that there is not this gigantic bloated administration, we have one administrative assistant covering all of them, even though there's, you know, positions that I think there's supposed to be three. there's one and they're covering all of those administrators and they're covering the school committee. And we of course also have a lot of asks. So I think it's just important to set the record straight on that because they're working like all the time and I can't imagine how we could have less. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I would certainly welcome that in the handbook, but the law is actually not very unclear on this matter. I would not want school committee members to have the open door policy. The group here right now is great. We wanna go on and look at some school committees around the state where you're like, that person should not be showing up in students' classrooms. That's why it's the law, is that when everybody's great and we'd be fine to have them in our class, we're all fine with it. But really a key part of the First Amendment is it's the same for everybody. So when somebody's on the school committee who's disruptive to teachers' classrooms, if that is just allowed, then guess what? They're gonna show up in your classroom, they're gonna disagree with the way you're teaching a subject or the content you're teaching. I think that that is not, when we think about inviting school committee members into the class, we think of the good things that are gonna happen. And I do agree completely that there are lots of good things that will happen, but it is, You know, at this moment in time I don't have a full time job. How many hours a day do you want me sitting through your classes. I don't think most teachers want to have me sitting in their classes for, you know, maybe I'm just curious how you teach or, you know, anything you can think of. the superintendent must invite us, and most superintendents, I think, delegate that to lower other people within the district to be allowed that, but an explicit invitation like we did get last week, or was it this week for the, I don't even know, it's Monday, last week for the social studies presentations at the high school, we did get an explicit invitation, a couple of us were able to go, And that was great, but I think that having us just show up when I have spot in my calendar, walking around the school. I think that is not what educators want. And I also don't really think that's what students want like who is this this guy just roaming around. but I completely understand the intent, and I think if we can codify some way to make it more of an open door, like here's our intent, and then here's the process school committee members must follow, which would definitely have to include permission, because when we show up at a building, we are no different than anybody else in the entire public of the world, frankly, and have no more rights to be in that building, even if our own kids are in that building. If you are not there to see your kids, You do not have a right to be in that building. And I don't think that we can put it in the handbook. I don't think we can draft a policy that overrides that. I think we could perhaps come to something that would lay the path for how we could do it the right way. and make that really open and obvious that like, you wanna go, here's what you gotta do. Email this person, get an actual invite. But I just think that's an important thing for us to talk about. And we can talk about it at the Student Advisory Council, because I do think it's important for us to get into the class. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. And you know, I don't believe it was last year, I believe it was the year before. There's this sort of question in Massachusetts law about, well, it's settled for city councils. If the city council just refuses to pass the budget, I believe it's 45 days later, whatever the budget was that the city administration presented. Sorry, how many?
[Paul Ruseau]: just becomes the budget without the vote of the city council after a certain number of days. And, well, that's the city council. And I have asked our professional association, which has every school committee member in the state, and frankly, people who have probably been on school committees as long as I've been alive. And, you know, our previous finance director was an attorney and like, you know, we, It does appear to be an outstanding question if we just refuse to pass the budget, what happens? One option, one opinion is that on July 1st, without a budget, the district stops operating. Of course, school's not in session. And we have funds that are like, you know, not leftover, set aside funds for like special ed. There's a few places where we're allowed to save money for special eds. One, I believe there's a transportation one. But anyways, like we could technically operate off of those funds. for some period of time, which of course does assume that we're a week away or a month away from finally agreeing on a budget. But the other opinion is that It just becomes the budget even if we didn't vote for it. It seems like no school committee, and it makes sense when you think about school committees and if you've, y'all haven't been to our associations, but it's a group of people, nobody runs for school committee because it's a good time. We run for school committee because we care about kids. And so for us to decide that we'd rather shut the district down, rather than take a horrible budget that at least is still operating. It does appear that no school committee has ever just said, we're just not going to pass a budget. So, you know, it's it's it's settled for what happens with the city council 45 days or whatever the number of days later it just becomes the budget whether they voted for it or not. But for school committees, that is an outstanding question. And I'd like Medford to not be the first community to ever have to sit, go to a judge and find out what the right answer is by getting us enough money. I'm not necessarily saying I'm, if we have to cut another 2.7 million and after the administration comes back and says, well, this is what that is, you know, Maybe we will be here and refuse to vote for our budget and get to find out for the first time what happens in Massachusetts when a school committee refuses. I mean, 2.7 million more than the horrible stuff we've discussed tonight is a number where I'd be like, fine, we won't have school until this is settled. Because what is school if you've chopped this much? I hope we won't get there. And my understanding of the courts is we'll probably just lose and we'll just say it just becomes the budget is my guess. But it is an outstanding question and one that I think about a lot when I think about what it would mean to vote for a budget that chopped six, seven, whatever the number is, millions of dollars total. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to suspend Rule 46 requiring a second reading of 2024-26.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, sorry. That motion to, do we then have to actually motion to approve the policy?
[Paul Ruseau]: Because we're not having the second reading. I think we have to then Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second. You want me to speak on that, Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So we have our consent agenda and in the policy that explains what's allowed to be in there, it has, well, I don't have the full set. There's a list, a laundry list of things we allow to be in a consent agenda. And as we have discussed, well, I mean, last week, we actually accidentally had them in the consent agenda, but this just simply adds the approvals of capital purchases. So in our last meeting, we talked about how we wanna be approving them, And then I got a question from an administrator about, so how do you do that? Do we have to come here and do a whole song and dance every time we wanna buy a new skylight to replace something leaking? And I don't think the intent of this committee is that we have a song and dance every time we have to replace the skylight. any of these approvals that are capital purchases, so we're not actually funding them, but the city is, but the assumption is the administration has already talked to the city and the city said, yes, we'll pay for it.
[Paul Ruseau]: And we can just sever anything we actually need to discuss for real. But it just seemed like, you know, we already had one tonight. And I think actually last week after we had talked about this, there was another one as well. So it's just like, when we don't really think we need to talk about it, a consent agenda sounds great. So that's about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I make the song and dance again? Motion to suspend the second reading, rule 49.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve the updated BEDB policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Present. Member Olapade. Present. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Leclerc.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau? Yes. I'm looking around like, come on, Mayor Lunker-Kern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley? Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Lapate. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: There we go.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was going to make a motion to spend the rules and take item 2024-24 out of order.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Branley. Remember Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember and Papa. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to speak on it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The resolution does speak for itself pretty clearly, I think. And I think it's, you know, Medford has done things differently than lots of other communities. In fact, doing things that are, oh, that sun is right in my eyes. And done a lot of things that are frankly not even, that are explicitly laid out in the law, in mass general law, that should be done differently. And there's sort of a mountain of things in that category. The. Unlike Somerville, where they have transferred the buildings over to the city, in which case the school committee has no authority over school buildings, also doesn't have to pay for any utilities. And during COVID, the school committee could not open their buildings because they had no authority. The city had all authority. But in Medford and the vast majority of communities in Massachusetts, the school committee has explicit and total control over our buildings. I know that that is not then how Medford is operated, but we should be doing no capital improvements to our buildings, we should be doing no emergency repairs to our buildings, unless the school committee has authorized them. And so that's a part of the resolution that's not actually stated clearly. Well, I guess it is in the beginning. Um, and I just want to make it clear that this committee, um, the majority of the folks that ran for office, um, included in their platforms that we would stop, uh, using fossil fuels. And, um, I just, uh, that's what this resolution is about. And so, um, I'd make a motion to approve unless somebody else wants to talk on it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly am very interested in this presentation. I read it, and I have a lot of questions. This resolution provides an out. There are going to be situations for which we must continue to use fossil fuels. For instance, I think sometimes when it comes to the backup options, having an electric primary system and a backup system that's fossil fuels right now might be the most appropriate thing. But when I hear that the city's hiring an OPM to do a project that the school committee has not even authorized, I can't help but feel like there's a big problem here. So I'm not interested. If at the end of that presentation, we need to have a meeting to discuss approving that project to use fossil fuels, that's fine. And that would become the new policy of the school committee. Putting it ahead of this, to me, feels a bit like we're gonna go ahead, hire an OPM and start doing some work. And then after the fact, the school committee said, you can't do that going forward. Well, that's not okay. I mean, the law is explicit that we have this authority and nobody should be touching our buildings without our approval. So I'm incredibly interested in this presentation and look forward to it and definitely want to know a whole heck of a lot more about the options and the site challenges I understand that we have with geothermal in that area. But if in 10 years, the federal government says, under no circumstance could public buildings use fossil fuels anymore, did we just blow however many millions of dollars and have to rip it all out? We don't know what the future holds, other than the fact that from the climate, we sort of have a pretty ugly picture. But we don't know what higher levels of government are going to do when they finally come to grips and finally start taking very strong action to stop the use of fossil fuels. And public buildings are usually the first thing they go for because that's the stuff they have control over. So I respect very much director Hunt and her work and especially the work around the library and the police station. I look forward to working with her and lots of other folks on the new high school. But I think we need to draw a line in the sand someday. And I don't know when anybody else would like to draw the line, but I feel like it should have been done 50 years ago. So maybe now's a good time to draw the line in the sand on this. Again, this resolution allows for us to decide, okay, we're gonna stick another fossil fuel thing in our buildings and just pretend that the climate is not completely falling apart. That's an option, but we need to make that vote when we make that decision. And today, we aren't even being asked about these things. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Everything you said except for one thing I agree with, you do not speak for the committee without us voting. And I really take offense to the idea that the chair who by definition the chair is the servant of the body is not the head of the body. That is the definition of a chair. And we did not ask you to do this. So I appreciate that as the mayor with the purse strings, that there's a lot you can do and there's a lot only you can do, but we didn't ask you to do this. And so you didn't, as the school come forward as a representative of the school committee to get this work done, you came forward as a chair, as the mayor, you don't have that authority. So, I mean, that's very upsetting to think that you can speak for us if we have not voted, because you cannot.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the potty? Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Longo, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Order of business?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa. Yes. member right bill. Yes. Remember all the body. Yes. Remember I'm filled. Yes. Member Ruseau yes Maryland.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I like the presentation I especially like the additions to it that were spoken because there was things sort of missing I thought from the presentation that you answered about the backup gas boiler backup is probably the wrong word since it will actually need to be in use anyways. This is my seventh year in school committee so I'm just going to be blunt. If a future superintendent doesn't like the electric bill. Can they turn off that system and just go to the gas system to save some money, because that's, that's an, that's a Medford mo. we're gonna cut this budget this year. And if we stop using electric at the Andrews and just use the gas backup system and it costs way less money, that is a decision that won't come to the school committee. It'll just be somebody in facilities or in the superintendent's office, no offense to the superintendent, but when the pandemic began, or maybe it was just before the pandemic, Director Hunt evaluated the high school about what it would be, how we could save money by installing more efficient equipment to heat or cool the place. It turns out there's no such thing as more efficient because all of the equipment was turned off or dead. So you can't do better than zero. And so I'm just deeply concerned as this is a system that could support just in perpetuity if somebody decided the electric bill was too high.
[Paul Ruseau]: I assumed I just, you know, just thinking about like how we're going to figure out how to make sure that that does not happen. It's not for you all. I'm super excited by the solar on the Andrew stuff. That's very exciting. I had a question about what is construction manager at risk process.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. That's nice to hear that it's not the waterfall approach or whatever it was called where you have to just wait and wait and then you get the low bid and it's the lowest bid by a long shot and everybody's like uh-oh like what did we get a bid for? I'm not sure my colleagues will have other questions but I'll come back to my question because I gotta find it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I think you're answering my question about R22, which was that when we're done with this, there will be no more R22 in use at these two buildings. That's correct. Wonderful. Best thing I've heard all night. That's not true. Our stuff was good, but there's also more great stuff. And I'm going to scroll up here. So I just renovated my kitchen, and I had to spend a fortune on power upgrade. which on scale probably is less than the $350,000 that we were talking about for a whole school. This is obviously a problem in probably every municipal building and school building in the country. Is there anything going on of interest around how this is funded? Because to think that every school building in the country will be able to pop a $350,000, right, a $350,000 check for electrical upgrades, that just doesn't seem like a scalable or, you know, we have Prop 2.5 in this state. I mean, there's no way every school building is ever going to be electric if everyone has to upgrade their, the do national grids bidding. I mean, we all look at our bills and It's like we pay this much for electricity and this much for the delivery. I don't know what's included in delivery if it doesn't include actually the infrastructure. So is this just the way it is right now? Is there anybody looking at how to change that? Is this sort of like when I upgraded my panel at home, like 8,500 bucks just to install my new kitchen stove? Is that what we're talking about?
[Paul Ruseau]: When I did this upgrade at home, which nobody cares about my home projects, but one of the things I'm worried about is, in 20 years, is this going to be enough power in 20 years? And so when we talk about these buildings and we spend $350,000 to upgrade the power, is that really enough power no matter what happens? Or are we going to potentially have to do this yet again? Because I'm sure that the power that's there now was big and powerful and a lot when the building was built, and far more than a building 50 years older. So is this just like we're on a treadmill of dumping tons of money to have more power come to buildings? Or does this feel like this would be an amount of power that nobody can imagine using at all kind of thing?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: A little flip in your kitchen. All right, thank you. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Soyes. Mayor Landau-Kirk.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I appreciate this. the rate card format very much. Where did the 10% come from? I just threw those numbers into a couple of different intra-inflation calculators or compounding at 2.5% like we can do for increases in our property taxes here. And I come up to a number of much bigger than 440. As an example, the elementary school gyms in FY16 for The four category I actually don't have a category differences, the 400 would actually be $520 and you know we're not swimming in cash so. Did you just pick the 10%.
[Paul Ruseau]: That was my next question, but you answered it. Yep.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Langouker?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I would like to nominate Member Olapade as an alternate.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley? Yes. Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Langenberger?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, thank you. I do think it's important to figure out how we invite people is is a challenge. And then scheduling becomes a challenge. So more people we add to the list. Like in the past, we've said we really wanted to hear from principals on something. then we needed to make sure principals could be there. It is open so everybody can come, but I think figuring out how to tailor the people that I'm gonna try to reach out to so that it's not going to be November before we can hold the meeting, it's a battle. And some groups of people will be people that I will have, none of us will have any way to actually contact them. I'm really hopeful somebody will be able to tell us how we can get ahold of former students. Maybe Joan's shaking her head. I don't know if that means she has some way to do that. She does good, it makes me feel better. But yeah, so I hope to hear from lots of different people who have a relationship to the Curtis Tufts past and present, because we do have a very important question to answer here and the timeline is not on our side, unfortunately. So, I mean, I'm not a fan of rushing anything, but yeah. would have a choice here, so thank you. I'd make a motion to approve, although I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I have motion to approve that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to take the paper from the table.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Branley. Yes. Remember Graham. Remember and Tapa. Yes. Remember all the potting. Yes. Remember, I felt, yes. Remember, so yes Marilyn go.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly I did try to think about that in the wording because, uh, we don't want to have like 15 emergency meetings a year just to approve the purchase of something I did not include, um. You know, if we replace any of our equipment that way so I mean, this is really aimed at big equipment. This, I mean, I don't know. Miss Smith is not here anymore. Lucky her. this equipment that is not actually functional at this point. I mean, I don't think she ordered it and it was there a week later. And a lot of this HVAC equipment, I mean, we heard, what was that, 32 weeks or something crazy for the lead time. So I don't envision this as something that is going to actually gum up the works at all. It's more of a FYI. Again, it's only FYI if it needs to be a fossil fuel-based equipment. If it's not, then spend all the money, I can.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, and if I may, I certainly, first of all, I mean, the kind of equipment that we're talking about is not normally purchased stuff. I mean, we're not, fossil fuel stuff is stuff that has to be installed, and like, it's a big effort. But there was another, earlier in our consent agenda, we had a couple items that actually shouldn't have been in the consent agenda because of the policy. So I went, for the next meeting, I was gonna actually make a policy change to our consent agenda to include things like field trips and donations so that we can include those. I'm happy to include this as well because why not? So sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm very hungry, too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Intoppa? Yes. Roll a potty? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, are we talking about people who have actually applied, or we're just gonna randomly pick people that you want, Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I just wanna clarify, you keep using the word alternate, though. These are not alternates, so I don't know what you think the non-voting members are. They must come to every meeting They are required for a quorum. Actually, I'm not sure about that, but they must come to every meeting. Thank you. But they are not alternates. They don't get to vote if voting members stop showing up or if we have to find a new voting member, they don't get the seats.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I find it offensive that as a politician, you're using the politician in the four-letter word, sensitive. It's really obnoxious. I just wanna be very open with that. You're a politician there, you're talking about politicians in the negative sense that the public frequently does. It's not helpful when politicians ourselves talk about each other in that sense. Okay, you're not concerned about the number of politicians, you're concerned about politicians in the negative sense of the word. So I just need to get that out there, because your tone is extremely offensive.
[Paul Ruseau]: These are required by law to be approved each year by the school committee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for doing this tonight. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I know the point has been made about devices, Chromebooks being treated as capital. I just, you know, My first experience of Medford as a district was a very long time ago when we were voting whether to buy computers. I don't know, this was at least a decade ago. City Council was voting because it was capital then. And if we can't get this in there as part of our budget, it's It's just not okay. I mean, we're doing so much here to bring stuff into the budget that should be in the budget, that should have always been in the budget. And to leave behind a day-to-day use item that is literally a critical part of education doesn't make any sense to me. So I just want to support that that number needs to be in the budget. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, I just wanted to clarify, when Mr. Guillen was asking about the programs and the chargebacks, which is what Mr. McHugh was talking about earlier, we're not talking about like the rentals, we're talking about meat, we're talking about afterschool, the food services program. In this presentation, I don't think we're talking about rentals in any way, shape or form, unless I'm misunderstanding.
[Paul Ruseau]: Of course, that's fine. I just wanted to make sure that relevant to this presentation, that won't be included in this particular set of numbers. Because we can't just dip into that money to use it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Vice Chair Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Itapa? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lengelker?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I did just Google for some examples of transportation surveys for school districts. This one has 21 questions, which I am just reading right now. There are questions about the bell schedule, which is interesting to have as part of that survey. I can't see the answers because the dropdowns have presumably lots of options, but it is a survey that is closed, so they won't let you drop down and see what's behind there. You know, there's questions about the, you know, transportation experience, positives, surprising, that kind of stuff. I also put into the chat the safe routes to schools I believe this is a sample of what their actual report looks like. And it does have, as Member Reinfeld pointed out, it's very basic. You know, when people are using it is sort of what I'm getting at, getting is how do people get to school, percentages, days of the week, the morning and the afternoon. Interestingly, they have a thing about weather conditions, which is good. If we plan everything around, everybody bikes and the entire system falls apart because it isn't always biking weather, for instance, that could be a problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: So is this being created in your personal Gmail or in school? Okay, just check. Nope. I hate that. I also, I think that As you were just speaking, I was wondering about whether or not, you know, looking at the survey, Safe Routes to School survey, this appears to be a survey to parents. And I think that's an important group to ask. We have questions for parents, caregivers, but I feel like there needs to be questions to the users, the students, as well, especially for the high school. And I feel like they're very different kinds of questions. Oh, it is. Okay. And high school students. Thank you, Tom. Good. You know, looking at their data, though, I'm frankly nervous. Like they have Each day, the morning and the afternoon, transportation, the data broken up by each of those, which is 10 different things, which of course makes sense to want that. It's a lot of data and I'm hopeful we don't have to replicate anything that we have coming out of Safe Routes to School survey. Hopefully we can scratch it off the list instead of asking those questions again.
[Paul Ruseau]: be great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I think, I certainly understand Megan's concern. Nobody really wants a report that says, my God, everything's terrible. Especially when we, first of all, I'm not saying everything is terrible, but when we know there are problems and we know what they are and we know the solution, and right now that is not solvable. I do think there's value, however, in understanding it because it provides us with a priority list. You know, when we decide how to spend money, which we don't have enough of, I think knowing, you know, if 92% of all students who ride our transportation think it's the worst thing that they've ever experienced in their lives, that's different than 20% complaining. And it'll help us understand in the context of other services in the district that we don't provide or can't provide might be cutting or whatever else. And I think one thing about the survey in general that worries me is, like other surveys we have done, such as our superintendent search, which is the one that is most prevalent in my mind, because I did the survey, not alone, but is we really struggle with outreach is an understatement. The people that responded to the superintendent's search to say they were not a slice of Medford, a representative slice of Medford is the biggest understatement I could possibly ever say. And so, I mean, I appreciated all of their feedback and we got a very good number. but like the number one income level for people that responded was over $250,000. And that is not the average of Medford. So I worry about how we can get a meaningful set of responses so that we are, first of all, not skewing the data so much into just people with a grudge, which is always a concern. But I also, you know, the late school bus stuff that was just brought up, you know, I don't know how many times I can tell my story, but some of the faces on the screen changed. So, but, you know, I lived in a rural district. I was the furthest student from the school, the furthest student. And to say it was well over an hour each way every day was no exaggeration. And there were no late buses. at all, and I participated in exactly zero after-school activities my entire 7 through 12 education, because it was a 7 through 12 high school. So I think, you know, certainly my strong preference is that we prioritize stuff like that, because now, granted, this is not rural New Hampshire with 13 towns going to one school far, far away. It is definitely a different situation, and there might be alternatives. But I'm just very sensitive to our students not participating in activities because transportation is the reason they can't. And how we get at those students and get those answers, I don't know. But I think that should definitely be a priority because they're the people who are not necessarily getting served at all.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was actually going to bring that up. Peter in a slightly different way, but, you know, aside from the. the probable need to have less parking available, assuming that the high school is done where it is now. There's also the need to understand, if we are building a whole new high school, how much parking lot are we building? I don't suspect the MSBA actually will have an answer for that in some formula. But they may have a formula for minimums or something. we probably have more than is normal just because of the lot we have right now. So understanding if we end up having to have less parking, how much less can we have before it becomes a real problem? Also the parking is for me is about the, the ins and outs of the high school, getting your kid in and out for parents and for buses and for students that are driving. The current setup is, of course, everybody can agree is terrible. And whether or how much we think about and care about that in a new design, it kind of matters. Like if we were to change the pattern and make it work beautifully, would we suddenly have far more people driving their kids to school? Would we have far more students trying to park? You know, those, that kind of a change, if it was not so painful, I think there might be more people who are like, I'll just drop you off at school. Because I know that they're like on Wildwood across from the high school, like people are lined up there early. I'm sometimes one of them. And we won't even go up to the high school because it's so awful. And so, yeah, no understanding what people might want to do. Like I feel like there is two things here, the evaluation of what they have, but then there's sort of the blue sky If let's pretend we were building a Medford High from scratch and we didn't have students and we were just creating a high school from the beginning, what would people want? Which isn't necessarily what they would do, but I don't feel like we know that at all.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, yesterday, I believe, Framingham Public Schools voted to take all transportation in-house. And because of, apparently they need 77 drivers, but they have 54, which to say that creates problems, I just can't even fathom. How does anybody even get to school at all? And now that Jerry's not on the call, I'm kidding. I mean, I would have said it if he was on the call still. But, you know, when we talk about driver shortages, we really are also not talking about driver shortages. There are enough human beings to drive buses and enough human beings that would be willing to drive buses, but not for the wages that bus companies pay. But when I think about what they're doing over in Framingham, these are probably going to be a unionized group. They're going to have benefits and retirement and they're going to get paid a boatload more than any bus company was ever going to pay them. And I'll bet they won't have as much trouble finding any bus drivers. So, you know, I realize this particular fiscal year is probably not the year to have that conversation, but the bus driver shortage is not a real thing. It is a made up thing because we refuse to pay people a reasonable wage. We have a bus driver shortage when McDonald's has to shut down because they can't get workers. But they don't shut down. So there are workers. And I'm not trying to, this is not an attack on you, Megan, or anything. I understand that's how this is talked about. But I think it's just really important to talk about it as it really is. We somehow want people, it's the same with the after school conversation. there are people who could work those jobs if we were willing to actually provide the benefits and retirement and enough pay. That's a reality. I mean, come on, we all know that. So, Framinghams doing this, it'll be very interesting to see how it works. And I realize financially, they're a very different district. I think the Student Opportunity Act has been kind to them. And so they may well, in fact, be flushed with cash to be able to do something like this that we couldn't do right now. The other thing though is, you know, I signed the warrants and I see what we pay to transport our students out of district. We pay per student more than we pay assistant superintendents. Like $6,000, $8,000 per student to go to school 20 days a month. So, and actually, I don't know if that works out to being what I have to pretend to make, assistance to pretend to make. But my point is just that's far more than we would ever pay a unionized retirement eligible and benefits eligible person to do that work, far more. And so, you know, I get that there's not a lot of time, a lot of energy and it takes a lot of energy and money to talk about getting ahead of it. It's like you're always a day behind on this kind of thing. Oh, we have a student we gotta transport. Well, you're not gonna like, okay, let's post a job for a new person to come and become our driver. Like no, the student has to be transported tomorrow morning, starting tomorrow. And so how do we get ahead of that? Because I don't, know the exact numbers but we spend a shocking amount of money on out-of-district transportation that and there is just I mean without a spreadsheet in front of me there's like no way we cannot do that for less if we just hire people ourselves take the hit put them in the you know pension and salary and all that other stuff there's just no way that it's cheaper and it also is a huge amount of effort for our staff to be on the constant treadmill of trying to find a new person to, you know, find a company that's willing to transport a student. Some of that stuff doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And it's, some of this is, this isn't really about the survey, though, I don't think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Which is okay. Right. I think that's fine. Yeah, I think that's a good point. It's like, you know, we're going to get data from students, we're going to get data from parents, but we already have a lot of data of our own that is very relevant to this. And I appreciate that electrification of fleet was just put there, because then I don't have to say it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have it right here.
[Paul Ruseau]: You did not.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? We also did hear, actually, I didn't write it in my notes, but I remember it now from the meeting, Students, I don't know how many, but some students are not biking to school because the city made the decision to not do the safe. Protected bike lanes. Thank you, protected bike lanes. So that was a decision the city made to allow for some parking spots. And the consequences are that there are more people getting other ways. I don't sense that the people who would have been biking to school are instead getting on the bus. They probably have a parent dropping them off. And so when the city makes decisions like that, there are consequences. And I think that we have to remember that, again, getting back to the project That is the big project that's happening. There are intersections between the city's decisions and our goals, because I think having many kids biking to school would be great. I frankly don't want to have many kids biking to school if we once a year have to go to a funeral. That's the blunt reality of not having protected lanes. I wouldn't let my kids ride a bike to school.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. You know, when I was looking at the state schools survey results, you know, while they have this like morning, afternoon, a beach day thing, which I think is great, and you see some fascinating variability, I kind of, I'm struck that there's, and believe me, nobody wants to put out a survey with 350 questions, but I am struck by the fact that there seems to be no recognition that what you do in January versus what you do in May and September, if you're a hardcore biker, you may be like, all right, we have two feet of snow this entire February. every Monday, and maybe I won't bike. There's no seasonality, that's the word. And I'm hoping that Safe Schools is always like, this is the date. Otherwise, that data seems like that would be a little questionable. But it seems important also, because if we put the survey out in September, it's beautiful out. People who want to bike are biking. We may get a false sense of how much traffic there's going to be if we did some change, how much actual use of busing is there going to be. Yeah, I just feel like that seasonality stuff. And it isn't just seasonality. I mean, it's weather. I would put a slash weather on that, because I mean, I'm assuming that when the oyster comes through, there might be fewer people biking, possibly. Erica, remember Ryfeld, I know. Those things don't put her off, but for the less hearty of us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, so which I have, well, thank you. Hi everybody. Um, you already read all this, right? Just have to do role in attendance. So if the lack of order, but since I didn't write it down, I'm going to just read off the screen. Um, and we're right now present. Remember in Tapa present. I'm all about a present. We're so present or present. We have a quorum. Thank you everyone. So we have a new member, whichever some of you may have already been watching other meetings. I remember a topic is, um, new as of exactly that date. Um, so these meetings, which are, um, and so I think it makes sense if everybody, on the table and everybody can just introduce themselves. I've already done that so.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. know who the superintendent is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Darren, do you want to start over?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. You know, we didn't address that specifically in the dress code. I think it was brought up as something to consider. And it was kind of like, are we going to boil the ocean or are we going to actually get the dress code part done? So we didn't go there. I believe just before the pandemic, there was conversation around the backpack policy, like many things that were happening when the actual pandemic began, we just forgot about everything because that wasn't what mattered anymore. And I believe before I was even on the committee, this is my seventh year, that that was a major issue that had been discussed by others. But I wasn't in high school then, I was here and I didn't have a kid here. And so I don't know how that conversation went. If there was any dialogue about it, I feel like at this point, everybody's new and doesn't even know what that was. Although John and Aaron may actually remember it, but it feels like we should just have whatever that conversation is again, because we're all gonna need to go up speed on whatever that was. And things may be different now anyways, because before the pandemic, we didn't have a school issued device. things were technically different as well. So that's just my thoughts.
[Paul Ruseau]: As far as the recording, we'll have that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, the website is implementation. It's not policy. So it has nothing to do with us. It has nothing to do with me.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I said first, but that's OK. Oh, great. Remember Einfeld? Yes. Remember Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Tappa?
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, for the affirmative, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Have a good night.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, maybe I'll look up when we're supposed to, so I actually know after six years. Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Remember all the body. Yes, remember Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember so yes Maryland.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Ruseau, and then we'll... I just want to... We have four new members, so I think sometimes saying things that seem obvious have to be said anyways. We statutorily cannot run a deficit. We cannot end the year with negative one cent. We must have that money come from somebody, whether it's the mayor's office, or whether it's layoffs, or whether it's turning the power off. We must get to zero by June 30th. So most businesses and lots of other organizations can run a deficit and figure out what to do with it. the day after, but we do not have that option. So I think that's in my my time here, we have frequently done things like we have 300 extra $1,000. So we prepay some out of district special education expense for tuition, or we buy stuff we know we're going to need, but we weren't planning to buy until July one, or we have a little bit of a deficit and we delay paying school committee members for a month or something like that. So that the, because the zero is the only allowed number and I don't envy the finance department figuring how to manage. It's a terrible needle to thread in my mind. So this is 100% normal that we do this every single year, whether there's a little extra or there's a little too little. And 200,000, 300,000, 400,000 is in fact a normal amount to be... It's a big number at the start of the the year when we do our budget, and that is a relatively small number, and I'm kind of amazed we get that close every year, considering all the unknowns about how many students we're gonna have, whether we're gonna have lots of staff out on leave and then have to hire additional staff, or all the other things that change every year. So I think it's really normal, and I'm excited that the number is not 2.5 million, though, because that would have been a disaster, so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You covered all the basics. I have two questions. On the STEPS program, you mentioned there's six teachers that cycle through. Are they current Medford Public Schools teachers that are leaving the classroom for a period of time? How does that work?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, that's awesome that the schedule allows that. I'm interested to hear how the new schedule, whenever that gets presented, will work. SBIRT only in seventh and 10th grade, which I'm glad we're doing it, obviously. I just think about middle school is not, I don't, most of us don't remember it fondly if you did go to middle school, but is there other places where they do it every year? And is that like, I'm sure there's a huge effort involved with doing this, but I just think about like, that's a lot of years, three years of major change for adolescents. And it seems like a long time, like, you know, seventh grade, they do this, everything looks dandy. If in Later in the same seventh grade year eighth grade or ninth grade, they, they have a new addiction 10th grades a long time to wait to find out. So, is that, what are your thoughts on that we had previously done seventh and ninth grade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. So last year, our professional association adopted a new bylaw because each year the resolutions committee would put forward and school committees could put forward resolutions for MASC. Then these would become the things that MASC would be pushing for with the legislature, their advocacy work would be centered around these resolutions. Before last year, those resolutions just kept getting added. So their docket of things for which they should be paying attention to was quite long. And there was no mechanism, even if they succeeded, frankly, for them to stop pushing for it. So last year, they adopted, we adopted, the association adopted a new bylaw that says that every three years, any resolution just automatically will expire. That if a member school committee wishes to reaffirm that as a priority for our association, we had to vote for it. And then if three, I believe it's three, don't hold me to that. If three different school committees reaffirm that the resolution should be continued as a priority, then it will just automatically be continued to the actual conference in November, where it will be voted on. So that's the gist of it. The list of expiring resolutions included many more that I think we all, many of us care about. Some of them were partially already approved. had been partially successful. Others were, well, these are the ones that after I looked at the list I thought were important, and I also took a kind of a pragmatic view. Some of them were things for which I didn't necessarily think the Association could effectively advocate for. So that was just my opinion. But this is the list of the ones that I thought we should reaffirm, and hopefully we can get the association to continue that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So it was funny that I keep my own system for keeping track of resolutions that I want to put forward, and it's got a long list. And I try to prioritize them because there's only so much work that can actually get done at a time. And I was cleaning up my list, and I found that I had this one sitting in there from several years ago, which I thought was very timely since we just had a new member. This is language that is almost verbatim what everybody else has in other districts. with the exception that there's a lot of like. to be generic for all the various types of communities we have. So I. Cleaned it up because in most of these in the language that was originally provided that I found it was it said the city clerk would do things that are superintendent does, and I wasn't really looking to change anything. I was just looking to get the language to reflect what outdated and missing some of the stuff that changed in the law.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll take the first one first. So, wait, what was the first one? How can a new member if Oh, yes. It's a great question. And if we were all new. Traditionally, and again it's just a tradition that the leadership of committees are typically not new members just because there's an awful lot to learn. but it is entirely possible, especially in Medford where everybody is up at the same time, that we could be an entirely new committee. I think that that's not considered in the language here. I think that we would vote for a secretary and then that person, good luck, but would have to then know all this stuff as well. So I don't know that we can get into that because if that happens, it's going to be very challenging for the committee anyways. The other question though, so we have been trying to clean up our policies and not have policies contain other policies.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, we have a non-discrimination policy and by inserting the language all over the place, every time we change it, we effectively need to update dozens or more policies, which we never do. So then there's like language is outdated and wrong all over the place. So this is not an attempt to suggest that a school committee member would not be following that. On the other hand, it's also important to note that elections are elections, and that if a school committee member wants to violate all of our policies and wants to violate the law, there's literally nothing that can be done about it. So having meaningless language is something I'm opposed to because less is more. So, I think having language that is enforceable is important. So, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: The current policy already actually says that this is supposed to come to the secretary. And I believe that's language directly out of the law. I don't want this, it doesn't make sense to me that it would come to the secretary, like the keeper of our records by law is me, but by practice is the superintendent. And I think that's the case in virtually every school committee there is, because the secretary is not a nine to five full-time job. But I think, And I don't know if there's anything in the statute about should we be delegating authority to the superintendent or not, but that's, that's the way it, I mean, this is current language, and It doesn't make sense to me. And if nobody ever comes and gives this to me, I'm perfectly fine with that. Nobody has ever done it. I'm not aware. And I wouldn't know what to do with it if you gave it to me. But I think the superintendent has her office acts as the keeper of records, even though like I take the votes and that's because of the secretary's role. So I certainly understand that it's, I think it's just weird. But I think the other thing, though, is that in Massachusetts, while school committees, for the most part, there's different sizes, but they're still fairly the same kind of idea. Districts are not. There's regional school districts, and they're very different kinds of districts. some regional districts are literally municipalities like a city. Meanwhile, we're not in this municipality as a school district. So I think there's some other weirdness. And I think whenever they write these laws, they want to make universal. Things get frankly, muddy is an understatement. So I hear your point, but it's current.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's the language to say the oath is with the clerk.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. The Medford community media that was often not up for several days. So, I mean, I feel like we should send a mailer I know it costs too much but YouTube is amazing. Literally you can watch us right now. You can press pause, go to the bathroom and come back and hit resume as if this meeting was literally pausing for you live right now. What did Paul just say? Scroll back a little bit. Oh my God. So I mean, if you have access to Medford Community Media, you're on the internet. So you have YouTube. So not that I don't love Medford Community Media, but I can't imagine why anybody would use it when YouTube exists because you can scroll around in the meeting. You cannot do that on Medford Community Media unless you download the five gigabyte file to your local device, which is what I used to do before we had YouTube. So if you're using Medford Community Media, now's your time to know, go to YouTube. So I'm a fan of just having the link. I also did wanna say that we have a policy that if we want to, our agenda format is actually in a policy. to amend B. E. D. B, which I think you mentioned. Um. No, you don't. But if we want to change the format of the agenda, we actually need to amend B. E. D. B. Which we can do it. Another meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do think that we have to also consider if we put the wrong information, whether the meeting can proceed. If we say we're meeting here and we decide to meet elsewhere, we are not having a legal meeting. So if we put channels and they're not gonna be right, I think it's reasonable to ask whether or not the meeting should proceed. So can we get these channels and always have them right? I think it's not fair to tell people this is how you can watch this meeting live, and then they go there and they can't. Granted, there are alternatives, but just like if the power goes out here and we decide we want to go to the high school, no, that's not an option. So that's my only concern about the channels. I think more information is great, but it has got to be accurate all the time. or we have taken the public's ability to participate in a meeting in public. So that's my concern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I think I should also thank you, since you wrote the paper that went to City Council, and as soon as you're reading it, I'm like, oh my gosh, sorry. It's okay. Yeah, so I did watch this, this part of the city council meeting, was it last week, the week before? It's all a blur. And I know that, you know, the stabilization fund is not like a, free cash is the worst, the most poorly named concept I think that ever existed, especially as a taxpayer. I feel like everybody should think free cash, that's my cash. But conceptually, it just means it's the money that the city has that didn't get spent from the previous year. And, not having access to that money for almost the whole year is kind of bonkers. I don't know, I can't find a better word. And so, while the city has money, something horrible can happen, and we literally can just look at the money and just like, wouldn't it be nice if we could spend the money on the urgent problem. And so I think that having a stabilization fund, which did get approved, but I believe at this moment there are $0 in it. So when free cash gets certified by the state, I obviously urge that the mayor, as I'm sure she will want to, will ask the city council to transfer some of that money from the free cash account into the stabilization fund and give her give her give the city council and give the school committee the ability to respond to emergencies. You know, in Somerville they had a roof partially collapsed and they closed the school over a weekend, and they had to spend a ton of money I'm sure to figure out what to do with all those students. That was not planned for. that happens here, it better happen between the middle of March and June 30th, or we don't have the money to do that. So I think this is a critical thing, and it's a constant risk that we just sit with when it doesn't need to be. So thank you for your efforts, Mayor, and thank you to the City Council.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, you said roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? No. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olaparte? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longoquer?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I actually think it's self-explanatory, so I don't need to keep us here till midnight on it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion to approve, but I have an amendment. So my motion is, since I wrote it, I can motion to approve as amended if you agree with that. The bullet under three, the third bullet says the above data elements disaggregated by school, by grade level, and by school and grade level. I wish to add comma, and by DESE category, reporting categories. I don't have to list them here, but DESE has a set of reporting categories, which includes students with disabilities and a host of others. So that's my amendment.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I have a second to that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Bramley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: And for the first time I'm ever saying it, Member Intoppa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Um, second member. So present Mayor Lando.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Connecting. Thank you, man. And I remember I thought we were taking the roll call and then just need one more person. That's you to stay here.
[Paul Ruseau]: And so, yes. Sorry, after you say that there are seven present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes, I just wanted to remind us that rule 19 of our member school committee rules said that we will take no votes in committees of the whole. We have a bad past practice of just rolling with it making all kinds of motions, and we literally have a rule we adopted saying we will take no votes in this meeting. I think that's important. If we want to make motions, et cetera, we can bring them to the regular meeting where votes actually matter. So just a friendly reminder of our rule. That's all, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Chair, when you were showing the budget for the last few years, everybody who was here certainly remembers the level funded year of FY21. And I realized that we did have a supplemental, the state hadn't even finished their budget, so we level funded, and I believe there was a supplemental, and your numbers reflected an increase, which we never approved a supplemental as a school committee. And I'm just, because I am often looking at the data from DESE, and I cannot find the number that you showed anywhere online. I believe you have access to you know, the login and all that, to versions of portals that the public doesn't, is that where you get the number that you are showing, not on this one, but the last five years of budget?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, yes. That FY21 number, we actually approved in our budget 61-250. That's what we approved.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I don't doubt that your number is right because I heard that there was a supplemental. That's as much as I ever heard about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did look at my own copies of budgets and never saw that number. Can you, one second, I want to write it down. I know you're ridiculously busy, but I really would like to know where that number came from, because these are really, really important. Yeah, 521. Because, you know, this trending stuff is a constant conversation that I certainly have with others, and having the same numbers matters. Thank you. Okay. Yep.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Jerry. This is excellent work. And I really appreciate having it in front of us so we can really see this. I believe the Japanese school pays even more than the revenues listed for community schools. So if their annual contribution, their annual payment is more than that number, I think somebody should figure out where that money went. But you did indicate that. there was work to be done there. But I think that their annual payment is greatly in excess of the revenue shown. So I'm a little concerned about that.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, thank you. I didn't know they did it. That's really useful information. The pool revenue, I'm glad to see that other schools that are using our facilities are paying as well. I guess the question, and obviously our students shouldn't be paying to use the pool to do the things like, you know, swimming and all that stuff. But I guess, you know, My question is, are we just charging entirely ridiculously low rates to the public who wants to come in and use our pool? Because frankly, it's like the best kept secret in Medford is that our pool is fabulous. You can get in at a ridiculously early hour. It's not crowded, although I have not done it myself. But we need to really have a conversation about what we're charging to the public. to folks in the public who are using the pool, and it sounds like you'll get that done. Can you repeat, I'm the chair of the board of SHORE, so can you repeat what you said about the SHORE tuition, because I was confused?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then the kid's corner, I mean, I think we have people who work in Medford because we have Kids' Corner, and it's great, right? But clearly we are not charging, which I realize it's charging staff, but we are not charging enough money to cover that, and we need to just bite the bullet. I don't know, I don't believe the school committee ever votes on what the costs for Kids' Corner are. which should be interesting whether we're supposed to or not, but I certainly for one hope that whatever it costs, no matter how big the increase, it just needs to be zeroed out. If the increase is to double what we charge people, then that's the increase because we can't be having other programs pay for a service that is frankly a service that people all over would die to have. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, that's great. That makes me feel better because, you know, nobody wants to be telling folks, by the way, your daycare is going to now cost a lot more money because that would be terrible. But if this is lagging, that makes me much happier. Those are all my questions. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have one question about, and I don't expect you to have the answer on this, but some of those things have substantial balances, and I'm hoping that somebody has the documentation on those bigger things, like there's three Cummings ones, because when I see these big numbers sitting there, I worry about, the grant expiring and then we have to send the money back because we didn't figure out how to spend it, frankly, or did we spend it and we didn't properly account for the expenses. So, you know, obviously if you don't have the grant documents, you know, but that's something I hope we could do because there was some big numbers there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I believe member Intoppa had a question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Did we lose the mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I did, yes. Not to throw a wrench, and it's based on what I'm seeing. It's more like throwing a little tiny file into this networks. But when we talk about the after-school program, for instance, we just became aware that a primary space they use at one of the schools was just reserved for another program without their They were just told, by the way, you don't have your space anymore. So when I think about making them pay for spaces, I think we have to also think about how their space literally, because we still can't figure out how to do reservations of space in the district, that their space may, in fact, just randomly no longer be theirs. So when we talk about charging them, I almost feel like we should pay them back. for the crisis that we put them in when we give away their space. And I realize that's sort of an additional little piece of work, what to do in those situations. But I just think it's super unfair and minor thing to think about after the fact, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm talking to myself saying I'm muted aren't I as if anybody's going to answer. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's see. Member Bramley. Present. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Who's next? I don't have it written down yet. Right, then Member Olapade.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld. Present. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Unger is online.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, sorry. Member McLaughlin is also absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to enter executive session.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin is absent. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn. absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Chair Graham. Yes. Member McLaughlin-Zaplin, absent. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Members say yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn? Is the mayor online?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'll put her as absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Chair? Sorry. Motion to take continued business, actually new business item eight, out of order. Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to accept the job descriptions for Teamsters Local 25 administrators unit.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Vice Chair Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin-Zapison, member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Vice Chair Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin's absent. Member Lapate? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Members say yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I feel like we keep seeing you. It's nice to always see people for great reasons. I see what the cost is. I'm just wondering about, this isn't a request for funding. I don't think, I did read it, but I didn't see that in there. So what are the thoughts at this point in time on the funding? It's about a little over 10 grand for the whole 10 of you to go. And yeah, what are your thoughts on that?
[Paul Ruseau]: It does. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yeah, that certainly seems like a rough period of time to have to come up with that money. And obviously, raising money for this when you don't even know that you're going to end up going. Well, that's, that's not very motivating. Who's going to do that. So I do hope that we can find the money in the district somewhere in a line item of money that is not actually getting used for this year. For the public that doesn't necessarily know this, at the end of the year, any money we have left over, we have to give back to the city. So if we can, if Mr. McHugh can find some money that we're not going to end up using, I would be very happy to see it used for this purpose. And I would like to find out whether it's just an email that says, you know, we were able to get all the kids to go. And if, you know, we still have two meetings before. So if it looks like there are going to be kids that can't go and there's no way to finagle the funding, I think I certainly would like to hear about that before it's too late. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you. Should we hold questions to the end or?
[Paul Ruseau]: I have many questions, and I want to make sure the new members have a chance to ask theirs. So I'll ask the last question I just wrote down, and then I'll come back afterwards. When the district covers transportation, when transportation is handled to get kids to these programs. I presume the district is paying for it, but is the after school, is your budget paying for that transportation or is it like the regular bus routes are being adjusted so as if that's where they live?
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. Thank you. I have many questions, but I'll wait.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I love it. Nobody asked the same questions I have to ask. Just need you have to listen to me for longer. So the one of the most common things we hear about is you know we have the students whether they're high school students are tough students. And the ratio of 10 students per adult, for the most part, we cannot include those people in our ratios because students have finals and they can't show up or tough students go on spring break and we can't close the program down or tell parents your kids can't come to the afterschool program because we don't have enough adults. So I think that's an important, when we list all the different kinds of people that we have working, Frankly, there's a whole lot of them that we can't include in the numbers for our ratios and I don't think there is a solution we're not going to actually get any tough students or or Medford high students who will be like no no I under no circumstances while I miss work like that's doesn't make any sense we want our high school students to be students first. and tough students probably want a break when they have breaks. So I think that's just an important thing to repeat yet again. The demographics categories, I appreciated you putting those in. I'm not for tonight, but if you could run those numbers and put like another column of how those compare to the district. And I realized that these, you know, it's like the number of students on an IEP is 45, but like, are they distributed evenly across the grades? It's not an easy thing. I mean, I would be fine with just a big, you know, take the grades that you cover in your program, and then get that, how many students, and just get kind of percentages. It's not the most well thought out request, but I think you understand my point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, thank you. You answered those questions, wonderful. So the, oh, you answered what the, oh, the proposed annual wage adjustment, you keep, you mentioned, the union or the unit, there isn't actually one number for the different units or unions. So I like the idea that we would say we will do that, but we would have to pick a union to peg it to. And I'm fine with that. I don't think there's anything unusual or strange about that. I would wanna just kind of ask our attorney about whether or not we can take a non union group of employees and tie their increases to a union because essentially that union ends up negotiating for these non members. And I know that like we're at where I've worked at Mass General Brigham. you know, the nurses at Mass General Hospital are non-unionized and the nurses at the Brigham are. And so the Mass General nurses just get whatever the Brigham nurses are getting. They just move lockstep, except the Mass General nurses didn't have to pay union dues. So I do just want us to get clarification before we would make a motion on that piece.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, it is?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, well then, frankly, that's common in NEDS. I didn't make it up. Okay. It's such a great idea. I assumed you made it up. Okay, well, if that's common in NEDS, and I definitely like that, can you just find out whether they typically tie it to the paras or the teachers? I know a lot of districts, the teachers and the paras are in the same union. So because they're not in Medford, we may have to just pick one. The negotiated increases in their contracts are typically very similar, although paras recently have had very big jumps because we wanted to fix that scale. So like when we did a 25% increase in the last pair of contract, if we had done this then, you might have a financial problem in your program if we just 25% increases across the board for your staff. So we do have to be a little more thoughtful on that. That's... That's my one concern there. And then that was somehow was all my questions, because I've asked them over and over through previous years. So I do want to thank you for explaining that lottery stuff, because while I understood the lottery in general, the whole, the incoming kindergartner getting through, and even though the other sibling is still on the wait list, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I wouldn't want to have to be the family that's in that situation, but at the same time, It's one less problem for families that can make that work. But it's unfortunate we don't have the space to be like, you're kindergarten again, so we're going to make room for the third grader. But that's not how it works, because once they're in, they're not leaving. So thank you for all your work. I know it's never ending.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I did have one more question I forgot to ask earlier. So I know that when we've talked about not not you, but when we've talked about, you know, whether we change middle school to an elementary school and we've had kind of off the record conversations around what can we do around our challenges around some schools being very oversubscribed and other schools being well the mistook having a much lower population of students rezoning is a temporary problem that just essentially kicks the ball a few years and people move to different places and then you have the same problem again. And one of the things that we had discussed was that bathrooms for elementary kids are actually different, which unless you've been in one since you were a kid, you probably don't remember, but they're like, they're these ridiculous little things. And so if we open a program in the high school, I assume we have to renovate the high school to have bathrooms that they can use. And is that a requirement of, the regulations which you know all that stuff and I don't.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay. Yeah. Thank you. And I mean, not that we are ready or anything wrecking ball at the high school but then we also have to face the impending reality that when we weather, whatever we do with the high school. We're going to have displacement challenges, not right you know for families now, what happens in. three years, two years, three years, whenever we're actually really ready to start doing something interesting with the building may not be their biggest concern. But as a member of this body, I do think about like expanding programs at a high school that we won't necessarily be able to keep. It's like building up this like new demand or making the community very happy about a program to then immediately shut it all off. doesn't sound like a particularly strategic approach to solving the problem. So thank you again.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information.
[Paul Ruseau]: When you say office space, you're not referring to, you are meaning space for which students are receiving services.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. There was something that you just said that, made me realize something sort of obvious at this point. So McGlynn has a lot of space compared to the other elementary schools, like a lot. If we think of it as one building, which I mean, it was built as one building. There's no wall that comes down. So I am interested in how, are we not using middle school space?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's a great example of the challenges of the shared space because you've kind of put to bed my idea of like, why don't we just like make this gigantic building have way more kids? And that's with the relatively small numbers that we have the at the McGlynn. So, you know, you double it, you don't double the problem, the problems probably goes up exponentially.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just gonna make a motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was gonna make the motion to approve the new pay rates for before and after school tuitions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Vice Chair Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: And my Glockman is absent member all the padding. Yes. Remember, right.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, Maryland go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[Paul Ruseau]: Vice Chair Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin is absent. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Members say yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate the changes especially closing the missing one degree gap. There's on the first page. Right under the first table, the last sentence of that paragraph, during high heat days, there's... I missed that on the formatting, so I'll fix that. Thank you. And then, actually, the sentence before that, which is a complete sentence, actually, it doesn't seem to actually... I don't know what on earth it could mean. The information will allow a five-day window of preparation for extreme heat. I don't know what that is suggesting will happen for that five days, because there are date there there are timeframes about like how far ahead etc to, you know, to plan for these events so that that that sentence also seems like if you took the sentence out, it seems like it would actually say the same stuff, which is that doesn't need to add anything, so less is always more.
[Paul Ruseau]: But in the definitions, there are all these other time frames that are not related to the five days. So that's why I feel like this five days is just sort of like randomly in there. That isn't reflective elsewhere.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. Clearly, this isn't actually a policy in our manual. So I certainly hope you would strike that. And then the other thing that I know we did talk about this at the last meeting about using different words from caution, extreme caution, danger, and extreme danger. And while I understand what you're saying, they use the exact same colors and they are in the exact same order. And in fact, lower risk level even includes in parentheses, the word caution. We either have to give up the color coding on the top table, or we need to bring the risk levels in line with the NWS Heat Index because there is way too much confirmation going on that these are related concepts in this one page. The exact same colors They're really close together. No rational person is going to see that top chart and not think that it's related to the bottom one. And then to see different wording, and I understand why. But I would recommend either we give up the use of color coding in the top entirely, whether we change risk level to just being one, two, three, four, and do something different there to take away that excessive, there's just an enormous amount of information here that makes you think they're related when they're not. I understand why you would want to not have them be related, because this is the preparation stuff at the top.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sounds good to me. Yeah. And the only other thing, you know, just some formatting stuff, there's like a random sentence under the temperature chart that
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, sorry. And, you know, there, I was looking through our, the, the MSC policy service. And there is a policy that at least one district has possibly only one that. heat modification policy, JJIH. So I think that it might make sense once you've finished kind of getting all this stuff done, if you can just, you know, it doesn't have to be another presentation, but, you know, just include it in our packets. And then one of us could motion perhaps to send it to subcommittee to adopt it as a policy officially. Formatting wise, you know, I couldn't find any policies anywhere that include interesting things like color and graphics. which is a limitation of our policy service that will continue to bug me. So figuring out a way to make this into just words for the purposes of policy would be a little work. But I think it makes sense to get it adopted as a policy. But for instance, the equipment needs, I mean, that's not a policy. That's a list of things we need to buy. So but thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have one other question on the water bottle filling stations. Are they really that expensive?
[Paul Ruseau]: We'd still have to install them, I take it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I certainly, I would be happy with an and. I don't know the chips. Is it the word chips, all uppercase, is the S?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I actually, I don't particularly, not that I don't find the city's Office of Sustainability to be, love them at all. But I don't particularly want their input here, because they work for the mayor. The mayor is the person who will be funding this project, while the residents will. And I just don't feel that they're going to be able to offer an opinion that's based purely on our goals. Instead, they're going to offer an opinion based on what's financially reasonable. And so we're just going to be chopping down potential before we've even started. I mean, if somebody comes in and says LEED 5 is going to cost us a billion dollars for a high school, well, then we can sit and decide that's not a thing we can do. But you know, and other times when that office has spoken about issues, there's always the start with whether we can afford it. And I think that that's a conversation for afterwards, not before.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, yes, on the issue of community engagement that member Olapade just brought up, I believe the MS, I mean, their process is quite lengthy and I won't pretend to be an expert on it yet, but there are mandatory community engagement activities we must perform, round tables, all those other focus groups, those are not optional. So I'm sure that what they actually look like is probably like much of the MSBA recommendations is kind of vague because a little tiny community somewhere out West in Massachusetts is different than the city of Boston. But we cannot get out of community input, which obviously we want. But I think including it is fine and great. I just think people should be comfortable with the fact that we absolutely will have to do that. regardless of whether we want it, which we do want. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Could we put the New England chips before the word lead? Just because the climate goal stuff is specific to the lead stuff. And thank you. And I would prefer definitely an and, not an or. One of those is definitely going to be far more Strict than the other. I mean, they weren't written by the same people at the same time with the same data. So, I mean, I don't know how Member Reinfeld feels about that, but I'm a big fan of and, because if it's or, it's going to end up being whichever is weakest.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. uh, member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm a clock with absent member. Right? So yes, members. So yes, Maryland. Go turn absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You know, when I think about like a jury, you know, you have the alternates that are there, they have to be there. So if somebody has to leave for whatever reason, things can just carry on. I think that, I think it's a very interesting idea. And I guess what I'm wondering about is the, the pseudo-appointed alternates or whatever, the appointed alternates. The expectation, if I was to imagine how that would work, is that they would be expected to show up, that they would be participating in the conversations, they wouldn't have voting rights, and then should a voting member need to leave or drop out or whatever, It would be just a seamless process to move them into the voting seat, which is definitely better than somebody, we go to the list again, we pick somebody else, they come in, and they do not know what's been going on in the conversations we've been having for weeks or months or, frankly, years at this point. And that would put them at a disadvantage, and it would kind of slow down the entire committee, because you should bring your new people up to speed, which means repetition of things everybody else already knows. So I do like that idea. The only concern I have is managing, I mean, we would have the 15 voting, wait, is it 15 voting members?
[Paul Ruseau]: And then six additional members, so 21 members who will probably always be there. So, I mean, if we added two more members who are alternates, I do see the value. I mean, the commitment is so significant. And I don't know whether or not folks added as an alternate would in any way feel OK about that. I think that when we make the decision as to who those people are, we would, I guess, prioritize the list of people we want to make the voting members from the community. And then we would have to sort. We've got this teacher who's also a building trades person and lives in Medford. This is a person that should percolate to the top. And then where do we? How do we sort? Becomes a little uncomfortable. But I think if we're open about it and say, look, we want you on the committee, but we want you to be an alternate, and they can accept or not, like anybody else we offer the positions to. I think there's some value there. I mean, this is just not a minor commitment. So I think two people as alternates is something I think would be interesting. It just makes the meetings a little more unwieldy. But that's my thoughts.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. It's funny, like, the more we talk about it, now I'm backed around to maybe no alternates, because I think what we would want to do is when we look at the list, you know, we don't know what the list is going to look like. We could have 35 people with all this technical expertise apply, and then boo for us because we got to figure out But when people apply initially, their own circumstances could change. I mean, because we could be talking about five, six months from now, and then you might not have wanted to apply five or six months from now. So we don't really have a process in here for what to do when we need to add members. Do we just go back to the well? We have the list that we had from the first time we did this. My preference would be that we go to this list. And then if we cannot be successful with this list, then we put another thing to the public and be like, we need more people with these specific skills if you would apply. But I think just going back to the list is probably the approach I would recommend. As for alternates, if we end up with alternates, I would definitely think an alternate has a voice at the table. they just don't get to vote. I mean, I would not, personally, I can't imagine volunteering to sit silently with my expertise on a topic that- Five to seven years. Five to seven years, with something I'm interested in and I wanna say something and being told, no, I'm sorry, you can't speak. Also, these are open meetings. So I don't think we actually, I mean, I guess this committee will have to design its own rules on how it wants to operate around public input and all that stuff. But, you know, The only thing I like about the more that we talk about this, the thing I most like about having alternates now that we say you're going to be an alternate is that if they actually show up. that when we need them, there will be a lot less effort involved with bringing them up to speed. That said, the tasks that we have to accomplish, it's not like we have a task that will take six months. It's tasks, tasks, tasks, tasks, tasks, tasks. So we're not going to be bringing them up to speed on decisions and things we've already done and are completed. from nine months or three years ago. We're gonna be bringing them up to speed on the things that are being worked on at the moment. So maybe that isn't as big of a lift actually. So I'm kind of wishy-washy. I feel like I could go either way on this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, no, my gut, of course, this is not based on anything, is that once people sort of reach this threshold of being committed for a year, two years, they're gonna be like, no way am I stopping now. So I feel like this is going to be an earlier, I mean, with the exception of people who have all the usual things that happen in life that can make that determination for someone. But the people initially who get selected, who are participating, they'll know quickly whether or not they've bitten off more than they can chew in their own personal lives. And so that list probably won't be terribly stale early. So I think going back for another round of applicants is something I think we should just think about in the future if it comes up as necessary.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's all good now. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. member of McLaughlin's absent. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Reverso, yes. Mayor Langenfeld is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't think so. I mean, if they are, that's fine. They're just applying as a member of the community. I think when we think about selection, which not all of these questions are about selection, but this one certainly seems like it is. You know, we may, I certainly would want to include a Medford High teacher who is applying. So if they're not a teacher at Medford High and they're at a middle school or elementary school, you know, that doesn't seem, I mean, it's not that it's not relevant. They may have all these other skills and we're going to pick them anyways, but the fact that they're at the Missittook, in my mind, doesn't really provide the focus of what we're looking for in the people who will be on the committee. I just envision we're going to have plenty of people applying.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I mean, I understand why. I would just wonder about Well, first of all, if we're going to do this, then it really needs to end up being a policy that all of our requests to the community of this nature go through the DEI office. And, you know, there's nothing particularly special about this part on this particular thing. We have done this at least three other times or four other times since I've been on the committee. and we've not done that, although there hasn't always been a DEI office. So, I mean, I think I would be okay with it if we thought about it in the context of all community surveys we're doing. And I do worry that the DEI office doesn't work for us. We have no authority there. They have no authority here. So if we send it over and they don't get around to it, which I mean, I don't doubt for a second they'll take it seriously and quickly work it, but we're putting somebody in the critical path who has no authority over us and we have no authority over them. And I feel a little uncomfortable with it from a simple process perspective in doing that. Not at all concerned about the content of the response, but also if we do send it there, we do have to have, the assumption is we're gonna have to have another meeting to do this, to deal with the response. So if the DEI office says, I would change the wording on this and I would change the wording on that, and we've just approved this wording, then we're having another meeting to approve the recommendations or not approve the recommendations of DEI office, which by the way, might also be an uncomfortable situation where we're like, we like this wording, we use this in education, and the DEI office says we should use this wording. I don't particularly have an interest in that kind of like, well, who's right? Which way should we go? We can't call the DEI office to come to our meeting and provide input. They don't, they're completely separate part of the government. So that's sort of my concern, not at all with what the content of a DEI office reviewing it would be.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I mean, there's also this very uncomfortable thing that we aren't talking about that I think happens in circles in government when we're having these conversations where we're like, we want to include people whose primary language may not be English or they may not speak English at all. And then we kind of have to come up with reality. And I hate to use the word reality because it sounds like I don't know. It's a very awkward conversation, because if everything had to be, if they had to have an interpreter at every one of these meetings, we have 270 days. It does not have any exception for whether or not everything is interpreted. So if we couldn't conclude this process in 270 days because we were translating on the fly in every meeting the entire conversation going on, would we be able to finish this process? And that's an important question. So it really gets to the root of the fact that government isn't designed for inclusion, 100%. It's designed around an assumption that everybody's speaking English. how we would want to handle that. If we have an applicant who is an expert in all these things and we want this person to be on there, we're going to have to have a conversation around funding because we're going to have to fund an interpreter for all these meetings and all these documents. Then we're going to have to sit down and have a hard look about how much additional time would we be required to complete the process if we were on the fly I mean, I don't think we run any zoom meetings that I'm aware of in the city where every single thing is being interpreted for a participant of a board into another language. And it would all have to be interpreted for them to be a proper participant in the board. So it's a very challenging. thing that I think, I wish there was an easier answer, but I think that's sort of the elephant in the room on this issue. And I think we, of course, should cross that bridge when we get there. But it's something that I think about and I worry about because I would want to be able to include people who are not speaking English or, you know, using sign language. I just worry about how we would actually accomplish that. But that's a different story.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member McLaughlin is absent. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungokirn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly appreciate that the mayor wants that this is, recommendation. My concern is just that our eligibility opens on May 1st, and that is not something that we can slide or change. The state has determined that, and it happens whether we're ready or not. And if we do move it later than April 8th, then we will certainly not be having our first building committee meeting on the 1st, and people will still not have had a chance to be trained in open meeting law. And Robert's rules. And I feel like we're going to be moving into the middle of may before the first meeting happens. And, you know, that whole, what's that process they have in meetings if the forming and norming that has to happen. So we're going to be in June before this committee is doing any real work. I just very much. understand that April 8th feels like it's around the corner because my Lord, it really is. But because of April vacation, I would not be in favor of that move because it really just kind of hoses us on the May 1st start date. And as I think everybody here knows, we do not want to be dilly-dallying. That's the technical term.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, I you started to say something and that reminded me also that like open meeting law does allow scheduling related changes to happen without formal meetings or any postings of any sort. So this is actually part of the resolution for which we can just have a group email and that is acceptable. So I like the dates being written down so that we have a plan, but if they need to move for whatever reason, we can move them without scheduling a meeting to do all this work again, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did. I feel like you said that I was gonna start singing a song about that. I'd like to make a motion to approve the resolution as amended.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Klockman is absent. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Soyes, Mayor Lungo-Koehns absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I really appreciate this report. I know that it was a lot of manual labor. Unfortunately, we don't have the systems in place to make this a button you click, which I think in many districts, it's a button you click. So it's one of the reasons we don't get this stuff monthly. You know, we don't get a burn report, which many other districts, even the little collaborative short collaborative We get a burn report, and we just can't do that with our systems, which is disappointing in a conversation for another day. I have a few questions. I really appreciate the identification of the undistributed salaries line item. You know, this $1.1 million appropriation, that just went back to the city, and then in FY24, the appropriation was 250,000. Neither of those numbers together cover the expense is what I understand, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: you won't remember any of this, but on January 6th of 2020, we got our FY 2019 budget close out, and it lists what we budgeted, what we spent, and the differences, and it's sideways, so I can't really go through it too easily. And I don't believe we have received such a report since then, so I don't know. That means nothing for FY20, FY21, FY22, FY23. We have never seen a closeout that shows us that we budgeted $5,000 and spent $180,000 or whatever it is. And some of that is that it takes so long to close out because the systems are not, we're not using Munis and we're just using inappropriately outdated systems. But I think that if you have a closeout report for any of those years, I certainly would be grateful because I think when the committee is looking at our budget proposal, and we see a line item for 5,000, and we see that last year the line item was 5,000, the rational person sees that and says, oh, okay, that should be fine, right? But if we also could have a report at the same time that says, no, we budgeted 5,000, The superintendent's budget says $5,000, but it was $160,000 in spending. Well, that's a major conversation. And I would hope the committee can have that by the time we do the budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I just have one more question and then I'll let my colleagues jump in. Looking at the FY20 budget, which nobody has in front of them but me, but near the very end of the budget book, and this is something that Medford has been doing for a very long time, there is a long list of positions that are not in any way, shape or form anything other than normal operations. Let's see, we have a director, we have secretaries, we have teachers, we have tech people, another director, another director, some paras, all of which are actually regular operating normal part of running a school district. And $1.85 million worth of staff is actually listed as being on grants from revolving, the grants of course is different, but much of this is just from revolving accounts. And so I'm aware having talked to other finance directors like the one at the short collaborative, that this is very unusual. I won't go any further than that. But my question to you is this, How does, if there's such a thing as a normal district, if we put all of these people on the budget, which we should do, and then we have these revolving accounts that build up funds, how does a normal district dispose of those funds? Do they just, at the end of the year, like, hey, we have 1.5 extra million dollars from afterschool or whatever the number is, do we, we don't just let that build up forever or become a, private checkbook for the superintendent to do fun things in the district. Do we write a check and transfer it back to the city so that it can become part of the budget. How does, what does a district normally do with all that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You know, when I'm looking at this, there's this spreadsheet you gave us. All these numbers are of course are concerning, but there is a general up in addition to the running out of paper thing there's this. drumbeat that we don't have substitutes. And somehow in FY23, we budgeted a quarter of a million dollars, but spent almost $900,000 on substitutes, which is hard to do if we don't have substitutes. So I don't know where that money is going, or if there's a perception that just because there was a day without a substitute, that there are no substitutes. I know that generalizing can happen, but this number does not tell the story that the community and some teachers definitely are telling, that there's never any substitutes. How do you spend a million dollars on substitutes if there aren't any, or 900,000. But we appropriated, again, a totally inappropriate number. FY23 was not a, quote, pandemic year. And so, like the previous year where there was lots of people out for you know, because everybody was testing. I mean, I know the pandemic really is, you know, some people would say it's not over and I can't disagree with that. But, you know, to appropriate only even less in FY 24, and then to already be projected to spend twice the appropriation that I just I'm confused about why we're even trying to appropriate, why are we putting numbers down in our budget book at all on a lot of these things they're just made up numbers to squeeze into a number we've been handed on a slip of paper from the city. But to be fair, some of these numbers were in our budget book, before we got that appropriation, you know, the $5,000 I looked back in some of the older budgets, my very first budget, it said $2,000. The next one that said $30,000. So it looked like somebody was like, hey, we probably should go up. Now, of course, I don't have actuals. So I don't know what the actuals were. But You know this substitute line though and there's another story in here because we're definitely spending a lot of money on substitutes and it's worth noting we pay less for substitutes than most other districts, so it's even more people and and substitute hours that are happening.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, that's actually, I would never have guessed that that line meant that. Is there any, you have plenty of work on your plate, but is there any way you can divide this line item in the future so that charges that when we're paying teachers for lost prep times, that that's a separate line item than substitutes we're hiring in? Because certainly like, they seem like totally like, can we get enough substitutes, this line item, tells a very different story than what it turns out to be accurate. And I would really like to know that, especially when we go into the next teacher contract, like, you know, how much are we actually spending on last prep period, which right now I don't think we could easily tell, at least not from here, maybe in the budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, thank you. And then, I think you touched on the security wages already, but I'm just, is a lot of this expense related to things like the bathrooms and the, you haven't been here long enough for all of our multi-year debate, discussion, community conversation on the safety of our bathrooms and stuff like that. But when we're paying administrators or anybody else to monitor bathrooms, assuming we're paying them, I think we are. Are those getting put into security wages or is that literally just people who are in the security union?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, I know you said that earlier, I've already forgotten, sorry. No problem. And then I did have, what was my question? You already answered that already. In the building repairs, as Member Graham pointed out, we just keep budgeting for a number that doesn't make any sense, especially with an old building like the high school, but then it turns out all the other buildings as well. It does this include expenses when the city donate donates when the city covers capital expenses like you know rekeying doors or.
[Paul Ruseau]: So anything that's considered capital that the city is paying for directly, that's not even included in this number. Correct. And do you have a sense for what is the big ticket thing? I mean, I assume that, I don't know when this data came in, but like, is this covering the flooding we just had?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I just wanna say one other thing about when we get to the budget, if the committee decides that we want to use reality as a basis for our budget, barring some gigantic unexpected increase in revenue, we'll be faced with the decision of, okay, we're going to put in $150,000 for legal, and we're going to lay off this number of people to do it. It's not a situation any of us wants. I should also point out that just pretending reality isn't there, I don't know who it serves. And this is the position we have been in year after year. And I'm not looking forward to the budget for this reason, but I think having those actuals right up against it, having reality on screen and in our books will at least allow us to say it out loud. Okay, we're gonna probably spend $500,000, we're going to budget 100,000 and just see what happens. Very exciting. It's really depressing, frankly. And this is going to be my sixth budget, I don't count the first one, new members, like the budget just happens to them. But it's going to be really my sixth budget, where I participated, where every year the buildings and grounds budget is 150,000, building repairs is $150,000. Each year that I looked at, and I can say quite confidently, there has never been a year where it was anywhere close to that. But short of an awful lot more money from the city, we're gonna have to choose to either be honest with the budget and lay off a whole lot of people. or just zero things out and see what happens. I just think it's a crappy choice that we have. And I appreciate that you're gonna at least allow us to see it in real time. and we can all make our decision to put $5,000 in the legal fund so that we can save the staff that is directly with the students. But then we're just gonna be here next year having the same conversation. We should all look at each other and be like, we're gonna have this exact same conversation next year. And it's going to be the worst deja vu, but thank you very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you want to speak? I'll start. One second, let me just get the language back up. So in our last meeting, we were I think we had motions and we all seem to really want to have an FAQ. And I think an FAQ is certainly critical. It needs to hang off of something. I looked around at project websites that existed for surrounding communities. They were frankly, nobody was very creative in their school building project website URL. And I just copied, I think, I don't know if it was Arlington or Somerville, just use MHSproject.org, it could be anything, as long as it's not too long. And I did look to make sure it was available, at least until this got published, and hopefully nobody went and snagged it. So I think, you know, having that having us have the actual URL gives us a starting point for folks to actually put up an FAQ system, which I highly recommend we just look at the FAQs for other districts because mostly they're just going to be the same questions. And then the other thing was to actually name the committee. And I know we have a policy on advisory committees, but this is not an advisory committee, which is like, well, what is it? It's a special kind of committee that's part of the law that authorizes the MSBA building stuff. So that's why I'm not following the advisory committee policy we have, because it's not an advisory committee. An advisory committee doesn't actually make decisions. They make decisions, well, they make decisions, but then they come to us and then we make the decision. I think a building committee makes actual decisions that are the decision. So I think that's probably the biggest difference. And then, so I did choose, I just, again, I'm open to changes to these things, but the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee, it's a little long. It was always gonna be long. And then the final part was to name Vice Chair Graham as the chair of the committee. I looked around, the school committee member is usually the chair of the building committee. I think it's, you know, in our renaming committee, we didn't have a school committee member as, was there a member at all on there? No. But you know, and you know, nothing to, not to speak badly of anybody on that committee, but having somebody who is like regularly using Roberts rules, understands open meeting law is like not optional. And we did build that into the advisory committee policy, which we bid, we drafted a couple of years ago. So I think it's very important to have a current school committee member who can, from day one, know how to run the meetings, know about open meeting law, So that's why, and obviously somebody who's willing to serve as the chair is kind of an important piece. So I do not wish to be the chair. And so I asked Member Graham if she would like to be chair and she is able and willing. So that's why I've made this motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, the mayor has already said hopefully, but there's no requirement that it happened during a regular election. It can be anytime. And depending on a certain communities may strategically choose to not do it in a regular election or a general election, you know, depending on the makeup of the community. And, you know, if it's a presidential, you know, everybody's showing up, Is that something you actually want? So there's no one answer, but obviously the city would have to pay for an election. So that's a consideration too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. I've looked at some building committees around and one of the things that was sort of glaring to me as confusing was that there was, there were no parents. There might be one teacher. And I was trying to wrap my head around it because I remember Graham and I did talk about like, you know, just blue sky about like, who would we want? And we were quickly at like 30 people, or I don't know, I think it was a huge number of people. And so managing a group of that size is certainly a challenge, but even if that wasn't a challenge, we have to also acknowledge that what we're asking for in the commitment to be on this committee is as much work as it is to be a school committee member, probably more. I mean, it's many hours a week of uncompensated labor and it's an open meeting. If a quorum doesn't show up, we don't keep moving along in our process to getting a new high school until that quorum can show up. So the commitment that we're asking whoever does end up being on this, it's not a garden club. We're asking for a shocking amount of unpaid labor and a commitment, and as Member Graham pointed out, like the committee will probably change over the course of five to seven years. So that's normal and not surprising, but we will have to be very careful that we, you know, if we decided we wanted to have several students and they're voting members, but if they don't show up and then suddenly there's not a quorum, whatever the agenda was, it's not happening. So I, you know, it's, I have a strong desire to have inclusion of a whole host of different members of the community and different kinds of levels in the high school. I do want all of those people involved. On the other hand, when I look around at other school committees, Winchester, Arlington, Somerville, they have 12 people. And that includes all these mandatory people. So, you know, I spoke to someone who is on the Somerville school committee today about this and I said, what are the big mistakes, what should we not what what do we really need to make sure we don't screw up. And it was, it was interesting because she talked about. you know, you need to have, you should have a student, you know, inclusion of all these different groups. And then after I got off the phone with her, I went and looked at their website and they actually weren't there. So I'm still trying to parse how that worked out. I do know that in this process, while MSBA's requirements on who has to be on the committee is a pretty short list, there's mandatory community outreach, there's, I think there's surveys I think there's listening sessions there's focus groups with the community. So, it's even if we don't end up with a community committee, a building committee that is. as large as we want it to be from the perspective of including all the right voices. That's not to suggest that that's the end of it. The building committee will not go off in a room by themselves and just do the project. There's mandatory stuff that will pull in other members of the community. And one of the other suggestions she had, which I haven't processed because there's only a couple hours ago, was the idea of an advisory committee to the building committee so we can create advisory committees left and right we've created one, a couple of them in the past. And so I mean I haven't thought about how that might work. having shorter term and more focused specific groups that we could create to advise the building committee, not unlike a subcommittee, but the subcommittees of the building committee will be full members of the committee. So again, if we had 12, you can't have 15 subcommittees. we have an awful lot to figure out here. And I was at the conference in November with member Graham and there's a big aversion as member McLaughlin, sorry, but I don't think you were in this session with us, sorry. And there was definitely an aversion to trying to provide advice on this. particular thing. And if you think about it, like there are regional districts where people are hour and a half away from the school, like providing a this is how you do it. When people are dispersed over a quarter of the state and some of these regional districts that would be really inappropriate and then there's communities that are so tiny that Again, that same advice would be weird. On the other hand, I really wish we would get some more advice on this because being wide open feels very, well, it feels a little risky. If we build this too big and then it just can't function, time is ticking. So that's my concerns.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly have been trying to take advantage of our neighbor's expertise, but I understand the point. I just think that it's hard enough to get us together. I think trying to get other school committees to serve us sounds like a challenging ask. It would be fabulous. I think it would be better if the MSBA actually provided this. Literally every single district going through this process is sitting here probably having the exact same conversation, like, why can't somebody give us a little help with how this is supposed to work? And I don't, I've never, obviously I've not been the fly on the wall as to why they don't go there. It seems like a great place to go. There was a session in December I went to where all of the invited districts were, members were invited and there were like 400 and something people on the call. And it was fascinating. Everybody had the same questions and they were mostly around things like this. So, no, I actually, I don't remember, I don't know which towns they were, but it was just, it was very interesting. I did want to just reiterate, just kind of come back to something that Member Graham said that I actually think is important about this when we think about how to form the building committee. And aside from, you know, the exciting stuff happens in feasibility and it's correct, nobody has asked to be on anything so they can count classrooms. A lot of the things in the eligibility phase are in fact things that the building committee cannot actually help with, like they, you know, the members of the community who will end up on the building committee. will not even in feasibility be allowed to just roam the school. And a lot of these activities, there's a massive checklist of things that have to be turned in that nobody in the community can help with. In fact, nobody in the school committee can help with. There are gonna be things like, how much did you spend on maintenance for X number of years? So somebody's gonna be digging through a whole lot of old receipts. Hopefully there'll be some of that categorized in the finance system, but I don't know. So, much of eligibility is just a whole lot of paperwork, frankly. And so, bringing in getting people excited to join the committee. And then to have them have a few meetings where they just have presentations on this is how many classrooms we have. I mean, that doesn't sound exciting to anybody, I don't think. So I do like this idea. And I think it would be good to lay out when we get to the point in a committee, the whole amount of resolution on defining the committee, to literally lay that out so that people understand that, hey, we didn't call you up yet, or we haven't even asked you if we decide to do that. But that doesn't mean that, you know, we don't want your feedback, we don't want you to be part of it. It's just that in this beginning phase, it just doesn't make any sense. So that I like that very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to comment that the Somerville School Building project site has an amazing FAQ system. I mean, I looked at several, most communities like create a whole website for the project so people know where to go. frankly, a lot of them didn't have FAQs, but Somerville's is top-notch. So we don't even have, like, I feel like a lot of the questions you're gonna ask, we're gonna hear, like, wouldn't they be the questions happening in almost every community? So thank you to everybody who's gone before us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading of the policy JICFB that we just discussed.
[Paul Ruseau]: I fully support this, except for the fact that we'd have to have executive session to receive that report.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly agree. I thought that that worked well with the superintendent evaluation process that was developed. And I just want to be clear that this is not a motion to do the handbooks. This is to have three of us get together and figure out, well, how will we do the handbooks? So I certainly would motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Rousseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Present. Member Raimondo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It's nice to see the form actually show up before we have to ask for it. I greatly appreciate that. I don't recall exactly the details, but I didn't see the nurse's signature yet. And I know that there's no nurse required, but I think the nurse at least has to sign off that things are good. I'm sure that'll happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you. And this is all very exciting and motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um I love all of this as I have since you started down this path three years ago at this point, four years. Um and when I'm looking at the proposed 2526, one thing that's a little confusing to me is that pre calculus does not appear to be a prerequisite to calculus. Um and um I will admit it's been so long since I took pre-calculus or calculus that I, like, is the title pre-calculus actually just a poorly named course?
[Paul Ruseau]: I figured you had figured this out, but I just was curious. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, I know that there's a shortage of space for students in and out of district placements. It's a serious shortage. And so I'm excited that you're thinking about becoming a place where we could accept students from other districts. If we have the capacity, it seems morally appropriate, not to mention fiscally a good idea, to use the capacity we have, because there are wait lists everywhere. And all those kids on wait lists are not being served. So thank you for thinking about that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have one clarifying question about the bus monitors. In the district that you're referring to, did you have your own busing or did you have a vendor?
[Paul Ruseau]: You did have a vendor, excellent. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there any chance we could get some excessive heat in here?
[Paul Ruseau]: And do you want questions now or at the end?
[Paul Ruseau]: On the first page, the heat index, the definition for excessive heat, we may want to take a look at that. It's 101 degrees. It's not considered excessive heat according to the protocol. There's missing data in that what's excessive heat. And then, you know, there's in the first item there, it's like for three hours for two consecutive days. But then in the other two, it's there's no like amount of time required, like in the third option there, if it's 105 for one minute at noon and one day, that's considered a excessive, like we should just tighten that up so that it actually makes sense for all of the scenarios that would happen. Right now there's some gaps, but we don't need to rehash those right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: The 105 does seem sort of the, I mean, 105's crazy times, but 101 is also kind of weird that it's missing.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then, oh, I printed it. Where are my notes? is there's there's a couple of references essentially to the MIA heat protocol and without seeing it I just want to I'm not going to put down the MIAA, but every single year we see a news story of athletics that lets or forces kids to participate in sports until they die. So I want to know what that MIAA heat protocol looks like. Is it more conservative, less conservative than our heat protocol? If it's less conservative, that I think we need a conversation around that because the science around what's healthy and all that other stuff isn't different for students that happen to be participating in sports. And we see that every single year in this country where it's like, you gotta play your football in a well, you know, and with coaches and other places, not here necessarily, but coaches that don't let you take water breaks really some pretty egregious stuff that I'm not suggesting we have here, but whenever I hear about another protocol that is not mentioned, I'm nervous that it's not aligned with ours. And if it's not aligned with ours, we need a real conversation around
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And then there's a reference to our policy EBCD emergency closings. I took a look at that and read it. It looked fine. I just think that, did you all take a look at it or just reference it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, it's not the longest policy, but it's pretty good. I do like a couple of the other things that aren't relevant, so I won't make us stay here all night long, but thank you. I appreciate you getting this going.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just looked up the average length of heat waves. We're up to about four days now. The only time you will not be able to replace your 10,000 water bottles is during a heat wave. So we don't need 10,000 on hand, we need 40,000 on hand. And God, I have no idea where you're going to put 40,000 bottles of water. We'll pretend that there's no environmental impact to that for the moment. But if you have 10,000, then you have to cancel school the next three days of the heat wave, because you have no water. So, you know, if that's part of the plan to have water bottles on hand, which I think might be worth talking about because, I mean, we're not assuming there's not gonna be water in the school functionally. If the water doesn't work in the schools, I assume we have to cancel anyways, because you can't flush the toilets. So, you know, that 10,000, that two bottles of water per person per day, if that's something that we really wanna stick with, we have to get a lot more water if there's really a strong rationale behind that. And I don't know the conversations that went into why, but, you know.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, yeah, I mean, I okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, yeah, there is that but also like, you know, we don't want to have day to be like, well, we used up our water supply. So now we our plan is that we have to now cancel school because we don't have water. So, and then the other thing was, You were mentioning, you know, the misting devices and the things that you would presumably set up rental agreements with. I assume when we do those rental agreements, we're going to make sure that those rental agreements include something that sort of gives us, you know, I assume that they don't have 100 of these things at every rental place. And when there's a heat wave coming, other people are going to be looking for them too. So like, we need to make sure that our rental agreement isn't just that this is going to be our price, but that we'll get first dibs on them. Because, again, having plans for things that then are not going to actually be available is not a spot anybody wants to be in. And then for the fans, you know, not that I want to spend a million dollars on fans. But if the backup plan for the outside schools or the elementary and the middle schools is to use fans if the air conditioning isn't working. Well, then we need to have purchased enough fans for the entire high school. And then at least one of those other schools, if we assume one of them is possibly gonna go offline from air conditioning, it's a lot of fans. And I just, some, I mean, aside from the costs, like there's the storage, there's the distribution, there's the, build a new high school, we're probably not going to have the kind of massive amounts of space laying around to store stuff. So, I mean, some of these things are perfectly logical, but they're also in the actual implementation things that I'm wondering how they'll really work out.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may, I don't for a second doubt the intent of anyone on this particular point, but I would say that it is unlikely in the next two years for that to be a reality. I mean, the millions of dollars that have to be spent to make that a reality, not to mention then the procurement, then the actual doing the work, that's not happening this summer. So, you know, we will have a heat wave this year. There's like a 0% chance we're not gonna have a heat wave. Um, it's maybe 0% is not the right amount. But, um, so I'm just worried because, you know, we started the last school year in a bad spot. And frankly, I mean, for the new members, you haven't quite experienced it yet. But most of us are pretty sick and tired of the same conversations about the fact that we had all summer long, and we didn't notice that the air conditioning was broken at an elementary school. I'm really tired of that. So while I understand we want to buy enough fans just for the high school, I want to buy enough fans to at least have one of the other schools not have functional air conditioning because I fully believe that's what's going to happen in the next couple of years. I'd like to be wrong.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. And I just want also sort of a clarifying question. So, I mean, I believe Medford does not usually do delayed start because of the number of days of actual education we provide is the minimum the state allows for other districts to have like 184, that pay their teachers for 189 days like Cambridge. If they do that, it's a different conversation. So we don't do delayed starts, but if we need to close an elementary school, we close the district, is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, since it's not, it doesn't sound like it's a desi thing. It's just a financial thing. Then I'm not gonna be all worried about that. But okay, thank you so much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And in that vein, the questions they're going to be asking are probably multiple thousands of questions. We will have to dig through many years of literal paper risk of payments for how much we paid electricity and each building and it will have to be per building. I mean, the amount of work that the administration is going to have to do, maybe an issue that will have to actually address separately like I mean, to dig through file cabinets and figure out where they are in City Hall now because we send them over to City Hall. You know, it's going to be a Herculean effort to answer some pretty basic questions that, through nobody's fault, are not, you know, we didn't process the paperwork in the many, many years with an intent to ever be asked about it. And so, and since we don't have computerized systems for all this stuff, it's going to be a major undertaking. And that's just the simple, because we have to answer like, what are our utility costs in each building? the different kinds of utilities. And I signed the warrants and, you know, I just see, you know, National Grid, five different pages and somebody's gonna have to look through each one to find out what's the address oh that's the McGlynn school and Oh, that's actually the high school. It's, I don't envy the people that have to start doing this work, but it definitely, we have a deadline and it has to start because it can't finish until it does. So thank you for putting this on and thank you to the administration for a big chunk of work ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to thank you. The second part of the motion is that the The Wednesday thing, I like that, but that's actually our policy. We already passed that, that Wednesday is the members are supposed to submit things by Wednesday. The part about it I like that we don't have now, though, is that when we submit it by Wednesday before a meeting, that it then just goes out to all the members right away. And I don't have any problem with that except for the fact that the the chair can decide that it's not going on the agenda. That's obviously part of the policy as well. Either it's not going on the agenda this coming Monday, or it's not going on, you know, because it's too much already on the agenda, or maybe they're an interest in a conversation about whether it should be on the agenda. So I definitely like this idea that we know sooner because sometimes I think that like something will happen and like I'll submit something and then you submit something and you submit something we're all submitting something and like if the first person that submitted it if it went to everybody then the rest of us would be like yeah that's probably what I was going to write anyways and be done with it. So I think the city council does this themselves, like when something gets added to the agenda, I believe it's sent out to the rest of the council. Mayor, do you remember back in the day if that's the case?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. When a councillor, I mean, I realize the rules have probably changed, but when a councillor submits something to the clerk to be put on the agenda, does it immediately just go to all the councillors so they know?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. So it certainly seems like something to talk about because like they think there's pros and cons like the scenario I just described where we all are going to end up submitting the same thing. And actually when you look at city council agendas, they will frequently be three or four people who have submitted the same thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah I mean I was thinking like blind CC or something but um so anyways that that's the part of that I kind of like think would be interesting but the other part the other stuff about like the planning on a calendar I do I do agree with member Graham that um we can play an account of right now, I think we would have a need for like a seven year long year, because there's just the list of things in our presentations that we have on our policy that we're supposed to get, which is far greater than the number of meetings we will ever have in a year, is sort of part of the problem. So we gotta go through that list, which I think we're doing on Wednesday and say, all right, we've got these things, we said we wanted to hear about them, but which ones do we mean we wanna have PowerPoint for and which ones that we just want to have like a report in our packet that we can read. And if any of us has interest, can we can write our own agenda items for another meeting? And we didn't do that when we created that list. And that was, I think, no, I mean, it was just, it was a first step. I don't think we thought about it necessarily. So that's just my thought.
[Paul Ruseau]: Maybe we could get a little more precise on the language. I have to write it down.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have to write it since it has to be read so we can vote it.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just need to, I followed everything that was said, but there was a lot of... I don't have exact phrasing and I knew you were going to pin me on this, but I don't have it. I just need the data elements. And anybody can throw them out there. I'm too tired to make it up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley. Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members say yes, Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll take that button. It's the left button. It's always been the left button.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It's not my first rodeo here. Anyways, what am I doing? Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longoker?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is it? Yeah. I said Member Branley and Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin is absent. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. we, it's not our wishes, it's our policy, which we approved two years, December of 2020 is when we approved this policy and it went through our standard processes and was deliberated and there was plenty of input from the community as well as the committee at the time and the administration had plenty of opportunity to speak at our meetings. I won't pretend that it's not an uncomfortable conversation to have to suggest that we're gonna honor some religious holidays and not others. So while it was an open meeting, I do acknowledge that it's a difficult conversation. I will say that I disliked the use of your preferred calendar. The committee has a policy. So frankly, the administration's preference is not a real thing. It's the committee's policy. So I was a little taken aback by, the administration having a preference to not abide by the policy of this body. But that aside, I'd motion to approve calendar A, which abides by our policy. That's the calendar I would motion to approve. And the second motion I have is to send calendar options B and C to a committee of the whole, so this whole This whole committee can sit down and, and discuss what are our goals around calendars and observations and there's clearly some people want to get out of school as soon as possible. And I think that if that is the goal we should be talking about more than just the religious holidays, frankly. There's February vacation is an utterly ridiculous thing. And my understanding is teachers hate it. They finally figured out how to start teaching kids after Christmas break, winter break as we pretend to call it. And then suddenly we're all gone again. So I think it's worth another conversation to revisit this calendar policy. So those are my two motions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Calendar B and C, the calendar policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Memogram. Yes. Remember McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the potting? Yes. Remember? Reinfeld?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember? So yes, Marilyn. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to second it, but since member McLaughlin has just spoken, I think I completely agree. I hope that this doesn't come across as any kind of like no names anywhere kind of thing. It's just like, you can't buy your name and it's the point. But I think that's an absolutely great idea. And I don't know if we or the naming committee or somebody else should be involved in doing that because it's just an exceptionally good example of how you know, there is a place and a time for naming or names to be in a space, and that seems like an exceptionally good example, so thank you. So anyways, I seconded that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So for the language, let me know if this sounds okay. The playground committee will determine a date for which donors having given will appear on the plaque. I'll rephrase that to make a little more sense when I'm not just writing it in.
[Paul Ruseau]: So on the amendment. I'll second that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, we're just going to do it all at once? That's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin is absent. Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was going to say much of what the superintendent already said. But I just want to thank each of my colleagues one at a time. Member Hays has brought an understanding about literacy that, you know, As a parent and school committee member, I could not have. And I think that that guidance around coaching and helping our teaching staff have what they needed was really important for us as we battled in the last budget. So I really appreciate that. I'm a little surprised it was only 31 months ago when we sat down at Tasty. No, it wasn't Tasty. Where's the cafe? classic cafe. And that seems like just yesterday, but nothing else on school committee does. So thank you. but I hate saying member-crats, it feels fairly personal here, but Kathy, I've always appreciated your focus on the vocational program. Having Noah inside the program for some of our years together has been helpful. And I did not go through a vocational program, so having you to keep bringing it up is really, really important. And your perspectives on that has definitely helped a lot in many of our decisions, so thank you so much for that. And last but not least, I found it amusing the superintendent used the word direct to describe Member Mustone, but I like the word blunt because it's less refined, and not that you're less refined, but you were the one I was hardest to write some words for because As some of you may know, Mia got me elected. Lots of other people did too. But as soon as I announced, or maybe you announced, I don't remember who announced me, she dragged me around to this every corner of this city, because she knew everyone. And when I say everyone, literally everyone. And so, but it was fun because she wasn't, you know, she wasn't dragging around and just like leaving me in a corner. She was like, stick me in the face of every person that I might need to know or want to know. So I can never say thank you enough for that. But in all of that, also, I gained a lifelong friend. And it will be difficult to not have you to look across and be like, oh my god, this meeting is still going on. That's fine. And I think that's all I'm going to say now, but I'll say more later at dinner. So thank you for being my conscience sometimes. I did also want to say that like, Me and I would come at many issues from incredibly different perspectives and I loved that we most of the time at least arrived at exactly the same conclusions or views on things. And that was quite a learning experience to know that like people don't have to come at things from the same place to come to the same conclusion. which is sort of an important thing for a politician to know, but to know it and understand it and experience it is different. So I greatly appreciated our many conversations. And no, we didn't always agree on everything, but I will miss you greatly. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. I attended the orientation on Thursday. just feels like three weeks ago at this point, but it was very interesting. It was 70 people on the Zoom. So it was kind of an interesting way to orient because every single person there surely had two hours worth of questions. So I look forward to future smaller scale orientations where we can actually ask our questions. Cause that was a little overwhelming that there were 19 communities invited in which apparently is more than normal, quite a bit more than normal. So I also think we should thank tax revenues that allowed them to have a bigger budget this year, because that's just an unprecedented number. In the presentation they gave us, they said there were $2 billion worth of projects in this 19 schools. I think it was 2 billion, right? One or two, I thought it was two, but maybe it was only one. One billion, two billion, big numbers. I don't know that we can get that many schools for one billion, but so it's very exciting. And I look forward to this very stringent process that we must go through and deadlines we must meet. And I'm hopeful we can beat the deadlines because most of the deadlines are things that are like, there's like a deadline, but if we can get it done early, can be early and I like early. So I'm very excited to take the five to seven year project and make it four to five maybe.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kraft?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Coffin-Zappa and member Ms. Stone? Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Longo, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I'm just wondering, and we can get this later, but this doesn't have an item number on this, and usually those are created when the items are submitted, so if somebody could get that to me. I don't know if Member Hays got that when she submitted it, or if the administration has it, but like, you know, the 2023-whatever.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think in our rules, they just get the same number. The same number? Perfect. We'll do. Just because the votes and the notes will need that. Okay, we'll do. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. Is the 14 million students, is that worldwide or within the U.S.?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I've been confused by this slide. It's come up a couple of times now. When it says the national, that's the national of all students. And so I'm just confused why we would compare subgroups to all students, which make that comparison sure. But I would like to know how our Asian students are doing to the national Asian students. I mean, because I guess this is, to me, seems like not terribly important data. I wanna know how our black students are doing compared to the black students nationally. Because that's why we even have subgroups. It's not to compare them to the big number for all students. It's to compare.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I didn't say that it wasn't important. I said it was not the only important thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that wasn't a question, though. Point of information is a question. OK. Anyways, so this slide does not give us the information we need, and I'm assuming NWEA map does provide that, or maybe they don't. So then I'm not sure what the point of this slide is.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I guess I'm confused why they would provide us the ability to see how our subgroups are doing, but then also not provide any information about how subgroups are doing nationally. That does not seem like a reasonable thing for a product to provide. They must have those things because they are providing those delineated pieces of information to us. I mean, we didn't do these calculations, they came from their product. So they know how these subgroups are doing nationally. Whether they're willing to share it, maybe they have a reason for not sharing it, but I really feel like somebody needs to figure that out because it's just critical information. I mean, I feel like if we're not gonna know that at all, Anyways, I just think that this slide is definitely missing something and somebody should call them up and ask them what the heck's going on because it's critical. It is certainly critical to know against the, like these categories right here, by the way, these are Medford's categories. Where's the Medford ninth grade? I see national, there should be another column there for district also that covers all students. It should be on the same slide though. I mean, these four, Asian, black, white, and Latino are all Medford numbers, right? because nobody really wants to sit here and just discuss their data nationally. So all of those things averaged together based on the number of students, et cetera, would provide us with the district number is, which I think was on another slide somewhere. So slide eight, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thinking about that quadrant chart, are teachers looking at that? Yeah. So a student that might have a whole pile of relative strengths and a major weakness could show up in that top right quadrant. And if I'm a teacher and I've got a bunch of students that I've got to focus on, I'm not clicking on that student because I have only so many hours in a day. How do we make sure that because this one data point is a student, How do we make sure that we don't have, I'm sure when teachers are receiving students into the middle school, into an algebra class or something, and then they find out that, why does little Johnny not know how to do this very basic thing, even though he got great grades and knew all these other concepts? It feels like that's a story we hear about when kids go off to college and they can't do some, frankly, basic things. And I just feel like this, average as a single data point for a student can seriously hide major deficiencies, or is that average not really an average, but it's some kind of other NWEA map calculation that prevents that?
[Paul Ruseau]: It helps, but you said something just now that was sort of partially my point. Teachers are, there's only so many hours in a day for teachers. We just heard that at the Andrews, 2 3rds or 70% of kids made the honor roll. I'll go on a limb and bet that means a lot of kids, when we looked at this quadrant chart, were in that big green section for, let's pick math. And what I'm worried about is it's quite reasonable for teachers to be focusing on students in these other quadrants more. These are the students that are performing. These are the students that are growing. You've got so many hours or time in your class. Who are you going to put more attention on? You're going to put it on the students who need more help, which is rational and reasonable. But these are one dot representing the students. You could be a rock star with these huge scores in some areas of math and then have some major deficits that are just not relevant to what's going on. You can just skate through with your A and sitting in the green. And then when you go up to the next grade, this happened to one of my children who went into an honors math class. And it was because of the pandemic. It wasn't for any other reason. But there were whole sections of math for which the student couldn't perform, none of them, frankly. And while that's a different kind of situation because it was most of the students, I'm just worried about how if you have only so much time in the day and you're looking at this quadrant chart as your starting point for where to focus, you're not clicking on your students that are high performing, high growth already. And this is an average that will mean that you have, we put a billionaire in this room, average all of our incomes. Things look great. Those are not, we're not all making $100 million a year. So I just worry about the work that averages can really cause skewing within the individual student as well. And maybe there's somebody that makes sure that every single one of these students was inspected at some regularity from this chart. I don't know if that's your team or the principals, or does this pop out a report that says, hey, this teacher in math, there was never once did anybody inspect this report for this student this year.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's after you've clicked the student, though.
[Paul Ruseau]: I doubt that.
[Paul Ruseau]: That does help. I mean, I think that sometimes we've heard tonight that it was the individual student was the strength of a lot of this reporting. And now we're kind of back up to the middle of the curriculum. Yes. And obviously, I think that that makes complete sense what you're describing, and that's great to hear. But if all this testing is about the individual student, then I'm interested in knowing that every individual student's report is looked at by every single teacher. Yes. no matter whether the student is sitting up there in the top corner green and the teacher has 20 other students in the bottom quadrant who need a lot of time and focus, because a kid could not know how to deal with money, for instance. One of my children, math was fine, but then when the report came out, turns out they didn't know anything about money, which for those of us that can just, well, that's just percentages. I just worry about, and I think the teachers would worry about receiving students with major gaps that are missed because the report is an average for the whole individual student, which is not, you know, it's not how you teach new concepts in math in particular. You need those basic concepts, all of them. There's no like optional ones. And so I'll stop because I've gone on too long, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just tell you that there's some mistakes. What? There's an error.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have a few small amendments I'd like to make. I'll take them one at a time. The first is to add a new related policy, the JICA dress code policy under the related policy section. That's my first motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The next one is in the privacy, confidentiality, and student records section. And my motion is to replace his, her, with their, and he, her, he, she, with they. Kind of amusing in this policy that we make that mistake. So that's my motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: And two more. Motion to replace DESE with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. I don't remember where it was in the poll.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: And hopefully last, in the last sentence of the first paragraph, It says, I'm sorry, yes, the last sentence of the first paragraph, it says, including disciplinary action where appropriate, and I would motion to replace that with including disciplinary action following restorative practices where necessary.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone is absent. Member Ruseau is yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Yes. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rosen is absent. Member Rosen, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. My thinking on this is that if we're passing a policy after a deadline, that we simply set the date for when it becomes effective, because I'm not really interested in having all of this. I mean, it's the principals aren't running around changing these, the site councils are. So I don't think it's reasonable for us to, a week before or a week after site councils have submitted their proposed changes for us to be just making changes to policy. Obviously we can make changes to policy at any time, but I think that when our policy changes, are going to affect the handbook, we should just consider whether or not, can this just wait another year? It's not like if we wait another year, There's, you know, for the most part, those kinds of things are not the end of the world. I mean, the bullying policy was an example that's very, very different because it was so substantial. And this is a great example of what we just did. But a lot of the policy changes we're making are not things that if they waited another year to be in a handbook that anybody would even, be bent out of shape about. So I'm not so much concerned about the cost of printing, although, you know, money's tight. But I am concerned about the work of the site councils. And there's also an important thing about the handbook, though. There are sections of the handbook that are sort of inherited from the district. They're the same in every single handbook. Site councils don't even really have a say in them, things such as things that come from the law. So whether or not the change would affect site council work, I think is something to be considered. And I certainly think that As a chair of the policy subcommittee. This is not something I had thought through. So I think that is something to consider in our procedures around policy adoption to be like you know, sort of a checkbox, does this affect handbooks? And if so, when should it go into effect? Because that's an easy thing to consider rather than setting some arbitrary date, because a lot of times policies come up because something's happening and we can't wait. So knowing the impact of the change, I think, is something we can just put right into our procedures.
[Paul Ruseau]: I need language that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone is absent. Member Ruseau, no. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, one moment. I have a construction crew in my house, so forgive me for background noise and the need to pop up every now and then. I'm not sure who's here, because I am catching up late, but Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Member McLaughlin? Here. Member Mustone? Absent, I believe. Member Ruseau is present. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, I'll be brief. I, as everybody has already said, I ran because students don't get to vote. So I thought I had a lot to offer and I'm most interested in hearing what you all have to offer actually. So I'm gonna leave it there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Member Graham? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone absent. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo Kerr?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone, absent. Member Risseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep, member Ruseau. Just for my, because we're speaking and not seeing words that I'm typing into the minutes, caregivers is caregiver and then open parenthesis S, close parenthesis. We don't want to assume there's more than one, but just wanted everybody to know that's what I wrote in the motion in case there's any disagreement.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. In the same section here, a couple sentences up, it says, some transgender and gender nonconforming students are not openly so at home. well, that language is a little, it's correct, but that doesn't sound very common in the US, but anyways, are not openly so at home for reasons such as safety concerns or lack of acceptance. And then another two sentences later, For the same reason school personnel should discuss with the student how we've just been talking about that. I'm just a little concerned here. Where does this get documented that so that each and every staff member communicating with caregivers understands the possible expectation to communicate with a student one way and caregivers another, because that's what we're talking about here. A student comes to school, he, she, her pronouns. At home, they're he, him pronouns, which is not an unusual situation. And it might be just the way it is and it's no big deal. It also could be, as we said two sentences before, for safety reasons. I'm a little concerned that we have to have staff just, you know, they just have to know. And so I'm just really concerned that we're putting staff in a terrible position here where every communication, they're going to have to be, you know, wait, is this, is this, you know, because lots of transgender students and adults, like you don't know they're transgender. It's not like they wear a little sign. So you get used to a student or a student comes into your school or class and you don't know they're transgender and you don't care. But then you're gonna go write something that goes home and we have a policy expecting them to know this. And I'm just really concerned that staff is going to, well, I wouldn't want to be, if I was a staff member, I would want something a little more robust. some way to be flagged so that every time I'm writing a communication to my students, I know. And again, this gets into the sharing thing. But at the same time, if a student is presenting and using she, her pronouns at school and using he, him at home, how are we expecting staff to get that right? And two sentences before, we're concerned about their safety. We can't have it both ways. We can't have it where the staff doesn't find out, But then the staff also has to know to do something different at home for home communication. So those two things are in conflict. And I don't want our staff to be stuck with the guilt of screwing it up and something happens to a student. I'm not saying this is happening in Medford, but we can all read the news. This is real stuff. So what's our expectation for the district, for the superintendent, and for processes to make sure that when this is a situation, and I don't know how it gets determined, guidance or whoever makes this determination, that this really is pushed out to all staff that could possibly communicate with a parent, because I'm just deeply concerned about the safety of our students and, frankly, the staff. I mean, I would feel really awful. So this is a question. I don't have an answer.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Ruseau? Thank you. That's all good to hear. And I hope I didn't imply that there wasn't any confidence in the leadership to already be doing a lot of this stuff. That certainly was not my intent. Um, I'm just going to go to the top because I have. A long list of, uh, changes. Little changes. Um, and if it's okay, I will put them all together in one motion. Um, unless there's somebody argues about one of them or something, and then I'll separate that one. Um, so, uh, the in front of Denver public school should be removed. Um, Next we have, there's several places where it says the Medford Public Schools and it should just be Medford Public Schools as a proper name. We wouldn't say the Maurice. And so I'm just gonna say that once and I'll include them in the list. The next paragraph down, so I see memograms located right there, but to help create safe and supportive Environment for all students district will consistent with applicable laws and guidance take the following steps. I don't see any steps. So I don't know what that means. So I'm not sure if I think we should strike it. I mean, but it feels like that was like, like our bullying policy. It was like, you're gonna do a bunch of things. Here's the list. Or as I said, in the bullying policy, you're gonna do a bunch of things. And then it didn't say the list. So I'm not sure. what that is supposed to mean, if anybody wants to respond.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was just going to say that, you know, this is policy and just like law everywhere, it does matter, which is why I'm saying remove the does. The set of steps is like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you do them in this order and you check off that you did them in that order. That's what steps are. So, I mean, I'm fine with the language suggested by whoever typed that in, but they're just not steps. I'll just continue on. We have, in one place we have birth gender, another place we have birth sex, and I don't have a preference for one. I just think they should be consistent.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, in one place we had birth gender in the name and pronoun section, and another place we have birth sex under the privacy confidentiality and student records. They both have the same sentence, students assigned birth gender, students assigned birth sex. I don't know what the right one is, but one of them should be the right one.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're in the same document, yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I didn't read the many documents that Member Hays said, which I appreciated. So I don't know if there is a preference or a correct way to talk about the gender assigned at birth. Whatever is correct, we should use.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, under privacy confidentiality and student record, I certainly don't disagree one bit with the intent of the regulation, but I do need to point out that the words gender, sex, those are not in the regulation anywhere. I did a search and I actually included the link right in the meeting chat. Those words don't exist in the currently published regulations. And I just feel like having it in line and the privacy confidentiality and student records is sort of implying that that's what's actually in there when it's not. So I don't know. I mean, we don't typically, in many of our newer policies, we're putting all the references at the bottom, and this is in the bottom too, which is fine, rather than inline. And this just inline seems to drive home the point that, hey, this policy says exactly this, and it doesn't. So this regulation, sorry. So my preference is that we cut that. I don't know if anybody has disagreement.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, so I that makes much more sense to me. I didn't see that on the page, so I think that's great. I mean, I don't know if we want to replace that with the link to that page. That's I'd be totally fine with that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sounds good. And just so we're clear, to the website that Amber Hayes mentioned. Great. In a number of places, I know we talked about this extensively already, but in a number of places we say, in the case of a younger student, did we decide, because I don't think, let me look at the motions, No, did we decide what we will replace the words younger student with?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I guess I was confused by what we meant by, sorry mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I was doing that some of the changes were across the whole document. So I didn't want to have the conversation 5 times. I was literally moving down the document. So. I'm my next comments are actually not until. Privacy, confidentiality and student records, so I don't know. We want to let everybody else do their stuff up until that point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information members, there's more, but yeah, I'm looking at the current regulation. I don't see that language and I'm not, I'm just not sure where you're reading it from.
[Paul Ruseau]: These are different. It's repeated a second time later on in the regulation, which is why I was confused. It's repeated, but then they don't make the effort to include Section 2, which you're typing, which you're adding.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I make a suggestion on that?
[Paul Ruseau]: There, could I make a suggestion on that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I just suggest we take the quotes out? We're not going to actually use exactly their language, and we certainly don't have to, because we use caregivers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Marisol? Since we're talking about younger students, other than in this section, would it make sense to replace younger students with students under the age of 14?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's in the names and pronouns, second to last sentence, case of a younger student, so a student under the age of 14. Cursor's almost there. Next, down one, there it is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for that clarification, because I actually didn't get that. I know we said it earlier, but I didn't understand that. So I guess my question, though, is at what age are staff expected to be consulting with parents versus not? Or are they just expected to never consult with parents, period? Which, I mean, I don't know what the expectation right now is in this policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly love the sentiment in this. I just think that the policy sentences and the purpose of a document is to tell people what to do. And the research part of that, I mean, that might be in a whereas, which I think actually there was. That might have even been in the whereas of the proposal on the last agenda. I think that getting rid of that research and starting with the primary goal is reasonable, but I mean, research will be different at the time the next meeting happens. It's not going to change the point of the, you know, the outcomes of very obvious outcomes for this kind of research, but I mean, we could do this for every sentence in this whole thing. Here's the research that says this, here's the research that says, you know, that gender is not binary and not immutable. So that's just my feeling on that. I do want to keep that sentence definitely, but I don't like couching it in research, which could, you know, God forbid the research changes tomorrow or somebody comes to us at a next school committee meeting, here's a pile of research that says that's not true. I'm not interested in that conversation. That's just my thought. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll certainly make the motion to accept the transition section as displayed.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Yes. I don't know what people have for time, so we're already an hour and a half in.
[Paul Ruseau]: there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, in the first sentence it says gender marker is a definition on school or other records that indicate, actually just indicate, no S. And then this sentence, here we are again on the young students. So this is the one where we want to change upon request by the student or in the case of students under the age of 14. Is this the correct place for that change? Okay, I saw some hands shaking. So getting rid of, changing the, in the case of young, just change young students not yet able to advocate for themselves to students under the age of 14. And then my only other change was in the last sentence of that paragraph. It says, oh, there it is. The last sentence says, the last line, excuse me, up one, page three, end of page three, last line, a diploma or transcript that includes, that actually needs an S. And that's it for that section. I'll make a motion to accept the section.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll make a motion to accept the gender markers and student records section. Oh, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: make a motion to accept the gender markers on student records and to move the section.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastone, absent. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Was that a motion? I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The opposite? I certainly, can you hear me okay?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I'm sorry, Member McLaughlin, go ahead, you can go first.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member Ruseau. Thank you. I'm in agreement with all of these options, actually. Unfortunately, when I think about what a policy looks like on the ground when it's getting used, because it has to be acknowledged, we cannot maintain our policies. We make a change here, nobody goes, there's no system in place to go and find the 32 other policies that need to be updated that now says we use the word caregivers as we decided like four years ago. Every policy has the word caregivers in it, but it doesn't now. Right now it says parent and guardian, probably doesn't even say caregiver. My point is just, if I pick up a policy as a staff member and I read it and I use it, and it's got language that is no longer correct, because there was another policy that made another change that should have been updated and injected into the policy, then what you end up with is people not following the policies, when they are trying. And you also create, frankly, the mountain of outdated policies we have would take a school committee of 100 people 10 years to get through. That's the truth. So I am very much opposed to duplicating stuff. The other argument for not duplicating, though, I think is important. As we saw with the bullying policy, when it's 37 pages, nobody read it. I understand administrators probably went through it and they tried to find parts that they cared about. Nobody read that thing top to bottom. And I'm sure I'll get an email from somebody who says, yes, I did. But when policies are multiple pages or longer, they get read less. They just don't get read as much. I've got lots of things on my desk. The one-pagers get read. The 32-page documents sit there for months or years. And so whether it's right or wrong, if we want people to read our policies and to implement them with fidelity, they have to be readable. So I am opposed to including the PE section and the dress code. And then the other thing I also just want to quickly say is, I don't understand the reading of, The MIA will rely on the gender determination made by the student's district. It will not make separate gender identity determinations. Is that actually just a statement of fact or are we asserting that we can tell the MIA what they can and can't do? Like, I don't know the legal stuff here, but we can write something down. And if the MIA has authority and it's like, no, we're gonna make our own determinations. Well, our policy means nothing. So I just think I need to understand what that is saying. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Gritz? I think already left. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone absent. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, point of order. Point of order, Member Ruseau. We can't deliberate after we have started voting. Otherwise, the members who have already voted lost their right to change their mind. So can we finish voting or?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, there's already a roll call in place. You cannot motion in the middle. We cannot even deliberate in the middle of our roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. The only thing that I am. If I'd like to make a motion that the members allow me to reorganize this information section to fit with our current policy on the proper format. It's mostly good. It's just, you know, like there's this M A s t. I think that means mass general laws. Maybe I don't know. But If the motion is to allow me to replace this section with a properly formatted, a more commonly formatted way that the school committee uses.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz is absent. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Yes. Yes. Member Mustangs absent member says yes. Marilyn go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Emotion to report this motion to report this to the full committee's next meeting on November. 20th 20th 20th. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz is absent. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Ms. Stone is absent. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Grant's absent? Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone absent? Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just also want to remind us from a security perspective that the high school must be unlocked and open for these meetings. These are public meetings, just like these. We can't have locked doors, so we'll have to plan the security around that, unless we don't have a quorum of members, in which case it's just a meeting. So that's important to remember. When posting the agenda, if more than three of us show up, none of us are speaking about anything related to policy, unless it's already on the agenda. So I just, my biggest concern about these meetings, which I obviously want to hear from the students, is I don't want each of these meetings to be a series of open meeting law violations, because nobody really wants to deal with those. So somebody will have to plan the effort around making our high school open at 230 when there's clubs and all the other stuff. Because I assume we're going to have them there, it doesn't make sense to cart the students over here, that doesn't make any sense. So I just want to make sure those logistics are worked out, rather than on the 17th or the 15th of November, when we sit down and we have a quorum. And then there's a locked door because that's just not gonna be acceptable. It's also against, it's a violation, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I mean, if we're speaking at all, then if there's four of us, then it is a meeting. an official meeting that will have an agenda posted following open meeting law. If we all swear to sit silently and listen or nod and be jovial and not engage in a single item of a policy for which we have authority, then I don't think that's a meeting, that's just four or more of us happen to be in the same place.
[Paul Ruseau]: Of course, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: An agenda, though, can be just that we're having a meeting and we're showing up and we're going to listen to the students. That's an agenda, an agenda that has items such as we're going to talk about food service or we're going to talk about this. Those are different kinds of agendas. They're both agendas. And Medford has a long history of showing up to talk about whatever anybody wants to talk about. And that's not how open meeting law works. And I just don't want to be the person sitting there silently because I don't want to violate open meeting law on a topic that I care greatly about. That's my biggest beef, frankly. If other members feel comfortable ignoring that, that's up to them. But I don't want to sit here silently looking like a jerk because I won't say anything on a topic that's not on the agenda for which we have authority. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. In the district improvement goal, everybody else has already asked a bunch of great questions already, so. Key action number four, it's reestablish the capital planning committee to examine building systems and create a replacement timeline. Create a replacement timeline. Does that mean for each building? or I'm not sure what the replacement timeline is, what does that mean?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so the individual systems.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I can... It is what it says, but I just wanted to be clear because we are also talking about the high school and I didn't want it to seem like this group would be discussing a timeline for replacing the high school, which would be sort of out of scope my thoughts. Okay, great. And then in outcomes, there is the communication platforms will be used regularly by all systems. And what do you, what does student servicing groups mean? I just wanna make sure, does it mean PTOs? Does it mean the clubs? Does it, what does student servicing groups mean?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that is easy. I just don't want it to sound like we're expecting, you know, the clubs and the packs and other folks to be using this stuff. I mean, it might be an interesting conversation about whether they should be. But from a scope perspective, I just wanted to make sure that was clear. And then I just had a couple of other questions that are sort of seem random. But when we talk about how many more hours a day we expect you to work as an actual employee, how many emails do you receive per day on average? Just a guess.
[Paul Ruseau]: And how many, on average, how many hours a day do you work during the school year?
[Paul Ruseau]: different people have different ideas of what it means to work long hours. If I have a 10 hour day, I sometimes I'm like, this day won't end.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Do you lose vacation days each year that you're allotted in your contract, but you can't actually figure out how to take because you're so busy?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. I just, I think these are important considerations when we consider adding work to you, because I was part of the committee that hired you. And, you know, there are many different views on what we people expect from a chief executive some people expect a chief executive to be shackled to their job, and not sleep. frankly, a lot of chief executives do that, and they're proud of it. And Medford had a history of a superintendent who worked 12, 16 hour days, six days a week, and that worked for Medford at the time and for that superintendent. But when we were hiring, we were very clear, I was very clear and I think the room was clear, that we were looking for somebody who had some concept of work-life balance and was actually going to be a person who could have a life outside of Medford Public Schools. And so when I hear about you can't take the vacation that you're allotted in your contract and you don't get paid for it either, it just vanishes and you, are working, you know, I mean, there's the whole, you know, working smarter, not harder, all that stuff. But there are limits to working smarter and not harder. When your boss, which is us, piles more stuff on that we expect only you to do, not to delegate, but only you to do. You know, it's quite reasonable in my mind for us to keep piling work on and for you to delegate it. But if we pile work on and we say, it is only, Dr. Marice Edouard-Vincent who may perform these duties, then I think it's reasonable for us to consider whether or not we're being in, you know, excessive. And so when we talk about, you know, I went to many PTO meetings, not many, some PTO meetings when my kids were in elementary school, the principal was always there and I thought that worked. And I mean, has anybody asked principals if they want the superintendent sitting in on their meetings? I don't know. And I don't mean this to be anything about any specific thing tonight, but I do think that, you know, we want you here at eight o'clock in the morning and we want you here at 10 o'clock at night or nine o'clock at night. And I just think we need to think about what we're expecting and asking of one human being. And, you know, we don't put it everywhere in our policies, but we often say the superintendent will do this. And we decided a while ago that we wouldn't every single time say, or his or her delegate, because that becomes obnoxious to see that written everywhere. But when we are asking the superintendent to do something, most of the time, I mean, I'm expecting the superintendent to delegate that stuff, not to figure out how to find more hours in a day. And so whenever we ask for things, we're explicitly saying the superintendent is the person that must do it. I think we need to like, get out a piece of paper and start figuring out how much are we asking only the superintendent to do. It just concerns me greatly, because there is no time when I can't talk to you, or, and you know, you'll call me or something about like some agenda item, and you're not at home working from home you're still at the office and it's long past rush hour. I just have a lot of concern about what this looks like. And someday if we have to hire another superintendent, they're gonna look and say, well, would you last superintendent have to, I don't want a 93 hour a week work, because guess what? The salary sounds great to folks who see the contract, but then when you start dividing it up by the number of hours, it starts to not look so good. So I'm just deeply concerned about how many goals we are having. if we expect those goals to be met exclusively by you personally rather than your ability to delegate them. And that just sort of a statement about concern. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to agree vehemently with member Hays on the survey. And, you know, when I read the results, you know, just going to pick an example here, about 40% of respondents agreed that students at the high school were teased or picked on about their physical or intellectual disability. Everybody agrees the right percentage is zero, we would love to see that no student thinks that that happens. But what I would want to know. in figuring out where to focus a limited amount of resources and time is, how does that compare to other school systems with other high school people in it? I mean, I don't like this 40%, but if you told me that the average high school it was 70%, I would be like, Well, that's kind of very disturbing. But I would also then say, is this the right place to first focus, considering that we can't focus on everything at once? And there are other kinds of questions, for instance, where if 10% of students said something, it might cause everybody to panic and be like, that should be a 1%. You know, so 10%, 40%, 2%, those things don't really mean anything without any context of what is it like in a typical high school? We can all agree that we want these, you know, 0% of our students to believe that this kind of thing, like picking on somebody because of their physical intellectual disability, there's no question what the right number is, zero. But if the average high school has 70% in our area, which would be horrible. But we had another area where it was 10% 10% of our students said something is happening, but in a typical high school it's one or 2%, like, without that information. All we have to go on is our own sense of, we agree, this is bad. We should focus on this. But we don't, we can go through all of these questions and we can, without any question, there's gonna be no disagreement here that 40% should be 0% on this question. you know, 10% should be 80% on this question. Like there's not gonna be any question, but whether or not, which of these areas actually require our focus when there's only so much focus to give, without the other districts, the common survey that is used elsewhere to compare, I do feel like we're comparing to ourselves, which is fine. But there's only so many hours in a day and I just do feel like that that that is missing from this, regardless of this, the design of the guesses in the know that you know the strongly agrees and strongly disagrees, even if all that wasn't a problem without the same questions being comparable to other districts. It feels very challenging to know which is the most important thing to focus on, but obviously not one thing. But of the many things to focus on, which ones are a higher priority? And I just don't think we can get that unless we do go with the standardized survey that other people use. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do we want to wait till the end for questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: I kept bumping it. So many questions. On slide five, I just wanted to state the obvious. Dessie's idea of who needs assistance is really quite a statement. We're down to 32% for the high school. for our percentile ranking and they don't think that requires assistance, just to never miss an opportunity to point out Dessie's idea of what their job is. Not what we on a school committee think our job is and certainly not what the district staff thinks their job is either. I don't know any other setting or environment where 32% and they're like, things are cool. I just had to kind of just say that out loud, because it's just so obnoxious. It's not a comment on anybody who works here. The 10th grade, 7th grade too, but 10th grade just seems to across the board have taken a hit everywhere you looked. And I have a 10th grader, so not that I don't care about all the students, but they did jump out at me. Are there working theories that you all have at this point as to how in the heck this happened? I mean, 61% down to 39%. I mean, that's, I mean, that's, I think that has to be unprecedented in all of the time we've ever done data with MCAS since it was initially created. And I know that you have a lot of work ahead to figure this stuff out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Yeah. I mean, if you, you'll obviously spend more time on this particular piece of information because it's just such a stark and startling of all of the data that is, can be upsetting. There's just no example of something like that happening. And, you know, we did not have like a massive turnover in our math teachers or anything like, you know, so I just could not let that piece of data not get commented on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I did. I watched the board meeting where that decision was made. And of course, I hadn't seen any of this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. And I mean, if they stick to their guns, then we're going to have a graduation rate that across the state, frankly, that will, you know, be front page news and be Parents will bring their pitchforks, a huge percentage of our... Right now, 66% of our students are going to get a diploma because getting all the other competencies is fine, but if you can't get the math one, then it's the same as getting none. And the idea that a third of our students would not get a diploma, I mean, I can't imagine the... the firestorm that would ensue. Is it too soon to know? Well, because we're talking about 10th graders and people generally are not dropping out of school in 10th grade. So it's too soon to kind of know how that will go. I did have a question about the graduation rate since I probably could find this out on the internet, but if a student gets a certificate of attendance, but not a diploma, Do they count as a graduate in our graduation rates?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I wish that wasn't a thing, but I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a guess.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't have it exactly in front of me, but I know- Yeah, I'm not particularly worried about it right now because our current seniors and juniors do not have the same requirements.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, I don't want us to be here all night, but I mean, if, you know, come spring, we have reason to panic as a body, you know, like we should be like, putting, taking PTO from our day jobs to go hunt down legislators if we need to kind of like, it'd be good to hear that before when you get the sense that like, look, you know, we have a sense of why absenteeism of course is a pretty good place to look, but it's, you know, the regulation stuff that member Hays brought up, there's just, there's lots of things that it could be, but I just do not want to be sitting on this body and having, you know, hundreds of kids not get diplomas, it will be a very fun experience for them, obviously. But it will not be anything anybody, educators or committee members want to experience. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. And can't you just print some new teachers and those hard to find subjects? That and chemistry.
[Paul Ruseau]: And those were filled. Oh, great. Wonderful. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I would like to amend that to the first meeting in February of 2024.
[Paul Ruseau]: The second reading, it can't be changed. It has to be changed to the first reading. So, I mean, we can have the second reading, but then if we change it, it becomes another first reading. So that's.
[Paul Ruseau]: Are you pleased?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I mean, I don't have any concerns, obviously, with the intent at all, but there's formatting issues. There's a sentence that says, take the following steps, and then immediately afterwards are definitions, which were clearly inserted in a place that wasn't the right place to insert them. So I don't have any problems with the definitions. It's just that as it reads, it would not make sense as a policy. So I think a half an hour, 40 minute, 45 minute committee of the whole will be done. Okay, I see the superintendent looking at me like you met this committee, have you met yourself. So I mean, but a one item agenda we've done that before, and it has been quick because we well I mean we're not probably going to get together and be like, we don't think we should do this policy that that's, you know, that makes it a long meeting, but I also think that there's probably nothing wrong or a violation for us to just send our comments off to member Hays, and And as long as we don't have a dialogue response that, you know, here's what we think, and then you make the changes and don't email us back so that we don't violate open meeting law is probably fine too. Although the numbers for employers, so I could go either way.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have the school committee conference the morning after the election, which is the best timing for that.
[Paul Ruseau]: backslash NPS 02155 dash org dot zoom dot us slash j slash 98989768948. And additionally, if you have questions or comments, they can be submitted during the meeting. If you don't want to speak, you can email me directly at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you're an employee, just indicate that, your question or comment, the agenda. is that we will be needing to discuss and revise the wellness policy which is policy ADF. for K-8 students and the resolution that sent that here was as approved by the committee on May 15, 2022, the wellness and policy ADF for K-8 students be sent to the rules and policy subcommittee for revision and that it be revised as necessary to ensure unrestricted free play recess is available to all K-8 children daily as part of their social and emotional well being, the curtailing of unrestricted free play recess shall be tracked. This information shall be returned to the school committee twice each year and be disambiguated by school, grade, gender, race, disability, and socioeconomic status. Subcommittee shall invite at least one teacher and administrator from grades K to five and six to eight as well as the director of student services or designee to ensure their views are considered. The current policy and recommended revised policy will be returned to this committee no later than the first meeting in November of 2022. So I'll take the roll real quick and then explain why we are doing this so very late. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rosado is present, two present, one absent. We have a quorum. So before we get into the details, so this is actually take three trying to do this. First time was just before we had some kind of a little health crisis called the pandemic. It wasn't little. And so we kind of delayed working on this because, well there was no recess because kids weren't in school, and there were much bigger fish to fry at that moment in time. And then last November we again Give it another try. And then we had the bullying policy, which kind of overtook this subcommittee for all of the winter and spring and summer. So here we are, try three. I think we're going to get it this time. So I am preparing for this meeting because while we did have some really good conversations last year in our November, I believe we had a meeting on November 16th or something like that. Forgive me for not having the exact date. And we had really excellent conversations, made a lot of engagement. that I don't want to rehash all of that. I don't think anybody here needs to rehash all of that. So we're not going to look at the news articles or watch a video of why recess is important. I don't think anybody here needs to really be convinced that recess is important for the social emotional stuff, classroom behavior after kids actually get proper free play recess, all the growth that I mean, Most of you here, or half of us here, are educators. I'm not one, but you all get that. So I think it's best if we get straight into the actual policy. Amber Graham, did you have something you wanted to say?
[Paul Ruseau]: It was, one second. And I, of course, did. November 16th is the date, I believe. 2022, honestly. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, great. So I went and looked at our current policy because the resolution from the full committee is to update that policy. I quickly realized that we were looking at another scenario for those of you that were present for that, not unlike our bullying policy, where we attempted to change the current policy for many meetings, and essentially we really only ever made progress when we just kind of flushed the old policy down the toilet and started over, and then we moved quickly. The current wellness policy, which I could share, but I don't I mean, well, actually I will share it, has language that is clearly was in, there must've been a law passed, I'm guessing in 2021 based on some of the, where's the share?
[Paul Ruseau]: The current policy on our website doesn't read like a policy. It, like the bullying policy, it reads like there was some legislation and people copied and pasted from somewhere. And, you know, there's like WIC said to do this. There's a whole section in here where there's the whereas, which is, Right here, whereas, like this reads like a resolution. And then when I read this policy, there's a couple of interesting things that are sort of like surprising. Like our goal is that the Medford public schools reach phase N. So like that was supposed to be filled in with a number of all nine elements within a five-year period. There's no date on this. So that five-year period, I've been here for six years, so that five-year period long since it's passed. And there are not policies on all of these things. So this is the current language, and I'd like to just make a motion, frankly, that we, rather than beat ourselves to death with that, existing language, which is not like the current model language from our association. A current model language from our association actually makes sense. So maybe we did this when there wasn't a model, but I'd like to make a motion that we do not try to amend the current language and that for the purposes of this meeting, that we simply move on and treat the current model language as our starting point for our deliberations to craft a new policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sort of a couple of answers to that. Let me put this other thing that's causing my learning a couple answers there. So I didn't look up the law, but I do remember from our previous director of nursing. Tony, that the law required that the wellness policy be re-approved every, I believe she said every two years, and obviously we should find that out. Now, you can see on my screen, you can see my screen, correct? That there's in the policy naming convention, numbering convention, if you will, is these letters. And there's the sort of the high level, well, the highest level thing is foundations, but then wellness. And then you can see these dashes, where essentially, these are pieces that have been brought out into their own quote policy. But Your point is, of course, very accurate. Like we used to, I don't know if anybody remembers, but maybe a year ago, we had what was called a school attorney policy and we renamed it. I mean, because the law required a school attorney policy, but we're pretty sure nobody was coming for us if we renamed it to make it make sense that it was the district attorneys or the school committee's attorneys. So I think we can probably get away with renaming it. if it's not going to cause problems down the line where, you know, people are like, we have to have a wellness policy. I mean, we can literally put it in the language somewhere that, you know, if there's a legal reference that says school districts will have a quote wellness policy, then we put that in the legal references. And I think that's fine. But whether they're all in one giant policy or in sections, I think we can break them up into sections. So that's my take. I said there were two things I wanted to talk about on that, and I've already forgotten what the other one was. So does anybody else want to talk on that before I take the roll, too, so we can stop looking at the old one?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. The current MASC policy, they updated theirs in 2022. So theirs is quite fresh. They have no subcategories. But their policy, which we will get into in a minute, is really quite high level. And some of these things like nutrition education, like I'm on the HECAT. There's like, what is that, 10 lines? That's not a lot, but how much of our health curriculum is really gonna be in policy? None of it, frankly, should be in policy. So I don't know whether this is too small or too big, but I do know that the current policy we have is, it's not enforceable or implementable because it's not written as a policy. It's written as a, I don't know what to call it to be. fair and nice and appropriate on a public meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: MSC has not the word allergy does not exist in any MSC model language so we're a bit on our own there, but I know that. Director Heinz and some other folks have been working on language which we will have another meeting specifically for that. Because it's there's no policy recommendation from MSC on this. on allergies, my gut tells me we would actually make it a subcategory under the wellness policy. But we'd have to look, I guess we'd have to look at all of the rest of the naming conventions to see where the right place is. Policies can also go in multiple locations when that's appropriate too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I've already was communicating with them today, actually.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, the answer is, unlike with the city council, ordinances actually have to be reviewed by the state. It won't surprise anybody here that nobody really seems to care that much. that we can, for the most part, do things any way we want, as long as there isn't a specific law saying we have to do it a certain way. And, you know, the language in our current one reads a bit like, you know, that Congress will establish new requirements that all school districts with a federally funded school meals program develop and implement wellness policies that address nutrition and physical activity. I mean, that might be the full extent of the law. Or I mean, that doesn't look like a law, but you know, the laws aren't typically being passed that give us enough detail. And that's where we're sort of on our own. But I think if there's no other questions, I'd like to move on so we can get to the policy. I have to take a roll call if there's no other questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, are you reading my notes before I've even had a chance to say those things out loud? Those are my motions I'm gonna make after we get this one done.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member McLaughlin is absent, so okay. So all that is doing is sort of resetting in our meeting here what we're gonna start with for text. to actually accomplish the goals. I might as well get those other things out of the way. So since never gonna mention them, ADF-R is also... Hi, how are you? Hi Joan, you're unmuted. Oops, sorry. Thank you. So this one here is also, this is like very strange thing. I agree specifying the software we're going to get rid of, we're going to use like it. This, this might have been a document that made sense the day we all started somewhere in the past with a like hey we need to care about this stuff but so I'd like to make a motion to rescind the ADF dash our policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. And why on earth would my own computer not know how to spell my name? Member Ruseau, yes. And Member McLaughlin is absent. Okay, and then the next one is the odd, it's very odd.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. And let me just bring it up so people know what it is we're doing. This is literally just the law. It is the law. I went and looked at the law earlier today. This is the text of the law. A policy, it doesn't make any sense that a policy is the text of the law.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then the last one is the appendix, which is an entire bizarre, it says that we already have in place all of these policies, which I don't know if that's true, but also that's not a policy. That's what the links between policies are for. So just from a perspective of less is more here, I'd like to make a motion to rescind that one, too.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'm going to close the policy here. So I've taken the text of the current MASC policy, since looking at it in this window isn't really any fun, and I have moved it into a Google Doc so we can work. And prior to the meeting, I went through and I fixed some of the, I use Grammarly, so I fixed some of the grammar mistakes in our model language that we were handed. And I added the policy reference the policy information as we have a policy thing we'll have that information I put that at the bottom. I just want you all to know I did that so that you know when this comes out of here you're not like that's not what we did. I've also highlighted the things that I've suggested crossing out. There are three policies in the current MASC policy manual that they say are related. In fact, EFC is not that. IHAMA is not that and KI is not that. So I've emailed them and they're going to be fixing their policy service to correct that. So I don't believe there are related policies right now that are relevant. But I just wanted you to note that I was taking those out because Those are literally not what those policies are in our policy manual or theirs. So they have a little hygiene issue there with their database maintenance. The other thing I have done ahead of time since, oh wait, nope, that was all I did. And so I'm just going to go to the top real quick. I'm not going to read this line by line because we will If we finish it today, we will be sending it to the full committee and everybody can read it. But there's really so this is the interest. There's a couple of things that I think are particularly interesting. That we will have a wellness committee. I will admit I did not look to see in the law, whether that's required, but I kind of wonder if this is ring bells to folks. Is this something you know the districts like of course as a wellness policy committee. And do we just have a different name. looking for anybody in the administration?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, so we can just include it and then worry about it being implemented as another, you know, that's what the superintendent in her office does. And if in the future we decide we need to scratch it or whatever, then we can make that change now rather than digging through the law. But I found it interesting that MASC had this as part of their model language. And it's a very interesting committee. It's got a One parent, guardian, which I will change to caregiver, because that's what we use here. And student, nurse, school food service representative. We call ours the food service department. School committee member, school administrator, member of the public, and other community members as appropriate. And we doesn't really say what they'll be, oh, implementation and evaluation of this policy, okay. It's kind of strange to really have a policy saying somebody other than the superintendent will implement our policies, because that's sort of like, isn't that how it's supposed to work?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, it's important to note that when the meeting is over, we have to stop looking at the document because that would be an OML violation.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, that's a, we'll have a whole meeting on that specifically. So, yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I like that approach as well. We have a member of the community that would like to speak. Shanine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent, thank you. Yeah, so I think, so let's, I mean, we don't really decide that, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Based on the feedback we got yesterday about the bullying policy and how it was like people could use it, I'm pretty hopeful about a new allergy policy, but I say a new allergy policy, but like there is no allergy policy. If you look at our allergy in our current policy service, I mean, as I think everybody here knows, like when a school district must have policy, if the school committee does not speak on that by saying, this is our policy, then the policy is whatever the superintendent says. And so I'm not saying that there's nothing in the district that cares about allergies. I just mean that there's no school committee policy on it. Um, just don't invite to think that it's a complete free for all. Um, so, um, I, I like those changes and I don't see any reason not to just accept them. Um, and we haven't approved this as a thing to really be amended. So I'm going to just click. To accept them rather than, uh, come back and look at this Google doc in the future and be like, what did we say? Um, agree.
[Paul Ruseau]: And so the school committee designating the individual as the, I just want to scratch that entirely.
[Paul Ruseau]: That doesn't make sense.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, so next we have the national guidelines, excuse me, nutrition guidelines.
[Paul Ruseau]: So what I'm gonna do is just literally have nutrition,
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Well, yes, I am. Okay. You know, I find it so interesting that there's nutrition guidelines, but then there's nutrition and physical education and it's like, Is it called nutrition and physical education nowadays or is it like dietary? Like, is it, are we still using the word nutrition? Is that not up to date on that stuff?
[Paul Ruseau]: So let's just skip that one for now. So this nutrition education, it's interesting that they're, recommendation is actually like, we can't use this language. This is like, hey, maybe you want to consider some of these goals. And so I'm a little bit confused on this one, because we just want all of this stuff, right? Isn't this a bit, I mean, I don't know what to do with this section here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, because in the heat cap, we've talked a lot about nutrition and diet and culturally appropriate ways of teaching that kind of stuff. And so I would be a little uncomfortable with being prescriptive in this. Do any of the educators here have, I mean, nutrition is integrated into health curriculum and core curriculum. Like, yeah. I just don't know. Getting back to like our bullying policy, like we took it from this giant thing and made it a lot smaller. And if we want people to read the policies, they cannot go on and on about stuff that is irrelevant to knowing what we are expecting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's just do the physical education because it is the last section, and then we'll go and add them will get to the point of why we're here recess. Because physical education activities to me has nothing to do with recess. So let's get that through. And Jenny, are you going to pop in what Linfield has? Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, it does make it longer for no reason.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, exactly. I think I'd get rid of 11.
[Paul Ruseau]: So four and five, I'm just going to go to the bottom of this and put it in the same document. as things we want to incorporate into there. I like that, you know, we just use the word recess and then the policy can hyperlink over to the recess policy instead of everywhere we use the word, we painfully define it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Who's speaking? Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I thought so, but I just wanted to be sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I think, you know, the concept of logical consequences is not logical. I say I'm going to do something. Well, it can be. It can be. But if I say I'm going to do something, if you do that, it is not logical that I punish you the way I said I was going to punish you. That's not the logic. The logic is that the thing you did is related to the punishment, not because I said so. And I think, I mean, I don't know if this is a professional development issue or what, but, you know, The example of, that we were just discussing, like we're in recess, there's a behavior that requires remediation of some way that just can't continue as is. That isn't, in my mind, the principal source of this conversation. It is, you didn't do your homework, so you're going to sit in class during recess and do your homework. And even if you told the kids that's what you're going to do, that's not a logical consequence. you know, those are the kinds of things that I have heard of, and I have heard of them in Medford. Now, I don't have elementary kids anymore, so I can't speak to the last couple of years, especially during the pandemic. But, you know, that sort of was the motivation for this entire policy coming here around recess was that it was, you know, some teachers were more willing to just take recess away for reasons that They're not that they weren't valid reasons to have a consequence. That is not what I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that the consequence wasn't related to recess and leads, you know, the research, which we are not going to go through again today, is clear. Like, literally, you know, you're biting your nose to spite your face, whatever that saying is. I'm sorry. I'm terrible with those. it doesn't have the consequence that anybody actually wanted, not to mention the consequence on the kids. So I'm fine with moving this entire part to the recess conversation and policy, which will be a sub-policy, just so we can keep moving.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will remember those when we're all not staring at the screen together, because I don't know what that just did.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the next section is the, did anybody else have anything they wanted to say? I didn't mean to like, just like rush through that. I just feel like since we're taking a whole new policy to start from scratch, time isn't our friend.
[Paul Ruseau]: I feel like athletics, I just worry about pulling that, partially because I know so little about athletics, I'll be honest. But I think the athletics, meaning not during the school day athletics, is one of those areas where it's like, what is a school activity? What is not? Where are rules and authority go? I just get sort of, frankly, a little confused.
[Paul Ruseau]: And for number seven, do we also want to say slash GVL guidelines, because that's not part of MIAA, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Perfect. Less is more. Thank you. All right. Let's move on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. So... Hello.
[Paul Ruseau]: No worries. So... We are on B, physical education. So just a super one minute, what we've been doing. We looked at the current policy. It is sort of like the bullying policy, could not be resuscitated. And so we had gone to the model language from MASC. and we have been making modifications from there. And sort of like the bullying policy, our wellness policy looked frankly a lot like something that may have been created the day that the law somewhere was passed or something. It wasn't really a policy. So we are now working our way through that model language and incorporating changes from other districts that looked good, rather than writing from scratch. So we are on to the physical education section. So I'm looking at the amount of time, physical education, we required subject in K to 12. Elementary 75 minutes per week, full year, middle 90 minutes per week. I don't think this is how we do it though, because we, no, I didn't think so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I'll let those hands up and speak in a moment, but my preference around this is to, you know, after number one, you know, comma in compliance with state requirements or something along those lines, because those do change. I know there's a health curriculum. update coming down that we have to redo this policy just because they've said no, not 20 minutes, you need 21. But that's just my take on it. I don't know whose hand went up first, but I'll go with Mr. Tucci.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, and thank you and Dr. Cushing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. What are you material reductions in total minutes per week? Oh, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin, you broke up hardcore when you were just speaking.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Dr. Cushing, could you do that? I'll put it in the chat. Thank you. Dr. Cushing, I think you'll have to do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I happen to like that because, yeah, nothing being done wrong here, but we will, as school committee members, hear from parents if this happens. So I would, if we can get ahead of it, that's always a good thing. Dr. Cushing?
[Paul Ruseau]: It sounds good to me. Looking at the suggested changes, I don't see any reason to not accept those unless anybody else does.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I can just jump in, this is a very strange, I mean, this means like a senior who doesn't have enough physical education and is in a car accident, we're not gonna let them graduate. That's what this says.
[Paul Ruseau]: What? No. Oh, it says except to. I'm sorry. I thought it meant include. Oh, no. OK. But this to me, it feels like it's really getting at how. Many of our students on IEPs, frankly, do miss an awful lot of things. I don't know if PE is among them. I think it is. I know it is from my own child's experience that health curriculum just didn't get taught because there were only so many hours a day and so many services that needed to be done. I'm wondering if that's not what the point of this is. I would also wonder very much like, so how does Linfield manage it then? Like, you can't not give a kid reading services because they need health education.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just heard what you just said, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I mean, when I read this, like if a student has, well, social emotional needs, like if their IEP had something about that was a social emotional need. They cannot go to gym class. Right, then that would be acceptable. But I just, I don't know what this is getting at. And I just don't know what this is getting at because it's very, very, watered down if the real issue here is we need our students on IEPs to get this education like everybody else. Like, you should just say that. Instead, it's this like murky thing that isn't even addressing that issue at all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I would just say that, you know, I actually think three and four mixed together makes sense because this is policy. It's not supposed to be like, hey, do whatever you want. And what's the point of the policy?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Tucci.
[Paul Ruseau]: Forget the word, get rid of except.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not really following exactly. I know at the high school, if you take the vocational rotation, you don't have the art requirements or the language requirements. I believe the principal has to sign off on those exemptions. But I think in this particular context of this policy, we're trying to lay down that
[Paul Ruseau]: I think I'm understanding you now. I'm sorry, I'm a little slow there. So like you're saying like exemptions to any kind of class.
[Paul Ruseau]: that we should probably have a policy on that. I don't know if we do, but we perhaps don't. That really is more that, first of all, could be more specific in the language and take into account lots of different scenarios rather than trying to craft one sentence that somehow magically covers everything. And then the sort of the corollary to that is by putting this in here, we run the risk of having policies where in one policy the exemptions are done this way and another policy the exemptions are done that way. And then we already have enough trouble with policy hygiene. I certainly, I sort of see that point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Dr. Cushing.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yeah, I was just gonna add that. Sorry, go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just, the word entitled there. I mean, they're entitled there. IEP may say they don't have to take it, but they're still entitled to it. if there's a way to provide them with that. So I think the word entitled becomes a problem there because, I mean, I think the point is made. I just don't think the word entitled, I mean, you have an entitlement or you don't, there's no exceptions to entitlements.
[Paul Ruseau]: I also just worry about, you know, being as specific as an approved IEP or 504. I mean, there's the students whose family has had a horrible tragedy, or there's the homeless student who this isn't gonna work for, for some reason. To me, there are lots of things for which there may not be an IEP or 504 because maybe there's no family to provide the kind of supports to get that stuff rolling. I don't know, I'm just concerned about putting required things that have to happen in order for a student to be excused from this, that just adds paperwork and a bunch of opportunity for students to, for instance, I'm not going, and then they just get asked, and then they become a dropout risk, and that's not a positive outcome. Ms. Bowen?
[Paul Ruseau]: I like remember McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you guys know? Can you see my screen? Yeah. Okay. I never know when I share, if I'm just sharing the tab or the whole enchilada. So this is the current, this is the Massachusetts law, chapter 71 something, it's too small for me to read. It has to be taught in all grades.
[Paul Ruseau]: No. I think that's elsewhere.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, we are way over time, I apologize, and I'm sure many of you have been working since a very early hour. So I just wanna see if there are any things we can check off here so we don't have to rehash those conversations the next time we bring this up. This is the addition of the words, all students are entitled to. I think that sounds good, unless there's any objections to that. I think I can live with this sentence as it's written and we will have to revisit this anyways. So I like that. I like the by grade edition that's. Good since they're not the same. i'm not going to do my grammarly changes and then we cut these two out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, all we have left in this is this other school based activities which we may not keep or may. and then evaluation, which I have not actually read what that says. And then we will take up, remember McLaughlin, the other thing we did discuss before you came on was that in some of the policies and the policy manual, there are sub policies. And we agreed earlier that we would move to recess to a sub policy. So EDF dash, whatever the right letter should be. And then we would also move the, Well, we did discuss what was the other one. Give me. We're going to move another. Oh, the allergy policy will go as a sub policy as well, rather than injecting it into this this policy here. So those are the things we will do at our next meeting. I don't actually feel like I have any to do's. So I just want to remind the members that For open meeting law, we can continue to look at this, but we should not be typing into this document at all until we are in our next meeting since we cannot deliberate outside of the meeting by sharing our thoughts on policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Is there a motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. And Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Katz. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bestone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, I'll just volunteer to do that so that six of us don't send the same thing to the next agenda. The school committee. Yeah, so I'll just volunteer to do that. I'll be putting it on the agenda next time, so we'd all know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Either nobody does it or everybody does it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Orso? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: members. So yes, Maryland occur.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kress?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hussow? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think this report is not interpreting the data correctly. We received the raw data as well. Under cultural awareness and action, the questions were students at this school are teased or picked on about their race or ethnicity. And 31% of our students said they agreed with that. So the actual Favorability would be 69, not 31. It's more favorable that that is not true. Correct. We do not want more kids teasing and picking on students about race or ethnicity. And the same is for the other question in that category, which says, students at this school are teased or picked on about their cultural background or religion. 7%
[Paul Ruseau]: 69% of our students said that is not true.
[Paul Ruseau]: So whether the question is a positive or a negative, we've in this report, we've just taken the top two and given it the favorability. If we look at the end, we have a question like, my teachers often connect what I am learning to life outside the classroom. And 54% of our students said that was true. And that's a 54% favorability. We want more of that, not less. When we look at the question about the one I was just reading, we do not want more students to say that students are teased and picked on. So the word favorability implies that's what we want, right? Favorability does not mean you want more of what's favorable. And that is listed in the red. I think this, this graphic that's showing areas for growth. Well, first of all, everything's sort of an area for growth. But if you look at student strength, school belonging, the questions are in a positive. So that isn't wrong. I'm just saying that the way the questions are formulated, the data is not being interpreted based on how the question is being asked. I mean, you ask the same question, a positive and a negative, and you get the same answers, that would be a very different and concerning thing. So I'm not sure that the report that you're presenting is reflected in the data that we received and it's not shown on the screen, so I apologize to the folks at home.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly don't think that's good. I'm just saying that from a raw data perspective, we have just chosen the agree and strongly agree And those are what we called good forgiving scores. We have a list of scores that we got. Those scores are, there's no reason to have any scores if they're not going to actually be meaningful in relationship to each other, and they're not. This says 90% for school engagement. That could be good, that could be bad, depending on how the question was asked. So we don't give grades out and be like, your A in this class might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing in this class. And your D in this class might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing. Like there's a point to the scores meaning something. And so maybe if we just got rid of all of these percentages, that might make sense. But by including them, it just is a very weird thing to have a report that seems to be mixing and matching what's considered good.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Longo, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mestone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mestone is on the phone. Yes?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone is absent. Members herself? Yes. And Mayor Long-Leclair?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, thank you. I really appreciate the clarity of all of this, I especially want to say I'm. The foresight about having one individual who's present across the houses. You know we've had issues where the same thing implemented across the houses hasn't been implemented in the same way so having that person there who will. have the experience of having done it in the other houses is fabulous will save us from the, the challenge we were certainly going to face in the future so I appreciate that. I also appreciate that this was actually, you know, the, the, the losing credit. That's not new. And I can't even remember but I think that's actually even more strict than this but I, so I appreciate that that is that the goal of this is not, you know, to penalize anybody it's to recognize that. you're not actually in the classroom, even if you're a high-performing student and you're not in the classroom, you will come to class and not know what was just spoken about. And just like with out-of-school suspensions, when we did that, the students who are not there, when they come back to class, diminish the education of every student in that room. And it doesn't matter if they were A students, They still don't know what happened, and they're going to use up those very important minutes to find out what did they miss. So I appreciate your approach to this. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm very excited about the grant. And I, this morning was reviewing our policies on our website, and our current policy DD does not reference this even though we passed a policy. Last year that are two years ago. Requiring that we approve grants, because we were concerned about some strings attached to grants in the past, obviously this is not that case, but just kind of a heads up in the future that grants have to be approved here. And obviously you don't have to get approved because it's already done and the money's coming but just in the future like we want to. make sure we, you know, the situation in particular was when we got the abstinence only grant from many years ago, which tied the district from teaching our students what they should have been taught. So clearly, this is not that kind of situation. But I just want to make sure there's a heads up that like, if you find more money to apply for grants for which we're obviously very happy to find money that we do need to have a say to make sure we agree that it's not something wacky. I mean, I don't expect Desi to actually be putting out grants that are going to be concerning. This was a grant from some private institution. So, but just a heads up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, just a quick question. Thank you. I ate by 12 by what I'm confused by a two dimensional already thought of that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, right, because I mean there's some really cool backpacks that are in fact very tall, and have a very small footprint to get around the airport security but The issue of, you know, we have three minutes between classes, correct? Which must be, is there any school with a smaller number than three minutes? Three minutes is mighty quick. My school was four growing up, a very large school, and four felt utterly impossible. And, you know, last year we had many students without lockers. My own ninth grader at the time didn't have a locker because we had a, environmental issue that closed the section of lockers. And, you know, she was dragging around everything in her backpack because there were no lockers. And then when she got another locker, it was not anywhere near where her classes were because all those lockers were gone. So I, you know, based on this other stuff about, you know, kiosks for passes, like, you know, putting Chromebooks in the house, offices, instead of all centralized, like you're clearly capable of handling all of these, like, minutiae, which make things work or not work, frankly. So I look forward to hearing about how we can find a way at changing the, you know, how much teachers are expecting kids to carry is, frankly, sounds like a harder thing to do. You know I mean teachers who taught for a long time like we have this, this is what we do and this is how it works and asking teachers to really redesign that. in the middle of a school year sounds very hard. I wouldn't want to be asked to do that. So figuring out, you know, the locations that I, you know, I did not go to Medford High and I've been there enough times over the last few years to know that it's quite large. And I don't know whether students schedules have them running from one end of the building to the other. My reports from my 10th grader is that she in fact after lunch is impossible to get to class and locker room. So before lunch has to plan to take everything to lunch that will be used after lunch, because it's not technically possible in her mind to get to her locker and get to class. So working that out, I just hope that we're not being She did say like some teachers don't let you leave everything in their classrooms, which I mean, if I had a classroom, I wouldn't want piles of stuff everywhere either. But this feels like a very big problem with a thousand different scenarios. And if no backpacks is causing all of those scenarios to kind of come out of the woodwork and not work, I think finding some other, finding another way around that or something because, you know, kids carrying around and essentially an entire day's worth of books. And when I was a kid, I carried all of my books and binders for the whole day, all day long. And I wasn't the bigger kid than I am now. And I do remember it being ridiculous. You know, my calculus book was, you know, inches thick, my chemistry book, my bio, they were all massive textbooks. And the one thing I haven't really heard is why do we care so much if they have their backpacks? Because at college, you can bring your luggage with you, frankly, to classes. And I remember that from when I first went to college, kids brought luggage. Like, I just thought it was weird. And I'm like, whatever. So what's the sort of concern about them having backpacks? And if it's an uncomfortable thing to just say out loud, I'm happy to do it in an email.
[Paul Ruseau]: You said something just now, if I may. The incidents that have risen to this body's concern, I don't recall ever having to do with anything related to backpacks. So there may have been lots of other incidences that we don't hear about. So I guess I need clarification how backpacks are involved. the incidents we've heard about are frankly cell phone video cameras and you know and tiktok challenges and stupid things like that that frankly a backpack isn't relevant because that fits in the palm of your hand so what are the kinds of things where backpacks are a concern that are incidents that we're not hearing about for safety things that can be carried in them um i don't know you mean the concern the students are walking around with guns No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I would really love to hear more details maybe from staff about what are these incidences and concerns, but looking at our students as being potential dangers concerns me that staff would look at students as if they are a danger to them. It's sets up a relationship that is not healthy. And I'm not saying that there aren't staff that see students that way and I'm not saying that no student has ever not been a danger that would be ridiculous to suggest, but if that's the kind of the mentality and culture like that's concerning. You know, last year we heard an awful lot about we need metal detectors and, you know, You don't say that if you think your students are all sitting around, you know, at a Boy Scout thing chanting, you know, telling ghost stories. That's not the environment where you think you need metal detectors. So I just, this feels like a very concerning thing, because I've never heard yet a real reason why we don't want kids to have backpacks, when in every setting I can imagine, you carry what you need to carry. And it's not about you, because you just started, but it just seems a bit draconian to mandate something like that. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, before we start. Member Ruseau. We've asked this a number of times, and when the district gets long reports that we are going to have presented to us, could we please send them to the committee when you get them? This is 83 pages, and I don't know if everybody else spent their whole weekend reading it, but I didn't. And I would like the chance to really read it thoroughly and have good questions. before you all do your work. You all didn't get it on Friday to prepare for this meeting. And I just, I feel like we get these long reports and 83 pages is probably on the shorter side. And there's no harm in us getting it the moment you get it in your inbox from AIR. So can we try to remember to do that in the future? Because it's really a challenge for us to come. I'm not going to speak for everybody, but it's a challenge for me to come and be fully prepared for a very dense report that's huge. And I was one of those kids that could barely read for a long time. I'm a very slow reader. I cannot have gotten through this this weekend if my life was on the line. So thank you. I care so much about what's in this report, but I didn't read it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's see how far off I am. The motion is to schedule a committee of the whole on the several reports we have received to discuss the common themes to feed into our discussion of a successor strategic plan.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I believe, well, I believe we all get the emails from our association and I grew up in a rural school district of seven or nine districts, depending on my memory at the moment. And I lived the furthest from the school, my high school, which was a seven through 12, the entire time I went to seven through 12. So I was on a bus, when it was dark in the morning and I got off the bus when it was dark at night for a significant portion of the year. And so I remember very much the experiences of never participating in a single after school activity because there were no late buses. And so I certainly feel very akin ship to Earl to school districts, which, well, as a student, I certainly did not experience what the district in the administration we're going through or the towns trying to figure out how to fund it. But as a side becoming since becoming a school committee member. I've become very aware of how in rural districts there, there's their bill for schools can change to 300 400% every single school year I mean can you imagine if our, If we had to change the funding for Medford public schools, double triple a one year, and the next year was half. We conceptually can't even really wrap our heads around it. And that's what it's like in some of our rural districts in Massachusetts, especially the regional districts, where a tiny town may send one kid to school this year. next year it's three, the next year it's zero. So aside from the funding that the individual towns have to figure out, the idea that you like, this year we have a chemistry teacher, next year we fire the chemistry teacher, next year we need, it's incomprehensible what they go through in the rural parts of our state. And so the Student Opportunity Act had a, portion of it, requiring or suggesting I guess that the rural school funding, the looked at and amend and updated to try and help those districts and communities, and it hasn't happened. So this is a there there are several, two or three or pop out, it's the state house is probably 12, but there are several bills to to get this done this year. And this resolution is in support to push for this work to happen because these districts I mean, you can read about it it's truly heartbreaking, like can you imagine your property taxes oh they're doubling your property taxes this year. I mean, it's really wild. What's going on and right now so far from here a quick drive. So I this is a resolution to support pushing the state to get its button gear, because these, these students these school leaders, these teachers and these people that are paying the taxes in these communities are in just, it's just chaos, chaos, and Anything we can do to try and push on that I think we should do point of information point of information.
[Paul Ruseau]: I forgot that I did waive the reading, so that does, yes, thank you, Member McLaughlin. Without the reading, that was a little missing in that context, yes. So this is actually a resolution that we would send to the Joint Committee on Education to the Senate and the House, urging them to get this work done. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. Those are actually not subcommittees meetings. Those were actually special meetings and they're just filed on the agenda. And I'd motion to table those to the next meeting, because there are substantial edits that I think should be made.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I just wanted to. I've received I think my first email from that new blackboard system today from the principal of the high school and it was like we stepped into the next century it was clear it was formatted it was beautiful. And I know that in the past you all have worked on your Friday updates and you have your actual update was Nicely formatted, but then we had to send it out and it turned it into plain text and looked. Not what you wanted, so I was extraordinarily happy today with the message that I got that i'm pretty sure I came out of blackboard so I want to thank everybody that did that work because. I know it's not simple, but it makes a big difference as a parent when I received it, I could read the whole thing and. a short amount of time. And I didn't get lost and endless text so it was fabulous. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Member Ruseau. Thank you. So I'm beyond thrilled. I mean, we finally have universal free meals and that's been something I've been harping on continuously for nearly six years. So I'm very excited that that's there. I look forward to hearing how that affects your budget and, you know, You have enough work to do today, but someday it'd be nice to know how that, because I've certainly received questions like, how does that change how much money is there to spend in the food services department? And that's not a question for now. But I do want to also say that.
[Paul Ruseau]: So hopefully more people will be eating more meals.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I did receive several unsolicited texts, and I Honestly, I did not think that already the food would be better because you started like eight weeks ago, six, seven weeks ago, not long ago. Yeah. And, but I did receive several unsolicited texts from parent friends of mine who were like, I don't know if it's possible, but my kids have already said the food is better. And then someone who's a para at one of the elementary schools says, yeah, there's, there's fresh food to eat, like fresh fruits and vegetables. And I just was like, dearly in tears with happiness. It's like if after less than two months, this is what we have moved towards. I'm beyond excited for what's to come. So thank you so much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to suspend the rules and take item... Once I find the item number. Four. Item number...
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I thought it was going to be one of these.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do a roll call or just a favor to take number four out of order.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to thank you I just want to be clear so the report will include both the how to get all the parts that are in this report functioning, but it will also include, which is really, I mean, they're both interesting, but, you know, you can't just replace the R32 with something else in the current system, you tear the old system out of the building and put a new one in, is what I think we've talked about in the past. You know, when I did the math and assumed $50,000 per piece of equipment for each thing here, it was nearly $1.5 million just to get the current equipment running minus charging it, which makes me shudder a bit at what it would cost to tear these systems out of the schools and put new systems. I mean, I just, that report is gonna tell us in today's dollars what that would be?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor Longo, present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I'll second the motion, of course. And I wanna thank Jerry for, not volunteering, but for raising his hand. I look forward to someday to retiring myself. So I hope nobody's calling me and asking me to raise my hand after I retire, but I greatly appreciate that you did. I look forward to meeting you as well. And as I said, I second that motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin, absent. Member Mestone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Longo, present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Never gonna stop.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember? So yes, Maryland go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, did I not call, I'm sorry, I marked her, yes, sorry. You did. Oh, good. The mayor, are we returning afterwards to public session or not?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion to suspend rule 46, which is, since you all probably don't have it up in front of you, it's the rule that we wrote that requires a second reading, because I don't know if anybody wants to come back in a week or two. And I don't. And also because the policy is, frankly, relatively minor changes at best.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll just read the rule. Rule 46 states the first time that a policy recommendation appears on the agenda, the school committee will hear public comment on the item and engage in discussion and comment on the policy recommendation hereafter referred to as the first reading. The policy of pass will be placed on the next regular meeting agenda hereafter referred to as the second reading. In accordance with provision of rules, provisions of rule 75, the school committee may suspend this rule to adopt the policy upon first reading. A policy that is affirmed by majority vote on the second reading or upon suspension of the rules will become the policy of the school committee immediately upon another date as specified. So this is not to quell any conversations at all. This is merely so we do not have to return here in August, which we have to-
[Paul Ruseau]: The motion is to suspend Rule 46 by me and seconded by Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone is absent, sorry. Member Rossell, yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members are only people allowed to make motions. No offense to our superintendent members should make motions by stating the motion. Um and know what they're saying is their motion. I'm trying to take minutes here so we can take votes and I have people like making suggestions and comments. This is a public legislative body. We are making motions to modify policy. We are not having a conversation about my opinions of this, that, and the other, and what websites say what. So if members could do their jobs and make motions so that I can write the minutes and we can take legally binding votes, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I did have my hand up to speak before we took the last motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, when I joined the committee in 2018, we were assigned our subcommittees and I was, you know, a new member and very excited. And Paula Van der Kloot, member Van der Kloot, who served with us for 30 years, leaned over and said, I really shouldn't need to be excited because subcommittees don't meet. And I was confused. And she said, subcommittees don't meet because the committee cannot trust each other ever. So every member would either come to every subcommittee I don't know if it was the subcommittee that had to make it a regular full meeting. I've been very proud of the fact that this committee has figured out how to trust each other in subcommittees. I do think it's important to remember that we can vote against things, but finding a consensus isn't necessarily an option. And I hope everybody will vote no if you are not okay with the policy. But when a subcommittee recommends it, it is assumed that the subcommittee spent an inordinate amount of time that cannot happen on the floor to come to the policy that they reported out, the policy recommendation.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I continue?
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly met just to respond to remember a lot when I do not expect that the subcommittee thinks of everything. And that's why I think it's good practice remember just to come with a, I'd like to make some motion to change this to that, or insert this language here that we are an hour and 20 minutes into. an agenda that is to approve or not the policy. It is not to write a new policy. And we have strayed from that so wildly, it's kind of impressive. And, you know, again, nobody has to vote yes. If you just think this isn't right, this isn't legal, or whatever your other reasons are, vote no. I urge you to vote no. I would vote no in a second if I didn't believe the policy was good. And it would not, even if I thought my colleagues did great work to come to a policy decision. So that's all I just wanted to say is that I hope we're not on the road towards never having subcommittees again, because if this is how we have to do every policy, I'm not sending stuff to subcommittee. I'm gonna bring it to the floor and we're gonna spend four hours talking about everything. It just slows the amount of work we can get done down dramatically. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I need the motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. Member McLaughlin, I'm not sure where the quotes and commas start.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone, absent. member. So yes, Maryland. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember so, yes, Maryland.
[Paul Ruseau]: to remove, we've moved on to just using caregivers under all circumstances instead of- Yes, yes, please, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just was, the prior to investigation part of that, I'm sorry for having just put it into the motion, into my minutes. That does imply that there will be no investigation. You know, this happens first period. There will be no investigation that whole day until the report has made its way to the parents. the caregivers. And I'm worried that administrators will, first of all, just simply violate it because it seems nearly impossible, but also it just, if they did follow it, the quality of the investigation, I would imagine would be degraded.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd have to grab them and look at them right this second, but is there not a lot of content that ends up on an incident report that is the result of the bullying investigation? I'm just trying to imagine how this will play out. The clock is ticking and I'm just worried about creating some kind of weird, situation and I'd like to hear from an administrator who would know how this would work in real life, because I don't, but we spent a lot of time subcommittee caring about that so yeah and I guess I would say I would like to move the question and I'm happy to revise it to within 24 hours of.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. This is the third motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Which one?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you withdraw the motion to move the question first? That has all precedence in Robert's rules.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I take the roll call? Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Who was the first and second on this one? I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McGrath.
[Paul Ruseau]: Not member McCracken, sorry. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone absent. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Landau-Kern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Mustone absent members. So yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone-Absent. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Here. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The bullying, excuse me, the rules and policy subcommittee has met five times over the course of the past winter and spring to update our bullying prevention and intervention policy, plan policy. This proposed policy represents many hours of work in and out of meetings, drafting and redrafting language, researching how other school committees have written their policies, reading and rereading the law. And I am proud of this work product before us tonight. I see all policy as a statement of direction for our district leadership. Policy is not written in stone. This policy is not perfect. No policy ever is. Therefore, it is imperative that policy be regularly reviewed and based on actual outcomes, it should be changed so that the goal of the policy can be achieved. I want to thank the members of the Rules and Policy Subcommittee. Member McLaughlin, Member Graham. I also especially want to thank Vice Chair Graham for her work to generate a new policy document rather than trying to transform our old policy document, which is how we tried to make that go. But without her effort to sort of hit the blank page and start over, I think we would still be having meetings on this policy. I also want to thank our administration and principals that took the time to share their experiences and insights, especially Principal Tucci of the Morgan Middle School and Assistant Superintendent Peter Cushing. And finally, I'd like to thank the community members that were at every one of these meetings, especially Nicole Bramley, who single-handedly forced this policy into the crowded policy space of the school committee and helped us to understand from the caregiver perspective what was right and what was wrong with our policy. I am deeply sorry that this attention to this policy required an incident that we all know too well. I am hopeful that this new policy will allow the Medford Public Schools to move forward with clarity on bullying prevention and intervention. I am also hopeful that this drastically improved policy provides some resolution to Ms. Branley and to those who have experienced bullying, and in many ways it harms our community and our students we serve. And with that, I'd like to make a motion to amend line 261 to remove the random period that is sitting in between a couple of words.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, you can answer those.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member Kreatz. Target is used in the law in a bunch of places, but I would agree that Target is not in the definitions. So, looking at the law right now, they don't have a definition for it. They have definitions for all kinds of things, then they use words that they don't have definitions for. So I would agree that we would want to amend it to have some kind of definition to describe what target means. I would say that I don't think I can do that on the fly right now. So I mean, we want I would certainly be happy to put a motion on for our first meeting in September to amend the policy with a definition if that's acceptable to Democrats.
[Paul Ruseau]: understood, but it's also the law that this information cannot be handed down. And that's a pretty old law at this point. Whether a principal, I mean, this is in relation to bullying though. And so I don't know what, at the early elementary level, how that is handled. I assume it would be handled a little differently than it does for high school seniors, but I don't envision that this restricts any of that in any other way other than making it clear that, in case there was any confusion, that you can't get a phone call saying, your child was bullied and here's the name of the kid that did it. That's a clear violation of the law, not even regulation. So whether or not, if your kid knows the name, which, I mean, it seems hard to imagine a kid doesn't know the name, how did there get to be a report? you know, the kids, your child's gonna tell you their name. And when you talk to the school, you might use the name and the school is going to respond as if that is, could be a name, it might not be the name. They're not supposed to be responding that anything about that other student, at least their identity. So I know that isn't always a great time when you're the parent of the target victim. whatever word is appropriate, but that's definitely not new.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. The word power occurs is listed in the law seven times. Power differential is listed. I'm happy to share my screen if somebody wants to, doesn't believe it. I mean, I'm on the mass legislature.gov website looking at the law myself. Power differential is actually discussed. And I don't know what to say other than that. I think it's worth noting that power differential is always implied. Otherwise, we're going to have no more sports teams. Because stuff that happens on sports teams between people who are hanging out and doing things on sports teams, if we don't have power differential in this equation, it's going to be considered bullying every day there. At least how I think happens at a lot of sports teams. Stuff that two people don't even think is bullying will be bullying because the policy requires that if an adult sees it, doesn't require that the students say they were bullied. So I think that's a very, very important thing to recognize that we have We have not required that the students say I was bullied. We have said our staff is responsible for seeing something that we believe based on the definition is bullying and acting. And that's the expectation. Frankly, that's the expectation I think that's always existed for school staff. I doubt anybody would disagree. But because of that, I think that the definition does have to be pretty darn airtight because part of the reason we're here is that everybody had an opinion on whether it was bullying. And then one person, the person who was dealing with it says it's not bullying. And then five other people in the administration look at it and go, How is that not bullying? And I'm not suggesting that the people who are making these determinations that things are not bullying are doing anything wrong. I'm saying they've had a pretty bad definition that is really hard to follow. So that's just trying to give some feedback on what we've talked about in our five meetings. But I certainly respect that the definition does look different. But the word power and power differential is in the law multiple times. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Our policy number 46 does say that we would have two readings. The first reading has to be approved for there to be a second reading. Okay, thank you. The second reading, my understanding is the second reading needs to be exactly what the first one was, what we voted it. So second reading is not an opportunity to come in to continue to amend. If we amend, then that's a new first reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to schedule a special meeting for Wednesday, July 12th at 4 p.m.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to schedule a special meeting for Wednesday, July 19th at 4 p.m.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I do believe that the committee received from our executive assistant on Monday, the materials, but I would like to just say that, well, I guess I can't say it because that's what we'll do in that meeting. So I would probably be discussing it without it being on the agenda. Nevermind. I will stop speaking. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: I said, am I saying mayor before everyone's saying member? I'm like, wait a minute. Sorry about that. I thought you were going to say Mia, Mia, Mia. No, Mayor Mustone, yes. Mayor Lungo, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Penny. I'm on the bullying stuff, how does that compare to the national averages.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have two questions. The first question is, I just, just a clarification. I mean, your work is for the city of Medford. So, you also work with non Medford public school students, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, good. I just want to make that clear. The survey data though is just a public schools, because you don't really have access to survey.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then my second question is actually for Ms. Schulman about how does this actually look in the public schools?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I don't know if I can answer that question. Just ask me a question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. As member Graham just mentioned that when we were, we were with Senator Jalen, it was, it was really kind of shocking to have students describing their state assessments as something where they, aside from being interesting, they were actually education going on. They were learning in the process of being assessed, which is sort of the definition of the opposite. It's like literally every other assessment given in school, as far as I can understand, there's no learning involved. It's the opposite. It's like, what's in there already? So to see these students describe it, it was, I mean, I honestly had not really thought about an assessment as possibly even being like that. So I certainly agree we should look into that. The other question, I did have a question though about, When we say a percentage of students, and forgive me, I'm sure we have gone over this a few times, percentage of students is meeting the growth that could also be set up the opposite, the corollary is that certain percentage of students are not meeting their growth, but meeting your growth and not meeting your growth, like you could just barely not be meeting growth and you would be in the, not counted in this number, But you could also be getting a 1% growth, and it's no different. And so I do worry a little bit about the focus. I mean, I was so happy by that 71% in reading. I'm so happy. I cannot wait to see what the next few years show. But for all the students that are not meeting growth, this data doesn't really these high level things do not say anything about whether they were just under the skin of their teeth, not meeting growth, or whether they were like, you know, totally a complete wreck. And from a school committee perspective, I feel like that's a really important thing. I'm sure it's an important thing for you all and for teachers, obviously, and for students, but is there a different view of the data that helps us understand that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And I think, speaking about MCAS again, it's like MCAS is like, there's a number and it's just very straightforward, frankly, to understand at all levels, but this is growth and we want everybody growing. So even if you're students in all AP classes, you know, nobody wants their kid to just be like, okay, you succeeded, you're done. And like, it's not a thing, you want to keep growing. So it is, it's a, it's a, I appreciate understanding that the, the high level reports are kind of harder to, I mean, that we have the one report really. And that conceptually, it's not, it's just not the same as MCAS and other things where you can just like, pick a number and say, that's the number. Thank you. I appreciate that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanna say yay, I'm so happy. It hurts for me to smile right now because of a dental thing, but I'm just very happy. I appreciate the countless hours of work that clearly has gone into this. And I wanna thank all the teachers that probably found this to be both I'm sure there was a little bit of a bittersweetness to it as well about understanding so much more about literacy than many of them probably did before. And I am very thankful for the willingness to do this hard work and just seeing that one number in the last presentation about ECRI after one year. I'm just very excited that we're on a path to 71% being a low number someday, and that we'll all be freaking out if we go down below 90 someday, you know? That's the goal. Yeah, exactly. And to put that in perspective, like 50% was good for the last generation or two. So I think that's very exciting, and I hope we can get all four of those literacy coaches Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I just, to continue what Member McLaughlin just said, you know, when we were in the, excuse me, when we were in the sessions, we definitely, we didn't focus on the next step because we had to finish the current step, but a number of the curriculums available have differentiation for students with disabilities, students with various language and cultural differences. And I know when we were choosing Was it our math curriculum that it, you know, all that stuff was just automatic and part of it and it's nice to see the curriculum providers are not like adding it on it's like a baseline for some of them at least that that's, you know, they go in, knowing and planning and expecting. which gets you a much better product. So while we haven't picked a curriculum and we haven't even reviewed them, I certainly, I know that from my experience on the HECAT committee and from the other members that there's lots of us that are paying very close attention to that, because we're not interested in just getting a curriculum that just meets the, you know, some stereotypical student, because frankly, nobody's a stereotypical student. So we will definitely not be, We won't be surprised at the end by that, we will definitely be taking that into consideration. I hope so I know you will. The other thing I when we were meeting. There was this issue of whether we. hire specialists in the sexual health education part, whether we train up existing people. And then the other option, which we didn't really explore a lot, but we did talk about briefly, was that there essentially are consulting companies that Like Planned Parenthood, that they have like a core of people that school districts hire to come around and do those sections of their curriculum because they are very specialized. And frankly, I can't fathom ever having to teach these parts of a curriculum. So I do hope that, you know, if As we start to train or as we post for positions to hire these people which I suspect are probably very few and far between that we consider this as an option because while it sounds a lot like outsourcing and I'm not a fan of outsourcing. This does seem like a situation where if there just are no people to do it, I'd rather us do it well, even if we're outsourcing, than to do it mediocre or worse by just trying to power through with our current staff that may not, I mean, if our staff do not want to teach this stuff, you know, we need to recognize that they were hired and they were teaching health curriculum, and it meant a very different thing. Obviously, I would like them to be able to, but the fact that something like Planned Parenthood actually has this as a thing that districts subscribe to tells me that This is not uncommon the district can't hire these people, or that their feature set of the kind of person that would teach this is different than a regular everyday teacher so I know I'm getting kind of far ahead of us on this, but I think it's important to note that it all likely we will need some money though that was kind of my main point here, we will need money, whether it's there there are some free curriculums whether or not they're the right ones for us. We'll have to figure out. even a free curriculum will require substantial professional development. And so I look forward to the next step because during this whole thing, we used this tool from the CDC and it was fine. It could have been a better tool. And one of the things that was most surprising for me is that we could actually just cancel all the rest of the education we do. The number of standards in health education could take up the whole school year, 12 years. Like we have to pick and choose the kinds of things we won't teach. So when you look through this list of things, you're like, yeah, we should teach that. Yeah, we should teach that. Before you know it, the whole day is just health education. And it's unfortunate, but we do have to say, okay, we're not gonna teach smoking stuff. And because when we look at the thing, not many kids are smoking anymore. And while we might intellectually be like we would like to teach, you know, the smoking stuff, and 20 years ago we definitely had to teach the smoking stuff, but we don't have enough hours in the day. So, those hard choices, this committee I thought was excellent at really like narrowing down and saying yeah, but there's only so many hours in a day. So, and I appreciate what director Perry said about, you know, some of these standards that are health education. Like when we think about math, we think of like in high school, at least there's the math class, but in elementary school, there's a lot more integration about the topics throughout the day. And I think that some of these health standards that we do wanna teach are gonna have to land in art and science and math and, you know, whatever other kinds of classes where they can actually happen. And some of them may already be happening there. We just have to really draw the line and then we can do the check mark that, you know, we cover the standard, not in our quote health curriculum, but we cover it. So it's an enormous amount of work. And I really appreciated your staff's work because we would come to the meetings and they would have done an enormous amount of work ahead of time to review what we currently do. So that we could respond and understand because if we could not have sat through our meetings where we're like. So do we do this? And then somebody goes off and finds the answer when we will be meeting for the next 20 years. So I want to thank the staff that really did all of that work, getting us ready for the meetings because it obviously was a lot of work. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I do want to remind this committee that for the first time ever, our new members will have a rule book. And I think it's a substantial change. We put an enormous amount of effort into it, but the new members when they like how do you put something on the agenda, the answer won't be you write an email explaining it, it will be look at rule number 42 or whatever it is. And. I mean, that'll be nice for those of us that are still here to not have to try to divulge all the knowledge that we've accumulated, but also it will, I think, will make a huge difference for new members. I mean, if I was getting elected in November, I mean, whoever gets elected in November, I'm certainly going to send them an email with a, hey, here's our rules so you can start reading because they are not a short, it's not a short list. But and most of them you don't need to really know you need to read it once and be done with it, but I think that will help a lot. It is true that, like the MASC training is critical and important for school committees in general, but they are not specific to Medford, which I do hope that the, you know, my intentions if I get reelected is to, you know, Latch myself onto the side of the new members brains and be like what do the rules not teach you that you need to know because it's. fresh eyes on something is impossible if you've already, I've already was already in office. So I'm hopeful that the next time around, these rules will become whether smaller or just better, so that we can parlay that into more onboarding kinds of documents instead of just, you know, kind of dry rules. I also want to point out that I I like the ideas of retreats I really do they would have to be in the city of Medford and they are open to the public, and when I think of a retreat no offense but that's not what I think of her as a retreat, I think of us all hold up in a hotel catered, you know, hanging out at the pool after we do our sessions together, and that isn't going to happen. Because unless only three of us go together. So I, I love the idea of a retreat. I don't love the idea of being in a speedo in front of a public members I wanted to show up and watch this talk. Don't worry I don't have a speedo. My point is just like that. I retreat I love the idea, but I think as member credits mentioned we have had. I think we might have called them retreats frankly but Yeah, but I think most of us might think of retreats, we don't think of Dorothy Presser in a room in the high school. And it makes me sad, but there's no carve out in the open meeting law for such a thing, unfortunately. So as for the dates, I have a slightly different opinion of the three in a row. Practice makes perfect. And I do one, and when there's multiple meetings in a row, they tend to be shorter. January being slower also. But also if they're every week I mean, we're going to have trouble filling up that agenda and making it a long night so I'm thinking that a new member, having three weeks in a row, which none of us are going to really like that. But three weeks in a row practicing, you know, Robert tools and relatively short agendas. I think it could be beneficial. in a kind of perverse way, frankly. So that I'm not opposed to the three weeks in a row being that it's January. If it was this three weeks in a row right now, I would like look at you all with laser eyes, like, how dare you? I can't do this another week in a row. But that's just my opinion. And I do think that like immediately after vacation, is too much because really the superintendent's office has to kind of do it two weeks ahead of time. And we can be assured of a very short agenda because nothing's really ready by then. So that's my thoughts.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, this is both law and policy already. So, I mean, it feels to me like we're at the point where we should perhaps included in the evaluation of the superintendent, but I also think it's important to point out that I do not believe a single district in the entire state of Massachusetts follows this law. And the reason we discussed extensively I think it was in February. that we cannot pay students by law. So we would either have to have school committee meetings during the school day to have them be there, which most of us cannot actually do that during the school day or take them out of class, frankly. And then by having it at night, we can't compel them to be here. So I'm just worried about us having five additional meetings a year where we're going to all gather for an agenda that's properly posted to hear from our students, they may or may not show up and there's nothing we can do about it. But if they don't show up, we will not complied. So we will have to schedule another one and hope they can make it. So the fact that no other district does this is because while the intent of the law, there is no person who could possibly think it's a bad idea to hear from our students. The intent of the law is there. Like many laws, the intent is why they got passed. and then they are immediately forgotten because nobody thinks they can actually be implemented. And I fully support hearing from our students in perfectly structured ways that we can be predicting and all this other stuff, but I do not understand how we could possibly actually accomplish this. I'm gonna vote for it. It's already the law. It's already the school committee policy. I'll vote for it. But making it happen does not seem to be something that other districts have figured out. And, you know, at a school committee conference, this was brought up by I don't remember who brought it up but there was like, we should all be doing this and everybody's like yeah we should all be doing this. And then everybody went on with their day. Again, the intent I agree with, I'm happy to just vote for it, but I don't see how we're going to actually accomplish this. And I don't think there is any logistical magic that can occur to make it actually happen. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just if we can make sure it's on our next, when we have a special meeting, we do need to put that on the agenda. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, City Council hasn't approved it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Mr. Member so present Mayor longer.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I do apologize that this has to be a focus for the fifth straight year since I've been on school committee where we've had a CCSR project to do this. Last March, we did approve the free products in any quantity that a student desires from our nurse's office. And when we did that, we did say like, this is step one. The next step is to get them into the buildings. into the actual bathrooms. You know, I think that the Senate has passed the I am bill I believe this is the eighth year, and the House of Representatives is apparently too stodgy to consider talking about menstruation. So it is never come up for a vote. There are more people sponsoring the I am bill in the House of Representatives, then a majority, a majority of the members actually sponsor it so there is zero question it would pass by if leadership is out of touch with reality or just can't talk about the topic, then, then it won't ever come up for a vote and become law. Hopefully that doesn't last forever. I do think that, you know, in the last number of times we've talked about this, I think we have, we have broached the topic of, you know, there's there's a moral panic around tampons. And I think that it is a disservice for us to implement policy that either sidesteps that issue by only offering pads or just keeps us from having to take a stand. That is not the appropriate way is to simply add pads and say, that's what menstruating students must do. I don't menstruate, but I know an awful lot of people who do. And for those that like tampons, It is life changing and it is a non starter that's like the differences are not, it's it. I don't personally experience it but it's it's not even an apples and oranges kind of conversation. So I do think that when we talk about putting stuff into bathrooms I think we need to set aside, just like with our other health education related things. How I feel about something is how I feel about it, but that's not policy and that's not how we should be using science and best practice and all that other stuff. So I'm very happy to see this. I'm sad that you all have to spend your energy on this. I'm sad that the public schools still to this day do not have this stuff in the bathroom. Now I understand it is not cheap. If we had two bathrooms we probably would have done it but we probably have 100 bathrooms in the district. So, I recognize that it costs money but getting back to the meeting that was just before that, you know, when we last talked about this last March, if, if bathrooms didn't have toilet paper, we would burn this place down. Right. I mean, if every one of us went to the bathroom every day, we are expected to bring our own toilet paper. And if it wasn't there, we're expected to go to the nurse's office. I just can't even imagine it would become violent, frankly. And somehow we are perfectly fine with the majority of the world, the majority of our population being in exactly that situation. And, you know, so that's just outrageous. But if we focus purely on the number one goal job of a school committee, and that is student performance, 15 minutes of class time, like we should be doing compensatory services for every girl, for every menstruating student, we should do compensatory services and hire tutors to fill in for the gap in their education they didn't get. Because we didn't do this. It's kind of absurd. And I continue to be disappointed that we are not making this happen. We just did the budget, we can literally I don't think we can make a motion to add to the budget because we just had that hearing an hour ago. If we had done this in the other order, I probably would have added another whatever $100,000 to do all the bathrooms. So, keep at it. I mean, I keep hoping that the house will finally do this because it is tiring to have the same conversation. around something that actually isn't changing like I think menstruation is fairly much been the same thing for as long as the House of Representatives has been around. And yet we got to spend all of our time advocating year after year after year on this topic and it's. It's also infuriating because all that energy spent on those things is energy not spent on other things we could be advocating for. And it just feels a bit like we're being like, you know, dragged around by this at the state house. But I am super happy that you all have kept it in the, kept the light on on this topic because the school committee has a lot to do. And sometimes it feels like we're turning our heads a thousand different ways every day. And so I appreciate that every year this keeps coming back until we can make it happen and make it happen right, so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't have any language of a motion, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. May I, I know we've already voted on it, but if this could violate procurement law, depending on the pricing, so we may. Roll call. What was the roll call and what?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I was just saying like, if this is over $10,000, we literally cannot
[Paul Ruseau]: Then they walk back to class and the teacher's like, where were you?
[Paul Ruseau]: We vote yes. Did we do the vote?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Okay, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you and thank you to member Hays. This presentation is for our submission of 71.8 million. That's a question. Or the 71 million that the mayor has said she would give us.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we're not, we're not putting forward our recommendation. I mean, because in past years we would put forward a recommendation for what we needed the mayor. After we did that the mayor would tell us what we get, or before, and then we come back again and try to figure out how to get the number down, but we are never going to vote for the 71.8 million in the current plan or agendas that we have scheduled.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have another question about this. How many literacy coaches did the literacy program say we should have.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And one last question before I stop taking all the question time. The slide we saw said 71.8 million. Did we see a slide that said the other number?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, sorry. I don't have the slides myself, so I couldn't return to them. I have plenty more questions, but I'll let other members ask.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just wanted to be clear on that just make sure I was clear, but member so that that is a not a factual statement our budget includes lots of other monies that we are not voting on. The word budget refers to the allocation request from the city, only that we do not include our special ed funding we get the year later we do not include transportation assistance, and just like those other grants for title one we do not include answer. So our budget is not for 71 plus something. It is whatever number will appear in the city budget, and it will definitely not include. I believe our actual according to DC our budget, our total spending is $84 million a year. when you add all those other things in. So I think it's not accurate to say that our budget will be anything bigger than the 71, because my understanding of the word budget in this context legally does not include any grants of any sort.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm still confused by the exact wording. It says that we're going to implement the recommendations from Mr. Welch and that it's budget neutral. And I'm looking at the recommendations right now, including a 0.5 FTE Dean position, the addition of an associate principal, the addition of four permanent substitute teachers. So these would be, you know, full-time teachers. Nobody can find a substitute, I get that. But an actual teacher just in the teacher roles on the actual schedule as a teacher is a different, different thing to try to recruit for than a substitute. So, all of those add up to an awful lot of money. And I'm not sure how we can say that's budget neutral unless we're just not doing the recommendations from Mr. Welch for which we spent a good amount of money to get.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I also want to just share my concerns about. We are in, we are purposefully increasing our fiscal cliff, one year before the cliff at the beginning of the pandemic. It was a lot of like the federal government just seemed to have a blank check. And so it was years away when we were going to be in full blown walking off the cliff. We are well we're 12 months away from walking off the cliff, and we're going to make it a higher cliff. I'm not saying we shouldn't add those other five, and that we shouldn't use our extra funds for that purpose. I'm saying those should be in our operating budget to additional literacy coaches should be in our operating budget. And frankly, an awful lot of other people that currently work for us that are in most of the districts operating budget employees. that we're just pretending aren't going to somehow ever have to become part of our operating budget. We're just closing our eyes and being like, well, next July is going to be terrible. You know, you know something as bad as coming. doing nothing about it is different than when something bad happens at the beginning of the pandemic. Nobody was prepared. And how well, maybe we could have some of there could have been some preparations but here we are 12 full months, and we're going to approve a budget, adding to the fiscal cliff, up to 33 and a half people who will either be laid off or some magical thing will somehow make 33 people That's not $100,000. That's not a million dollars. I don't know what it is, but it's a lot of money. And our normal annual increases are going to come anyways. The teacher's contract is for 3%, I believe, in the next year. We have other contracts that are going to increase. And that is all in addition to the 33 and a half people. That we are all going to sit around this table and say we don't want to get rid of because they're all important. So, there are solutions. The solutions all expire on December 31 and override before then would allow the mayor to start including that money in our budget next July 1. When December 31 arrives, those people had better be looking for new employment. And I don't I mean. It's really insane. So I just, I just find it fascinating that there's a massive free cash in City Hall. And we're going to not even fund the meager improvements to the district we want to as a committee. And we're just gonna like sail along at full speed right off the edge of that cliff, as if there are not, aside from the employees that are impacted. There are no employees working in our school district who are not impacting our kids. So, you know, all I care very much about the employees, we really get elected for the kids, and all of the needs being met by those employees are just going to stop being met because there's no creative way to take 33 and a half people's full-time employment and just shove it onto other people and think that the work will get done. We've sort of been doing that in Medford for a very long time. So I'm deeply disappointed in 71 million, 71.8 million would not be satisfying. It would be, in my mind, a minimum to not making the problem worse next year. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll get that in a minute.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just, I was surprised to hear you use a number to describe the high school considering construction costs have gone up that again I'm sorry, I was surprised to hear you use the number 200 million for high school I don't think that there's a high school that could be built anywhere for 200 million anymore.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. I thought you said a $200 million high school, and I was like, ooh, that would be something.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate your comments on the funding. I do also want to point out that aside from the 33 and a half people, we have most of our paraprofessionals and revolving accounts, which is totally, perhaps not even allowed. When I talked to the, the president of the Massachusetts school school. No, the, the, the accounting, the school business operations at Maslow, I forget what their dental stands for. operating budget employees out of revolving accounts was palpable. And I'm a chair of the Shore Educational Collaborative as the Medford representative. And it's a wonderful meeting because every month I get to sit down with school committee members who I have a relationship with at this point. And I can ask them very pointed questions about things that we do and say, hey, do you do that? And universally, nobody does what we do here, we have so many employees that are not on our operating budget. And so when we look at, you know, the number on the DC website, well that that none of those employees are included in how much we spend on our schools. So in reality we spend more on our schools than we are reporting that we do, which I suppose is I guess that's a good thing, but it is a totally not transparent way of paying for people to work for us. And it is also a highly risky thing when the pandemic hit and we shut down after school, we were all like, how are we gonna keep paying these people that are actually not in our operating budget because the money stopped flowing. So I think that it's good to hear that the city is planning I don't know exactly the timelines of when an override would allow us to spend that money, but if it was in March, I would hope we would already have our budget halfway done or more by March, and whether or not we're cutting people or. The residents have been giving the democratic option to decide to fund their schools should have already happened before March, because it's, it's, I mean the superintendent can't be, you know, as happened in 2020, you know, was given a weekend to cut $400,000 school committee had no input, because we couldn't have a meeting. And I just think it's not fair to the superintendent to ask her to plan for something. and then not tell her what that thing is. So sooner is better, and maybe just some more transparency about. What are like if you're if the mayor is saying that we in fact are going to be able to find all these positions for July one, I would throw a party, I'd be very happy. And I frankly wouldn't even ask how, because if the mayor has enough free cash, and she says she's going to do it. Well, then, how are you, because we do not fund the public schools the school committee does not. So, just like with the number that we've been given. Whatever it is, is what we get. So I just, I guess I don't have a lot of confidence that next March and April, we are not just sitting around figuring out what departments to slash. Because some of those people, there's now 33 and a half people, we will all agree cannot be cut. And if we can't cut some of them, we cut other people. And I don't know where else to cut. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, just one quick.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm assuming we're going to go to the audience in a moment, but I just wanted to ask that folks clearly state their name so I can put them into the minutes that I'm taking.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Yes. I think we have to do the, I don't know if it's the against and the for's or the for's and the against, like I- For public hearing? Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, no, I'm talking about the audience.
[Paul Ruseau]: We always do is that we say is, is there a reason that we always mean I mean I just watched a city council meeting where the people who want to speak in the affirmative for something, come up they said they get to speak, and then the people who want to speak against it. After that, that part is closed. And then the people that want to speak against it come up and speak and I'm looking at the law right now that does say that we're getting those for and against it doesn't say that they have to be everybody for goes together. I just think it's cleaner. But I don't care. People say whether they're for or against the $71 million recommendation so I can keep that in the notes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Where does the number 50,000 come from?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I don't have any problem with the number, but the budget has line items and it has to go somewhere in the line item on a budget. So I don't know, it seems like that number, whether it's high or low is not really my point. My point is, I don't think we could just add money that doesn't go somewhere in the budget. I mean, I don't, so looking at the budget that we were sent, where would that get added? Because there's no like line item for, that there's no line item at the moment for the specific thing that you have mentioned, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I remember so I did want to answer the question that a speaker, Mr. Guillaume asked, and he asked where the missing. So the thing that was being referenced was that the chapter 70 or the state aid to education. that flows to cities, and is not required for the cities to send it to the schools. I wish the state would do something about that. So, the increase this year over last year from this is the increase this isn't the total amount, the increase this year is $3.3 million increase in state aid to education, the state did what we expected of them with the millionaires tax. They sent us way more of an increase than we've probably ever seen. However, that money did not flow into the schools, and that is completely legal and within the authority of the administration, but that is the answer to. Where it went, it went, it goes to the same place it always goes into the city coffers, but it did not come to the schools. And that that's a policy decision for which the school committee has no authority so I just wanted to answer that question. I did second that motion for the new number, but can I can I just say one more thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Come back.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rizzo, yes. Mayor Longo, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just for anybody watching I just think it's important to highlight that there's goals and then standards and that they're different things and Jesse has been changing that over the years. And so, for instance, there are five categories of performance on the top section and there's only four in the bottom. So maybe someday, they'll. they'll bring it all together so that it's not weird like that. But I just think that's an important distinction is that they're different things. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, could we scroll up actually? I'm confused how somebody would say on the only focus indicator that somebody needs improvement and then say that they were proficient. There's only one thing you can grade the person on. It's like if you had one class and you got a B, your GPA is a B. So I'm confused how somebody, I mean, the outcome is the same, but I don't understand how you can, you have one thing you're measuring, and then when you average your one thing you're measuring, you get a better score.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. First of all, I'd like to point out that the thing we were just talking about about the discrepancy is actually my review. Because there are two different places where you provide your summary of the count. And in the bottom one, which we were just looking at, I actually had said needs improvement, but at the very, very top of the document is actually another place where you're yet again transcribe the same information so that error was mine so I wanted to own that and we now know how to fix that because it's not a mystery. I would blame the people that required into the same data multiple times. I would like to. make a I don't know if we need a motion, but my comments that were so this is a PDF. And unfortunately, this document, I swear, sometimes I feel like nobody uses a document before they send it out to 351 communities. But when you click into the document to put comments and then click out of the box, anything too big just disappears off the bottom of the page. And you can't even see it. And it's, it's a not a well-designed piece of, not a well-designed tool. So my comments have been compressed to try and fit them into here, but I wanted to just have a request that my original comments that I sent actually be replacing, that they replace this. And my comments, for the most part, are the same. There was some compression of like the structure of my comments. there's nothing new, but I just felt like this doesn't flow as what I actually wrote for comments the way I originally did. And I certainly understand the need to figure out how to fit it into this PDF. So that's the only change I'd like to make to this. Unless there's an objection.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to amend. Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I know. Okay. I did. Okay, no worries. Now everyone does.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi, Nicole. OK, then you are not.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, let me. Give it one more minute. Actually, it's 734 we should get going because Time, time, time. Oops. Right posting. Good evening, everyone. Today is what is today, Wednesday, May 17. This is the rules and policy subcommittee meeting. To discuss the bullying prevention and intervention plan. I will read the full posting. Please be advised that on Wednesday, May 17th, 2023 from 4.30 to 5.30 p.m. there will be a rules and policy subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Memphir Community Media on Comcast channel 15 and Verizon channel 45 at 4.30 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or call-in number. Memphir Public Schools invites you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. The meeting link is https://mps02155-org.zoom.us.j99633576663. The meeting ID, if you'd like to call in, you could call 1-312-626-6799. The meeting ID is 996-335-76663. Additionally, if you have any questions or comments that you'd like to submit in writing, you can send them to me during the meeting at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Please include your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you're an employee, indicate that, and your question and or comment. I'm going to call the roll. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin is not here yet. And member Rousseau is present to present. So in the last meeting, I think everybody here was on the last meeting. Excuse me. In the last meeting, we had decided to pass the document that we had at that point reached, we had gotten to. over to Member Graham to work her magic on it and produce something hopefully more coherent than what we had. And so I believe it probably makes sense to let Member Graham go from here and perhaps share the document.
[Paul Ruseau]: I guess my only comment on it is there's this, the definition as written, how it intersects with bullying, the law. You know, the law is, you know, three, is it three or more or multiple? I'm sorry, I'm forgetting suddenly this part, but three or more incidents And I guess three or four or 10 incidents that are equal power quarrels individually may be conflict, but is this implying that those can't be considered bullying? I guess how they relate to bullying is sort of the part that still kind of confuses me. And I don't know what the answer is. And I'm not, do we as a district have a consistent answer that we all agree we do understand? Because I mean, in like in our real lives, there are people we might have conflict with and we might have conflict with them. But if it's a professional setting, for instance, we may have conflict with them way more than three times regularly. And it's not bullying because that's not what's happening. Just like, you know, we have conflict one time, two times, 15 times, and it'd be nice if we worked it out so we didn't have conflicts, but that might be just the normal way that relationship works versus bullying. And I just don't understand how they intersect with bullying.
[Paul Ruseau]: Senator Graham actually wants to talk about that more.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I like it. I think that if we do change the structure of the organization, and some of these things would probably have to be looked at again. But in the current structure, I think it makes sense. And I don't know, on the ground, what that looks like. And if there will be challenges around, well, this is about the investigation. So who's going to be the person that takes the report wouldn't necessarily be different.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, you know, we wouldn't want to have a middle school person, a student trying to report something and have to go to the high school. That would be terrible. Um, but, and you do say investigator. So it's not that the person who is going to be responsible for receiving the reports would be any different. Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, that's really excellent point. Anybody else on this one? I don't know why I'm suddenly decided to try to drive a little bit, but it's clearly running.
[Paul Ruseau]: And the staff are required to formally report the incidents I don't know if we want to add some kind of wording here. I don't know how to put it. So maybe just a note, but, um, you know, You know, when you drive by an accident. The best dial 911. It doesn't matter if there's 20 other people there because they're all standing around thinking somebody else dialed 911 And, you know, I imagine scenarios perhaps in a lunchroom where there's multiple staff members and they all see an incident happen and somebody, they each think somebody else is going to do it. And, you know, whether that's based on like, oh, there was an assistant principal there and I'm just a teacher or whatever, like, you know, whatever the stuff that goes on in someone's head as to like, oh, somebody else is obviously going to take care of this report. If there are five adults in the room who work for us, there should be five of them making sure that the report is written. And it doesn't matter where they are structurally in the organization, they are all responsible to make sure that one is done. I mean, if they go up to Mr. Tucci and said, are you going to do a report? And he says, yes. I'm not saying we need five separate forms filled out, but short of an affirmation that somebody will be doing it and they know who it is, they are on the hook to make sure that it gets done, whether that's by them or not. So I just really worry about that, similar to the car accident where everybody stands around and waits for the ambulance and never get called.
[Paul Ruseau]: And, you know, the days of everybody keeping a little journal that they are jotting notes in are over. These are going to be notes that are probably largely going to be electronic And the average person, certainly the average employee's ability to maintain top-notch security on their own electronic content is not encouraging. Not a dig at our staff, most people are really actually quite bad at it. So the notion of confidential notes concerns me greatly. Also, what are you gonna do with them? Write a memoir someday about something you can't write about? Why you would want to keep them is also concerning. If it's important enough to be written down, put it in the official notes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Dr. Robinson. I mean, you know, If there's a valid reason to be keeping your own personal notes, the word indefinitely particular is the part that would bother me the most. I mean, we have a whole thing about making sure this stuff is destroyed. And so even if we, if there is a valid reason that we find or can figure out better, which, by the way, we should include something in here to explain that, I think, for the next school committee in 10 years trying to figure out what this means. But indefinitely is just scary. I mean, our kids already, their whole lives are going to be many of our kids' lives are going to be derailed by the digital content created in their teen years. And I just don't think we should have a policy to not making it worse or enshrining it in policy. So yeah, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I agree, we should put them elsewhere. I think we can actually add just an item near the end of the document with a sort of an appendix of forms and just literally describe the form and a sentence with a link to wherever it would be on the website. I think that even actually the investigation forms, I think, actually should be available to the public, because a parent might want to know what is it that's going to happen. And while reading this will tell you that, seeing the forms can actually be kind of helpful too. and grasp that. And then up in the definitions, I just saw that you had, I had created a document that I shared with you with definitions. I wanted to note that we have aggressor and perpetrator. We, I think, had agreed that we liked aggressor, but perpetrator is the language in several sections of the law. And so that's why it's also here because in places where the law is actually literally typed, you know, the language in the law is in here in some places, and the law says perpetrator so we're going to keep that, but I think that's a good question is, can we just use aggressor instead. Thank you, Dr Vincent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I think that's definitely in here. I mean, I see that Memogram has actually highlighted the requirements that DESE has. And I think that earlier on there is this, you know, if the incident is coming in and it's not coming in on a form, like get the form, get the form going is definitely the goal. And I mean, it's even if DESE didn't require it, that makes a lot of sense process-wise to have, you know, even if the starting points are a little bit, different as quickly as possible, getting everybody into the same exact process, I think is ideal for staff. I mean, we'll have to manage all this, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I think last meeting, I might have said this was gonna be our last meeting. I think we have to have one more. I also think we need, so the notes that our Graham has made I think are all things for which she could get an answer and then just make, yeah. And so what I think makes sense is that, remember Graham, I'm giving you work, so hopefully you're okay with this. makes these updates to the document that we've just discussed, and then sends that to the administration to comb through it in detail, because looking at it on screen isn't the same. And then if you could send me your thoughts in an email, this is okay, this change here or there, and I will review your thoughts And then if I think your thoughts are tweaks and tiny and can be changed on the floor, that we just go to the school committee meeting and we make those changes there. If I think that your comments, questions, changes are things that require the kind of dialogue that happens to subcommittee, I will instead just have another subcommittee meeting. And I just want to make sure that we don't default to let's just have another subcommittee, because if you read it and you're like, you know, there's two or three words that are spelling errors or something like that. Having a meeting for that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And, but I also want to give the opportunity for you to go and read it and be like, this isn't going to work for us. If this isn't going to work for us, or you have a reason why you think this whole section is not going to work. the floor of the regular meetings isn't the right setting for that. So, does that sound okay, Dr. Robinson, to you?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, trying to make that, shrinking that down in the meetings was not working. It was just too much. So I think, so the, I'll, let me, literally write the motion down so that I can send it to Markey. So the motion I'm gonna make is that member Graham will make updates based on feedback from this, from the May 17 subcommittee meeting, and then send the document to the superintendent for review. The superintendent will provide her feedback to the chair of the subcommittee. Given our quickly ending school year, do you think a week is sufficient time, Dr. Edmondson, just to give me your feedback?
[Paul Ruseau]: How about next Friday?
[Paul Ruseau]: May. So by May 26. Yes, thank you. And at that time, chair will decide if the feedback from the superintendent requires another subcommittee meeting or
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. First reading. I'm actually going to say for minor changes and then first reading because there's little I mean we will not have seen the final actual document here so.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then, and first reading of the new policy. So i'm going to read that one more time so that. Everybody knows what we're voting on, even though it's just two of us. And Barbara McLaughlin does send her regrets that she was not able to be here today. She was dealing with a child. She was being a parent, which interferes sometimes with our other responsibilities, as we all know. So member Graham will make updates based on feedback from the May 17th subcommittee meeting, and then send the document to the superintendent for review. Member Graham, when would you send that so that I can? Tomorrow. By May 18th. The superintendent will provide her feedback to the chair of the subcommittee by May 26th. At that time, the chair will decide if the feedback from the superintendent requires another subcommittee meeting or if the new policy can be sent to the full committee on June 5th for minor changes and then first reading, the first reading of the new policy. This, I'm just gonna make it a little longer since I'm typing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'll take the vote roll on that. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, everyone. I think we got a lot done here. I really appreciate, Member Graham, your hard work on this. And all of you all, I mean, this is meeting four or five, I forget, but a lot of meetings and for good stuff. So is there a motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: And I'll second that. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Members, so yes to the affirmative. This meeting is adjourned. Have a great night, everyone. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: After years, I still push the wrong button, sorry. Based on what's in ESSER spending now, we can safely predict that next year's budget, which will go up, fixed costs will go up as they do every year. And we will not be able to get rid of, for instance, ELL newcomer teachers, like they're in the ESSER funding right now, those are not optional teachers, they will come on to the non-grant based budget. And so has there been a prediction already prepared for next year on the minimum increase that will have to happen, which will far exceed this year's number so that the mayor and city council can decide whether to act on an override prior to it being too late, because I think after January 1st of 2024, an override that is approved will not help us fix our budget for June of 2024. So if they don't act, assuming that they need more money, which seems like a fairly safe bet, if they do not act by December 31st and we have an override vote and it's approved, We are looking at a, a increase next time around that will dwarf any increase we've ever had. So, are we making sure the mayor knows that, so that we can start having that conversation because I mean I'm not thrilled by this budget, but what I see is 2.7 something million dollars and Esther spending, almost none of which we just think we want to get rid of next June of 2024, which we will definitely have to get rid of, unless somebody does something to prepare the city for having more funding. I'm not sure there's an answer, but I would hope that that conversation is happening between the superintendent and the mayor, so that the mayor isn't surprised next year, and none of us should be surprised next year. We have a whole slide of all the stuff that we definitely cannot afford on July 1 of 2024. There's no scenario where we can afford those positions. So short of a billionaire riding in on a white horse, we have a nearly one year view of a train wreck coming. So I just wanna make sure, this body cannot increase taxes as everybody in the room knows. and many of the people who are watching, we cannot affect having more revenue, but it's not within our authority. So I'm really grateful for that slide because it's really important to know that we are one year away from a full-blown train wreck. and this body can do nothing about it other than sound the alarms and make sure that the mayor and the city council give the voters an opportunity to say, you know what? We'd rather not have the train wreck and we'll do something about it, but this body cannot make that happen. So thank you for that slide. Frankly, it's the most important slide in my mind in the whole slide deck, because I think last meeting there was like 28 employees that are in that that essentially 28 people who work for us are in that slide. And when we talked about that in the last meeting, it wasn't that there was 28 people roaming the halls and doing work we don't need done was all important work some of its classroom teachers. So, I just feel like I've got a whole year of anxiety ahead of me about that one slide. And I just don't feel like there's anything that we can do about it other than raise the alarms. And I just feel like I'll be keep talking about this for the next while through December 31st when something could be done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me imagine the list that I don't have written down in my head. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Kirk?
[Paul Ruseau]: Here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think we do have a report policy, procedure, whatever the right word is. And I think it would be helpful to, well, obviously, it's our rule that we should be following that. But most importantly, more importantly than the rules in this case, is us literally writing out exactly what it is we want. Because otherwise we have meetings, we think we said what we wanted, we come back and then we have five meetings to get to what we want. And if we can't say what we want, Sort of like, if you don't know what your question is, don't expect the right answer. That's not a dig at you or anything, that's just like a general thing I try to tell my kids. And I think the full committee should decide whether to approve the report and the superintendent should have the opportunity to say that is a you know, five hour effort or is that an FTE for two months, which is really created the report procedure in the first place.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mestone. Member Ruseau, here. Mayor Lungo, here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, that could be a problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, I'm Scott Campbell, and I'm a sophomore
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know. We don't typically spend money like on the fly on the school committee. We usually do a budget, but if we could figure out how to pay for this, like we did with the ethics bowl, I think I'm assuming this committee would be supportive, although without a vote, that's quite an assumption, but I do so. We didn't do a GoFundMe for ethics bowl.
[Paul Ruseau]: out of the school district's resources so I don't know why this would be different.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just saw GoFundMe today up in my feed. It was definitely not paid for. So maybe there's a different GoFundMe or a different resource for paying for it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I just don't want students and families to be writing a check to send their students to these events. I mean, if somebody wants to give us free money, believe me, there's nobody here who would say no to that. But I just want to make sure that there's no expectation that the students will be spending any money of their own.
[Paul Ruseau]: Wow.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's exciting. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Wait for somebody else to do it. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Yes. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Restone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Restone, no. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have a question about including language that says this event is wheelchair accessible. Is every single one of our vocational programs wheelchair accessible? Every space in our high school and all of our other schools that we allow anybody to use, are they actually all wheelchair accessible? Because we're going to literally put on the forms and on the notices of these things that it's wheelchair accessible when it is not wheelchair accessible. And I find that confusing.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that was a question. I don't know the answer and I'm being completely honest and I don't know the answer.
[Paul Ruseau]: never missed on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Welcome back to her member McLaughlin. Remember my stone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember so yes Marilyn go current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, his Democrats back, Democrats.
[Paul Ruseau]: Which policy will this be amended to and where?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, so it's the it's the proposal to make this language be number was it five or six?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just, I don't have any problem with the language with the exception of the fact that the policy, I mean, it's just like the blue stuff, This is the like the insert date. That's actually would be part of the policy, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, when we make this recommendation, we need to be pretty precise and say, like, the motion is, the recommendation is to amend, you know, policy AC non-discrimination and add this as item number I think it is. I can't see it on the screen. We need to be that precise so that the committee can vote, make it number six. We don't have to re-vote or anything, but we just can't have that text sitting there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Member Kreatz? Here. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone is not here yet. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Longo, present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm actually reading the law right now. Um, and actually member can not do it. It must be the full committee. And, um, I'm quite surprised by this language because how the full committee can have a publicly posted meeting with the student advisory council. which meets during the school day when we cannot meet as a body because we have jobs and other things that would prevent us from doing that. It's a very strange way that it's written that this whole body must meet with the student advisory council every other month. So I don't know how we can get the student advisory council whether we do it as part of our regular meetings or as a meeting before our meetings, but it is not individual members, it is a regular meeting. So I'll reach out to the association and ask how folks actually implement this, because while I certainly agree with the intent that's clear, How does anybody get this done in practice, because we can't mandate the student advisor five members of the student advisory council come to our meetings, every other month. We, by law, we cannot pay them to be here for their time. which we talked about a couple of years ago when we were talking about student participation. So, it's a very strange requirement. And I know that as far as the six years I've been here we've never done it. And I'd like to thank member Hays for pointing it out, because never noticed it. I'm quite curious how you came to know about this policy, or this law, which I mean the policy is literally just a copy of the law for the most part.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I will certainly take it from the meeting to go to email MASC and look at other districts to see how or if, or how I just, you know, my head can't wrap around how we can do something this substantial every other month and drag a five student member body to a meeting. Does anybody else think that that seems like quite an exact a lot to require by law, that we will make this happen. I mean, we can't compel. We're not like the Congress that can like compel people to be here. But that's just very strange. Thank you for bringing it up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, yes. Thank you. The rules and I'm just doing the minutes for the folks that we were just doing. I'm sorry for the delay. Um, so the rules and policy subcommittee met. last week, was it? I'm sorry, I forgot the dates.
[Paul Ruseau]: 25th, thank you. And we had our attorney present and we went through all of his comments on the current version of the policy. And I thought we had, we made good progress. So as a result of the meeting, we've decided to pass the current draft version over to member Graham, vice chair Graham, take a pass at making the document make sense, which I look forward to that. And we will schedule the next meeting, which will hopefully be the last meeting on this topic and subcommittee as soon as she's had a chance to go over the document. I don't want to schedule it too soon, but my guess is by the end of May, this is May already, isn't it? By the end of May, we'll have the last another subcommittee meeting on that document, which we can hopefully approve and send to the full committee for consideration.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mestona.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Long-Gokern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want assuming we're going to approve this mass that the, the, we have a form that has to be filled out before the trip actually happens. I, it's been filled out many times in the past. I think you don't have the information at this point to fill it out, because it's usually like how many students, has the nurse signed off on everything, those forms, we do have to approve those before you take off, but certainly, I know that some forms were being redone over the past couple of months, perhaps, so I don't know, I haven't seen them yet, but from the last time that I did the paperwork myself,
[Paul Ruseau]: Those are the ones, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I'd make a motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember so yes Maryland occur.
[Paul Ruseau]: It was a lot to digest. And I have an awful lot of sticky notes probably more than we have time. I do have two corrections on page 51. It says that we approved the resolution on October 14 2021 we actually approved it on October 14 2020. I have the minutes here. And on page 52 it says October 2022 and it's actually October 2020. It's quite relevant that this committee, when we made changes to the discipline policy, put a very long runway to implementation, because we were not ignorant of the fact that we were making substantial changes and the district needed time to prepare. So I think that having those dates be correct is really quite important. But those are the two easiest things I'll have to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. I think I did find the Google Doc that has the policy that a copy of which was probably given to you. And it does say October 14, 2021. It's just wrong.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, but I found the minutes and we did in fact approve it in 2020. I was just confused because in the resolution it said, and in May of 2021 you'll bring your recommendations for any additional funding or anything that you need, which makes no sense that we would say to do that in the past. So that's what confused me but anyways. So as for. What to say? I will tell you that this is my sixth year on the school committee, and I learned a lot about the high school from your report. And I want to really thank you for that because my kids were not in high school when I first got on the school committee, and I didn't go to the high school. So this is weird lens of a parent, a parent whose kid goes during the pandemic. And while I can see an org chart, really understanding how everything fits together. Your report does a fabulous job of that. It's a little embarrassing that after six years, I'm learning this much about the high school, but I greatly appreciate it. I did have, it's like how to approach this. I have too many sticky notes and there's a lot of us. I do have two motions that I'll make because in your recommendations around policies, I thought both of those things really excellent. I was a little disappointed that there was a lot of confusion about the discipline policy as well as the dress code policy, considering every single school leader across the district was present for every single subcommittee meeting or committee of the whole we had on it. And so when they literally are present and paying attention, we're on zoom, we all knew we were paying attention to have that message somehow missed really, it really bothers me a lot actually, that the people who sat in the meetings spoke on the topics themselves, somehow walked away and were unable to communicate to our teachers and the rest of the staff what the policy was, or communicated something different than what they in fact had heard and even spoken about. So that part really, disappoints me, I know that's a reality, and this is not the first time I'm hearing about it. And I don't think it's, I think it's really a disservice that the teaching staff and the rest of the staff didn't have that message coming down strong and firm as to what the policy was. The issue of hats and hoods, the reason we actually brought the policy up was about hats and hoods. We talked about hats and hoods to the point where I wanna just smacked my head into a wall about hats and hoods, and that anybody who works for Bedford Public Schools is confused about whether hats and hoods are allowed, is really very, very concerning about our ability to communicate to our staff what the policies are. We, as the school committee, are barred from communicating with the staff about what our policies are. That's against the law. I can't send an email to the teaching staff and say, here's the policy that we passed. That's not allowed. We passed the policy and the superintendent and her staff get that message out. And the message did not get out. And I think it's really unfortunate that the teaching staff is sort of left to just wonder this description of piles of backpacks stacked outside of some teachers' classrooms and not others, that could be solved in an email in five minutes. And here we are a year and a half after that policy went into effect. So there was a lot in your email that was upsetting and that it was often very easy to solve, but still hasn't been solved. I'll let my colleagues have a chance cause I could go on all night, but thank you for that. Oh, the motions. I'll make my motions cause I think they're totally non-controversial and I won't want to forget them. The first motion is that the Rules and Policy Subcommittee will provide recommendations for changes to the dress code policy that clarify the carrying of backpacks at Medford High School. This recommendation will be returned to this body by June 30th, 2023. Yes, the Rules and Policy Subcommittee will provide recommendations for changes to the dress code policy that clarify the carrying of backpacks at Medford High School. This recommendation will be returned to this body by June 30th, 2023.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members, so yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: And the second policy, second motion is that the Rules and Policy Subcommittee will provide recommendations for changes to the dress code policy to clarify the wearing of hats and hoods. This recommendation will be returned to this body by June 30th, 2023.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. There's a lot in here around security and cameras and the building and our 55 exterior doors. Thank you for the number. I just think about what it costs to make an exterior door a high tech modern exterior door with access control and alerting when it's not closed. take that number in my head, which I don't have a real number, and I multiply that by 55, and I know that number is just too big. So that is a bit startling to imagine. And I mean, you do point out, and one of the teachers are quoted as like, the place is just too big, and we cannot hire enough staff to make all the hiding places not hiding places. That's just not one of our options. So it's sort of a problem of enrollment and the school size kind of coming together. There was someplace in the report, I couldn't find it quickly. You said something really important about how when the teachers and the students came back after being remote, that the behaviors were, Well, we planned a lot for coming back into in-person, but I don't know that we planned for the student body to largely be unrecognizable. And for teachers that have been teaching for many, many years to have like, it's like they showed up and it's a different planet or something, like all of the things going on that they had not experienced. And maybe did not have training and supports and you know we didn't suddenly multiply the number of people in the assistant principal's office. That like we did try our best to support them in coming back, but I feel like this would probably be like you know, in the history books will be one of the areas where we didn't. So it's not that we didn't provide like. adjustment Councilors and all those other people, but that's sort of for the students, but finding ways to support the teachers who just came into this situation. A friend of mine is a, I think she's a second grade or third grade teacher. And during the pandemic, we talked about like how there were not being, there were not a lot of special ed referrals coming in. And she was, I was, I mean, I mentioned this on the floor, like I'm terrified that the referrals are down because there's no, Well there's eyes on the students but eyes on a webcam is not the same thing. And sure enough September arrived, and it was a madhouse of all these students who are completely undiagnosed or on untested for what they needed. And how much of that could have ever really been supported is will be interesting thing some people I'm sure will study but, you know, we couldn't just magically create a second teacher to sit in every classroom or whatever that those people don't exist so I just think it's really important to recognize that the teaching staff wasn't prepared because they couldn't be prepared because we didn't know, none of us have been through this pandemic. Even if we had pandemics every 25 years, we never would have had a pandemic on Zoom. So it's like, no matter how more common pandemics become, this will be the first one where kids actually kept going sort of. And I hope we can take a lot of these things away because the global authorities indicate we can expect more pandemics. So maybe we can do a better job. I'll stop talking about that. I do just want to point out on page, 41, there's a paragraph, I'm gonna read it, it's one paragraph. I'm just really tired of this conversation and you probably don't know, because you haven't been to all of our meetings, but we have been having this conversation over and over again since returning from the pandemic. Bathroom access and availability, and yes, I rolled my eyes, sorry, has been a significant issue in the overall supervision of students. Bathrooms are scattered throughout the building and periodically are not functioning due to maintenance needs. Some bathrooms are routinely closed deliberately to limit supervisory requirements for staff. This is a relatively common practice in large comprehensive high schools. but the number and location of open bathrooms at Medford High School changes on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, creating frustration and confusion for all involved. These changes are usually a result of lack of monitoring coverage. When monitors are not available, bathrooms are locked and students are sent to other bathrooms. A couple of questions in there. Students are sent to other bathrooms. If there's nobody to cover it, they're not sent. They're left to wander to find another bathroom. Am I correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Reasons make sense to me. We have all had to go to the bathroom and not been able to find a bathroom though. And, you know, the changes happening sometimes on a daily or hourly basis. I mean, are we really getting signs up there on the fly in the moment that are always accurate to tell a student where to go? Because, you know, my daughter doesn't go to her locker anymore. She just violates the policy, whatever it is, or at least in the handbook and carries all of her books with her in a backpack all day. And, you know, that's partially related to scheduling and our lovely asbestos challenge we had in one of the halls that took out her locker area. But when I think about three minutes, I mean, my high school was a similar number of students, dramatically smaller footprint, and we had four minutes I still remember thinking four minutes was nuts. Like, how can you get anywhere in four minutes? And if you're like ninth grade is in this wing, maybe that makes sense. 10th grade's in this wing. But we have students traversing like the entire building in their three minutes. So, you know, when I think about that, and then I think about they go, the bathroom is closed. Is there, I don't think 100% is an unreasonable expectation. that every bathroom has a sign 100% of the time that correctly says where is an open bathroom, not 95% of the time, 100% of the time the sign is correct. Like we have an awful lot of people working in that building. And it's one thing that matters a lot to somebody who's looking for a bathroom. And when we talk about student behaviors, well, one thing that's important is that we might wanna consider respecting our students. And while I agree we can't have all the bathrooms open plenty of very good reasons. If the bathroom is closed and the sign says to go here and you go over there and that one's closed and there's no sign telling you where else to go, I would feel very disrespected as a student who is supposed to be in class learning. I mean, we can ignore the fact that that means they're not getting an education while they're on the hunt for a bathroom. It's obnoxious that I'm talking about bathrooms, but we have talked about it so many meetings that you have been lucky enough not to participate in. And I'm just I'm really exhausted and I'm not running around looking for a bathroom. So thank you for answering that one question about like the why is there there's coverage all set up everything is lined up and then somebody's out sick or somebody You know, there's lots of other reasons why a staff member couldn't make a coverage, but I just want to make sure that the signage issue is, you know, NASA level accurate, because it's a big building to be running all over the place. And by the way, having to go pee isn't the only thing our students need to use bathrooms for, which, you know, we still don't have menstrual products in all of our bathrooms, but that's a different conversation. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bestone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Members, oh yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Yes. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McCrads.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would like to welcome everyone to the member school committees rules and policy subcommittee meeting for today, Tuesday, April 25 2023 from 430 to six. The agenda for today is we will be discussing, as approved by the committee on January 24th, 2022, the Rules and Policy Subcommittee will review the Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan for recommended updates. This meeting is continued from our previous meetings, which were held on December 6th, 2022, March 2nd, 2023, and March 28th, 2023. If you would like to send me any comments or questions rather than raising your hand and just participating in the meeting, you can do that by sending me an email at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Please include your first and last name, your Medford Street address, if you are not a staff member, if you are a staff member, just say that, and your question or comment. You can watch this meeting on Medford Community Media, Comcast Channel 15, or Verizon Channel 45. You could also log in on our Zoom meeting, which is https://mps02155-org.zoom.us, backslash J, backslash 974-999-49349. You could also call in on a phone by calling 1-929-205-6099. And the meeting ID is 974-9994-9349. You can also find our agenda and all this information on our website, mps02155.org. I'm going to call the roll.
[Paul Ruseau]: fourth meeting. I actually thought this is our third, but it's our fourth meeting on this topic. I'd like to welcome everyone here, the superintendent, assistant superintendent, the director of Special Director of, what's your title, Jov? I'm sorry. Student Services. Thank you. That's the word. I knew it. I was having a moment there. And the principal, assistant principals, I'd like to thank you all for coming tonight and for our attorney, Mr. Greenspan, for making it. So we are going to, in our last meeting, we Discussed having a lot of questions for Mr. Greenspan, and he was kind enough to provide some answers and go through the current policy, the current bullying prevention and intervention plan, it's a mouthful, and provide his feedback. So unless anybody has anything they wanna say, I think it makes sense to share his feedback, bring up the document, share his feedback and go through those items one at a time. And then if anybody has questions about what he had to say, we can then discuss those. Does that sound fine to everyone? Excellent.
[Paul Ruseau]: So for those that might be joining us for the first time, we are reviewing this extensive document to try and find a way to make it more usable, and to bring it up to date, as well as identify any areas where we want to actually make policy change. This is a copy of the document that Mr. Green's been sent back to me. And so I will just start at the top. He does indicate that by law, we must biannually That's twice every two years. Every two years for regulations, we have to go through this document and. review it, revise it, or simply approve it as it is. I will say that I'm not sure that, well, it says November 2022, I do remember doing that, but I think we just rubber stamped what was already here. So that's just a comment that we need to really get on this and make sure that it's on a schedule and that we are doing this as required. Scrolling down, some of the comments are really, pretty straightforward, remove the word new, it's not new. Anybody can just jump in since I will not necessarily be able to see you if you raise hands. So just jump in if I say something that you do wanna talk about, I'm gonna just keep going on things where I can't imagine, well, where I don't think that anybody will have something to say. This one here, I do believe we actually had numerous conversations in previous meetings, but, Right now the policy is for any student, and it should say student or member of the school staff, which I think is great because we had wondered about whether we could just incorporate that. So I have taken these comments, the ones that are similar to this one, for instance, it should say that. So I have a Google Doc that I have added that to, and we will look at that. Again, same thing, this policy is for students or member of the school staff. Okay, so this gets back to, I have to mute my alerts, I'm sorry, I keep getting email notices that are really annoying and distracting. Okay, this gets back to what we, so sort of our principal point when we started going through this document, there's a lot of duplication. So in this case, this simply says that we will create this very document so that this is that document. So we don't need to include language saying we'll create the thing that we're looking at.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have not even noticed it. Here we have, this was one that I sort of a question for The educator or administrative team here and the screen span mentions this a couple of different times that this is mandatory, it is not optional and I want to make sure that. We don't have to get into whether it is happening or not right now, but it needs to be happening. And I also don't have any concept of like, do we really have false accusations happening? Which we talked about extensively. But when one does happen, it's required that there is an educational component to it. It's not just like, hey, you accused somebody of bullying and you completely made it up. We're going to just suspend you or give you detention or whatever. And that's the end. It must include an educational component. So, this is a comment and there's nothing to change in this document, because it does say that will be part. I just wanted to highlight that. So this is one that when we've been going through this in the last three meetings, we've done a fair bit of, well, actually, this is the current one. Forgive me, this is not the new one we've been working up. But the law is that this is only for students. The suggestion is to remove staff members because a student may make an anonymous complaint against a staff member. the school, this says the school can't take disciplinary action, which of course, if an anonymous report comes in about a staff member and the district does an investigation and decides that it's valid, we can't have it in our policy that the district therefore can do nothing about it. That is kind of a, Dr. Edward Benson?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I do have a question, oh, Mayor McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: part, because we did add our members of the community, the school community or school staff in another spot. But this is the I'm sorry, which section are we in? Sorry, we're in the never ending section without titles.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then the second sentence is unrelated, it seems.
[Paul Ruseau]: So as member McLaughlin said, like, you know, this should be broken, separated.
[Paul Ruseau]: But what I'm trying to understand is, if there's an anonymous report against a student, we'll skip the staff and all that other stuff for now, against a student, and then our administration or the principal or whoever does an investigation and determines that there's something there, they are still allowed to Correct. Okay, good. Correct. Great. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I do wanna be clear that, and we'll get to this further on, but that the, am I correct, Howard, that the only people who can file bullying complaints are students and staff?
[Paul Ruseau]: So our form that is available for the community, frankly, on our website, parents, caregivers, Anybody in the community can't just fill it out to accuse a student or staff member of bullying. The bullying that is defined by this law, I mean, bullying has a broader meaning and set of situations, but for the purposes of our forms and our process and our authority, it's students and staff. I believe so, yes. And then when I mentioned that to member Graham, in a conversation we had earlier today, you know, the question was like, well, how does a five-year-old file a bullying report? And of course, in my mind, like hopefully the staff member that was around would be doing it, but that sort of seemed like a pretty good example of, I mean, and maybe it's just a matter of like whose name gets listed is the student, even if they're not typing, but. Member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thanks. Thank you. I think the anonymous stuff, in my mind, we've finished that. But I do think we would want to tread very carefully about like, if one of our students goes to a restaurant and bullies the staff, business owners and staff members from a restaurant showing up at Medford public schools to file a bullying report is a nightmare. I wouldn't support that. And not that I don't think it should get addressed, but I mean, it does seem like an expansion that doesn't make sense in my mind. And I mean, I don't know that- Sorry, just a point of information here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, the only anonymous reporting can happen by people who actually have access to our anonymous reporting system, which are students and staff. I mean, we're not going to take a piece of paper slipped under somebody's door and call that a report.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Thank you. I forgot about that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mr. DeLava, did you want to speak? I see your hand.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate bringing that back around because I think I got lost in this anonymous part. And So anyway, so I think we can, Dr. Cushing's hand is up still because he needs to talk. I think we can move on from this paragraph. I think one thing that's very evident, there's no structure to this. It's just a long dump. And so we will tease those things apart between anonymous versus filing a bullying report, which is not an anonymous report. And then I guess I will ask the question, and I forgive me for not remembering this, but is anonymous reporting even part of the law? It is, okay. Which I find sort of fascinating. It's like, how can you have a form to fill out if it's anonymous? There's no form if it's anonymous. It's the same as slipping a piece of paper under somebody's door and thinking that that's a report. Not that I don't think we should have anonymous stuff, but I guess we'll have to normalize that and figure out how to bring it together. But we should move on to the next comment. This was another one of those, make sure we're doing it, the educational parts. Actually. make sure this is happening since it is in the plan. This is more than what is required for the regulations.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, that the plan gets reviewed? Yes. We have our policy on annual, on reports and presentations. So I think that we might be able to slip that in there as something like, because we have things that are every couple of years or even every three years, and we can have it in there that will receive a presentation with the recommended edits and changes. And that sort of will work backwards from that. Remember, Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Got it. Thank you. Um, I didn't quite get that. Thank you. Um, unless anybody has any recommendations differently, I think we should switch back to doing the two years. I mean, we haven't even been keeping up with that. Um, So. I agree. Good idea.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't think we need to make a motion. All right, that's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're welcome. So this one says, this seems very broad. It might not be possible the way it's written. This is the document that all unacceptable student behavior and treating these incidents with standard school disciplinary procedures. Yeah, I mean, this would be, I mean, every kindergarten teacher would spend their whole day just writing up reports. And they wouldn't actually spend time with their students. So I certainly understand that this is wildly broad as written. But perhaps we actually don't include this and and I mean, we have other policies that say how things should be reported and those can stand on their own.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. And this has been the policy since 2010. So it's not like we're expanding. In fact, we're sort of contracting by taking the word all out. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, exactly. Thank you. That's right. Yes, we've talked about that on the floor as well. And I think we don't want to put all that into this one bullet. But I think that's a really good point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, I just wanted to add that not related to the content of the conversation, but certainly that good policy should not contain other policies. other than a link to them, because if we had a high quality document management system and our policies were all up to date, I think there's a real case to be made for inclusion in other policies, language from other policies. But that would, of course, at the same time when we change that other policy, the system that we don't have would literally tell us, hey, you have to go change policy X, Y, Z, because this language is in there. At this time, it is literally a manual process or anybody who happens to remember, and we definitely cannot handle that at this time. You know, we have this problem with the handbooks, frankly. We update policy, some of that policy gets stuck into the handbooks because it has to be there, but then we update the policies and the handbooks don't get updated. Or somebody updates the handbooks as if they're not actual policy and the policy says something different than the handbook. So I do think trying to make sure we provide a link to whatever other policies are relevant here is super important. And I think we've started to do that in other policies where we say something and we just literally say, see policy, whatever, so that folks can see the whole thing. It's not perfect, of course, but I think considering we also want to change those other policies, I think, because the law changed, we don't want that work to become this work, because in this work, we'll be meeting on this policy for the next five years straight. And we do have to meet every two years on it as it is. So that's my opinion. Dr. Edward-Vincent, I see your hand's up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I do think it's definitely possible. Member Graham and Member McLaughlin, if you could just try to limit your comments to another minute so we can move on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, everyone. Next is, this comment is about that we have specifically named the training folks, the company. I don't know if we use those folks, but even if we do, I think it makes more sense to not have it named. And I don't know, do we even need to list this at all, this item?
[Paul Ruseau]: Next up. is we have several pages where there's not a lot. So that's wonderful. This is the statement which we have said multiple times. This is literally a copy of what's above. So that's all the same thing. So that whole section gets chopped out because it is the same section duplicated. Okay, so that this whole couple of pages is just gone because it's the same thing. This, This comment is that the public involvement section can be removed. These are really getting the policy up from the ashes or whatever the right analogy is there. But that is not something that needs to exist now. That was for the day one version of this. So that section can be deleted. Assessing needs, it says outdated. I also wonder if Mr. Green's been, can we just delete this section as well? This feels like the getting it started 2010.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. And then planning and oversight, same thing. I'm not sure why I keep getting that little pop up.
[Paul Ruseau]: There it is, parent and community involvement. This whole section here, the comment is to review and make sure this is still relevant.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Howard, this one here you said, you know, you asked, does this need to be updated? We had previously met and thought, this doesn't even belong in here. I went to a couple of other districts and they don't have it in here. I did see it, Malden does have it, but I looked at other districts and they don't have it. This feels very much, frankly, is inappropriate for policy considering our specific ban on curriculum. So we had talked about in previous meetings cutting this whole section out. It's also very much inaccurate. Dr. Edward Benson.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And I did notice on the, I think it was the Lexington policy. At the very end of the policy, they had three or four links. And one of them was that. And, you know, that's a separate website. If we create that website, and we can add the link to it. But so this is still all, I'm sorry, these are all still the, I'm sorry, did I go too far?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep, these are still curriculum. This one here, faculty and staff, actually, I'm just going to keep going with these comments instead of rehashing what we've already talked about, sorry. Here we have, this says this is an old definition, needs to be updated to include school staff, which we don't have to talk about, I can just do that. This one here says retaliation language should be removed and have it stand on its own and not as part of this definition. Howard has not seen the version of the definitions we had started working on. So I think that we agree that the definitions are a bit of a mess here. So this does not make any reference to anything that anybody understands. Also an asterisk, does it have a, home. Anyway, so that that'll be cut. If I go too fast, just tell me to slow down. Okay, this is the unacceptable language conversation we just had.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, isn't that a conversation I'm having in the school committee already?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I see what you're saying. Sorry. So yeah, that we agreed to do that, but where?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'll add that we need to add the links to that policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin, I mean, our rules require that any policy that's going to get changed or reviewed has to be submitted through the full committee before we can review it. So we can't review another policy here in this meeting. Not right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I mean, we can't have another meeting and then do it then either. If you want that to be updated, you have to submit that to the full committee to send it to subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not sure. Anyway, next meeting, it doesn't matter. We don't have to have this conversation.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's it. It's not about all incidents that happen in school.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I think that making sure we stay focused on that part seems important because as Mayor McLaughlin said, like, you know, putting too much on a family to like come to this and see this and be like, oh my God, I need a PhD to figure out what this says, or I'm gonna need two hours to just read the table of contents. That's not a service to anybody. And I do think that that's a very much a, you know, a hard, you know, thing to, a hard needle to thread. Too much and too little are both bad and they're bad in different ways. The current policy is 38 pages long. I'll go out on a limb and bet there were zero people in Medford who've read the whole thing other than us. They might've scanned it, but nobody read it for a reason. But anyways, let's move on to this. Okay, the comment is related to if the incident does not meet Sorry, I have to click away. Does not seem to meet the definition. Continue to treat the incidents with standard school disciplinary or conflict resolution procedures. And Mr. Greenspan says this almost seems like a pre-screening process, and I'm not sure DESE would approve of this based on recent PRS findings. they may want to consider revising this procedure. It also needs to be the same as the school committee policy and student handbook procedures for everything to need to be checked for consistency. So as I am understanding what is being said here is we don't wanna have it in our policy that some individual can just like look at it and decide for themselves that this is not gonna go through the process. Is that correct? Yes. And so things go through the process. The process is complete and incomplete, meaning it's got a start and an end for everything that comes in. And there's not something that sits at the front and decides whether it gets to go into the process.
[Paul Ruseau]: The district would pay for it unless the student has been charged with a felony or expelled, in which case we can require parent-sponsored counseling. Mr. Greenspan says just remove it because this does not apply.
[Paul Ruseau]: The student has, okay, let's see. If a student has an IEP, work with his or her liaison to determine whether the behavior is a manifestation of the student's disability. And this says, this is only required if the student is removed from school for more than 10 days. I would advise to say to notify the liaison who may want to reconvene the team.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I was just looking for the title of the section we're in because I was confused slightly. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you, unless there's an objection, and I've modified that. Next up, notify the aggressor of his or her rights in the process to appeal your decision. There is no appeal process in the law.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may, I think number 10 is we have done the investigation. The aggressor has been, we've identified that it was bullying and we hand out a disciplinary action. The student, and or their family does not have the right to just appeal that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, we could go all the way to the US, the federal government civil rights division,
[Paul Ruseau]: But this is, the aggressor is being told that they have been found guilty, for lack of a better word, of bullying. This is not the other stuff.
[Paul Ruseau]: But that's the next two pages down in the notification section, which I feel like that's
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Graham, I certainly agree with everything has just been said about no appeals process. I think some of this is education and communication, because, you know, the law is clear. There's no such thing as a one time incident that is bullying. that does not exist. It does exist to the parent and it does exist to the student and to anybody with a rational brain, it's obviously a real thing. But the law has the word repeated and without repeated, it is not bullying and not part of this policy. But I don't think that incidents resulting in disciplinary action can't happen still. That can still happen. You just can't fill out a bullying form and think that you're going to get a determination of bullying when it's a one-time thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: I feel like this is a different conversation that we do have to have, or at least the superintendent has to have, because I understand and agree that there's repeated incidents that are continuously determined to not be bullying. That should cause incredible alarms, frankly. But those alarms are not school committee alarms. Those are supervision alarms from the superintendent to the principals. Um, and is there a way to put this into policy so that we can make sure those alarms can go off is totally something I would be up for.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I think it is too for me as well, but Dr. Edward-Vincent?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin, could you mute and unmute just to see if there's something going on with your audio? And then just unmute, unmute and then say hello. Can you hear me now? Yeah, we're getting you as a stadium kind of version of you. It is understandable. It's just suddenly weird and it happened while you were speaking. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. I'm going to put that into the notes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Next up is disciplinary actions. This should be removed, expulsion or termination. I hate that word, termination. It just sounds like, what else? How is expulsion, what's more than expulsion? Anyways, I'm sorry, that's a strange word there, but Mr. Greenspan says we cannot expel for bullying. So if that's, if we cannot, we cannot. So I don't see any reason to talk about it. Referral to, under remediation actions, referral to special education for repeat offenders who fail to respond to individual behavior plans. This is not standard for special ed referral. I would advise us to say, consider referral to special education if you suspect the student has a disability. I think that sounds good. Anybody? Okay, good. I like it. We are gonna finish this thing and we're gonna end at least one minute early, I promise. Notifications. This is, the comment is, and the other way around. So I can do that, just that we, the who's who in all of this remains confidential in both directions. Administrators may only share information with the permission of the student's family. This is not accurate or moved. We can share information with school staff who have educational interests. That actually makes complete sense. That would be very strange, frankly. I don't know how you could operate a district, each other in meetings, stuff. Documentation. Personal notes can be kept confidential as long as you don't share with or consult them with the presence of parents or students. Mr. Greenspan says this is not correct. We, I will, Somebody, one of us, will get the language for what the current school student records regulations are and replace that. This did also raise an eyebrow to me. The section here, I'm clear what this chart is, which is great because it is very unclear to me too, so delete that. This one says that it's called the PQA now. I went to the website and it was still called PRS. So I don't know if it's more than one thing. It's not, it's the same. PRS, okay, good. That's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I'm sorry. It said that there's no longer PQA.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we will flush out this whole section. And I would appreciate any emails with recommended additional language. Dr. Robinson?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The next section is a bunch of pages down. Just need to update the definition to match the definition. This is not part of the definition, involves an imbalance of perceived or real physical or social power between target and aggressors. So we will remove that. Retaliation should be separated, which we have separated in our other definitions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Howard, should I remove the four repeat offenders? Or the special education? Oh, okay. Just repeat offenders. Great. And then that's the end. It's 5.56. I feel I lied to several people about how early we were going to end, which is okay. We got to do the work. So this, I will, I have my notes and I have a version of the document which I will share with everybody and which has these notes made real, like remove this section, et cetera. And I will get that version to the members as well as for the purposes of minutes as soon as possible. Thank you, everyone. We're gonna have to have one more meeting to review. Hopefully a document we can send to the full committee. I will do a doodle poll shortly. And if there's no other final words, is there a motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Is that what everyone wants to do? That's correct. I believe we voted. We, I think we decided that in our previous meeting, but that's my understanding. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, on the motion to adjourn, remember Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays, absent. Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone is on Zoom. On Zoom. Here. Member Ruseau? Present, and Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate the presentation, I feel much more aware of our situation than last meeting. I have enough questions to keep everybody, the rest of us going for another hour. The budgetary priorities, those don't have a dollar figure listed anywhere and they're not included in any totals anywhere, am I correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: They're not mapped out for you yet. Thank you. I just wanted to translate savings on instructional materials to mean that PTOs go back to buying paper. Sometimes things sound very different than they do in real life.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was on slide, forgive me, 19. We're just talking about how to save money. I have a list of things. This is definitely not a comprehensive list. These were things that I think many of us expected to happen in the next year. Director of Communications, that position I presume is gone.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think the salary, though, is certainly going to be dramatically higher. The health curriculum, should we just give up on that for next year?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I'm on the HECAT committee. Any curriculum we purchase, or there are free ones even that are not bad, they do nothing on their own. They are going to require a vast amount of money to train the staff. Hundreds of thousands is a minimum is my guess. We don't know because we haven't gotten that far in the process, but there's no getting us to the point where we stop teaching harmful health curriculum, which is what we have right now in Medford. And the one of the professionals in our committee said, if we could just teach nothing, it would be an improvement over what we have as a curriculum. Now I will say that it's probable the staff isn't following the curriculum and is doing better, but the approved curriculum right now is harmful. So I don't care what a new health curriculum costs, when the professionals in health education tell us what we have would be better if we just let kids watch YouTube all or play a video game in their class instead of learning what we think they should be taught. That's really startling. So I hope the health curriculum makes it. I take it the theater teacher we heard very joyously about in the last meeting, it's not gonna make the list.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'll ask one more question and then I'll pause for my others. Let other people ask questions. How many people are currently employed that are on expiring funds, because when I look at other districts, they're trying to do, you know, not most districts, but other districts are trying to do two and three year budgets, which I recognize part of that process is in fact, theoretical because the money doesn't come yet. But, you know, we're one year away from having everybody that we paid from out of ESSER being on the street. And while I care very much about them, I actually care to a greater extent with the services that they're providing to our students that will just cease in need, they will stop completely, because they will not be employed here are we talking five people are we talking 50 people. And I recognize you may not have the number but if we could get the for the next meeting or in a report. How many people work for us that are paid for out of s or funds and. And what are their positions and what do they do, because I'd like to know that this is the next you know this is the next budget we're going to face but it's very relevant now because when we're making decisions about what to cut now. it matters if we're, you know, do we cut a little here? If next year we need to really just cut a big hunk of something off so that we can afford to keep these critical people. And I don't really get a, I don't have a good sense of who it is we're paying for an investor funds and what those positions are. And I will let my colleagues ask questions before I come back. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: When we keep saying specialists, we mean new teachers, right? Teachers that are in the MTA.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. That's the confusion, because specialists could be, I mean, anything. And I just don't think it's clear that that, I don't know if Member Graham was trying to ask, like, are we talking about four new teachers? And that's what we're talking about.
[Paul Ruseau]: The committee decides what our process will be so receiving a memo that tells us what we're going to get for an allocation does not change what this body will do and we have a process that we have implemented for three years now and we will create a request that will say what we need to operate this district regardless of what the municipality is going to give us, that unless the committee decides to change our process, that's what we're going to do. Getting a memo does not immediately decide that we don't have to do our jobs and that the superintendent doesn't have to tell us what's needed to make this district function and flourish. Those are not related things. So I disagree very much that receiving that memo last Friday suddenly short circuits our process.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McDone. Yes. Member Rissell, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I looked at the cherry sheets, which is the state's, there's a set of different cherry sheets, but those are the amount of revenue the state plans to send to Medford. In this year, Medford is getting a 20% increase and we'll receive $3.76 million more that the state says is for education. Communities, cities do have the freedom to spend that money any which way they want. The state could give us that 3.76 and the mayor could use it for pavement. That's legal and allowed. But I do find it very concerning that the state has believes we need $3.76 million more for education and we're only getting 45% of that in this new budget. That 55% of the money that the state said here Medford, you need more money for education 55% of that money. The mayor is choosing to do something else with, and that is 100% her authority, and we can do nothing about it but I think it's really important, and this set $3.76 million is the governor's budget that usually goes up as the legislature gets their hands on their proposed budget. So this number is almost certainly just going to go up. So I'm, I was very surprised to see that that's what the cherry sheet said and what the governor's budget said we should be getting more for education. And I don't, I think those numbers speak for themselves.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Yes. Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Mustone. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve as amended.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have too many windows open. Sorry, one moment. Thank you. Great. Yes, thank you. So we met on April 3 2023 to continue discussions on the bullying prevention and intervention plan. Our agenda was a little off kilter because we were hoping our attorney would be with us but That was not an option that night. So we discussed how to proceed with the document and at the next meeting, which will be on the 28th, I believe. One moment, I do have that right here. No, the, okay, 26th, 25th. I don't have it in my calendar, even though I know I put it in my calendar. So forgive me. At our next meeting, which is coming up this month, the end of the month, we will be working with our attorney to go through all of the recommendations that he had, as well as bringing forth a proposed new document and new format, rather than trying to work through the 38 pages one line at a time. We had a lot of great conversation that the minutes explain. I'm hoping that the next meeting is either the last or second to the last meeting on this plan, and that we'll be able to make enough progress to get this buttoned up before the end of the school year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Can I go? Just kidding.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. Anyways. I was just going to ask that we make sure that the usual travel approval forms come back to us prior to it actually happening. I know this is really kind of early, but we do really want to make sure that that is always filled out. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just didn't want you to get off of this slide before I ask this question. Sure. Because there's no numbers, and I can't tell you where to go. But do you know how the state selects these? Is there some randomness? Do they have whoever's in charge is in a particular mood?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: But it's never just like, this isn't the Medford set of criteria. No, this is all of cohort A, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Could you send us this slide deck? I don't think we have it. Sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. To come back to what Vice President Bears said about having enough resources, there was an article this week out of Arkansas or Missouri or Mississippi, forgive me for not knowing which ones it was. And this is not a place with much money. In fact, the community is particularly poor. And so they could not get anybody for teachers. And what they decided to do, and clearly they had to spend money, is that we do have a workforce in our public schools that is particularly diverse, our paraprofessionals. And what Arkansas did, which I'm still kind of surprised, because it has to be wildly expensive, they not only would take their paraprofessionals, they would pay for their entire education, And they would pay them their salaries they were getting as a paraprofessional to not actually work. And all they had to do was be a teacher for three years after they graduated. That's not a cheap endeavor. But like probably most people up here, we got checks in December. And the non-white teaching workforce is tiny. And frankly, I think if you graduate and you're a black woman or a black man in particular, you can pick and choose any district in this country you wanna work for and they're gonna pay you whatever they're paying. So our teacher pay isn't, when we talk about diversifying our workforce, it isn't Medford versus Everett and Winchester, it's Medford against the entire nation of school districts that would like to have some teachers that aren't all white. So we really have to think about that. If you get to pick where you're gonna go, are you gonna go a place where you can't afford to buy a house on a teacher salary? The pay in communities that are a 20 minute drive from here isn't really any different than Medford's, but you can buy a house for a lot less. So if we want to solve these problems, all these things that I've heard are really important and good, but like Representative Garbally said, we're just talking around the edges here. Because we're not going to diversify the workforce without a bigger workforce of people to hire. And if we want to solve that, we could solve it. I mean, if Arkansas can do it, I'm pretty sure we could do it. Not to suggest we're better than them, but seriously, we have so much money here. and somehow a place that couldn't figure out how to hire teachers, because their pay is probably terrible, found a way to create a workforce. We can do it. And every time I hear there's not enough workers, I do want to scream a bit. Would anybody in this community really be that upset if all the people that worked at every fast food joint found another job paying significantly more, doing something in education, or working for the city, or the state, or a bus driver. There are plenty of people. We are not willing to pay for it. And I think there's not enough people. It's just a cop-out. And it really makes me angry, because I can go to McDonald's right now and get something, and there's nothing wrong with that work. But if those workers were told they could get paid twice as much to come be a paraprofessional, they'd all quit. They would. There's enough workers. There's plenty of workers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone, absent. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. One second. Just got to keep up with all the other things.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, motion to table to the next meeting, and hopefully we actually have the minutes in our packets.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is great. As soon as it was available, I was all over it. I'm very happy. Thank you. I'm curious, what are the big outstanding challenges? In particular, I'm wondering about how we implemented search. You know, is it just all Google? And is it connected to everything properly? Because I know that Google sells a lot of stuff and nothing's cheap from Google.
[Paul Ruseau]: So like, if I, if somebody creates a Google Doc, and it's just automatically available through final site search, how do... So if you had a link in a post that was to a Google Doc, Yeah, I'm just thinking about, for instance, the example of the school committee agendas. Google Docs are used to create the agendas. Do they all have to be published and uploaded into the cloud for final site to even know they exist?
[Paul Ruseau]: That was my question, really. Is it not searchable?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's a lot of work.
[Paul Ruseau]: But like all of tonight's many PDFs won't be, like if you went to the search, you won't find anything that's in there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, I, I don't actually know what I want. I think that, you know, you know, there's obviously a hazard of connecting a search tool directly up to all of our Google accounts. That could be you know, you're trying to draft something and somebody can just search and read the next school committee agenda before you've even published it or something.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor, for your work and Superintendent as well. I know it feels like we keep trying, but we will keep trying. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone, absent. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone, absent. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I wish we had page numbers, because I'm going to reference slides and realize that I can't tell you what page it's on just now. But this one, you don't have to really go to it. Thank you for the presentation. I'm pretty sure there's one slide that everybody's interested in, but I'll cover my lower priority stuff first. Are we reducing the engagement specialists because we have not hired enough, or are we getting rid of some? I'm assuming we're not suddenly paying them less.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I guess I, so this is a presentation of, this feels like this is a presentation of our, approved budget allocation versus our budget request. I mean, last year and the year before and time is wonky, but we specify what we wanted and needed to operate the district. And then we figure out how to squeeze all that down into the number we got from the city, but you're squeezing ahead of time, which means that when we go and ask the city council, I know that we have not hired a fifth engagement specialist. But I would like to see, you know, based on the person who's in charge of that, and obviously, and you all like is five even enough was the right number seven. And sure, hiring is hard, but if the right number is four, then this makes no difference to me going from five to four, especially since we have four, it makes sense. If the right number to support our kids who are trying to recover from the pandemic is seven, well, we should be putting seven down here. So we know when we ask the city council, whatever the number is, if we say we need $77 million and we get a smaller number, in the mayor's budget, well, that's the way it's supposed to work. But going in already with chopping, and if you're telling me we don't need five engagement specialists, and the kids are fine, and their specific role for them is enough, then I'm gonna believe you, because I obviously can't know that. But you've just described this as a way to save money, and it seems like that's the step. In our last slide, that's one, two, three, four, five, six, That's like step six and step seven, except we're only in step two. So, I mean, I see that the reading specialist went up, I'm assuming we didn't double somebody's salary, so that's great news, but that's not a money saving situation. So this slide is sort of a mixture of attempts to save money which I have no problem with saving money, but I don't know, like in the very first line there, is five, four, what's the right number? Because the kids aren't okay. Lots of them are, but not all of them are. And to be cutting at this early phase just seems backwards. I'll just go through one more of my questions before we let some of my colleagues speak I have other questions but I'm in the budgetary priorities expand expanded school day staff is that just another way of saying after school. Yes, thank you. It's around trying to do this around care workers and I guess I'm surprised by that number because I pretty sure we've never budgeted anything for after school other than the director, and that the rest is just covered in the revolving account. So this to me seems to suggest that we're going to use our allocation that we get from the city and actually spend some of that on afterschool? Is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly didn't have any problem with exactly what you just described. I just want to make sure we don't get into any kind of slippery situation around our operating budget and what it covers. Cause it covers K to 12 and the school day. And then if we want to start pulling other stuff in, you know, like then that expands our scope of what our budget is supposed to cover. And if that happens, I think it's an important, I mean, this is perhaps in one FTE. So this is not the scenario, but like if Medford rec just suddenly became part of the public school system, our budget would go up whatever the Medford rec budget is, presumably. So I just want to be careful when we're expanding our scope because then it makes year over year analyses of how much of the public school spending, those kinds of things really hold a lot of weight, especially if you're doing an override and you're like, suddenly it looks like you grew this huge amount and somehow you still can't make it work. So I just want us to be really careful about what in after school stuff ends up being part of the operating budget, the number we approve, because that number stick, I mean, I personally look at over 20 years of our budgets. And there's surely been that exact situation somewhere along the way, where there was a big jump, but it wasn't because anything changed. We just, you know, our scope changed. So I just think we have to be really careful about that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I signed the warrants, but I just realized I don't think I've ever signed a warrant for water. Do we not pay for our water? Does the municipality just provide it for free? Wonderful. That's nice that I have one bill. And my other question was on the slide, two slides before, the areas of concern. I appreciate the use of the color there because these items definitely caused some alarms. I mean, obviously it's too soon to really talk about staffing downsizing, but in the advocate for investment, I guess I'm wondering who's advocating and with whom? With whom? Whom? Yeah. I've never really got that stuff straight on the who and whom's, but I mean, I think it's important to advocate for investment, but I think this whole committee's part of our job is to advocate for investment and the communities and sort of everybody's responsibility. So I'm just wondering what is meant by that in this context? And if I might just suggest, is it just try to talk to the mayor, get more money in that in that in the mayor's budget. Is that what that means? Because I don't see the the administration going and I mean, spending your time talking to your state, our state legislators, like, I just don't know what that means.
[Paul Ruseau]: 1927. Additionally, if you wish to submit any comments or questions during the meeting, you can email me to pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting an email must include the following, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment. The memo is that as approved by the committee on January 24th, 2022 in paper 2022-5, the Rules and Policy Subcommittee will review the Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan for recommended updates. This is continued from the Rules and Policy Subcommittee meeting, which was previously held on December 6th, 2022. Actually, we've had one more recent than that as well. So I'll get that fixed on the next agenda. Oh actually, I'm sorry. The agenda continued from the Rules and Policies Subcommittee meeting previously held on March 2nd, that's the one, 2023. So I'm going to take the roll. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Here. Three present, we have a quorum. So for those that are joining us and have not been in this, this is our third or maybe our fourth meeting on the bullying prevention and intervention plan. We are working to update the plan, bring it in compliance with the law that seems to change more often than we expected, and also to make it human usable, which it is not at the moment. The last meeting we had, there were a couple of takeaways that's fine either way. Um member Glockman was going to begin work on a flow chart, which we. Can get to today or not. That's fine. Either way. Um the member Graham, um, after this meeting. The goal is for her to, um, review the structure of the the document. Um and I was assigned to clean the hundreds of comments in the Google Doc that make it interesting, but there's no date and time stamp. I mean, there is, but it's a real hard thing to use. And then check on the sections that are required in the law so we can delete unnecessary stuff from the current document. Between then and now, I heard from our school attorney who was supposed to be the star tonight. Unfortunately, COVID is not done. So we will not have our attorney tonight, which sort of threw me into a bit of a like, oh, okay, something to do tonight because this meeting is scheduled. He did review the entire policy and sent me an email and told me that there are a substantial number of updates. Lawyers don't tend to use a lot of exciting language, but I read into his very short email that most of the policy does not appear to be what he thinks it should be. He didn't send me a list or anything like that. So the plan was he was going to go through that with us tonight, but I just found out yesterday that he was not going to be able to make it. I did want to just share some of the work I did since the last meeting. So I did go to the actual law, section 370, I actually forget the full reference from Mass General Law. And I went through the document, I copied it out of the Mass General Law website, which is remarkably, 1995, if you ever enjoyed using it. And so I put it, I formatted it, actually did some indentation just so it was readable, because it's just, if you look at the law, it is a gigantic blob. It is really a remarkable, when you look at a lot of other laws on the state website, you see formatting and spacing and like, you can read it. This one is very, very strange. It's just a gigantic dump. It looks like without return characters, frankly. So I went through and did that just so it would be easy enough for us to With Mr. Greenspan, our attorney, who's not here, with him here, we would be able to look at the actual text that he was referring to. That took a bunch of time, but is of no value. The only thing I did other than that was I was assigned to work on the actual definition section, look at the definitions throughout the document. I also then looked at the definitions from the state's website, the Mass General Law, which includes a whole pile of definitions, and frankly, will solve a couple of the questions we had. But before I share my definitions, did anybody want anything you wanted to say?
[Paul Ruseau]: Needed to hear somebody's voice other than mine. Okay, so I went through the definitions that are in the current document. Can everybody see this and is it big enough? Well, that's good. So I took a couple, okay, I took one liberty. In the actual law, there's a whole section with definitions at the top, which you will see here. And then in, after that, there's two examples for which they should have just put a definition and instead had this like three line long school districts, charter schools, chapter, you know, 766 schools or whatever, day schools that like listed all the schools that law applied to. And it would repeat it, I don't know, a couple dozen times, which added a huge amount of text. So that was the liberty I took here was to simply convert that to say, let me find an example. It's not so long anymore. Okay. School district, there it is. So where I say school district, Well, this is for us. We're not any of those other things. So I chopped, frankly, a remarkable amount of language out of their definition because we don't need that other stuff. So that was a liberty I took. I've changed this slightly. The current version in the document says definitions. Oops, let me grab that. It's a little long, but it also,
[Paul Ruseau]: The current language says several of the following definitions are copied directly from Mass General Law, Chapter 71, Section 37-0, as noted below. And, you know, taking to heart that a lot of people had and all of us I think had really been like this current document isn't terribly usable. You know, this is supposed to be a document that is used. So I rewrote that to say definitions substantially taken from that are italicized. So I couldn't say we copied it because I took out all that extra language about, you know, all the different kinds of school districts that exist. Other than that, these are the definitions right out of the law. And I take the definitions out of the law to be that that's the definition we have to use. Now, I mean, you could say I've taken liberties here, but I think there's no change to the intent or meaning of the language at all to take out that chunk. I think the definition of cyberbullying, I wouldn't write it this way. But again, it's in the law. So if Howard was here, I would ask him, are we required to use these definitions? And I think we would want to ask him that when we see him at the next meeting. Because these are definitions that need to be updated, frankly. Hostile work environment. I added a couple that we didn't have. that were in the law that I thought were actually something we should have. And in the last meeting, we had a pretty interesting conversation. I don't think we ended with any kind of decision about whether to use perpetrator or what was the other word?
[Paul Ruseau]: perpetrator feels an awful lot to me like you're already convicted, but that's what's in there. So I mean, unless if Howard says we're supposed to use these words and I guess we're stuck. And if he says we're not, then we're gonna have to have that conversation again. But I feel like I'd rather wait to dig into what we wanna use until Howard can tell us that we could change it. So just from a efficiency perspective. Retaliation, school grounds, school staff is when I added. So every time it says school staff, this was the other liberty I took, I'm sorry, there was two. Every single time school staff was referenced, it would be school staff, including but not limited to educators, all that whole thing over and over and over again. So I put school staff and we could discuss whether we wanna put like a C definition or something like that or not. I mean, this is just the definition section. And then the other one is victim, which we did. I think that might be the one we talked the most about, but that is also in the law. So I think we have conversations to be had once we have Howard to tell us there's no point or not. So that was the definitions that we currently had, plus the addition of school staff and the addition of perpetrator, because our current definitions actually didn't, oh, it did have aggressor, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is the actual copy. I can share this with everybody after the meeting, if you want to take a look at it. This is the copy of the law that has had formatting and then a couple of small items that are in the law I just deleted. They were things specific to charters. They just weren't relevant to us. And just to have a clean version to work from and understanding the law, I thought this was helpful. I have also taken the three times the law has been updated and I've applied those changes into this document. I did not look to see what changed. So in 2014, there was a change that simply took all of section D, whatever the law was before, It replaced section D with a new section D. So I copied the new version of section D into here. I didn't painstakingly look to see what had changed in the law. And I'm guessing that's some of what Howard will have to talk about is that maybe we have language that needs to be updated because the law was changed three times or four times. So I don't know what else we should be talking about.
[Paul Ruseau]: It is. In section D, and it may well be part of what changed, I don't know. It seems like the kind of thing that would get added after the law went into effect and people like, well, what about this? But yeah, subsection D29 is a provision that a student who knowingly makes a false accusation of bullying or retaliation shall be subject to disciplinary action.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mr. Tucci. Definitely, I put it on the list of things to include in the new document. I mean, I can't see a downside really. So, member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member Graham. I actually think that's a really good point. It may be a weird question since I should know this, but, Are administrators allowed to fill out a bullying form report? I mean, I would assume and hope, but I... Okay, a lot of heads going yes, that makes me happy. Good, I assumed, but Dr. Edward-Vinson, I see you want to say something.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's a great idea. Thank you. So I guess I would start with, did anybody come here with a list of your own? And if you didn't, we can start at the top. Obviously, we have the table of contents, which I'm going to skip. Or maybe I should just do this table of contents and we can go to the sections if anybody says yes, that one. So now because, nevermind, sorry. I don't like the structure of the document. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't belong in there. So I think we're gonna just go through it like this. Dr. Edouard-Vincent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I, that was what I was going to do but like right out of the gate we don't have any, this isn't even in the, in the index. But so this section here is really copied out of the law. Not everything in the law is here, but there is definitely, or actually it is almost the entire thing. Let me switch over to my version I created. So it ends right now with, department investigations. Okay, it's not really the same. It probably was at one point. So that section is really mostly a copy of the law. I mean, these one through five definitions for bullying, that's just all right out of the law. And if we go down to the first section, the document just begins with a copy of the law, do that myself. Introduction to the plan, district and school district responsibilities. So these, I think there are some updates that have to happen here. One of the ones I noticed today was that we're supposed to be providing specific education, K through 12, every single year to our students on bullying prevention. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but I'm saying that I was surprised and, you know, with all the other pressures, I guess it feels like something we're gonna take care of in the ECAT, the Health Education Curriculum Advisory Committee, to bring that in across the district. That was something in there. Let's see, there's staff training as well. And I think I asked in the last meeting and that is happening already every year. So then there's responsibilities for the district, financial support, resources to teachers and parents, students, outreach. Obviously the policies in the annual plan review and individual school plans. This says annual. I believe the law was updated when I was reading that today. It's not every single year you have to redo this whole policy. Then individual schools have a whole set of responsibilities. Let's see. This document for anybody who's joining us midway through this conversation is on our website. If anybody wants it, raise your hand and I'll grab the URL and send it to you, but otherwise I won't make everybody wait while I browse.
[Paul Ruseau]: Student responsibilities, which we've talked about quite a bit this last year, six months. Parent caregiver responsibilities. This one's an interesting one to me. I just find it, this one in particular, I can't, I don't think I've ever been able to figure out what it even means.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I actually, that's a really good point. One way we can certainly make this document more consumable is not including a bunch of stuff that feel good, but it's definitely not policy. I do like that sort of almost a, I don't want to say workaround, but providing those sessions like screen agers, I remember going to that a couple of times. It was, I don't know if it's the same exact one or if they keep updating it, but we can certainly put some, perhaps put something in here that that will be offered. Um, we'd have to find out how to figure out how to word that one to make sure it still remains policy and not just a like on this date and time because that's not going to work well for a policy. Um, thanks. I regret that's good. Um, this is a copy of the same exact thing again. Um, so I'm not going to reread it and obviously we'll be cutting it One or both of them out. I mean, before we would cut anything, we would make sure they really are exactly that. But this section here, leadership and plan development, I don't know that I understand This is just document management history. This is probably in minutes of former school committee meetings from many years ago. I certainly, you know, when this was being brought up from nothing, very interesting stuff to read, but I don't see any reason this entire section should be in here unless there is some weird thing that Howard says, our attorney says, yes, you have to have it. But if he does say that, I'm sure we can get away with reordering it and putting it at the end as in some kind of document history or something like that.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's quite annoying. The next section is the parent and community involvement. And I think this is probably where it would make sense
[Paul Ruseau]: Like just seeing this community health organization, Redford Health Matters, it's not actionable, you can't do anything with it, it doesn't tell you what happened, were they really involved, was that the plan? Dr. Edward-Vincent?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, yeah, thank you. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, next section is the, this is just the, oh, this was the thing I said earlier about how we have to do this education every year. Apparently it's listed right there. I said we weren't doing it and it's literally, I'm sorry. I was thinking too much of the heat cap meetings where we were kind of like, okay, well, this stuff has to go. And member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly agree that it should be deleted. Um, if for no other reason than where we don't have authority over this, this literal, this policy, which is presently approved means that. This is the curriculum that the district should be using in every spot. And I don't know that that's necessarily right. But as member Graham mentioned, we are not supposed to be doing, we're not supposed to have decision matters in curriculum other than funding. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yeah, in the HECAP meetings, we are essentially like, unless we have a time machine and 40 hours a week, we're gonna have to find ways to make all this stuff come together in a less than math time, science time. It just isn't, there's not enough time in the day. So yeah, thank you. Next section is faculty and staff professional development, which is, I believe in the law as well. I don't remember every bit of it. Obviously, we'll want to update that with the current language in the law. I think this is part of the section that was replaced. Section D was very long. It was the one that was just whole cloth replaced. Definition of bullying. It's very interesting. This definition looks like it came from somewhere. one, two, three, four, five, there's six items here, but the definition of bullying in the law is different. So in an unusual situation, the law is actually briefer, but it does have the repeated use. And then there are five categories versus repeated use and six categories. I need more tabs. I don't have enough tabs to see which ones. So number one is causes physical or emotional harm. Okay, that's number two is places the target responsible fear. And that was number two over here. Yep. Number three is hostile, four is infringes on the rights, that's right, materially disrupts the education process.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, this is so strange. This isn't a school committee document saying this is part of our definition, but it's not part of the official. Somebody copy from another place. But anyway, so I think it makes sense to have this stuff as an actual, I could go either way. Retaliation is a whole section of its own. So obviously retaliating, to retaliate, you must do something, right? And those things are the things that are the other definitions of bullying. So, I mean, retaliating, there's looking at somebody with angry eyes, that's not retaliating. So I don't know. It seems like having a definition of itself as part of the definition is kind of a problem. So, but anyway, so let's see. So these are just some more definitions that showed up in the middle of nowhere. There's all these reminders to staff. I don't think these belong in here either. Frankly, we might want to put a line in the policy saying that We expect that the staff will be trained, but this is like stay calm and neutral. Our policy is going to do bullying intervention training of staff right in the document. And just to me, like best practice, I assume has changed since this was written. And it feels very strange to me that it's here. Remember Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I think the procedures should be known. People should be able to find the procedures. I will say that the procedure being part of the policy is, again, it means that you can't change your procedures without coming to school committee and us having yet more meetings, which I know you all love these meetings as much as everybody else. your procedures like that just changed in January, I'm guessing that they may not even coincide with this current policy and having those in here at all makes no sense. Now it's similar to the last section, a statement that the superintendent and the, you know, actually the responsibilities are different between the superintendent central office and the principals, but that, you know, a statement that the, procedures will be developed and they will be, you know, common across schools as appropriate. But specifying the actual procedures to me is not what should be in here.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just want to put you down as somebody who might make a... And I'm going to write it in my notebook so that I remember to do it.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is, uh, let's see administrative investigation procedures.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, yeah. I think also, I just did do a search and there is nothing here about, If it's a determination of conflict, what happens?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so we have the repeated use. This is just the items you check off the things provided for your description. Oh, a final determination. Does not meet the standard of bullying. Bullying has occurred. or criminal harassment. So there appears to be, if it's not bullying, because it wasn't repeated use for instance, then it's just over.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think that's actually leads me to a question I think I'll have for Howard, our attorney again also is that, you know, this plan, this document is mandated. And so is the expectation that the scope is limited by that, or is that a starting point we can go out? Because it would feel very, you know, disconnected to have everything that we want to do or say that's a little more than what the law requires if we had to like stick it in another document or in another policy. And so I don't know if that's the case and we'll have to ask our attorney Greenspan when he's here, because I think having something that says that, you know, after that term, not determined to be bullying, it just can't look like, even though if that's not what's happening in practice, having it in black and white, that it looks like it just, that's the end, rejected, have a nice day, which is sort of what it reads, even though I don't think that that's what you all do. Remember, Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Superintendent did you have your.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll just agree. I was gonna do that on my own, but I figured I would let us all decide as a group to do that. So I will, well, let me just take a vote on that. The motion is to have a member Condense the document in consultation with our school attorney.
[Paul Ruseau]: He's gonna tell us what we have to do. So attorney's advice on required changes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm happy to do that since I've already been in communication with Mr. Greenspan and I will absolutely ensure that he comes to our next meeting. So, because we would no matter what I end up with after talking to him, either I will have a lot more questions or you all have a lot more questions to understand things. So I will make sure he is at our next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me just scroll down a little bit more so I can make sure we put notes on all the sections. This section here, the response options, I think, We should wait. He's going to have something to say on this. And I'm looking at some of this and I'm thinking it doesn't even jive with all of our other policies that we've passed. So member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay. We have a bunch more definitions. So let's just do this last page here. Notification. This is, well, I feel like we just did this once before already, but this is the notification process. And I feel like this is going to, Attorney Greenspan's gonna have something to say about both that and especially documentation.
[Paul Ruseau]: We're on page 25. Oh, we do only have this last page before we are done with the stuff we haven't covered. Problem resolution system. this is just more of the law saying that we have to have one, but, oh, this is what if we're not doing it. So I'm guessing that Attorney Greenstein is gonna tell us we have to have this in this policy, access to resources and services. This is pretty much real policy that says that the superintendent will have a list of resources and, We had looked at a list of resources earlier in the previous meeting and decided that made no sense. Literally all the links were broken except for one. So I think it makes sense to have it in policy that that will be there. The title probably could use some work. And then definitions and then the forms, which we're not gonna do the forms right now, cause we're out of time. It is 5.56. Does anybody have anything they want to say before we end a minute and a half early?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'll aim for the 24th or the 25th since the members are here.
[Paul Ruseau]: just as options.
[Paul Ruseau]: So just seeing the future play play.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll target for the 25th. After I talked to our attorney and I'll let you know there a motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Here. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ms. Stone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Osoye? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm very excited by photography. My daughter is very excited by photography.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, all abuzz. And obviously photography is a little different now than when I was a student, but we're doing digital photography because, you know, the other stuff requires a lot. Yes. But will students be, required to bring their own equipment and what kind of equipment requirements will be there?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's exciting. I know when my daughter mentioned it when she was doing her fall selections, I did not know that you can buy for like 20 bucks, really amazing equipment to attach to your iPhone and turn them into like equipment that didn't even exist when I was a kid. So it's kind of amazing how the bar is much lower to be able to do some great stuff. So that's exciting. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the change, though, is not for anybody currently on a wait list. It would just be the new kindergartners.
[Paul Ruseau]: So my understanding of some of the problem with a wait list, everybody gets a number when we do the lottery, is that if you're number one on the wait list, well, that means something different than if you're number 142 on the wait list. At least it does to the parent. In reality, I mean, if I was a parent and I was number one on the wait list, I would make decisions very differently than if I was number 107, I'm sorry, 107 at the Brooks wait list. I would not behave the same. I would be like, somebody's gonna leave. Somebody's gonna, something's gonna happen. I'm gonna get a spot. I'm not going to find additional, I'm not gonna be looking for another option. And if I'm number one, it doesn't feel terribly risky. If I'm number three, it's sort of as a risk. And as you move down the list, it becomes pointless. If you're number 107, to say it's risky to just wait for a spot is an understatement. The problem is being number one on the wait list does not mean you're next. And I think that that is an impossible logical thing for most families to comprehend. Being number one on the wait list does not mean you get the next spot. So if a kindergartner is doing two days a week, And they move and now it opens up and the next person needs five days a week or three days a week or two days a week, but a different two days a week. Those two days cannot work. They're number one on the list. They don't get a spot. And I think this is too complicated, frankly, for even when we've had this conversation before and I have to like, am I saying it correctly? Because it is complicated. And I think it's unfair for people who are number one, two, three, four, five to be put in a position of- False hope. What do you do? False hope. It's like, do you have to communicate with you at least 72 times over the summer in hopes that number one will, you'll go from number one to having a seat. It feels like it sets a situation up where you look, not you personally, but the program looks bad and it gives false hope. And so that's sort of my big problem with this list. I also think that we've talked about who's in the list, meaning are there people who aren't even applying because they know we have not anywhere near enough spots. And my mind, we wanna know how big is the actual demand. And we do not know the actual demand right now. I mean, at the Brooks, if you take all of the kids that are in the program and everybody that's on the wait list, that's like half the student body. But the other schools, it's not anywhere near that. And without knowing the demand, it's really hard to make decisions. I think if everybody was, we picked the top, the kids that are getting a spot and everybody else gets to sit in the pile, well, then there's this like, it could be my turn. And it would feel like I would wanna throw my name in the hat and maybe get a much cheaper program than I'm gonna get at a private provider, which is really a different conversation we'll have later in the slide deck. I just think that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but other districts do not do wait lists. They do a lottery every time a spot opens up.
[Paul Ruseau]: So if we did away with the wait list, the lottery situation right now is we run it, we create the wait list, And then I moved to Medford or I hear about this system after the date of the wait list gets generated now. And I would know to not apply because there's 107 kids on the wait list. I will be number 108. I'm not filling out a damn form so I can be number 108 on the wait list. That's not how I like to use my time. But if we get rid of the wait list, I find out about this after the selection has happened. I move to Medford after the selection has happened. I fill out the form in June, July, August, September, any time I get added into the pile, and I have the same opportunity as anybody else to get picked the next time a spot opens. And that feels particularly fair to me because Well, I mean, communications isn't our biggest strength, but even if it was our biggest strength, there will always be people moving into the community or people who are just completely unaware. And it doesn't feel like, well, frankly, always knowing what's going on is a very privileged position. And so for people that do not have that privilege to also lose the opportunities that we offer just seems like a double whammy. I'll wait for my motion because I realize that other people have something to say, but it feels a lot fairer to me, both to a parent that would know to not get this false hope, but also to all the people who don't know in time about this two-week period to have the same opportunities to use the services that we're providing. And everybody should have those same opportunities, so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you want to wait for my motion to the end? Do you want to make my motion now?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just to point out that when we look at a budget like this, there's a gigantic line item that does not exist that would exist in any private program. And that is we, the program pays exactly $0 for the building, $0 for heat, $0 for electricity. These are incredibly expensive that the district provides and are free to the program. And that's fine, but I think it's important to consider when we talk about how On the next slide, you'll see that there's more income than going out. But it is, in my mind, not a reflection of just like a cash cow, like to have these programs in a facility where you are paying rent and you are paying your own utilities would far outstrip the deferential. So I just think that's really important when looking at this budget to recognize that, that the excess cash is not just, it's not play money. It's like, we're providing something as a district, the taxpayers are. And so it is, in my mind, very appropriate and rational that that is essentially coming back. I'll let you get to your next slide where you'll see that, but thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, thank you. I know I might be a little bit out of step on this from other people, and that's why there's a committee and not just one person in charge. But, you know, what's, you know, we live in a end stage capitalist society. I think that's really not a, that's not a controversial statement. And the private companies, nationwide private companies providing these services are paying dramatically more than we will ever pay and charging families, you know, $40,000 a year. So, you know, this program is in a weird space where it is not public, not private, but also somehow competing with private. So I don't, you know, I look at these wages and I see none of these wages making somebody leave another job to take these jobs. I just can't fathom anyone leaving any job at any pay to take these jobs. So if our goal is competition for workers, which, you know, it's like been front page news for three years now that everybody left the workforce. not everybody, but a lot of people, and they're not coming back. So, you know, in my mind, we have to get workers that already have jobs elsewhere. That's how you get your workers. That's how every private business does it. And, you know, just wishing that they're gonna show up. I don't know how that, I'm not saying you're doing it, but just wishing that they're gonna appear to me seems, fantastical, really. And I know that, you know, I've talked before with you one on one, like, you know, we go to $100 an hour, do we get a bunch of workers? Yes. And then two years later, every other district has $100 an hour jobs. And it's the same size workforce. But at some point, we do start peeling people off other types of employment. And And in my mind, until we start peeling people away from other employment types, we're just sort of running in a circle here. At best, we're going to keep up, and it's not going to fall further behind. But I don't really envision us somehow producing more employees. That just is not an option. So I look at these wages, and I say, OK, these are not 40 hour a week jobs. So unless you are independently wealthy or living at home and don't wanna work a full-time job, or, I mean, I'm incredibly grateful for every single person that does work for us in this program, but there is, I mean, without knowing any of them, well, I know a couple of them, I'm assuming none of them are paying for rent or a mortgage in Medford on these wages. they're probably not even able to eat on top of all the other stuff. So I just think that as a public body trying to provide a public service, reality has to come into the room a little bit here. And while some of these, I mean, $36 an hour, I mean, that's not nothing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. So, um, I mean, I look at those increases and I'm just like, why not more? Um, and you know, when we talk about the sliding scale, you know, I'm not sure I've talked about this with you or not, but you know, when we did the superintendent search, we asked for incomes of people filling out the survey and I will never forget the results. And I understand that it's not a generalization of the city of Medford and what the incomes are, but by far the number one income level of the people that filled out the superintendent search were households with more than $250,000 in income. And this was five years ago. So I just really have an incredible problem with people who are residents, the people we serve, if they have incomes like that, paying these rates to me feels absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong. And if they lived in places that don't have this, they'd be paying $40,000 a year for the same services, or they'd be getting a nanny. And I don't know what a nanny costs, but not what we're charging. So I'm all for dramatically increasing these rates and then providing a steeper sliding scale so that we are not making anybody who can't afford it. Look, if your household income is 50,000 or 70,000, like you can't afford the high end of these rates probably. And I mean, I don't know what the scale looks like. So in my mind, we take the curve and we turn it up. And if some people whose household incomes are 400,000, $800,000 a year, and there are plenty of people in Medford where that's their household income, that are actually applying to be in these programs, let's not pretend that's not the case, they may go and say, I'll just get a nanny. And if we diminish demand, then the people that are on the present day waitlist future lottery pool have a greater chance of actually getting a spot. And those people are less likely and able to afford expensive options. So, I mean, I'm not looking to like, say, put an income cap, because if you're paying at the high end of the scale, you're supporting people at the bottom end of the scale. And I think that's wonderful. I think that's great. But I don't see this increase of 3% when inflation is through the roof. We're never going to buy a building in Medford to make a childcare center less than many millions of dollars. I don't know I just don't know why we are going a little bigger with this. That's that's my opinion on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Would you like me to read it again?
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I have a motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion that beginning with the 2023-2024 school year going forward, incoming kindergartners that we will change the wait list to an on-demand lottery, and that the lottery will remain open.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll summarize it.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the incoming kindergartners that are going to be in the lottery in April, that the lottery will happen, and that everybody who does not get picked will be left in the lottery, and that anybody who finds out about it later can just simply fill out the same application form. So there's really not an end date to the application.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's no wait list.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have a question about the before school pay, where we're paying teachers. Is that in the contract? And if not, how are we kind of getting around the fact that we pay them outside of the contract to work for the district? Did I just make a terrible faux pas and say that out loud? Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. There's one question. Thank you. Sometimes I ask questions that make me laugh because I'm the only man in this at this table, but I'm guessing all of you have stood in a line to use the bathroom as women while there's no line for the men's room. And the women's line is not true. I'm just saying like, I just was talking about this with Jenny the other day. I don't even remember what we were talking about, but that you know, the line, somehow society has still not figured out that women need a little more time in the bathroom. And I guess I'm just, from my own students' perspective, you know, and from other students' perspectives, students used to not want to use the bathrooms because they didn't think they were clean enough or they weren't safe enough. And now it's just not worth it sometimes for the amount of time it takes to use a bathroom is what I'm hearing. And so students not drinking and eating isn't really conducive to the best being prepared for an education. So if you're telling me that the girls can get in and out of the bathrooms just as fast as the boys, You're all the professionals on what it means to be a female waiting in line for a bathroom. I'm obviously not. And as a man, I will say that I just don't know how you all put up with it. Every single time I go to any place where there's crowds, I cannot believe you don't revolt. And so- I still can't believe that two people, and honestly, I don't know what the lawyers would have to say if we said the rule is different for the girls versus the boys, but I certainly can't believe that two girls at the time is enough. to get all of our students through the bathrooms that are open?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll just have to trust you on this, because I don't really spend much time in women's bathrooms, but thank you. I appreciate it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was glad to hear that makes a lot of sense why they wouldn't allow that disclosure in the near term. I'm just wondering about disclosure for the previous year, for instance. Obviously, we're not there yet, but the full lockdown of that data does give me pause as to whether we're you know, how's it working? It's good to hear that Sandy Hook is willing to kick us out the door if we're not doing our part. Do they also have any kind of metrics on sort of a quality metric saying you've got 4,200 students, let's just say 3,000 students or whatever are in the program or could be using it. And do they have any kind of metric that says, you know, look, if you're not getting five tips a week on average, you obviously are not implementing it properly. Good. So they will kick us out if we're just not really, it's not getting used. Cause I think that's my concern is. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, this is excellent. Sounds like they've really buttoned this all up so that they don't have their name getting ruined by districts. Just don't try or I know that like where I work, our vendor has these enormous requirements every year that cost many millions of dollars. The reason we have to do it is because they're the name that ends up in the globe if something goes wrong. So it's good to see they're protecting their reputation by making sure we implement with fidelity. And do you anticipate any, I know you mentioned costs, that it's in perpetuity, it's not going to cost anything for the software. Do we have any estimate on the costs for training staff? It's free. So they pay for our staff's time?
[Paul Ruseau]: That was sort of what's my concern is that, you know, we have the minimum number of professional development days a district can have in Medford. You know, if we're in Cambridge where they have nine a day a year, we have three. Right. Them fitting additional required trainings in Cambridge, I'm assuming is reasonably easy. I just worry long term, or are they tracking the training happen on an individual basis?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was happy to hear that there are surrounding districts that have adopted certain programs that will be at the roundtables. I mean, none of us are silly enough to think that they just got to be there on their own, that they were selected. It was a two-way process of being included. Is there any way we can require that the districts that come to these roundtables are like districts? we're probably not gonna learn much with how Cambridge did. I mentioned them because they are the outlier in the entire state. The resources that they, for instance, could bring to bear on any project are staggering. I wanna know that the programs from the district's perspective are districts that are as like us as, I mean, somewhat similar to us. I mean, it just, you know, it goes through a list of communities for which if they send their folks I hope nobody thinks that's useful information. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm on the cat. Health curriculum review committee and you know we just did a topic with what we do a topic every time we meet where there are members of the committee that like you know they're the specialists like the experts in the country kind of thing. We have such an amazing community here. When it gets down to that last item on the list and we're doing the selection, I don't mean this to suggest that not everybody doesn't come with all the energy, but there are experts and then there are the rest of us. And this isn't good. Is the final selection gonna be a vote of all people who are, I, it just feels awkward that people who, like two of the people might be experts in the field and 10 aren't, and maybe it's on them to convince the rest what the right choice is, but I do feel a little concerned, like, around this topic of experts versus those of us who just want to participate and help.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. The budgeting, when would these mats be needed?
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you want us to hold questions to the end or when we'll have to flip all the way back the slide deck? I don't care either way.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have a couple of questions. One was on the slide with the FY23 budget. Are those numbers representative of the portion of that $68 million, or do those include things like grants or special education funding that comes in a year late?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. When we do the bus contract, I feel like we keep talking about busing and the contracts here and then it happens and then we're just showing the contract to sign as as if we're not the other person signing it. And I understand we essentially live in a no bid there's no bids for the bus contract. There's the bus company. It's this de facto monopoly that the state somehow and the federal government have not cared much about. But we have things that this committee wants to change in our bus contract. And I think we should have that conversation before there's a new contract that's drafted. So I don't mean to add yet another meeting, our opinions on the bus contract and what needs to be different so that a negotiating position is actually approved from the committee. Seems like we should really have that this year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And then my last question should be quicker. I don't know if it was the last budget or the budget before they do run together, but when the city allocation came in at the last minute, it was last year, and the amount of money, it might not have been last year, forgive me, whichever year it was, the superintendent's office went off to figure out how to cut a bunch of money because the allocation and the approved budget were not the same number. you all worked like round the clock all weekend long to get that done, but the committee was not involved. And I just think, you know, last year there was our vote for the municipal appropriation. We split it out into the appropriate votes last year. And I just want to reiterate how important it is that we do not have us approving a budget and then you being asked to spend the weekend with your staff in a bunker chopping, if that's the situation we're in, without the committee having something to say about it, because we are supposed to have something to say about that. So I just want to reiterate how important that is. I have no idea what the budget's going to look like, but if that happens, I don't want to find out that you got rid of a director of something and you did all these other things in the dead of the night without us having a say in the matter. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it's actually a specific special meeting. It's not part of the regular meeting. It's not a COW either. meeting. And if I may, I think also that has to happen prior to our vote, which I'm reading is the 15th. Is that when we would vote on our request?
[Paul Ruseau]: Type fast, not that, too fast. Two seconds of equity goals.
[Paul Ruseau]: Could you repeat that, Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Did you get them all, Member Ruseau? I got them. I didn't think all the other members had a chance to perhaps propose their ideas of goals.
[Paul Ruseau]: I wasn't trying to get myself in the list, but there's four other members here that might have ideas. I was wondering if we were gonna let them speak.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you. Before the meeting, I looked up what other school committees do for goals, and I'm looking at an example from Falmouth. The most striking thing is that school committee goals are for a bunch of work for school committees to do, not for their staff. I feel like we've just created a pile of work that we're just going to be able to come to a meeting and vote and say we had our goals and they were met or not met. But none of us has to go do any work other than perhaps go to the meetings. And I look at other goals from other committees and the committees are doing all of the work, all of it. Figuring out how to have processes so when we change policies, we actually say what the policy is and we say what line is changing from what to what. whether we have goals around motions that are not seven paragraphs long, we've all done it where we just, my motion is, and two and a half minutes later, we stopped talking. That's not a motion, that's a conversation. And somewhere in there is a one sentence motion. And then, you know, when I go to school committee trainings, the motion should be read at least four or five times by the chair before we vote. That's what they say when you go to the trainings on how to run a good meeting. I would never expect the mayor to do that because we'd be here all night long figuring out what is the language. We leave it to Markey and Susie before her and Lisa to go to the video and try to figure out what the motion was. Those are the goals that I see when I look at other school committees. So nothing that has been brought up by any member here I disagree with. I just feel like we just need to add two more staff people to the budget to accomplish them. And my understanding of school committee goals was the goals for us as a body and how to do our job better. That's just all I wanted to say. I didn't really add a goal, but I really thought it was important that I say what I thought school committee goals were.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to I don't believe this would count as an amendment and require a second reading, but I'd like to motion that the approval of this policy, should it pass, goes into effect on July 1, 2023, rather than immediately, as is normal.
[Paul Ruseau]: As the chair of that subcommittee, that is correct. I don't remember the specific one, but that is not surprising. We have a very long list of things that have been sent to that subcommittee and we've prioritized bullying and the recess policy. And when we get through with those, we will go on to the other items in the list. I believe we have eight subcommittees and We can certainly send these items to other subcommittees. Every member here is supposed to be writing policy. It is not a rules and policy subcommittee only activity to write policy. It is the job of this committee. So if we would like to take that item and motion to move it to a different subcommittee, I would be thrilled because the list is long. And sometimes the crisis of the day decides what the order of things are going to be. As it is in any subcommittee in every government that exists, the chair looks at the list, consults with members and takes the temperature of the community and says, you know what, the bullying and prevention and intervention policy is more important than changing our policy to have an item on there for student participation. That's just the way it operates. It's not that there's like a desire to not have the thing heard or discussed because that's in the previous year before member Hays was a member of this body. There was a huge effort that I participated in with our student representatives to do a very long list of changes to include far more student participation. And much of that was not deemed even legal, because the state has all kinds of weird rules about student participation. But there is certainly no interest in preventing student participation. I feel a bit like that's the implication.
[Paul Ruseau]: Myself member Ruseau. I know we get told this stuff, but some things don't stick in my brain. Like how many bathrooms there are per floor and how many are open and when, um, because sometimes when we get assertions that there's only two bathrooms open at any moment, any, at any moment in time in the high school, If you tell me there's only two bathrooms open, I'm going to have a lot to say. Because kids are still not having anything to drink in the morning or eating in the morning. It used to be because they weren't really thrilled with what they would find when they went in the bathrooms. A crowd of kids. and they wouldn't necessarily feel safe. Now it's because they're worried they won't be able to find a bathroom. I mean, there was just in our daily email that this is being brought up in other places, not just Massachusetts, where kids should have a right to be able to go to the bathroom without missing out on substantial portions of their education. And if there's a line of kids and they're spending five, 10, 15 minutes of a class waiting to go to the bathroom, we are depriving them of their education so that we can have closed bathrooms. And that's, it's being actually the article I'll send to you superintendent is really is from a civil rights perspective. Like we were, these kids have a right to an education. And if they happen to have had a good old fashioned American breakfast, they're screwed. you know, so that I just want to make sure we get that level of detail in the email. Cause I think, um, you don't want six or seven additional emails after you send yours.
[Paul Ruseau]: There never seems to be enough time. All right. Thank you, everyone. This is the Medford School Committee Subcommittee on Rules and Policy. for March 2nd, 2023 from 430 to 6pm. We will be discussing, well, let me read the whole notice. Please be advised that on Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 from 430 to 6pm, there will be a rules and policies subcommittee meeting held for remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast channel 15 and Verizon channel 45 at 430pm. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call by using the following link or call in number. The Zoom link is https://nps02155-org.zoom.us/.j98476751202. Meeting ID if you'd like to call in is 984-765-1202 and you could call the number 301-715-8592. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing me PR US EA you at Medford k 12 ma us, please include your first and last name, your metric street address and your question or comment. The agenda for today is as approved by the full school committee on January 24 2022. The Rules and Policies Subcommittee will review the Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan for recommended updates. This meeting is a continuation of our meeting held on December 6th. I will take the roll.
[Paul Ruseau]: And member Ruseau here, two present, we have a quorum. So for those that were not on the last meeting, we went and discussed at a high level the current bullying prevention and intervention plan, which is on our website. We quickly realized that the content of the plan itself is not actually A big problem. The actual document is 38 pages and is a pretty big problem. There's duplication and there's sections of it that read sort of like minutes. It's a very odd document. Seems like a stream of consciousness that ended up being published as the policy. So I reached out to the attorney general's office to ask if there was a way we could work on this Google document in any fashion other than going through it in the meeting line by line. Because it's 38 pages, that is a painful proposition. And the answer from them was pretty direct. I will read from you just a couple sentences. The open meeting law does not carve out an exemption to the definition of deliberation for discussions that do not result in a decision or a vote. Any communication among a quorum of a public body on matters that are pending or will come before it and within the public body's jurisdiction is considered deliberation. Additionally, it says later on, public body members should not work on a shared document except for during a properly noticed meeting that is open to the public. non-substantive edits like proofreading for typos would be okay, but reworking a policy that would be considered deliberations. And then the person that responded, Assistant Attorney General Benedin, says, we are aware of the inefficiencies that can result from this limitation. It's close to an apology for what the law says, I think, is we're going to get. I'm going to, if this makes sense to Member Graham, I'm going to share the current policy and then we're going to go page by page through it, which hopefully there'll be sections we can move quickly through.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I just want to note that you are present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello. So we're going to go through this. I just read the Attorney General's response, which said that I can't share a document with anybody, unfortunately. And we're going to have to go through this in this posted meeting. So this is the current document that's on our website. And you can tell that it has the approval date from 2010, which I'm guessing is when the law was passed. As I said in the last meeting, unfortunately, the name of the actual policy is written into the law. Typically, school committees are not writing implementation plans. That is pretty explicitly not what we're supposed to be doing. But in this case, the law is very, very clear that that's what this document is called. I, let's see. So I'm not gonna go through the table of contents, because that will update automatically. So this is the current document. I've gone through and started to do some suggested modifications. Let me increase this. Is this tiny for everybody or is it okay? I'm good. Okay, thank you. I never know the answer to that. So some of this document is written in a way that very much feels like the law just passed and we're going to tell you about the law. It's now been 13 years and so some of the language doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. There's also an awful lot of change management kind of language in here. They know this talks if we looked at that before I said to cut that, the new state anti-bullying law, I mean, it's not new, saying that we must have this. It was revised in October, 2011. The following guidelines were revised in 2014, and most recently in November of 2020. So when I look at this document, I think about what's the purpose of this document. And what do we want this document to do? One of the most important things for any kind of policy is that it's actually something the people that should know it can read. 38 pages is problematic in that regard. And so does anybody who needs to read the current policy need to know the full history of it? I think the answer is probably no. So I recommended that we cut this and I will just keep going and if the members feel like, or if anybody feels like, no, this really is something we need to keep in there, please just raise your hands or speak up because I might miss your hand. So I'm not going to read every line. This one here, there's this is a is violations policy for any student to engage in bullying or cyber bullying at a location activity function or program that is not school related. or through the use of technology or electronic device that is not owned, leased, or used by the school district. If the bullying creates a hostile environment at school, or the victim infringes on the rights of the victim at school, or materially or substantially disrupts the education process or just orderly operation of the schools as determined by the school. I'm not suggesting we cut this. I actually think this is probably part of what the law was aimed at. my question, you know, we write the policy and then the district has to implement it. When I read this, I get really like, you know, I think there was a case at the Supreme Court just within the last couple of years about a student who had said something on TikTok or Instagram or something. And then the district punished her and it was completely outside of school. I think it was in the summer even. And so my question, just how on earth are we monitoring stuff that's happening outside of school and making this determination? And I realized my comments are really tiny. So let me zoom and hopefully you can see that, but how do we determine this? It feels a bit like we're just sending me the arbiters of behavior of students 24 seven and it, I don't think the intent is a problem. I just think, how on earth does this get implemented? Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I would like to hear from the folks that would have to deal with it, which I presume is the principals, like, I mean, we won't get into the edge case of a student who's a rising ninth grader. So there's no, you know, the principal at the high school does not have any relationship. The principal at the middle school is, I don't know when their responsibility ends, but I assume the last day of school of June. That edge case I think is complicated, but you know, you know, July 18th, you're maybe taking a vacation and there's a report, whether it's through the new reporting system we have, do you all believe that it is your responsibility and expectation that you will swing into action to do whatever you do if it happened during a school day in a regular normal week of the school year?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin, is your hand up again or you just had to put it down?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yeah, I agree. We definitely, that's a great idea to get Howard in here or I can send him questions after of the things that we identify because I think that that's really important. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I agree we plenty we can do. I'm actually literally going to put notes of ask Howard, when we think that there is a situation like that rather than saying Howard here's 38 pages and pretending that that won't cost us anything. Yeah, remember McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, before the meeting, I had reached out to a couple of friends about when KP Law reviews ordinances, the document that is being reviewed by the council has the strikes and the edits and the public watching the meeting can literally follow along with how the ordinance is going to change. And that's fabulous. Unfortunately, Google, isn't Word. Word, I think, gives you all those features, and I noticed that even KP Lab was not using Google, they were using Word. But saving versions of our S as we go will definitely solve that, and not clicking the checkbox so everything disappears. Were there any administrators that wanted to comment on this issue of, A, how does it actually happen now in the two different scenarios? The one, let's just be simplistic and say the middle of the summer, but also the transition between middle and high school, for instance. Like how does that kind of thing happen now or does it happen now? Or is your understanding of your responsibilities under the law
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's helpful.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you, I appreciate that. We should just keep moving since we have 36 more pages. I put a note in here when I first read this about not tolerating retaliation, I kind of feel like maybe I don't need to say that. I would just get rid of my own comment unless somebody feels that this needs to be more verbose, but not tolerating retaliation against a person that does mean anybody, so students, staff, anybody within our jurisdiction. So I don't know that we need to make that more complicated. And I appreciate, Dr. Cushing, that you found that there's a boilerplate. A lot of times what happens is the law is passed and then our professional association will typically draft for substantial things, they will draft boilerplate. Sometimes DESE does it themselves, and this may have come from DESE, but they will draft a boilerplate since they know every district has to adopt it. And, you know, as I spend more time in the policy manual looking at other districts, it's shocking how many districts have exactly the same language for policy. It's not shocking, it makes sense. So it's not that somebody sat around in Medford and wrote this document. I don't think that that happened. Dr. Cushing?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, I remember that. So going through this, this is something I thought we should add, is a definition of cyberbullying. And while electronic communication sort of covers everything, given the past several months, I felt it was important to explicitly call out video, which I think has become a very harmful way of bullying, a seemingly passive way of bullying. But I look forward to the day when we can say that the policy is students taking videos of a kid getting beat up and sharing it with their 1200 classmates, that that's bullying, that that's a disciplinary action, a very substantial one. Because when I hear about students who have been beat up, and then I hear about students who perhaps attempted suicide, was it because they got beat up or was it because 1,400 other people in their school got to watch it? I'm not that person, I don't know, but it seems reasonable to conclude that it is the video sharing. It is the humiliation, widespread humiliation and video that's forever. I mean, getting beat up is never good. That's a problem. By having a video of it for the rest of your life, for your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids, I mean, this stuff's never going away. That's probably the bigger harm. Um, the long-term harm. So I think, um, finding a way for us to get explicit on this particular topic is important to me. Remember Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's right. I missed that. That one's such an obvious one too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham, and then maybe we can move on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, if you want to... And this goes for anybody, really. If you have something you think we should be inserting, please don't hesitate to bring some draft language. We can pop it on the screen and think about where it fits. And we are running fast on our time. But Dr. Everett-Vinson, if you have another thing to quickly say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. So I just want to get back to the language here so we can move along at least to the sections where we cut them out, because that will make us feel like we've done something by chopping whole sections out. But I certainly don't want to stifle conversation. This word here, intelligence, I don't even get it. Like, does anybody read this sentence and have any idea what on earth this is meant by this? I just can't make it make sense.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Does anybody mind if we get rid of it? It's just weird.
[Paul Ruseau]: Evidence is fine. How about information or evidence? I like information, too. I don't know why that's not there. How about there?
[Paul Ruseau]: And now you know what the right comment is in a list. All right. So definitely the social media edition. This paragraph here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, right? Where's that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, yeah. Do we still have fax machines, Dr. Edouard-Vincent? We do? All right. Well, I guess we'll leave them for now. I do. Okay. Sorry. Every time something requires one, I'm at a complete panic. Like, where do you even get one of these?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, definitely. So this thing here, I just feel like there was something I've heard that is far more up to date. But that's just why I added that comment. I feel like there's another word people are using these days to describe this, but it's not important right this second. The who to report to, yeah, again, like this paragraph is huge and it's so important and it could just be a simple one page workflow, a flowchart that anybody could understand versus this incredibly dense, I guess it's more than one paragraph. But my question was, do we expand this teacher or principal for who to report to, to include other people?
[Paul Ruseau]: Two lines up. I will say, I don't know if we have one now, but I'm on the ECAT, the health education curriculum, whatever that long thing is. And we've made that front and center as something that we have to have bullying prevention as well as bystander training. So I don't know what we have now, but we will definitely have one. I believe Michigan model has some, but I don't think we were happy with it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. We'll be reporting out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, the heat cat covers, frankly, I was unaware, even though I'm, I mean, I volunteered to be on it. I did not understand that the heat cat covered. I mean, it just covers so much. It's really impressive.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. And remember, Graeme, is your hand still up because you wanted to talk again?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, one second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thanks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely makes sense. Yes. Thank you for that. I think that's really important. You know, and I think when I think about timelines, I think of, I think of having an understanding as the person who's waiting an expectation of when you would reach out and say, did something, you know, get lost or forgotten rather than, you know, on this date and time, it should have been resolved and it isn't, so I should then call the superintendent. But, you know, the parent, for instance, might have no idea that when there's a bullying report, that it might take a couple of days or more. So when is the parent supposed to say like, okay, it's been too long? Because I think if the parent doesn't know it's been too long, then they're gonna add to your burden by communicating early over and over again. And that I think is why setting expectations is so important is, you know, it's like, okay, you know, like you get a colonoscopy and it's going to be two days before you get your results. So you don't call your doctor four times the first day and four times the next day, because you've been told it's going to be a couple of days, but it's been two months. That's a problem. But that would only happen if nobody told you the expectation. So I think that when I think about a timeline, I think of the expectations that people will have. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe there is something in here about how the law does have something. I won't dig into it right now. But yes, obviously, whatever we set for timelines has to fit within the law. And I think Howard will be helpful in that. Thank you for that. That's a really excellent point. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. Yeah, that's really great point. Mr. DeLava.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. Yes, I think that that's, we could put all that on the workflow, the flowchart, I mean, excuse me. Yeah, definitely. Just wanted to copy a couple of these links, because this last link that Member McLaughlin sent is, will save me the trouble of looking that up, because that is the DESE page on that. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. So looking at some more of this document, I suggest we convert over to the caregivers, which in Massachusetts, for those that don't know, caregivers is a legal, specific legal term. It is preferred, and what I like about it is it may not even include guardianship, people who are the legal responsible person, which is my understanding. So I think getting consistent, we've been doing that on forms as we've been redoing them throughout the district. And so that there's like a 50 or 100 places in here where that's mentioned. Member McLaughlin, did you wanna speak up again or is your hands still up? Okay, great. And so going down, students and parents, Our caregivers will receive notice of the relevant student-related section of the plan annually, and faculty and staff at each school shall be trained annually on the plan applicable to the school. My question was, does this actually happen? I know we don't have a lot of professional development time in our schedule, so this looks very much like boilerplate, and my question to once I can look at the DESE page, it's probably in the checklist actually. Yeah, it's required.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So my question about whether it's happening, I guess we don't really need an answer, but it must be, it needs to be happening in the future. So I was just surprised by the heaviness Not, not that I don't think it's right, I do. It's just with three full professional development days a year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Anyways. Going down, okay, there's a bunch of links that are broken. And some of these things don't seem to exist anymore. So I will take it upon myself, if that's okay with everybody, to hunt for equivalents or to look at other district policies and see if they have replaced them with something else. So, I mean, These things do link to places, but they're just not places that are there anymore. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that sounds fabulous. I will I put a can it be deleted because I'm going to have to go take a quick peek at the language of the law. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, it may in fact be required. But I'll find that out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes. So Ms. Bowen did mention that these trainings are actually mandated and the principals provide them to all staff at the beginning of each school year. So I'm really happy that that's, I'm just going to click a little checkbox there. That makes me happy. Thank you. Not the being happiest goal of our meetings. Before we move on to this next section, remember Graham had said that page 19, if that's okay, and 26, get down there. I know I didn't make all that yellow, it's just yellow. So wait a minute, definition of bullying. Okay, so there's this whole other section, which is a definition of bullying again. And it's a different format, look at that. If a member would like to take a look at the two definitions, let me go down to section page 26 for Kix. 26, at least this one, not exactly the same format, but this one at least looks more like a definition section. So would a member be, take on the challenge of looking at the three different sections where there's definitions, deciding which one looks the best, and recommending which one we take. I'm certainly fine with doing it, not a big task. But rather than us going through, because it's also really hard to jump back and forth here and try and figure that out in a
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. I'll take that on. I agree just at a glance that this is definitely a better look. You need to compare to the content of the other definitions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. So just unclear so going through and checking off for instance that we're going to cut this, just so when we come back we're not looking at the always being edited document, and we're sort of starting with the where we are so far, because we have the original policy we can do the comparison. and draft something for the full committee prior to approval.
[Paul Ruseau]: We have the version history. Google will keep the version history so we don't have to save it as.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just don't want my Google Drive to be filled with 43 versions of the same document.
[Paul Ruseau]: Have we discussed?
[Paul Ruseau]: Dr. Robinson?
[Paul Ruseau]: He can't meet us. Three to five. I could certainly do five, but that's already kind of late to start.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry to anybody on the call on the meeting who really wants to be here if you can't make it. But if we all have to be here, we'll meet in 2042. So we're going to choose the 21st. And I'm going to recommend the 430 again. and I'll work on that. So the to-dos, if I have them all correctly, is that member McLaughlin is going to take a pass at a upgrade to the flowchart, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, yep. And member Graham is going to take a pass at the, what was the section? Am I in the wrong document?
[Paul Ruseau]: Obligation, there was something else. Remember Graham, I thought you said.
[Paul Ruseau]: And somehow Google does not know my own name.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I have some notes in there to ask Howard and I'll, I'll write those up. And, oh yeah, so we're going to see whether these sections are legally required, God, I hope not. Sorry. Oh, who was going to do the definition consolidation? I can do that. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did say I was gonna do that. Yeah, let me do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll take it, because it's the easiest thing I'm gonna have to do, and I'd like to have something I can say I did and finish. Great. And so then we have our next meeting for March 21st, 4.30, 6 p.m. It has to be posted. I think that was everything that we had. And when I'm going through the comments that I added and that we've added since, if there's anything additional that we should have been discussing just now. I will save it for the next meeting. Any final words from anyone? Motion to adjourn. Thank you everybody for being here. I appreciate it. I know this is hard work. We have a second. Member Graham? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Oso? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Does member hayes mean a committee of the whole or subcommittee? Sounds like she's talking about the committee of the whole, but she's saying subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to make sure I have this for the minutes. It's as amended that on June 1st, we will have a committee of the whole or subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: thank you. How would that be provided?
[Paul Ruseau]: Looking at the minutes, the last time the subcommittee meets is April 24th.
[Paul Ruseau]: Monday, May 22nd, it says the responses are due.
[Paul Ruseau]: May 21st. I'm looking at an old version of the minutes. I might be looking at an old version too. Sorry, I'm looking at the one I just received.
[Paul Ruseau]: member russell thank you mayor um yes congratulations certainly i was very excited um when i heard about the the earlier wins um i just have a sort of i guess it's a question probably for the superintendent i think we have a travel policy requiring the whole travel form to be filled out with the nurse's approval and all this other stuff for out of state has that been completed we are in the process of
[Paul Ruseau]: And since I can't find the form off the top of my head, it could be wrong, but I thought that in the process, which is very much detailed on the form, we had to approve the form with its, and I could be wrong, and if I'm. So I could have that form for you on Monday, because we're meeting again. Yeah, if you could just make sure to check so that we don't miss that. That's my concern, really. We'll do. And I can have it for you next Monday. I'd like a motion to approve the funding.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ms. Stone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Uh, the motion is to receive a plan by May 15th, 2023, um, from the CCSR and central administration.
[Paul Ruseau]: That will provide an inclusive outreach plan that considers students of all backgrounds and abilities for meaningful citizenship to increase outreach.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mike, could you stand up there? Thank you. If you would not mind sending your analysis, you can find our email addresses on the website. And I did find the date when the postings, where we posted for three different positions for track nine days ago, two assistant coaches and one co-ed head coach. So somebody nine days ago got the message.
[Paul Ruseau]: But there are also a whole host of other athletic positions that are posted, some of which date back to November, January, So October, so I think, I mean, I don't know the specifics of coaching and the availability of potential hires, which is sort of a key element of this, but if we are paying rock bottom, does it really matter how many people are out there? Because I don't know, I mean, does anybody go looking for a job looking for the lowest possible pay? Is that a thing? So, I mean, We could get into a long analysis and maybe we will have something like that on the agenda next week, but this has been the Medford way. We don't want to raise taxes. And guess what? The money doesn't come from thin air. So we haven't had a raise since 2010. It's just offensive that that's even a thing. And I'm really sorry that you all have to received the very short end of the stick on this. I think it's shocking that Coach Donlon, I mean, I don't know anything about, I only know Coach Donlon from my first experience meeting him at the Day on the Hill that the School Committee Association does where we go meet the legislators and his class, he brought a couple of classes over a couple of years and it was clear his students were enjoyed him as a teacher and it was an absolutely wonderful time. I didn't even know he did coaching at the time, but yeah, if we're not gonna pay anybody, we need to give up the idea that we're gonna actually provide something. So, you know, everybody thinks taxes aren't the answer. Then what's the answer? Because rock bottom and no raise since 2010. I mean, it's just, if I was allowed to swear, I'd be swearing right now. Ridiculous. Thank you for your time.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? I just want to thank the assistant superintendent for his efforts. I know that the calendar and everybody's, most people's mind is just like, it's a calendar, how hard is it? But a lot of these holidays change every single year and unless you happen to be somebody who's observant of them, or even if you are, there is actual effort involved to figure out when those holidays are. And I also just can't miss an opportunity to say how proud I am of this calendar. I do not believe there are any other communities that are recognizing and properly treating our students and staff with the respect that we have treated Christian holidays since, you know, since we've been a school system. You know, we are recognizing that for many Chinese families, there is one holiday a year, and it will now be treated appropriately in our calendar. And for many of our Muslim Members of our community, you know, I forget which one of these Eids, but one of them is as big a deal as Christmas. And we've always just expected them to come to school and come to work and figure it out in the evening. Like, can you imagine if we all just suddenly decided Christmas was a school day? People would burn our houses down. And I don't even celebrate Christmas other than for toys and stuff. So I'm really, really proud of this calendar and that we're providing the respect to all of the members of our community. And I just want to thank this committee and the administration.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Unless the thought is that the ID thing will be a temporary thing, then we should just be buying equipment to make IDs on the fly when we need them. I know that when new staff comes in, It can take a long time before we can get them IDs. And the proper time to get them an ID is the morning they show up, their first day, maybe by the end of the day. And the other, so that's more of a statement. I don't know what an ID machine costs, but it can't be as much as a car or something.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I agree. Thank you. I did have a question about the 50%. I know that's not a, that's not like a, nobody did a calculation, but is there a sense that this has gone up or down since it began or has it been kind of pegged that the students that are gonna wear their IDs have been wearing them and the rest of the students that weren't going to, whether they don't have an ID because they didn't get a picture or they just, don't feel like it or they don't like their photo. My own daughter didn't like her photo. I mean, I hope she's wearing it, but, you know, I mean, we've all seen the memes of, you know, the funny memes that people go into the DMV and, you know, this is the picture they have to live with forever. Now imagine being a teenager. It sounds like torture if you, had to have your picture taken and then have it walk around showing it to everybody. Adolescence isn't really known as the most fun time for a lot of people. So I think being able to get a new ID photo, which will be resolved when we can actually do that on site. You know, I was gonna ask the students, our student representatives before they left, but I'd hazard that less than one student a day forgets their iPhones or their cell phones. So I don't think it is that students can't remember to do that one thing a day. It's that it's not important to them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. I had one other question, but I forgot what it was, and it's getting late, so if I remember, I'll ask it. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: The FF is actually already on there, but could you repeat the national law so I can write that in my thing?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's actually pretty short, I can read it if that would be helpful.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, so I won't read the whole long Mass General Law, how to get to it. Section 33, school committee, powers and duties. Except as otherwise provided in this chapter and subject to any laws which limit the amount of money that may be appropriated in any city for school purposes, the school committee, in addition to the powers and duties conferred, and imposed by law on school committees may provide when necessary temporary accommodations for school purposes may make on repairs, the expenditures for the regular appropriation for the school department shall have control of all school buildings and grounds connected there with and shall make all reasonable rules and regulations consistent with law for the management of the public schools of the city for conducting the business of the committee. So I think the most important section of that very long sentence, that's Rick, one really long sentence is, shall have control of all school buildings and grounds. That's the piece that is used.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can we vote on the amendment or approve it as amended?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. I can finally summarize this meeting. So we met on December 6th to discuss the Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan, which is a policy, even though it's called a plan, the name of the policy is specified in the law itself. So that's why we have to have this rather unusual name for a policy. There were, Member Graham, Member McLaughlin, and myself were present, and we had a host of additional folks from the, from the public as well as the administration. We were sort of, we went through the current document that's on our website and discussed. Well, what we thought we needed to change. You know, there was a lot of conversation. I won't make us sit through it all right now. But there was a couple of really important points made during the meeting. The most important point by far was that the actual policy wasn't bad. It was that it just hadn't been followed. So that makes it a bit of a challenge. If the policy isn't a problem, reviewing the policy for changes can be a very strange conversation, but we had it anyways. So we did, we, we agreed that much or most of the actual content of the policy looked pretty good. We also all agreed that the format of the document was needed some work is the nice way to put it. We talked about ways to actually do that. And, you know, writing policy in a meeting is, is the expectation, but typically a policy is could be a paragraph, it could be a page, sometimes two pages. But this one I believe is 38 pages if I remember correctly. And going line by line through a 38 page document and meetings would mean years of documents, probably at least months of meetings. So we did discuss if we could create a shared Google Doc and we could work on it offline. I did wonder whether that was acceptable or not from the open meeting law perspective. And I did ask the AG's open government office about it. And they said that we could each have our own documents and then bring our suggested changes together. But then again, we're back to the working line by line or paragraph by paragraph through the whole document. And it was interesting, the email didn't quite apologize, but did acknowledge the fact that the open meeting law is really a problem when it comes to things such as what we're trying to do. But anyway, so that's the bottom line is that we will have to go line by line. Hopefully everybody that is interested in providing changes or feedback on the document can bring their own copy to the meeting. We're having another meeting. this month, hopefully February 14th, but I'm waiting to confirm that, where we will start working through this document. And of course, at any time anybody has suggestions for actual change to the policy, we should definitely be talking about that as well. Aside from the how to deal with the document, there was another takeaway that was really well supported in that we should have a visual flowchart of how to deal with bullying and the whole process, as well as the document should be translated, and I don't believe it is right now. So those were the minutes, and I look forward to the next meeting, which is a little later than planned, but that's all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm in there right now. I want to one of my children and I do see a new section says referrals. Thankfully, there's nothing listed.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I guess my question is, you know, as a parent who uses school brains, I don't use it. Often I use it when it's report card time. And I don't think I get notices from Schoolbrains when new stuff is in there at all. So, you know, if a student is getting referrals that Schoolbrains has it, it's great, but will the parents still be getting a notice to go look?
[Paul Ruseau]: I have, there's a very, I'm having this very dystopian feeling about this. You know, we talk about being an adolescent, it's supposed to be something meaningful. And if every single thing that all of us did between the ages of zero and 18 was available right now on a webpage, I can assure you that very few of us would be sitting here. And so I'm very concerned about the data retention policies for this. I know that, for instance, discipline related to a diagnosed disability is not supposed to end up in the student record, right? Isn't that the new law that just passed or just went into effect? So that was a determination. Sorry, John.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So, I see your head, but not everybody on on screen. So, my question is when is this data entered in by who because data just doesn't you know if after the fact is determined it shouldn't be part of the permanent record. we should all be fully aware by now that there's no such thing as deleting data. So, you know, I think about this stuff, I think about do teachers have access to their new students when they are starting the new school year, they can look at their students and look at their referral records for the previous year and two years and say, oh, I gotta watch out for that Johnny, setting up a dynamic that is already ensuring that Johnny has a problem before Johnny has met his new teacher. So that's something that's deeply concerning to me And I'm not actually expecting you all to have answers to these questions right now I just think it's important to not be so excited that we're doing this. And this last point I was going to make. I really come back and forth on whether to make it but we all grew up knowing kids who were abused by their parents, that's just a fact of life in America, and most countries. Does this have a way to flag that this student's referrals should not automatically be sent to parents on the portal? Because you know what, if my kid comes home and got a referral because they talked back to a teacher once, I'm not going to be happy about it. I'm also not going to harm my child. And we can pretend that there are not families in this town that harm their children, but that's just not true. And I'm worried about the children, but I'm also worried about putting the teachers, because when I was growing up, all the teachers knew which kids were being abused at home. Teachers know that, especially in the earlier grades where you're with the kid all day, every day. And so are we setting up a situation where teachers have to choose between compliance and putting it in school brains, knowing that the kid may not come to school tomorrow, because they need a way to not be seen to probably do what the teachers will do and not put it in. I mean, I would expect teachers to err on the side of kids safety and we all would. So I just wrote this this. There's a goal here, and why we're doing it is an important goal, I just think it feels a bit blunt force and leaves an awful lot of opportunity for student records that become their permanent life story violations of that law that we just had. that just went into effect. And then also putting teachers in frankly, really uncomfortable situations around, I don't want to not report this, but I also know that Johnny's dad's not gonna react in a way that is necessarily in bounds for modern parenting at least. So those are my concerns. And this just seems like a very global, bit celebratory experience I'm having here with the rest of the conversations we're having, and I'm worried about kids like myself whose parents would not have responded in a way that would have let me come to school the next day.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have to respectfully disagree. I think brand new school committee members are wholly incapable of engaging in this conversation with the amount of new knowledge that they have. And while I can't remember the specifics, my understanding of goal setting that I feel like I went to a session on this at the conference at one point was that they should not be to like the day of the elect or when people are sworn in because They're just, it's sort of like your first budget. We all remember our first budget being like, is this for real? And no offense meant to anybody, but the process is completely illogical. And I just don't know that right out of the gate, a new member is going to be able to set goals. And we have a relatively new member who might be able to provide some her own thoughts on that, if she's willing. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just had a thought that regardless of when we and them. We will be. We haven't discussed when we we've certainly set when they would end and we have talked about maybe January February we set new ones but when is the planned time to actually meet to evaluate ourselves? Because I think when, if you have new school committee members, one, two, three, whatever, and they're sitting down and they want, they want, they're going to want to talk about the new goals. And are they capable of evaluating the current school committee and meeting the goals that we wrote today? Which, I mean, I realized that sort of is, you know, other than the mid, if we do one year at a time, the midterm one, like between elections, we obviously will be able to do that because we're evaluating ourselves. But I'm just thinking like, you know, if we had one or more new members, what is the timeframe we're expecting the new committee to actually evaluate these goals? Is it first meeting of the body January? Are we going to be like in, June, evaluating a previous year's goals, having set new ones. That's my question, concern. I don't have thoughts on the right way to do it, but it's a concern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me check. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mestone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just trying to figure out what the motion is motion to use words for numbers.
[Paul Ruseau]: We never use numbers but I'm happy to do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know, I know it's the wrong time. I'm sorry, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Haynes?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to skip you. That's okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you repeat that please?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Krantz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Musto.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Longo, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: If I could make that motion so that I could follow rule 31 in our rules that we adopted last year. Rule 31 says the special subcommittees I'll summarize it. It's always too verbose, but that we can establish special subcommittees by our vote. We have to include what those, that vote has to include what the membership is, the duties, as well as the duration that we think that this subcommittee will be formed for. So we can't create a special subcommittee that is just until you get it done, like we have for regular committees. So we would just, just from what I've heard.
[Paul Ruseau]: So you don't want to establish a special subcommittee then, you just want to establish another regular standing subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't care either way, actually. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, do you mind if we split the, who the members are into a separate subcommittee, into a separate motion? Sure. Okay, so then I have the motion is to create a new standing subcommittee with three members for compilation of notes and evaluations of individual members, a compilation of the notes and evaluations of individual members and provide a recommendation to the full committee at evaluation time. Did I miss anything?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, we did. Okay, great. Oops. So let me do that as member Graham. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor Risseau, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: No. Okay, and so the second motion that I'll take a roll for is, let me just update the time, is that members- Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Graham, Hayes, and McLaughlin. will be assigned to the, oh, we didn't name it. Should we just name it the Evaluation Subcommittee? The Evaluation Subcommittee. We should pick a chair probably, or maybe they can do that themselves and let us know. I mean, it's not how we normally do. Usually we are.
[Paul Ruseau]: So member, I'm sorry, are we ready? I'm sorry. Yeah, roll call. Thank you. Member Graham. Yes. Member Hays. Yes. Member Katz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Sorry, I'm waiting for an answer. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: member must remember herself.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember a stone number. So yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is good. I also appreciate Belmont and all the other school committees that have drafted policies that we can copy. I greatly appreciate that. The second sentence says the SC, I would increase that to, I would fill that out to say the school committee. And then There's a couple places where the word playgrounds exists, but it's not in the title and not in several other places. And I would just take it and leave it as, I mean, I would just say grounds and skip school grounds or playgrounds just for the less is more. And even the word school, yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, sort of, you know, you use the example of the playground equipment and I think that setting a, how long is this expectation that your name is going to be on an item is, I mean, a lot of institutions have ended the imperpetuity concept. And I fully agree with that. None of us knows what Medford 100 years from now is going to look like, but we don't want to enter into deciding to name something that means nothing to anyone then. Medford of 100 years ago was a different place too. So, and also like, you know, like for a piece of equipment, I'm fine with you getting your name to stay there in perpetuity if you provide the funds to permanently replace it as it dies. All this equipment has a lifespan. And a plaque to pay for it the first time is one thing. But seven generations from now, replacing at that point a $50,000 swing set, does your name get to stay on that? I don't see why that makes any sense. It would also hamper the opportunity in the future for a school committee to raise money for the next version of the McLean playground. So I think having expectations around and it doesn't have to be like an end date. it could be something like, you know, until the equipment is replaced or, or until the playground is replaced or renovated. But, yeah, I'm sort of slightly off topic. Sorry, I got slightly distracted. I know that somebody put something in the chat, but if they'd like to speak, they'll have to raise their hands and give their name and address. Of course, Member Graham will have to call them.
[Paul Ruseau]: No. Sure. There are certain types of things which we have authority to delegate. We do much of that with the superintendent. But for instance, there are certain things that we approve each year that we can't delegate to the superintendent. We have to approve the handbooks. We can't say somebody else can approve the handbooks. So similar to that, naming of buildings is, naming of facilities is not delegatable is my understanding. That doesn't mean that school committees can't be like, create an advisory committee and say, go at it, whatever you say, we'll be happy with, which sounds like you're delegating it, but the school committee still has to make the vote and the decision. And so that's, I think, why that is there. I think it's also important to note that Memogram sort of mentioned that is that, you know, There have been other naming opportunities, like NASA had one a couple of years ago, and like the number one thing was, or a telescope or something, was something that was like out of the Simpsons and meant to be funny. So winning the vote of an advisory committee, I mean, I don't fathom that will be a similar situation, but, you know, we aren't We aren't the whole advisory committee. We have two or three of us on the last one. So I think that the majority of the members who are not on the advisory committee certainly can't have their rights taken away by anybody. So I think that's, I think it's good that it's explicitly said there, but I can't, I mean, it's hard to fathom a scenario where that happens, but good to have it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, number five isn't really about that particular scenario, but, you know, Mass General Law does say we have that authority. We could change the name of any of our school buildings in one meeting with one vote. Well, actually we'd have to have two because we will not have a policy, but we could just show up. Somebody could put a motion on the agenda to change the name. And this says we would create an advisory committee. I take it back. We would, have to create an advisory committee first. I don't think any of those like scenarios, thankfully we don't have like an Epstein High School or in such a scenario, I mean, the committee could change the policy and then allow us to make the change immediately.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, Jennie. Member Graham, I see another SC. Just search for SC and change it for school committee. Of course. It hit a space after the SC.
[Paul Ruseau]: So unless there's a reason to bring it to another meeting, I'd like to make a motion to approve as amended and send it favorably to the full committee at the next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: All members up. Yeah, this one's, you know, the last policy, the thing we were just working on, and this, you know, I feel torn, frankly, on the naming of public anything. Because the thing belongs to the public, not a person and not a donor. even if there is a major donor, they don't own it, it still belongs to the public. I certainly understand the desire, I have my name over at the library, I get it. And so I guess for the, and since I can't really find a clear path in my mind as to, is there a universal right answer to this question of naming things on public property? I think that at least I've not spent a lot of time thinking about it, obviously, but if I was trying to think of like, well, how will we decide whether to name or put naming opportunities? I guess one thing I would wonder is like, what's the goal? I mean, if the goal is raising money, I'm happy to talk about that because the amount of money is invariably not life changing and not changing our budget in any meaningful way. And, you know, I'm not saying I don't appreciate donations, of course, but I'm just struggling with like, what's the goal of having, you know, like when we did the new elementary schools, there's a plaque inside, the building committee is listed there. And that makes sense. These people worked an enormous amount of time to get us those schools and to do all the legwork that was required. And, you know, that that makes sense to me, but they didn't have to make a donation for that. If we if we get lots and lots of donation I mean when I went to when I was in high school, it was just the very beginning when there was like a coke machine, and it was coke, it was not coke was happy to be there to get everybody on coke. Obviously i'm not a pepsi guy but um. know, things went to the extreme where every part of, not in Medford, thankfully, perhaps it's a structural issue, I don't know, but in some communities, and I know, like, I believe in Florida, it's like everything's named in the building. It's like you're walking through a mall, and I don't want us to go down that road. And so, like, where we draw the line, like, And I realized that we're probably talking, I assume we're talking about individuals who want to put their, make a donation, have their name like on a brick at the McGlen. But what if it's a corporation that wants to do the same thing? I mean, we probably don't have the problem of dealing with Amazon and major corporations making donations. But we have seen how a corporation can go from being just a company to all of a sudden people running, screaming as if it's a burning building to not be associated with a company. And then we have the Amazon playground at McGlynn. And then we're back in that policy we were just discussing. But the idea of the ability to take a name away, even if there was a donation, is that you know, we're thinking like I give a donation or anybody in this room gives a donation. But when big ticket people give donations, and then you take that there's a contract. You know, we won't just be free to have the school committee make a vote and change the name of it. Because we've got some massive contract where we'd have to pay a huge fine or something. I don't know. I'm going way down the rabbit hole on this. But what's What's the goal of this naming at the McGlynn? Seems really important. If it's to recognize all the people that did the work, that's not a donation situation. I guess that's where I'm stuck.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. So I want to kind of look at the most recent thing where we raised a lot of money, the library. No, I didn't raise any money. Let's be clear. I just donated. You know, well, I don't know if it comes across as petty, but I'll get over it if somebody thinks I'm petty. As a proportion of my net worth, I gave vastly more than Bloomberg did. That's just a fact. Frankly, almost everybody who made a donation, probably more than 100 bucks, gave more as a portion of their net worth than Bloomberg did. And guess what? Because of the way the tax laws are written now, you can't even deduct it, but Bloomberg surely deducted every nickel. And I'm grateful for the money, for the library, and I'm not here to rehash that story. But I do think the story that, that the rich get their names at the top of everything, giving an amount that means nothing to them and other people give what is truly like real portions of their income and pay for it through, you know, fewer vacations or whatever else. It really deeply bothers me the way we calculate who gave the most And nobody in this room that I'm aware of doesn't understand that from your own personal experience. So I understand the desire to rake in more dollars, but do people like Bezos need his name on just one more thing? It won't matter. All it's doing is creating a permanent, you know, royalty, essentially. You know, when Jeff Bezos dies, assuming he does with all the people like him do, his name will be on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of facilities around public things in our country. That's just guaranteed to happen. And I just don't know that we want to participate by adding one more little spot that gets to be marked, like it's a dog marking his territory. And do I think that would be different if somebody came in and said, I'd like to pay for a new high school? Well, yeah, that is different. Because first of all, even the richest people in the world, that would be something they would notice. And we would obviously have a rather unique conversation about that. Boy, I wish somebody was watching who could do that. But I also think that, you know, for those of us that live in Medford, and actually we all live in a community somewhere, and for most of us, you know, we are literally not from the land that our town is on. And we walk around town, you know, just out on a walk yesterday, and it dawned on me that I don't know of any streets and I'm going to regret saying this, but very few streets, I'll say that, have any Italian names, yet Medford has like a massive history of like, it was an Italian town for a very long time. Well, why is that? Because people that were here before get to permanently be the definitions of the place. And I'm not sure if I'm getting my point across, but there's another little side point too is, you know, the amount of the money of the bricks is certainly, you know, that's a thing, but we're sort of creating a, here's a list of people that mattered in Medford, right? I mean, when we walk to the library and see all those names, if you don't know anything about Medford or the library, you look down and you'll say, these are people that cared about Medford, mattered about Medford, had money to give in Medford. And there is an enormous amount of privilege in being able to do that. As member Hays said, there's also an enormous amount of privilege to even know you could buy one, a brick. I mean, who bought the bricks at the library? The people who knew people who were on the library committee, who were elected office, you know, the teeny tiny segment of the population even knew they were available. That's almost certainly true. And everybody who essentially was connected and already, you know, in a better spot than a lot of other people, they're the only ones who even had the opportunity. So it just can create this weird pink, just like the street names, it creates this weird picture of a place that makes you think, that, well, I mean, I live in Orchard Street, so that's not a name of a person, but for all these names on our streets, other than the ones that became governors, like, who are these people? It doesn't feel welcoming either, and sort of this weird, like, hey, here's the group of people that matter here. I'm sounding really down on gifts. I do want gifts. I just want us to think through what it means to stick a name on something that doesn't belong to us. It doesn't belong to the school committee or any person in this meeting. It belongs to the public. And I just don't think we spend any energy thinking about, you know, we sometimes talk about public goods, you know, public education, the protection of the police and the fire. Those are all public goods. And I don't see anybody suggesting we name the fire stations or the police station or city hall, because it's so clear that that is public good and those are off limits. But then when we move into the schools, somehow it gets a little softer and we start deciding to just not do what they do in the rest of government. Although I know we have the Tip O'Neill building in Boston, so the federal government doesn't agree.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Member Dram.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Koretz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Since I don't have them in front of me, my apologies. I can't summarize them. So can I motion to table them again? My apologies.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I have a question about number six, intellectual property. I read it as the written reports essentially are ours, but I'm just wondering about interview notes, for instance, like, will those be ours? I don't know that I like yes or no, because if the answer is yes, I feel like that will limit what people are willing to say if they know that it can just all be read. On the other hand, what happens to that information if it is not given to us is my question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, but sorry. I guess what I mean, but I do think that Mr. Welch will, like, does he plan to keep these things? Does he have a data retention policy? Like, you know, if you're interviewing people and you want some real honest responses, it's good for people to know the life cycle of what they tell you. And so that's really my question and concern is people need to know that if there's notes being written, and then anybody can do a public records request and read what I said, or anybody in the administration or anybody else could read said in an interview, I think that changes the kinds of responses you're going to get. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mestone? Member Ruseau Yes, Mayor logo. Your microphone is not on there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I'd like to make an amendment.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to amend that to say that this will be done within 30 days, because my understanding is the process has changed for the upcoming submission that we will have to do. So we cannot use the existing submission verbatim.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lundquist.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kritz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member so yes, Mayor Lungo cared.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. Yeah, I guess I was, I'm a little uncomfortable until I know what we mean by incident reports. I'm looking at the bullying incident report on our website, which is a pretty amazing looking form. But the person writing this is going to be including information about more than one student. And I don't want the staff to be trying to craft incident reports so that they can plan for the eventual release of reports to various people. But then I also don't want these incident reports to have to be going through a big, an entire redaction process. So I guess this slip of paper that member McLaughlin mentioned, I'm not familiar with them. So if there's a specific name for those and that's what everybody's comfortable with, can we call them that because incident report I mean, if we have a policy saying something about incident reports, well then the bullying incident report is literally called bullying incident report form. And I want people to be, the staff or whoever's filling it out to be able to just be free to write the incident report and not be worried about the potential end points of what they're writing, because it's gonna make it just hard to understand. It's just gonna be a mess. So I don't know what the, if there's a name for those incident reports, I think that'd be good to have that specified.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members, no yes, Mayor Longo, Karen.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, we are local correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to table to the next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I, this is a question I don't know if our attorney can answer the question or the superintendent knows the answer but I do not believe we can legally tell anybody what the consequences of a disciplinary action were, even if we are not talking about a student by name. Nobody in Medford knows who the student is. I'm assuming somebody knows who the student is. I also assume somebody knows who the victim was. So, you know, it'd be like talking about, well, the president, we won't mention his name, is in trouble and this is the consequence. So the school committee also does not receive any notification and cannot have access to information about the consequences. And That's just a fact, whether or not the superintendent can tell the community that expulsion will happen. I don't know the answer to that question but I do know that we cannot receive notification that a student will be expelled. I can read the law as well. If there was a murder, I think it's fairly safe to say that most of us would conclude an expulsion was on its way. You know, but, but we will not receive that notification, ever. And so I just think it's important when asking these questions to, to be clear who you're asking, because you won't get the answer from the seven school committee members, what the answer is, ever. We do not write the law, you all get to change the law by going to your state reps, we write resolutions all the time. We are always calling our state reps and state senators and saying, we don't like this law. We want this law change. We have one on the thing tonight, exactly that I have the floor, so you can wait Mr. beacon. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I've heard people say they want to change the law. There are so many laws I want to change. And I think many of us have very specific laws in common with all of you that we want to change. But we don't write those laws. We call our state reps most many of us know our state reps and state senators, and we give them our opinion very often. Okay, but we don't like the laws. So, you have a choice, we can break the laws, which I know that some people are quite comfortable with. And therefore, if we break the laws, if we break the laws, then the people that we broke the laws, you know if we just sit up here and we somehow know the information about somebody who's accused of something, and we disclose it. Well, that make make us all feel good until we have to write the check as a city for violating the law, so we are not. None of us are afraid. We are also not going to get that information to share it with you because we're not going to get it. Okay. Mr. Beacon is going to tell me how I'm wrong now. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I appreciate that an attorney, I'm assuming who is a member of the bar doesn't think that the law matters. The law actually, if I could speak, the law does not actually include the school committee and discipline. The principals have all authority on suspensions. In fact, students can't even appeal it to the superintendent unless it's more than 10 days. So, you know, if you wanna come and ask us to do stuff we can't do, and that makes you feel good, then you should do that. But if you want something to happen, then we do have to pay attention to the law. You know, my daughter was also in that school texting me and I was very upset too. I'm not just like some rando. Okay, I know how you felt. I know how you felt. My daughter was texting. Point of order.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I really appreciate it. I was very happy with the answers as my confidence in you is boundless. So I wasn't surprised by many of these. There's one word that I'm sure you know what word it is. I'm going to talk about opportunity. Our contract and the amount of professional development time this district has, is essentially the legal minimum in my understanding. Other districts, they have 189 days that they pay their staff and we do 183 or 184, 183, I think. And if you think about six days of professional development for your staff year after year after year, it is unreasonable to conclude that those six days of professional development do not make a dramatic difference in your staff's professional development. So, I'm not asking you how to solve that because that's a financial problem and something we'll have to discuss perhaps the next contract to try and get maybe one more day of professional development, which would be a 25% increase, which would is a real substantial change. When I see the word opportunity. I read that to mean the staff may decide to participate in the professional development or not. And that is correct. Correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. So, I mean, I feel like this is really a question for next year, which is I believe when we start the next contract. Actually, no, we got a plus one so we have a little bit more time but I do think as a district and as a city we need to talk about funding. Well, we always have to talk about funding but You know if we can get one more professional development day which is, I believe, around $100,000 if I remember some big number to pay the staff for one more day. I may be misremembering that but it's it's not. It's not $10,000. So, you know, we. in five minutes flat and certainly you and your role as a leader could come up with a year of professional development if the staff did nothing but do that. So, I think we should have a real hard conversation about how to expand that available time because when I look at other districts that are doing 189 days, I mean, I'm assuming they're doing something interesting with their professional development and it just feels like we are missing a lot of opportunity. Again, there's opportunity to really move our staff forward. I'm not expecting staff to do this on their own free time in the summer. This is part of their job that they should be paid for. But if we're not gonna pay them, we certainly can't demand them to sit on professional development. So I hope when we get, it's probably 2024 when we should really be talking about that. a good sense of like, do we want to go for one more day? Do we want to go for two or three? I mean, I'm assuming you would agree that we could fill up two or three more days of professional development a year in a heartbeat.
[Paul Ruseau]: We always could. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for the report.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I was contacted by I'm slightly embarrassed, I can't remember who contacted me. Somebody I didn't know yet on Facebook about the coalition, the Feed Kids Coalition, which is working to press on the state legislature to make free school meals permanent as Maine just did a few weeks ago. And the importance of it is not just really about free school meals which is sort of the obvious part, the, the challenges we face as a district, when we do our budget. Prior to the state doing their budget means we have a choice to include the money. And then perhaps that money turns out to have not been needed, because the state decides in the last minute to include in their budget, or we don't include it, and then the state doesn't decide to make it free and then we're stuck where we are not providing free meals to our kids. It's just an awful position for all school committees to be in because I don't think any school committee's budget is done at the right time to deal with the uncertainty that the state budget has. Last year, the state did extend the free school meal in the budget. But again, they did it, I think their budget wasn't even done before June. 30th I think it was actually after that. So we had already as a body decided that we all we have a policy that we will provide free school meals but then we did not include it in our budget. So we got, frankly, very lucky that we have a policy that we were not going to fund, and then the state came through. So this coalition is just trying to press on our state legislators to make it permanent, take this uncertainty out of the entire process for school committees and for students and families, of course. So I wanna thank everybody for hopefully supporting it.
[Paul Ruseau]: It is 4.32 on Tuesday, December 6th, and the Rules and Policy Subcommittee meeting will come to order. The meeting tonight will be, I'll just read the whole posting. Please be advised that on Tuesday, December 6th, 2022, from 4.30 to 5.30 p.m., there will be a Rules and Policy Subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 15 and Verizon Channel 45 at 4.30 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log on or call in by using the following link or call-in number. The Zoom link is https://mps02155-org.zoom.us 954-099-31345. If you wish to call in, you can call 1309-205-3325 with a meeting ID of 954-099-31345. Let's see. Additionally, during the meeting, If you would like to submit a question or comment, you can email me directly at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Please include your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you're an employee, please indicate that, and your question or comment. So the agenda for tonight, as approved by the committee on January 24th, 2022, the Rules and Policy Subcommittee will review the bullying prevention and intervention plan for recommended updates. I will take the roll call. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau, present, three present. We have a quorum. So this is a, The audience has had a chance to look at this document it's quite large, and it contains an awful lot of stuff that probably does not need to contain. work going tonight. I had a receipt of a suggestion that if there was anybody here who wanted to speak on parts of this bullying prevention and intervention plan, if there's anything in it that you specifically think we need to focus on, I figure we would get that get your feedback to start rather than at the end. My guess is that we will need more than one meeting for this. It's such a substantial document. And so without further ado, if anybody wants to raise their hand and provide any specifics about what you'd like us to be doing with this bullying prevention and intervention plan, Any particular weaknesses or strengths do you think we need to focus on? That would certainly be helpful. And that includes the administration, obviously, school committee members, and any of the public as well. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I'll put it in the chat in a second. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: You asked questions. Let me see. I'm not sure. Let me just first grab the document and then I will see.
[Paul Ruseau]: And in the dropdown, there's bullying, cyberbullying and internet safety.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I know that it's hard to be the first person to speak. Oh, we got somebody. If you could just include your name and address. Yeah, your name and your address for the record. Peter, do I have to click ask to unmute?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. Hello.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. Peter, welcome.
[Paul Ruseau]: There we go. I like being able to see people. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Nicole. And certainly, once we get some opportunity for people to speak, The contents of the document, a lot of it surprised me as already being there. But I will let others speak. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member McLaughlin. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham, is your hands just up? Cause it's still up. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I don't know who said may I?
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi, Member McLaughlin, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: So Unless there's somebody who urgently feels the need to speak now, I'm thinking we should probably try to move a little bit on to some more of the document and the policy stuff. Does that sound okay to everybody? Okay. So I did want to also just add a couple of little things since I have a lot of thoughts on the document. So, you know, Once we've got some kind of a policy and a document. When I look at the current document, one thing sticks out when I look at other district documents, is that there's a, I get a sense that some of this was. actually written into, I mean, I have not looked at the law, but the consistency across districts makes me feel like there's perhaps stuff in there. We may be like, we need to cut all that out. And then it may turn out to be that it's just required to be in there. So, but I think it's better if we just put that at the end, we'll send this off to our school attorney and he'll tell us that, no, you have to put this stuff back in because so, So there's that stuff there about, you know, making sure that gets reviewed by our attorney to make sure we're complying with the bullying law. And then around the curriculum part, I am on the, the school committee had selected me to serve on the HECAT process, which is the Health Education Curriculum. What's the A? Something tool. For the entire health curriculum for the you know K to 12 and bullying is actually part of that process, and I have not looked that far ahead to that section. So, this will be getting quite a lot of attention, of course. And I just didn't want anybody to think that when we get to the Michigan model listing of things in this document, that that's sort of like set in stone. And I can't predict where the committee that's working on this will go. But my guess is that this will perhaps be part of the areas that we think we need an improvement. I just want to also quickly note that I have a few takeaways so far. These are sort of things that I've heard, and that seems so obvious that they should end up as to dues, no matter what happens from here on. translations of all of these documents don't seem to exist. A visual flowchart, which I believe Dr. Cushing actually has one we can look at. I don't know when that got created or where it is, but I did see it briefly today and I thought, yeah, that's a great idea. And then definitions of conflict, which are not in the document at all. Those are sort of the three that I mean, I have notes of what everybody said. So there's certainly more. But so I'm going to switch over to sharing my screen and really hoping that it isn't a situation where it's so tiny, nobody can see anything. which is unfortunately happens a lot. I have a very large screen, 37 inches wide screen. So I have no sense of what you all will see. So please do tell me. Oh, thank you, Amber McLaughlin. It was not new, it was created last year. Well, new last year. Okay, share. Am I missing the share button?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, that sounds good. Oh, there's the, I can never find share because it's the highlighted green button.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you see the other tabs? When I switch, do you currently see a bullying prevention intervention file with MASC in the top left corner? Yes. Excellent. Good. So you do see all my tabs as I switch around, which is great. So I created a copy of this myself. And just sort of went at it with the proverbial pen. And at first, as I was reading it, I was like, oh, let's change this little bit here, this little bit here. And then as I kept going, I realized that it needed to be a bit more than a pen and more of like a, I don't know, I need to switch metaphors to find something more medical, but a big, huge chopping. So this document, I don't know the source of this document. Medford clearly did not sit down and just start typing. Much of this is verbatim that you see in other districts. So I think that tells you that perhaps the state or DESE or MASC, our professional association for school committees provided some sample and everybody just went and adopted it. So there's these guidelines that start out. And one of the things I noticed right off the bat is there's all this history information about where we've been. And while I think maybe the Medford Historical Society cares, I don't think anybody reading this document to learn about our policies and procedures cares one bit. Dr. Cushing, did you wanna speak?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, and I'll get that reference from you later so I can type and do that too. So, just as a sort of making this document usable, as Ms. Branley mentioned earlier, when I see really long documents, I feel really like this incredible sorrow for the poor folks that are supposed to be following it because you presumably have to find the time to read the whole thing. Then you have to remember the parts that matter. This document is so long that I'm not gonna put anybody on the spot about whether every administrator and person who works in our school district read the entire 38 pages or whatever it is. But I think it would be kind of facetious to believe that, naive to believe that that really happened. So, you know, getting this document way down in size is important. And it turns out that's gonna be pretty easy. If we get rid of all of the stuff that is the history of the document, that's chopping a bunch of stuff out, I'm gonna actually skip what all of this says, because here's the thing, it's repeated an entire second time. Right here, this is identical language, word for word, not like a little bit different, it's completely repeated. So there's two and a half pages right off the top that just get cut out. I don't think it makes sense for us as a group of 38 people to go word for word through this. I think what makes sense is for, since I've gone through this, is to make some recommendations and we could take a vote that says, yes, Paul, you know, go through that as a sample and chop out all that stuff. And then we can come back and look at it at another meeting to see what we have pared it down to. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I completely agree. I will I'll reach out to our attorney, but my understanding of meeting law is we could certainly do that, but we've got to be doing that in a public session. So I can't be making edits and you making edits and all of us making edits when we're not in public session. So I don't have any problem sharing this, but the only time any of us should be editing it is when we're on TV.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly, I'll reach out to Howard and find out how this can be done technically where we don't. My gut tells me he's going to be like, create your own versions of the document and do all you want to them and come together and make the document into one, which, you know, from a simple like process perspective, as messy as can be, the process that you propose is without a doubt the easiest and cleanest and most efficient. But as we are painfully aware of meeting lab doesn't give a hoot about any of that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that that would be fine if this document was posted on the Medford Public Schools website and the entire public could sit and monitor it at any moment in time. I think that would probably pass muster. But, you know, this is policy, we're talking about stuff within our authority so the public is supposed to have access to our thoughts and conversation like my comments here. You know, member Graham remember McLaughlin looking at my comments responding to them. is more than one of us and only two takes to be a quorum of the subcommittee. So I do not expect that he's gonna tell us we can do this on the other way other than everybody go create your own document. Now to be clear, literally everybody other than the three school committee members could share a document and do this as member McLaughlin recommended. And I think we would all agree is the most efficient option.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member Graham. I do know that the the bullying prevention and intervention plan within the language has an every five years we have to approve it as a committee. And so it feels a bit like it's this weird thing in the middle where we think of policies as ours and the superintendent can go and do whatever she wants. And we think the word plan, typically that's her stuff, that's implementation. And it's interesting that the word plan is in here that's not typically our domain, but then the law explicitly says we have to reapprove it every five years. So it's kind of like somebody didn't, from MASC didn't talk to the folks writing the law.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, we don't have a plan right now. If we look at this plan number, this is, I forgot what school this is, Lexington. You know, they have this. Ours is sort of, so the way, as the members know, but for the public, we write policies, but if we don't write a policy, the default is that the superintendent essentially writes the policy as she sees fit. And it's only when we write a policy that not to override her or anything, but just simply that when we haven't done our jobs to create a policy, it's not like she doesn't functionally have the ability to operate the schools. So that is just defaults to being that the superintendent is the policy maker in the absence of us making policy. So, the member Graham member of my classroom sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to be clear about when I talked about language, it was there's like weird inconsistencies all the all over the place. Sometimes it's the victim versus the target or the perpetrator versus the aggressor, or the The parent or the parent slash caregiver, parent slash guardian, parent slash caregiver, guardian. The consistency within the document on a whole lot of things was not there. And looking at some of the other plans, they all seem to have a great section on definitions. that we don't have. And that definitions thing is really critical. I wasn't looking for changing any language around that would affect what the plan was saying or doing, just so everybody understands that. I felt like the first draft that I was suggesting changing was simply to find and replace on parent and that whole thing to get it consistent. And the two and a half pages that are duplicated, two and a half pages after the first time they're listed, you know, verbatim, which I still am very confused by. So I know we're over time. Member McLaughlin, is your hand up still because you didn't take it down?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's an excellent question and I was trying to get to that point, a few minutes ago and I wasn't as direct as I should have been. This is based on a law, and most of our policies, I mean some of our policies have legal references. this law was explicit in what the thing is called. And I think that's pretty unusual. Usually there's a law and maybe the law has a name and it tells us what we're going to do generally, but it doesn't lay out that you're going to go create a document and it's going to be called this. And unfortunately that is explicitly called the bullying prevention and intervention plan It's just a very weird situation where it gets so exact as to what we have to do and what it will be called. So your confusion is completely appropriate because it is confusing. But my mind right now, until we adopt an actual policy as a school committee, the plan is the policy. And looking at other districts that have actually, actually adopted a policy separate from the plan, they have both. And yeah, it's messy. It's definitely not the cleanest thing I've seen around policy stuff for sure. So thank you for asking that question, because that definitely is, I think we're gonna have to repeat that particular thing multiple times throughout this process.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. And I certainly, I agree that our staff needs to know what our policies and procedures are, and that is part of their job. The, I feel sorry part was just like, there's so much that they didn't need to read in that. I agree. To actually have had the same, to be able to do it. So let's see, member Graham, I'll let you have the final word.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Yes, I think it's always helpful to hear the what versus the how. And again, the name of this particular thing includes the house. Yeah, it's very awkward there. So I'd like to thank everyone for being here. I thought this was very productive. And I felt like we had a lot of great information. I feel like we definitely have next steps. And I will schedule another one of these meetings, probably the second or third week of January, I have to look at the other Uh, rules and policy subcommittee meeting. We have, we also need to schedule, uh, related to recess. So it kind of, we're probably like leapfrog these two topics until we get one or both of them done. Um, so motion to adjourn. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there a second? Um, thank you. Um, member Graham. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: And member so yes, this meeting is adjourned by 45pm have a great night everyone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for being here. If we can all rise to salute the flag.
[Paul Ruseau]: There are two people with hands up. I don't know if you want to take questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You know, the word equity is being mentioned an awful lot. And while the definition is relatively simple, it's that people get what they need rather than people getting an equal amount of everything. That definition is only valid when there's enough. When there is not enough, it then becomes a policy decision about, well, when we have more demand, How are we as a committee or as a district going to decide who gets it? When I looked at that chart, I was quite surprised. And frankly, if I was just a dictator, the books would be losing a lot of spots right now. because it's not equitable right now that the Brooks has twice as many spots as the other elementary schools. And next year, unless we had some huge influx of 150 additional staff, I expect the Brooks to get not one more seat until the other schools are being matched. That's equity, folks. It does not mean you get what you want. It means you get, Folks get what they need, and if there isn't enough, somebody other than the people who need it make the decision as to who gets it. And, you know, I was shocked by these wait lists for the other elementary schools. Shocked. Because, I mean, my memory of conversations around this stuff is, you know, there's a couple people at this school, a couple people on the wait list at this school, and often they can get off of those wait lists. And that's all fine. You know, the Senator Jalen sent out a newsletter today about this crisis. And I can't remember the number because I didn't have, I wasn't fast enough, but it was like 18% of child care centers closed during the pandemic that did not reopen. So that there isn't enough isn't really new, but the pandemic has made it far worse. And I also did note that she listed what childcare workers are getting paid on average in the state, and we are more than double it. So it isn't a throw money at it problem. Well, at some point, I suppose we could throw quadruple the pay we have right now, we'd find a lot of people who'd quit their jobs to come take those jobs. So I think equity is not some solution when there's not enough of the thing that we want to distribute. And so, I'm not asking the administration right at this moment in time to talk about what next year's gonna look like, but I really hope that the distribution among the elementary schools looks a heck of a lot more equitable than it does now. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. around the sensory stuff. Was there any conversation around the water feature?
[Paul Ruseau]: So what you mean is it won't be a kitty litter box.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. In all of these images, the trees are mature. You might get to this later on, but are we looking at like a 10 or 20 year progression or are we going to have little tiny you know, twigs that you can get at Home Depot for 50 bucks for the next generation or two.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I mean, I just, aside from the appearance and the shade, you know, unless you place a guard there, kids are going to be trying to climb the trees no matter how small they are.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I really appreciate all the hard work. I know it was a lot of work and of course it's not done by. I had a couple of questions. for the process of actually performing the build. We're not doing our own project management, I assume. So I'm always happy to have the vote. participating in whatever they can. I also get very nervous when we think of them as a free workforce, which I don't mean to suggest that's what you were saying, but the reason I asked about the project management company is because I can't fathom a project management company being willing to insert into their critical path. The Vogue students will do something. That that's just not how you build anything. I mean, so I think, you know, if there's something that the students can be brought into, and it is definitely specifically educational related rather than they're just like free labor. I'm all for it. I just, I get both excited and really like I mean, it's my fifth year and I've heard a hundred times. Let's have the Volk students build it for us. And it's always been a response to, we don't have any money. It's never been a response to, we think the Volk students would get a great education. Maybe we should do a project. And here's the project. It's always been, we're broke. let's see if we can get some free labor out of our student body. So I have a very visceral response to every time I hear it brought up, and I don't mean to suggest that this project was doing that same thing, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great. I'm happy and really excited to hear that. And I did not expect you to have thought of them as a work, as free labor. So I just wanted to bring it up.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then my other question, which I hope will come to me in a moment. Oh yes, about fundraising. You know, But the corporate grants part, I mean, hey, if anybody's got money they want to hand out, that's fine. I just also do not, I'm not comfortable with the playground getting named after some rich person or the Chase Bank Playground, you know, like, not picking on Chase specifically, but, you know, I do feel very much like this is a public good, the public should pay for it. And if we want the companies and the rich to pay for it, then we should tax them properly, not beg them for their tax deduction so they cannot pay more taxes. So I feel pretty strongly I'm opposed to corporate grants, unless there are really companies that are handing out money and not expecting their name on anything. But I don't think that's a thing. And as for fundraising, other than the corporate part, look mad for public schools will take a check from anybody any day of the week. So I think that's fine that we, you know, offer that up. But I think that we should be cautious that it's not a critical part of the funding plan. I mean, because then when if, you know, inflation is high, You know, there's a lot of reasons why I think expecting the public to come out with $100,000, $500,000 of checks to write seems to me to be a bit of a stretch. So I'm all for the raising money from the public, but I do think we should not make it a key element of the financing part. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Betz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McDowell. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just had an additional question. If you would let us know when this city council presentation is going to be, that would be really helpful.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Is there any specialized equipment that will be required for maintenance and would that be something the DPW or the schools would need to purchase?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. As always, I'd like to make a motion going forward during any bargaining sessions that a minimum of one school committee member will be present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, yes. I mean, the most obvious example of that is that we could not decide as a committee that we would give high-performing teachers a bonus every year and we get to decide what high performing is, that would totally be insane. And we just, you know, all compensation, although I imagine there's some situations you're mentioning, not mentioning, but it has to go through this process.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just also, you know, I think I've sort of given a version of this tiny speech before, you know, we're all Everybody, and I mean the teachers, the administration, the public of Medford, all of us are running around trying to, you know, at each other's throats for the scraps. And, you know, the 1993 Ed Reform Act, which we, there was much in it that was great, but there was also much in it that we don't talk about. And that is that the defund public education folks won, the charter school folks won, the anti-tax folks won. The anti-union folks won in this landmark legislation that puts the school committee, you know, and when we think about unions and we think about negotiating, we think of businesses who can raise their rates, they can lower the profits they're sending to their shareholders. But school committees got this very fascinating little, I can't think of a non, vulgar word, so I'll just, it's not good. We were given the authority to negotiate something with no authority to have anything to do with the amount of money we have to spend. It is truly one of the most insane things that exists. And, you know, it's not an accident. It's on purpose. And who benefits? The rich do. The people in Wellesley, Reston, and Winchester who can raise their taxes every year, sometimes twice a year, to get what they want. And they know that the rest of us won't be doing that and instead will be at each other's throat, tearing each other apart, rather than doing the stuff that everybody wants us to do, including this committee, including the teachers, the superintendent, Mr. Murphy, I mean, you know, It's absurd. It's where we are, and I'm not suggesting that we just all throw up our hands and walk out of the room, but I think it's also really, really important to not forget there are winners and losers, and the community of Medford, all of us, we're on the loser's side of this equation. The State House, could change the school funding model for the entire state like Vermont did. They could say this is stupid to have 351 communities trying to figure this out and have a single funding model that the state does and then places like Cambridge would have to cut their poor people spending in half And you can imagine why that's not going to be a popular thing. But we don't have a legislature. We think we're a liberal state. We are not a liberal state. We are a protection of the wealthy state. We just also wear a giant D on our foreheads, regardless of whether we're really a Democrat. So I say all this probably the fifth time since I've been in office, because I think it's really It's a detriment to all of us to think of any of us as the enemy. We are all just a part of the other side of the equation and the rich and powerful and corporations who are people too in this country, they are benefiting very clearly. And I just also wanna add like the Student Opportunity Act, the millionaires tax that just passed, those are all really big deals. They are also just taking the edge off of this. The millionaires didn't let us get this millionaires tax pass, you know, it was a lot of work to get it done by a lot of people, it barely passed, which shocks me to my core. This is about taking the edge off. This isn't about fixing the problem. So those, that new tax, the Student Opportunity Act gave Medford pretty much nothing. But the millionaire's tax, I hope nobody thinks that everything's gonna be rosy in a couple of years. It's not, it's gonna be a little less awful. from a tax perspective. So I hope people can not feel like we've succeeded and move on, because we have an awful lot to do to fix this system. We're gonna be doing this again next year for the next contract, assuming we get this one done. And the math isn't gonna look any better, and it's not gonna look any better at the contract after that. And if we want it to look better, then we need a state legislature to do something to change the entire model, because this model will not ever work. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone, absent. Member Rossell, yes. Mayor Longo, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Russo. Thank you. That's an excellent, I really liked that idea. I was in communication with the station manager It's today's Tuesday, Monday, this weekend, this weekend. And he said that the mayor had approved spending to do some work to redo all of this stuff, the technology part of the chambers. So I think that that's an excellent idea. And if that's gonna be happening, then why not just include that spot as being fully wired in, why not? Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, yes. The Rules Policy Subcommittee met on November 16th, and we began work on the wellness policy update that we had approved in 2019, just before the pandemic, and took up again in May of this year to have our wellness policy updated, the entire policy updated. We have some updates that need to happen from changing regulations, and then also to include a really include recess in the policy which is presently not in the policy at all. The meeting was about an hour and 15 minutes long, and was I thought an excellent conversation we had all of the administrators all the principles. on the meeting and the feedback, the conversation was deep and broad, and we had members of the community that came and also spoke with a lot of expertise, and I was beyond thrilled with the conversation that happened. We had very good, we came up with four different Things to just to discuss at the next meeting so we're going to have another meeting in January, where we will be looking specifically at policy language we really just spent this last meeting discuss just hearing from the public and hearing from the administration and the staff about recess. So at the next meeting we will have in January the date is not yet set, we will be looking at policy language. Thankfully, there are almost every district around us has policy language on recess. And it's a unusually brief, which is nice. So we will move forward with that at the next rules meeting in January. There will be another rules meeting before that on a different topic. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. This is a lot to digest. And so my first question is, well, we just heard that the things that are being measured change every year. So my question around is this data available online? It is, it is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. Because I mean, some of these things, two out of four sounds like a 50%, but if the average for the state is one out of four, then two out of four looks good. If the average for the state is three out of four,
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The post-graduation outcomes. We had talked about that, I don't know, a few years ago. Everything's before the pandemic, it seems. But about how hard it was, it was in response to a series, I don't know if it was, some podcast series around how first-generation kids, especially kids of color, okay, Siri thinks I wanna talk to Siri, who would go to college and then the dropout rate was through the roof as a freshman in college because they were not prepared, they had no understanding of what college was like. And when we talked about that here about, you know, how do we figure out what are we doing, what we need to do to make sure that when they leave and go to college, because we have a big sort of like almost a celebration every year about who's going where, but, you know, celebrating a kid going off to Bentley and then, you know, three months in they quit, even though they were a straight A student at Medford High, you know, there's a story there. And, you know, how do we make sure we're preparing them? And I realized like, we can't be responsible for the kids for the rest of their lives. So there's limits, but the ability to understand what happens to kids once they've left was something that was sort of like, not possible. What I'm seeing in this measurement is that you have to do that. For students with disabilities. So that's right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. How do you
[Paul Ruseau]: And how heavy of a lift is that for your staff?
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's sort of where I see is the gap is that there are staff They're not teachers are not guidance Councilors like this is their job. So this is part of their job. And, you know, for instance, to find a way to have all the kids be getting these calls and letters, even if it was every year every five years so we could get some sense. There's no staff to do it because there's nobody whose job it is. Okay. Yeah, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. And my last question is, you know, when I first came on the school committee in 2018. DESE had just done this whole thing. Maybe it was the federal government, I forget who, around dropout rates was the biggest thing. It was DESE. And so then suddenly dropout rates was everything in our report card. And just like that, voila, dropout rates dropped to the floor across the state. And of course, it's questionable whether that was accurate. Whenever I see dropouts, I have to ask the question, are there, for this one, not necessarily for the rest of the student population, are there very strict protocols for determining whether a student is considered dropped out? And I ask that because, look, students' families move and they don't feel inspired to respond to MPS, because now they live in Colorado, or they go back to another country or move to a country. There's just all these ways in which a student drops off our radar. many times they're not dropping out, but we don't know which way it is for a lot of students. And I'm just wondering for this particular measurement, are there very strict things where we don't get to make a judgment call or do we get to make a judgment call? Like, oh, I knew that kid, John, and I know that his family left and they didn't fill any forms out, but I know they moved to New Hampshire.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, but I mean, I'm assuming somewhere in school brain, somebody has to code a student as being dropped out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, but if you don't have any reasons, John disappeared. I mean, you may, if John literally disappears, you may call DCF or something. Right, there's a different process. you know, students talking to their teachers, oh, we're moving to Colorado. And then they moved to Colorado.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's how we can... When they land somewhere else, they reach out to us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so do you feel pretty confident that our determination of a student dropping out is pretty robust?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not allowed to use that word as a politician, sorry. Okay, good, that's good to hear. I just worry that once we start measuring something, suddenly everybody, the measurement changes once you start looking at it. I forget that physics law, but all right. Thank you, this is really great information and I look forward to it. I can't wait to look online. Yeah, I'll send you the link tomorrow.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I make a motion to suspend rule number 46 requiring a second reading of this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I think the report request is self explanatory. This is in response to multiple podcasts through from American public media that has really gone deep into the state of reading in American public schools and the lack of science that drives the majority of the reading curricula that is used in virtually all schools, even though the I think it's MRIs that were able to show back in the early late 60s that in fact students do not learn to read the way that they're being taught and that the way they're being taught to read is in fact detrimental and harmful to the average and the weaker of the readers. So I just want to get an understanding and lay of the land and what is going on in Medford in these specific areas. And then obviously based on the results, we would probably have to have more conversations. But I felt like this is a good starting point since I can't just walk around in schools and sit through teachers classes. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? I would like to offer an amendment to add a number six to this. The, we received a discipline report earlier this year, Dr Cushing I believe, and what I'd like is to receive that report again with an explanation as to whether or not that report reflects actuals. What I mean by that is, if 50 kids get a detention and 30 show up is the discipline report showing us the 30 that showed up, or the 50 that should have been there. You know, I'm assuming that every kid who gets a detention, for instance, doesn't show, especially on Saturdays. And so I would just like to, you know, the report we received in January was challenging to comprehend. There was a lot of duplicative stuff going on, but I'd like to include that report as number six and an explanation of what it even means, if that's acceptable.
[Paul Ruseau]: We have to end on time, whether I just cut somebody off in the middle of a sentence and click the exit button because the cable folks have told us that this channel they're using to display this meeting has to switch over to. I'm assuming a city council meeting I can't remember what it was. But I think we can manage. people keep joining, but I guess I'll get us going. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. Can you hear me all okay? Yes, you all hear me okay. Excellent. So I'm gonna call to order once I find something to write on. So anyway, so this is the Medford School Committee Subcommittee on Rules and Policy for November 16th. 4 p.m., and I'll just call the roll. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Berceau? Here. Three present. Thank you all for coming. It's an exciting topic. I'm not going to share, well, I'll just go through the things that were, why we're meeting. I guess I should read the rest of the posting. It's been a while, sorry. Please be advised that on Wednesday, November 16th from 4 to 5.30, there will be a rules and policy subcommittee meeting held for remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast channel 15 and Verizon channel 45 at 4 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call by using the following link or call in number. The Zoom link is HTTPS And if you wish to call in, you call 1301-715-8592. The meeting ID is 95409931345. Additionally, if you wish to submit any comments or have questions during the meeting that you don't want to speak about, you can email them to me. Hopefully, I guess I should open my email in case that happens. My email address is PRUSDAU at medford.k12.ma.us. Please include your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you're an employee, indicate that, your question and or comment. So our agenda for tonight is From a May 16th meeting, school committee approved that the rules and policy subcommittee will review the wellness policy, which is policy ID ADF for K-8 students, be sent to the rules and policy subcommittee for revision, and that it be revised as necessary to ensure unrestricted free play recess is available to all K-8 children daily as part of their social and emotional wellbeing. The curtailing of unrestricted free play Recess shall be tracked. This information shall be returned to the school committee twice each year and be disambiguated by grade, school grade, gender, race, disability, and socioeconomic status. The subcommittee shall invite at least one teacher and administrator from grades K to five and also from six to eight, as well as the director of student services or her designee to ensure their voices are considered. The current policy and recommended revised policy will be returned to the the full school committee no later than the first meeting in November, which has gone by. So I spoke to, I can't remember, since this is rescheduled, forgive me for not remembering what I was supposed to do. In today's meeting, the goal was to hear from folks that have opinions on recess, whether that is the importance of recess, free what they mean by recess, because not everybody agrees on the definition of recess, and also on the impacts of withholding recess as a form of discipline. And I promised I would not do all the talking. So unless there's any other members that want to say anything before we open the floor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Dr. Edward Benson, my wonderful superintendent. I just want to throw a couple of little pieces of information out there. I don't know if everybody here already knows this stuff. In Massachusetts, recess is not considered time on learning. So that puts us at a disadvantage to some other states where they have started to finally do this and recognize that recess is not just a time to hang out and do nothing, that it's really for our younger kids, an actual educational part of their education. And we have recess at the elementary and middle schools, and I believe kindergarten has two recesses, is that correct? Yes, great, thank you. And maybe Assistant Superintendent Galussi could just, since I have to admit some ignorance here, tell us what recess looks like at the elementary school. Like, when does it happen? How long is it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That might be something someday to address. If we could just hear from middle school principals, since, again, I will admit ignorance on how that all works there.
[Paul Ruseau]: I greatly appreciate you reminding me as a parent that I don't know what happens to us.
[Paul Ruseau]: I appreciate the definition because I certainly said free play and had a rather vague conception of what that meant.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's very helpful. And we tried to visit this topic in 2019, and then there was a little pandemic in the way. And in preparations in 2019 for this work, I was watching these videos, I think it's Australia, where there was this wonderful series, which I won't make you all sit through here, where the principal sort of dropped all the rules, frankly. I mean, it was really, I'll... have it included in the minutes, the link to it, but it was really remarkable to see that the fears of teachers, the fears of parents, that they just didn't, that they weren't accurate fear, like they were real, the fears are real, but the result wasn't anything like what anybody thought. And, you know, did any kid ever break an arm? Yes. But I can tell you right now that a friend of mine, their kid broke their arm twice at the mistook. And, you know, that did not look like the Australian elementary school. So, you know, injuries will happen. But as Miss Bellaquin said, the data does not suggest that there's any increase in injuries by just letting the kids do it themselves.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I'm sorry, Member McLaughlin, let me just say this real quick. I did review our wellness policy, which is what we're supposed to do during this subcommittee. And I reviewed the wellness policy three or four surrounding communities. And our wellness policy does not use the word recess in any way. It's just not there. And all of the other districts I looked at, and I didn't go through 351 districts, but all of them, really, there was a theme. And that was, recess will not be taken away as discipline. And that's the main thrust of all of those policies that have clearly been updated in response to the research and evidence around this stuff. But when I, and the next meeting we'll talk about actual policy from Medford, but Member McLaughlin, sorry to delay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. And we will talk about, I can't remember which school district, but there's a childcare weather watch, essentially, a graph, a table that decides for everyone whether or not kids are going out or not. And hopefully we can include that in our policy when we get to that part. Emily.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you and we have lots of hands going up I've got a list so member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Ms. Sherwood-Hudson.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Before I go on to the next question, I will say, well, we certainly have not micromanaged because we haven't ever said a single word in policy as a school committee about recess in this district ever. It's not written down one word. So I'm not interested in going from one extreme to the other. as one member, I'm not interested in like slingshotting the entire, all of you all who have to manage these schools. It's not at all the goal. So I don't want you to be fearful that we're going to be providing you with a schedule of what kids should be doing every minute of their recess. First of all, we don't technically have such authority, I don't think, but I don't think that's what we want. So, member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Before I go to Member McLaughlin, I will, you know, the, I don't remember if it's in the first 15 minutes of every school committee training, the one that all of us have to take away first, get elected, but that is, beaten over our heads that when we will be the people that naturally families will reach out to, because we live in the community and they may know us, and that our response should be to say, go to the teacher, then go to the principal, then the assistant superintendent, then the superintendent. And then when that's all not working, well, then come on back and visit us. It's really hard for us as members to do that because what we are hearing is a tiny slice of something super important for the family. with no context and with no ability to really get the context. And all of us on the school committee are here because we wanted to do this work and we wanted to help people and make schools better. And so it's like, go back and see these 12 people before you, you know, and I'll see you in six months. Like that's just a very unsatisfying answer as a school committee member, but it is something we I believe all of us on the school committee do try to do because, well, first of all, because we are trained that way, but also because we just often don't know enough to do much about it or to do the right thing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I did have a question about the windblock analogy for recess. And I guess I'll just say it. Who gets to decide what the kid needs? Because it feels like if it's not the kid, then it's the opposite of child-directed. And I mean, if a child is during recess not able to play with other kids in a way that is working, however that is defined. And, you know, the natural responses of the other kids is not doing the educating that frankly probably happens a lot of the time. You know, I can see how the adults coming in to try and like help things get better if that's necessary, makes sense. But wind blocks, I guess it feels a bit like, Who gets to decide that? I mean, are kids really going like, I'm not gonna do recess today. I'm gonna go and do something that's not considered recess because an adult thought you needed more support in some other way. I don't really follow how it, my understanding of wind block is very much that the adults are saying, you know, my kid isn't getting this math concept and it's the wind block. So we're gonna go over the math concept during wind block.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: We are at 513. Oh, Dr. Edward-Vinson.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, thank you. And, um, you know, we'll at the next meeting, we will talk about language, but I will tell you that when I looked at the recess policies and other districts, um, everybody will be happy to know that they were very, very brief. Even when they were very concise, you know, about what can or can't happen, they were very brief. And I think that that speaks to the fact that the policy is not implementation. So, you know, the concern certainly that, you know, the Roberts does not have the space that other schools have, or that the McGlynn is in a tough spot altogether. Those are implementation concerns, as long as the policy does not get so fine that it makes it impossible to implement in those two particular settings. I will certainly make sure, hopefully we will not go anywhere near you know, really, really detailed stuff. But, you know, I just have a short list of what's to include or discuss in the next meeting. Consistency of when is recess happening or not happening, I heard, as something to consider. And there are, there was a federally funded grant that created a fabulous chart that Saves. It's sort of like the real feel thing, but it's it's a little more complicated. And, you know, it tells you whether or not you're having recess or not. There's the definition of recess which There's the I think it'd be important to include a definition of what is not recess. plopping the kids down in the classroom or any other setting and putting a movie on isn't recess, whether or not it's that time of day. And so a definition of what is not recess, I said consistency already. And then we have to find a way to discuss when recess is, well, and honestly, all the other policies are very clear that recess will not be taken away for discipline. And so we will, I think we'll have to dig into that more, more at the next meeting as to what that looks like, because whether we need to support professional development for teachers so that there's classroom management. One of the things that in articles I've read very clear is If we can't take away recess, then we can't punish the kids or have any consequences at all. And I know that many of you all here are like, well, that doesn't make sense. There's lots of other ways to have consequences. But I think it's not fair to not recognize that there might be teachers that don't have necessarily all the skills to know that there are other options and how to do that. So I don't think teachers like look forward to taking away recess. That's, that's not a thing. But if they honestly believe that's their only tool, then we need to make sure they understand and have the support to have other tools. So, and then, you know, we do want to talk about data, because, you know, if it while adding lots of more data entry and you know, forms to fill out, that all sounds terrible, but if it's once every six weeks a teacher is taking away recess, it's not too much to ask that a form be filled out. If it's three kids or six kids a day, well, that's a different problem. And I'd still support an excessively long form to fill out, like what's going on in that classroom. So, I think we should talk about data, what is not recess, what is recess, consistency, about when it happens. Am I missing anything for the next meeting?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, so as for which next meeting, so I will, there's always so many meetings, but I will schedule another rules and policy subcommittee meeting. I don't have the date, so I have to reach out to see who is available and when, but where we will look at some of the other policies in surrounding districts, which is not an overwhelming effort since they're short, as I mentioned. And then we will draft some language to insert into our wellness policy, as well as update a few other things that are outdated from the template system. Anybody have any.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. Yes. Thank you for that. I always forget. Not everybody knows the whole process. And so does anybody have any final words they want to add? I don't see any hands. All right, well, I'm thrilled to say that we are nine minutes early. Oh, I need to take a... Thank you. Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Thank you everyone for coming. Thanks everyone. Great conversation and this meeting is adjourned.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Just not for this particular one, but I do believe we'll have to take roll calls for everything with a member online.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thanks. Member Mastone? Yes. Member Mastone, yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: No questions? Member Ruseau? I would just like to thank you for the effort to find all this money. Free money, from our perspective, is the best kind. So thank you. And do you have any sense yet on how many teachers will be interested? Do you think that you will have to deal with too many people applying?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Russell? Thank you. I was just looking at last year's numbers, at least according to the DESE report, and we had 39, 37. So that's a good increase. I know that we had a drop. I haven't gone back and looked further. So is there, I mean, I haven't looked through this report since it's just right here. Is there a particular area where we're seeing a lot of, I mean, that's what, nearly 200 students?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just on that point, I believe we were at our charter cap. So being steady makes sense because we can't exceed the charter cap. Although I thought the charter cap might be a few students over 395, actually. So that would be surprising and lovely if we were under the cap. Obviously, the smaller the number, the better for us, but that would explain why we have been steady. I can't quickly find the charter numbers because it's the DESE website. Enough said on that, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, one last.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is a new format of this report and I just want to say bravo because it's very nicely done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Please make sure she receives our thank you because this is excellent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Just not for this particular one, but I do believe we'll have to take roll calls for everything with a member online.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Yes. Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thanks. Member Mustone. Yes. Member Mustone, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: No questions? Member Ruseau? I would just like to thank you for the effort to find all this money. Free money, from our perspective, is the best kind. So thank you. And do you have any sense yet on how many teachers will be interested? Do you think that you will have to deal with too many people applying?
[Paul Ruseau]: And the result. Thank you. I was just looking at last year's numbers, at least according to the DESE report, and we had 39, 37. So that's a good increase. I know that we had a drop. I haven't gone back and looked further. So is there, I mean, I haven't looked through this report since it's just right here. Is there a particular area where we're seeing a lot of, I mean, that's what, nearly 200 students?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just on that point, I believe we were at our charter cap. So being steady makes sense because we can't exceed the charter cap. although I thought the charter cap might be a few students over 395 actually, so that would be surprising and lovely if we were under the cap. Obviously, the smaller the number, the better for us, but that would explain why we have been steady. I can't quickly find the charter numbers, because it's the DESE website. Enough said on that, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, one last thing. Thank you. This is a new format of this report and I just want to say bravo because it's very nicely done. It's
[Paul Ruseau]: Please make sure she receives our thank you, because this is excellent. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Member Ruseau. Since you're bringing up the reading, you know, and in The samples that we have here, I'm looking at them and I'm wondering, considering the state of reading in the United States, it doesn't surprise me that a student took two hours or more to do this if they are frankly a typical second grade reader or third grade reader, frankly. So does this test understand that a vast number of students aren't able to really read at grade level? Or is there an expectation that the students can? I'm just really confused by scoring. It's about what they know. It's not a reading test. It's about what they know. Well, how do you answer what you know if the student has to read something for which they're not capable of reading? They're gonna get the answer wrong if they ever get through the question. I'm just confused how this can understand that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just one, forgive me if I've already said this, but the reports that the teachers have are student specific.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone? Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: So on the motion as amended to include disability in the sentence that includes race, gender, or bullying, it will now say race, gender, disability, or bullying. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Musko. Member Ruseau. Yes, Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: They are.
[Paul Ruseau]: We already did that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I already did that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just realized that in the announcements, the rules and policy subcommittee meeting is this Wednesday at 4pm. We'll be picking up the wellness policy related to recess, often called the recess policy. So I just wanted to include that for anybody watching. And the notice was posted today. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is something I may have asked in the past, so forgive me. And I know that we're not Cambridge, for instance, but there seems to be in some districts that each building has a really a data person. And when I, I know we don't have that, but when I think about, and this is nothing to do with the caliber of teachers or anything like that, but a lot of teachers, my guess, unless they're the math teachers, statistics may not have been their strong suit. Maybe it was. In the absence of having a literally a warm body always there to help them understand the statistics. How are we supporting them. I mean, are we able to support them is really the question. Is there going to be an ask in some way maybe in the budget to figure out how to support that because when I'm listening to this stuff. Like I was, I was a math guy. And, you know, I have to admit I haven't done statistics for, I don't know, 20 something years. If I got all these reports. It would not fit into my day and would not fit into my planning period to figure it all out. So how are we supporting the teachers that are not the math, I'm sure the math teachers are just fine. maybe some of the science teachers, but what about everybody else?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I've heard from a parent about in math, and I realize Faiz is not here. Oh, that's right. Just, you know, math, I will say, more than many other subjects, you know, requires that you did the last thing before you can do the next thing. And when I think about learning loss or gaps, you know, if you're, let's, I'm just picking this randomly, because I cannot honestly remember the details, but if you're in Algebra II, and the map that this test is given and a concept that is a definite Algebra 1 concept is a student doesn't know it. They're still sitting there in Algebra 2, and that is not on the syllabus, if you will. This is not going to be taught this year. Will NWEA map highlight the fact that there's a gap, and then how What is our expectation of teachers who like they have framework for algebra two. There's not an extra month somewhere they can carve out to teach something that the kids. Some of the kids didn't learn in the previous year. I'm sure this is a normal thing for teachers. It's always been a normal thing for teachers. But I think that because of the pandemic, this may not be just like occasionally you'll have a student in Algebra 2 who somehow managed to not know a concept of Algebra 1. But in fact, you may have a third of your students who don't know a concept. How do teachers manage that? And does this testing help them figure it out real fast so that the teacher can sideline what they were planning to do and get back and teach that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it's really helpful to hear that because, you know, there are plenty of parents who think more testing. And sometimes I'm that parent. But at the same time, we're not in a regular school year, we probably won't be for 10 years, I don't know. So it's, you know, knowing that there, this can help us find these gaps with precision. You know, nobody wants to just teach the whole school year over. The students don't want it. We probably can't legally even do it. And, but figuring out what, you know, little Johnny was on Zoom and for that month, there was something else going on in the house and little Johnny wasn't paying attention. you know, there's no way for the teacher of the next year to have any clue that that happened. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. feel like I'm going to just ask a couple questions for which you probably don't have the answers. But, you know, we talked about MCAS scores, which for the thousandth time, I'm not a fan of, we do know that we were referring to the students of Massachusetts, and we mean virtually all of them. What I don't know is the NWEA database for which they decide to decide that those are the nationals. Are they using, I'm assuming we're not getting some of like, they're not getting, showing us a like district numbers. And I realized like district at Bessie changes it every year. And I doubt very much the communities that are in the like districts for us truly changed every year. But what I have no idea is, you know, does, who's buying NWEA and feeding their database, is it historically low performing urban schools or is it. You know the wealthy Western Winchester's that are buying it, who's buying it, who's this data source because I think that sort of was maybe what member Graham was trying to get at was the national norm mean RIT in kindergarten for ELA is 136.65. But if we were all to just get together for a year and sit in a room and do some research projects, would we all think that it should be 230? I mean, I certainly understand the need to like understand how we compare to the state or to national averages and all that stuff and it's it's not that it's not meaningful, but. Unlike with the MCAS, where we know when we see the score that we're referring to an individual student or a district against a known cohort comparison, I'm really unsure. Is NWEA in 80% of the schools or 2% of the schools? Those kinds of things would matter dramatically. If you told me they were in 80% of the schools in the country, all my questions that I'm asking would just vanish. If they're in 2%, that would make me think that the national norm means nothing. And so I'm asking this question realizing you might have to perhaps come back and get an answer later, but it seems really, really important to me to understand whether I can trust that these nationally normed things mean anything. I'm glad we're above them pretty much everywhere, by the way, that's great news, but who are the them? Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The appendix is not everything you had, obviously. And you made that very clear. I also understand, based on some of the slides, that you had to do work to make them to hide student. We don't have the right to see individual student anything. But when I look at, for instance, I'm just the one on my screen, grade level district mean score in ELA. You know, I would, if it's not a week of work, I don't know how good the software is at spitting out endless reports, but, you know, I'd like to see that by a few different things, like by school. I would like to see it. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, look at that. I like it when the answer's right there. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Absent. Member Mastone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Oso? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to sever the minutes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just on page two, there's a motion to approve the consent agenda in the minutes. And it says six slash one, I think it should say six slash zero slash one because I was absent at that point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, because the one implies a no. It'd be yay, nay and absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: The printed one is missing a page.
[Paul Ruseau]: No. No, there is no one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Could I ask that a letter be sent to the family thanking them from the school committee?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. I know that there's been some communications today about this. And I'm just trying to, this is really, I'm hoping you can answer this question. Sure. The registration form says Bennett Studios, student travel. And so families signed that some number of months ago. And then now it's not flying, it's Amtrak. And did Bennett make that unilaterally, even though there's contracts with each and every family? Who made that change that instead of a four-hour flight, it's a 30-hour train ride each way?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And I have one other question. I have not been on Amtrak in a while, but I have been on Amtrak. And will the students be just, will we have reserved seats and cars, or will the students just be mixed in with the public?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It may not be a good answer for this but um, when can be the units that have already settled. Was it a week or two at this point now go. When could they start seeing their retro checks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And just sort of a technical, is that likely to be like all of them drop at once or as they're processed one at a time?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't want to beat this dead horse too much, but the state's 138%. That's inclusive of COVID.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we will get the numbers once the pain of figuring it all out is done. What was the COVID ones? What was the total?
[Paul Ruseau]: I guess I would just wonder a bit about, I don't remember exactly when it happened, but reporting a positive COVID for your kid has always been a little, I believe that, science has updated that on the website to make it possible, but when one of my kids was positive, I went to the website and I sat through many meetings where we were told how all this worked. But of course, until you have to do it, you don't memorize it exactly. I went to our website in May, and I could not figure out how to report that my daughter had COVID. And I mean, she hadn't missed much school. I could have just been like, whatever. So I just do want to make sure that the 2022, which is the one that ended in June, that it The caveats around that are gonna be pretty substantial because I'm sure that lots of people did not report it.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the regular absence system wouldn't even show a student who was COVID positive. Correct, but it also would show students who are positive but told nobody. Correct, and they wouldn't be in the positive pool either so I guess I'm just kind of questioning how much effort is involved is it worth that I guess is sort of my.
[Paul Ruseau]: just mentioned it, that's what I'm going to ask. We mail them to families?
[Paul Ruseau]: So who mails it to a family for a student who's now at a district? Because would we be mailing it still?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Have they all gone out?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, it's only Monday. Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm confused a bit on not meeting expectations. The 21% of the district's 10th graders who achieved not meeting expectations, which is a score of 469 to 485, right? Or 469 and below.
[Paul Ruseau]: So for students that had a 468 and below?
[Paul Ruseau]: They're not included in the 21% of students?
[Paul Ruseau]: How many, what percentage of students were 468 and below? 468 or below, so we, so,
[Paul Ruseau]: You're saying 79% of our 10th graders couldn't pass the math MCAS.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I'm asking the question of all of the student body who are 10th graders and took the MCAS test. what percentage of them must retake it because they could not get a score that the state will accept for competency under any circumstances, whether you do EPP or not? Is it one student? Is it a hundred?
[Paul Ruseau]: This just seems like the, this seems to me like the, the banner number. I mean, of however many 10th graders we have what like 300 and something of every case. If you told me that half of our 10th graders are not going to get a diploma. I think we should all stop talking about other things for a while. I can't tell from so I mean what I see is 21% of our 10th graders had a score that in any other year they're not getting a diploma until they retested the state has decided. We won't make you take the test again. So 21% is like 60, 70 students who normally would not get a diploma without another passing test in math, but now can simply do this EPP instead. So that's 60 or 70 kids, and I'm just making numbers up roughly. But what, I mean, I don't know whether of the 79% of the other students, what percentage of them are not meeting expectations and are below 469.
[Paul Ruseau]: didn't meet expectations to the point where they won't even get a diploma if they can't get a passing test.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me get back to you because I just- My next question, of course, will be is how does that compare to the state? And I mean, the ones that are not meeting expectations and will not get a diploma until they pass a test or get to the 486 plus EPP in 11th or 12th grade or something.
[Paul Ruseau]: And without spending all night on this, from your past experience, is that a dramatic increase or is it three times as many students or, I'm not asking for an exact number, but is it normal that there's two students and now we have 40 something students?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, this not meeting expectations 42 is all. of the not meeting expectations.
[Paul Ruseau]: So nine students were in the safe zone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, the EPP zone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes, I'd like to express interest. Sex ed was the health curriculum was one of the very first things that I met. Actually, I met with the administration prior to even being sworn in. And I won't say I've read every page of the Michigan model because the binder was like, six inches tall, but this has been a major concern and interest of mine. I had to send my own children off to the OWL program because frankly, we're not doing it. So I have a lot of interest in this topic. So I just want everybody to know that I'm interested.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? I just have one question. I was reviewing the HECAT assessment tool. That's part of the word, it's like the system system. Anyways, and I was noticing that there is nothing in there that I could find referencing English learners or special ed, and maybe I'm not looking in the right place. But when I do searches on those words, I kind of come up empty, and that surprised me. So I'm just wondering if you know much more about it, and you can tell me. It's a separate section, and I'm not looking in the right place.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have a man. Yep. So I just want to give a little background on there's a lot of policies here. And I was joking with I believe the mayor and the superintendent that this was just a half an hour of work in the morning for me to come up with this many policies, we have easily a couple of hundred policies that we must adopt that we just haven't adopted through the decades. And so we receive, I believe all of us probably received the once or twice a year policy updates from our professional association, where they list a long list of policies that have been updated, whether the law has changed or whether there's been some rolling in a court somewhere. Or the policy is simply written in the 1950s and they realized they needed to update it. So we get this list, once or twice a year, and it just lists the policies and tells us, here's the new suggested policy. And many of the policies in that list are Almost all of those policies are changes amendments suggested improvements to language. But what I'm finding often is that Medford never adopted the policy in the first place. So when I submit these to the, to the agenda. I put at the beginning. you know, if we just look at the first one, it's, you know, will be adopted as new policy, which means that we have don't have the policy at the moment. And when it's an update, I just usually say it's an update or a replacement. Sometimes it's easier to just do whole language replacement rather than strike this line, strike this line. So these policies that are in this agenda are I won't say the verbatim from the policy manual, because sometimes they'll say things like, insert your name of your school committee here. But there's nothing that has been edited to reflect Medford specifically, other than perhaps changing the name. The one exception is that sometimes the policy will say, if you're a regional school district, do this, but we're not a regional school district, so that's not included. But I want everybody to know that these are the, standard policies that come from our template system from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. And that's why I'm putting them forward. And I'm more than willing to make a motion to waive the readings, although I don't know what everybody thinks on this particular set of policies is all finance and dry, no offense to Mr. Murphy. So just some background.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. That's actually the most interesting one to me as well. As you know, I go to virtually every training MASC offers and I get looks of shock when I mentioned that we have never approved a budget transfer from everybody in the room. It's worth noting it's a self-selecting group of school committee members that goes there, that is obviously interested in policies and procedures. So in fact, I don't take that to mean that the whole state, everybody does it this way. But when I think about this particular one about the budget transfer authority, I think about a scenario like this, and I don't mean to imply this is happening here, but the school committee has priorities. We set a budget, we wanna spend, I don't know, $800,000 on staff for something. then those people don't get hired, whether because they don't exist or because nobody's pushing to try and find the staff, because the administration doesn't agree necessarily, that's how we should be spending our $800,000. Six months, nine months into the school year, there's $800,000 of unspent money. You all spend it on what you think is important and want it to be spent on. And in the current setup, you can do that, none of us will ever know. It's not about trust, because I do trust you and the superintendent here. It's just this sense that with no budget transfer happening in this committee in the four and a half years I've been on, that you could be squirreling away millions of dollars of staff that you're not hiring, because you don't think we should be hiring that way. And we've all said that at the budget time. And the end of the year comes and you're doing your, your magic to finalize the year. And there's that money that didn't get spent, which happens every year, because you can't find staff that you really want. And we're none the wiser. We're just like, we wanted this to happen. You can say we couldn't find the staff or we didn't hire the staff. And that money got spent some other way that you wanted that we didn't want. So I want to know what the middle, but I've also heard at these conference sessions, that some school committees and they're in town meeting town in places with town meetings, where there's a thousand different budget categories and every nickel has to be coming before somebody for votes. And it's like, they're like, nobody wants that. Nor does anyone want to work there often, but so, I mean, I think it does sound like perhaps a conversation is a good idea to try and find where's there a middle ground, because I think we should be doing some budget transfers and less hard budget. is so flawless that you can execute, and there's no need to move money around. But I've never heard that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Could we, if it's a table, I can't comment.
[Paul Ruseau]: Chair?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm looking at it and see different numbers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Me too. I see 2245 is the payment procedures.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're missing the online, the printout is missing things.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's what I have, yes, that it's passed. There's actually another policy in the agenda that's online.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's a fiscal accounting ability and reporting.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to speak on that real quick. Member Ruseau. I was reviewing that policy because there were some other updates we had made, and then it became very clear in this sentence that we meant to include special, because special subcommittees is another name for our like for the renaming committee. We don't dissolve subcommittees when they finish their work. We'd have to restart them every single time. So that's just a fix.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. I actually very much want this data as well. We have a rule number 44. which we adopted whenever we adopted it earlier this year, that says that we have to use the ad hoc report request procedure. And looking over that, I mean, when I, you know, member McLaughlin was not present and neither was member Hays when we created that procedure, but the goal of that procedure is to make sure that superintendent doesn't go create the report and then, you know, you wanted this piece of data and this piece of data is not in the report, so then they create another one and then your questions aren't getting answered. So, you know, the ad hoc report request procedure lists out, you know, you have to specify what is the data you want so that you get it because There's too much data, too many ways to do the data. And so I would just ask that Member McLaughlin review in the rules addendum two and submit it again to include that so that we can, because the other key element to this procedure is to make sure that if the request is for the superintendent to create a report that's going to take two people a month and a half of time, the committee should know that we're asking for that kind of a request of resources versus if the report could be something that the, you know, superintendent can get in five minutes, in which case, then that's a very different kind of scenario. But as we know from our financial and HR systems and the disconnect there, some reports are truly massively labor-intensive. And so understanding what are the questions that we're trying to answer and what are the data elements that are desired before the committee decides whether to expend those resources in the superintendent's office is why we created that rule.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just had questions about them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So this meeting, reviewing the minutes, it says I was absent. I actually was on an advanced notice vacation and actually did not receive notice of the meeting. And I think the minutes should be updated to say I don't know what they need to say, but I was not absent. I was not notified of the meeting. So it's a very important distinction since I missed only one meeting ever for illness and I take attendance very seriously. So I don't know what, if we want to just change the way it says absent to say absent, failure to notify.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's acceptable.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. And prior to the email, I had told administration I was away and without internet service or cell phone service, and we had no posted meetings at that point in time.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly would never have said that I didn't want to attend a meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: I didn't think the meeting was appropriate but I certainly would have attended any meeting I was invited to as I always have.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not okay with that. I've made a motion to amend them to say failure to notify. If there's no second, then.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? No. Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: I have one more question. I'm sorry. I'm reading the minutes, since this is the first time, aware of the meeting, I mean I was aware that there was a meeting while I was away, but I'm reading it and there's a lot of like there's all these motions with no language that says what the motion was there's like motion to accept what was perhaps talked about. I just don't know how anybody can take action off of these minutes without actual language saying what was approved. So, this is a comment I, I wasn't there. I'm assuming when it says motion to accept changes. that there were really changes, but reading through the minutes, I don't think anybody who wasn't present could reasonably know what it was was being asked to happen and by whom. So those are comments on the minutes, but I would still vote to approve them because there's nothing being asked to happen here as far as I can tell.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So if a student tests positive for COVID in the morning that they're leaving, this policy, according to its own little notes at the bottom, has not been updated since July 1 of 2015. So definitely, they didn't update it specific for COVID, which I guess is fine. But I'm assuming that if the FAA still requires tests, do they require testing anymore, or is it just a free-for-all on planes? They do not require us to France might well require a test.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: But so if they test positive the morning of because they test positive a week before, it's not really relevant. Correct. Are they just out the whole cost because they can't get on the plane because France decides that it's not accepting Americans who won't?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just worried about that because it seemed, I mean, more and more people I know now have COVID than I feel like at any point in the pandemic all at once. And, you know, it's not a puddle jump to Provincetown or something, it's a long flight to be sitting with a bunch of other people if you have COVID. It's also not, in my opinion, appropriate to ask our students to make that decision it needs to be clear ahead of time what they will do in that case and then that I know you don't have an answer to all that right now but this, this seems to imply that there are two different policies, there's the cancel for any reason, and then the optional cancel for any reason. The second one, which is the more expensive and that's the one that's $100 or is the first one $100.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep. Thank you. So, um, I guess until we have an answer on the student who test positive for code but the day before the morning of. I'm, I'm a little uncomfortable with just one part of this. If, if the optional cancel for anything covers a student who tests positive the morning of the first flight. I feel like maybe we should make it a policy this year that people have to pony up the hundred dollars. If it doesn't cover that scenario, then there's no point. But I just know that students who test positive and their families and some students who work part-time jobs for a long time for this. If the whole trip goes out the window the morning of because they have COVID and the policy says they get nothing back. we all know the way they'll be standing the following Monday. I would be there as a parent, even if I didn't expect any results. So I just feel like if for $100, if we can make sure that people testing positive only a couple of months, a few months from now, are gonna get something back, I would be open to that as a member, making that a requirement for this year. But without knowing that, I don't know how to proceed with that.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great to see. The issue of course is medically imposed restrictions. So if the U.S. doesn't mind if people with COVID get on planes and France does, this is a U.S. based policy. Are they going to be like, wow, we're fine with you getting on a plane. It's where you land, it doesn't. So I feel like this is the kind of question that definitely has probably been asked so far during the pandemic. I don't have answers though.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I really appreciate these questions, and honestly, maybe it's new or I've just not heard of it the capital planning committee would consist of who exactly.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So this is the timeline for replacement this is not looking at what we might replace systems with right, because I just want to be sure, like, we don't presently have a policy requiring any new equipment be carbon neutral or not be a carbon based, but if this is just a timeline like this system in this building is going to die in this year, this one's going to die in this year. This will just lay out a roadmap. And then at some future date in a dream world when those dates arrive, we would be then talking about how to spend money and what to replace them with right is that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean I just replaced my water heater like three or four years ago. And I got rid of the regular water heater and I got an on-demand water heater. And the only thing MassAve had at the moment was, maybe it was five years, was a gas-based on-demand water heater, which I got, which is great. It won't die for 35 years. But that also means for 35 years, I can't be carbon neutral in my house. So when we're making decisions along that, it doesn't feel like the superintendent's goals is the place to insert policy like that. But I just wanted to be clear that this is not about planning for spending money, because we all know that the carbon free versions will always be more well they'll be more expensive for a long time. But thank you for clarifying what that means.
[Paul Ruseau]: So much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You said that just now that the transportation and the zoning of the schools, I don't remember your exact words, but I just wanna be sure that we do not get in a situation where sign a contract, a year later we decide to rezone, and we are limited because we have a contract for the bus. Now I've not been a part of a school system where the rezoning happened and how that would impact busing, but I can't imagine it doesn't impact busing, so I want to make sure that if we do pick up the incredibly hot potato of rezoning, we're not throwing ourselves into this fire and then really being stuck because of how we decided our bus contract. So are those things truly a separate
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau are any of the. You know off the top of your head that the teacher positions that are open. I mean, you know, like if we have one calculus teacher and we don't have calculus.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. If you could bear with me and not take offense. This is a success story, a big success story. Okay. We are all here groveling over nickels and dimes. Massachusetts used to be the sixth heaviest tax state in 1980. We are now number 36. and what do taxes pay for public goods, public goods principally being public education. So the rich got exactly what they wanted us at each other's throats over the nickels that are left, okay? There is no school committee member here that doesn't think starting pay for a teacher shouldn't be six figures. There isn't. None of us ran for office to figure out how to screw teachers. Quite the opposite. I know I ran for office and I tried to get the MTAs endorsement because I really care about that teachers have anything and everything they could possibly ever need to do their job, because the teachers that my kids have had have been absolutely amazing. And, and I see some of them in the audience probably all of them. I get really upset because this feels a bit like us against them, when really the them are the rich people who figured out how to get us from number six to number 36 Massachusetts isn't like a state of poverty, where's all that money going, it's going into The usual communities start w some of them start with other letters but somehow w is very popular. So I just, I just think it's really important to to pause a bit because the other thing about the 1993 ed reform act was that school committees. sort of a joke on us. It really is a joke. We have all the responsibility to negotiate with you and no authority to do a damn thing about how much money we have to do that with. It's really kind of a sick, sick joke. And all school committees in Massachusetts have this same problem. I mean, I go to all the school committee conferences, ask my colleagues, I go to them all. And it's partially a therapy session because we're all suffering from the same problem where we have no capacity to raise revenues to do a damn thing. I ran for office because I wanted to implement K to 12 computer science curriculum that President Obama and Congress had done. but quickly realize, well, we don't have an extra four to $600,000 laying around for any of that to happen. So that's, you know, that's out the window. I mean, we're doing some stuff, but, so I just think that, I just want this to be clear. There's nobody in this room who is against anybody Prop two and a half was designed to make sure that communities like us do what we're doing, hating each other or whatever, maybe hate's a strong word, I don't know. Some days it feels that way. But in communities that really ran the prop two and a half thing to get it passed, they do overrides, some of them more than once a year, because they know they want stuff. They know that there's no way you can afford it with two and a half percent increases every year. And they knew that the people of their community, whether it's based on educational levels or income levels or demand and expectations of services, that they would just put an override every year, some of them twice a year, and poof, they would pass them and their taxes would go up a little bit and they could afford it. I don't envy any elected official, any teacher, and frankly, any resident of a regular community. And Medford, I think of as a regular community. So when we're talking about what we can afford, what we're really talking about is what rich people think we deserve. And let's be clear, they think we deserve an end to public education for full privatization, so there's even more rich people. And I'm just making sure this is all said, because frankly, prop two and a half is sort of like this boogeyman, nobody knows what it is exactly. And you don't have to learn what it is, but you do have to know why it is. It's there to make sure rich people don't have to pay taxes, and the rest of us are at each other's throat groveling over how to split the nickel. You can look at Medford's budget from before Prop two and a half, and we had, what was it, 150 people in DPW? We didn't get less roads between now and then, and we have what, 50, Mayor? 70, but 70, 150 down to 70. I mean, we've all driven on the roads. And when we talk about how to split the nickel, if we give, And I absolutely hate this next sentence, but if we give the teachers more than we can responsibly afford, meaning rich people think we should be able to afford, not what I think we should be able to afford, but based on the size of the pie, which can barely grow, if we give more than we can, then we're not gonna have to worry about the 15 to 17 pairs we have openings for, by the way, because we're gonna be getting rid of half of the pairs or whatever the number is. That terrifies me, frankly, more. So I just feel like as a body, we are often maligned, and I don't mean necessarily individually, but the notion that we can just pass wage increases and that there will be money coming is just not true. We do not have any taxation authority. We have no ability to rent out the buildings yet more. They're kind of always rented out and that doesn't give you much money. So I just really felt the need to kind of pontificate on why we're here, because I wish we were all getting together to talk about how can we improve this part of education and this part of education. Cause I know that the teachers all want that. And every member of the school committee ran for office for the exact same reason. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Are we done with this item? I just wanted to take an order out of five. Could we, I'm sorry, what'd you say?
[Paul Ruseau]: Make a motion to suspend the rules and take item 2022-43 next.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Mestona.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, can I just make one comment? And members when we at the presentation at the library, and I honestly, every year and month blurs together now, but we also I had brought up or we had discussed. I don't remember who brought anything up anymore. The police department, of course, has a complete listing of all licensed firearm owners in the community. And while it's not within the school committee's authority in any way, shape, or form, it did seem like a good idea, if it was not already happening, that an annual letter goes home from the police chief to everybody who has a licensed firearm to just remind them of the law. And I mean, at first, on the surface, it's like they went to the trainings or whatever, they got their license. But we all get lots of things every year to remind us of things. And if people who have a firearm that isn't a locked locker and don't do anything with it, it just sits there all year long, get the letter, maybe they'll check it and realize, whoa, the lock's not on or something. So obviously that's nothing for the school committee, but I just thought it was important that there's another avenue here where we don't have access to who has firearms, the police chief does. It seems like a very low cost thing to send one letter, assuming there's not 60,000 people with licenses in Medford annually. So it's just something I wanted to drop into your head real quick. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Member Ruseau. Thank you. I just have, thank you for the report. I always look forward to this and I feel, unless I'm reading it wrong, I feel happy that our numbers are rebounding because I know last year's numbers were a little much lower, right? A couple hundred?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. And then There's another, there's a column on page two, it's titled NC, I forget what that means.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, thank you. I would just ask that whatever we do for a plan on that, that we consider that some families will not want communications. And so it needs to really be individualized Certainly, families that want them should be able to get them, but I would just want to be clear that some families definitely will not want them. So, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to waive the reading of item number seven.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'd like to- Member Ruseau? I'd like to nominate Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. We, I don't think I've ever done this as far as I can tell, but this is actually something we're supposed to do each year. These are resolutions to change. But essentially their, their resolutions that come from school committees around Massachusetts that tell the association our professional association, what we want them to be focused on in the upcoming year, and their action to get legislation changed. So, these are the six resolutions that came to the resolution committee of the MSC, and I. Having read them all, I certainly support all of them, although, as it says earlier, it's up for all of us to decide whether to support them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, motion to table to the next meeting? That's what I was going to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, they're actually pretty small.
[Paul Ruseau]: Democrats. Oh, Kathy's going to be
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Not absent. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd be happy to go over the, you know, the Department of Ed's superintendent review process that we follow.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so the school all school committees are required to perform an annual review of the superintendent which is our sole employee as a school committee, and the state has over the last four years has changed, three times now, the evaluation system, the original system when I first joined was a. shockingly long and tedious system that, frankly, I can't believe it was ever allowed to go. But anyway, so they revamped it considerably in the second year I was in office, which was four years ago, three years ago, whatever it was. And then again, last year or the year before at the end of the year, they may get another major update. So we have changed our form that we use to match the state. They provide a long list of, well, a less awfully long list of categories that we have to evaluate the superintendent. Generally, at the highest level, there's really four measures. There's the instructional leadership, There's five subcategories within that. There's management and operations, and there are five categories within that. There's engagement, which used to be called family engagement, and frankly is, I think, mostly still, that's what it means. There are four categories within that. And then the fourth item is professional culture, which has six items. In the last update, this will be the first time we're doing this part of the evaluation. They also added the superintendent performance goals and while we've had those I think for four years. They were not included in the actual review until about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, the state also doesn't seem to think it's important to tell us when they make updates. So that was a bit of a surprise this year that there was some updates that caused us to have to kind of run around and what caused me to have to run around and update all of our forms. So that's the high level, what the evaluation system looks like. There are very long documents that the state provides as well as our professional association on But on the evaluation system recommendations on how to proceed there's procedural steps as to when things happen and who does them, etc. Many, they're all recommendations. And because school committees very dramatically in. size as well as, you know, there's regional school committees with a lot of members. There are smaller towns that have, I believe, as small as three school committee members, but I only know of those that have five. So that there's just an enormous amount of variation in what a school committee looks like. So the guidance is rather broad. The other thing that is important to note is that each school committee member provides their own evaluation to a third party, which, you know, sometimes it's the secretary for the school committee, if there's a, I'm the secretary for the school committee, but in like, for instance, in Cambridge, the school committee has an actual administrative assistant, I forget their exact title, who's an employee of the school committee in addition to the superintendent and does not work for the superintendent. So in that case, the individual members send their evaluations to their executive assistant. Most school committees appear to choose a member of the school committee to serve in the role of taking evaluations because individual members do not evaluate the school committee. We actually sit and do it, but that's not the evaluation. The evaluation, just like all other work products that come out of the school committee, are based on a four vote majority or it didn't happen. So we each do our own personal evaluations and we put them in a pile and somebody, and in this case it's for Medford, it's the secretary of the school committee, compiles them, averages the numbers, takes the language feedback and actually tries to make it not sound too much like Melanie wrote it or Paul wrote it or try to make it sound like it's the voice of the school committee as well as to remove any duplication. Sometimes you know, all the members will say the exact same statement. Well, nobody wants to see seven of the same statements written into a review. So because the review is the review of the school committee, not the individual members.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So, The being that is from DESE, they of course have more than one scoring system within a single review, because why not? So in the first top section, which is superintendent performance goals, which is on a scale of one to five, there is one is did not meet, two is some progress, three is significant progress, four is met and five is exceeded. And There's some wiggle room as to how many performance goals Superintendent can have. I think there's a minimum of three. I think, I can't remember the full description. Superintendent had four. The first one was elementary literacy, which is assessing early literacy skills and implementing interventions in literacy to improve outcomes by deepening teacher and principal knowledge of early literacy skills. This is considered the student learning goal. There's three categories. And the two focus indicators for this goal were elementary literacy and elementary mathematics, and the score, the average score was 3.69, which is 3.69, right? You know, that's what it is out of five. And Mayor, I'm not sure if we, do we want to read all of the, you've seen how many comments there are. I don't think there's so many that we couldn't read them, but I also don't want to just make the meeting longer than it needs to be.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, well, why don't I read them at least for the superintendent performance goals, and then we'll see where we are in time and move into the... Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I certainly think... I mean, the opportunity for the school community to provide their feedback was what we've just completed. So, I mean, I... We don't have, in my mind, we don't have anywhere near enough time for us to each be providing our feedback on each of the 20 something items here. That was, I mean, and we received lots of feedback, which was integrated into the document. So we have one hour. We're not gonna get even into the performance standards if we each speak on our feedback on each of these. I think that's why. we're supposed to put it into the form and submit it ahead of time.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So the first one, which was the elementary literacy, the comments from the committee were as follows, multiple families continue to express concerns regarding interventions and literacy, especially related to dyslexia. They feel disenfranchised by principals and teachers. They also feel they are, there are not enough reading specialists nor enough certified specialists. to meet any of their children, to meet many of their children's needs. Multiple families have shared concerns at the administrative level regarding this matter, but continue to feel concerns have not been adequately addressed. Additionally, we have under Dr. Edwards' instance leadership, the district has implemented continuing in-depth professional development and literacy for teachers K-2, assessments, NWEA map, and programs at Cree and K-2 to improve and enhance our students' literacy skills and our district's literacy outcomes, all while still dealing with ongoing impacts of the COVID pandemic. This has been a tremendous endeavor for teachers, principals, and administrators. At this time, data regarding the impact of these initiatives on learning outcomes and how teachers are using assessment results to inform their teaching has not yet been presented. I'm wondering if we also do we want to hear from the superintendent as we go I don't know how the superintendent feels about that, but it's just real I just realized we're doing a lot of talking, I'm especially doing a lot of talking you are not hearing from the superintendent at all, which I just keep.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I'll finish the performance goals. Okay. Second performance goal is the professional practice goal. And that is to develop skills in strategy development, data analysis and instructional leadership by completing the fourth extension year of the new superintendent induction program. There were two focus indicators the new There was one, it's just a crap, sorry. New Superintendent Induction Program is the focus indicator. And the score for that was 3.96, and the comments on that. I'm glad to see the induction program is complete. More information about data analysis and how this is being used for strategic development and instructional leadership would be welcomed. Dr. Edouard-Vincent demonstrates a substantial commitment to continued professional development and continued improvement in her role as superintendent. I hope to hear more about her learning in the induction program, about how the learning in the induction program has impacted her understanding of her role and actions she has taken in the areas of strategy development, data analysis and instructional leadership as a result. Would somebody like to take the district wide focus on instruction and assessment?
[Paul Ruseau]: Whatever I was saying. Thank you. Whether or not there's less PD or not, it's not the size of the pile, it's what's in the pile that matters. We have the same conversation around the testing we do of students. We want to get rid of testing that's duplicative or not serving to do anything other than take up more days of taking away instruction to sit and do testing. For me, it's the same idea. And we did put into our policy last year on annual reports and presentations that we would get an annual report that includes, I think, all the items that Member Graham just said, whether it was mandatory or optional. spending data, like what did it actually cost, and whether it was in-house or external provider, and participation rates. So, I mean, I feel like when we hear that there is not enough professional development, and then we see the list, It's these two things do not, they just don't make sense together. And what I think is going on is the teachers are saying that the professional development they get isn't what they need or want. And so I may have just beat this to the death, so I'll stop talking. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, Member Ruseau? Sorry, the updated version that I sent later in the day had more comments, and I see that you don't have them right there. Let me just, want me to just read the rest of the comments for that item? Sure. Because I know you don't have them in front of you. Dr. Ed Robinson is actively engaged in both the school community and the wider Medford community. She attends many school sports and cultural events, as well as many city-sponsored events, often during after-school hours and on weekends. This involvement in student and community activities is valuable in helping families and students and their families feel supported and welcomed by MPS and MPS administration. This year saw the hiring of re-engagement specialists, a position newly created on June 20, 2021. These initiatives to foster relationships with MPS students and families who have less engaged with the schools, increased opportunities for two way communication with students and families has needed communication that is focused on district learning initiatives, as well as community building students and families need more consistent opportunities to provide feedback, ideas, and concerns both in person and through surveys. I also hope to see the superintendent's Friday update email, which has been a consistent and important method of communication with the community, evolved both in format and content. I did send all the members during this meeting the update, which I realized I only had sent to Suzy, so my apologies.
[Paul Ruseau]: superintendent review, but it's a review of the school system, because we don't get to review principals and assistant superintendents. So, I mean, I think that your personal communications that are going on on Friday are in fact, excellent. And, you know, I remember early on in the pandemic, I think, when I provided some feedback on the formatting, and you took it and you improved it. And that I think is not in my mind this is not what this relatively low score is about it's that you know you're one person um and frankly I think your communication that's going out on Fridays is great and it couldn't be better everything could be better but um but you are not all of the other people that should be communicating out and that's where I feel like I see weaknesses in um consistency, which is a huge, you know, is one of your principle, I forget the word I'm looking for, but consistency is critical and important. And at this point in time, it seems like to the large extent, principles and other people who are communicating out to families are on their own. And I recognize that there's not a public relations or marketing office to draft templates for everybody to use and find out what all the various communications that go out in a year are and make sure that they're consistent and using the right language and translated ahead of time, frankly. I mean, a lot of the communications the district sends out are not unique. Like every year they're the same communications with tweaking dates and places and names. And yet, is there a giant folder in somebody's computer or office that everybody's pulling from? My sense is the answer is no. And so for me, that's why this score is, I mean, obviously this is not just my score, it's everybody's scores average together, but having a consistency all the way from the top to the bottom, is creates cohesiveness. It ensures that we are all using the right language. And that's for me why I think that this area has an enormous area for improvement.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me go look at your review. I'm sorry if I missed them. I did miss a number of days earlier. No, that's OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'd like to make a motion to amend 4.6 conflict management, the feedback to include the feedback that the mayor just provided and asked that the mayor just send me the language that she just said, or previously says she had in her review. It did not come across to me, I did go and look, but I don't doubt that she wrote it, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Go ahead members. I'm not sure that I don't have other feedback to include. So I'm not sure what's being suggested by others.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McDonnell.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Landau.
[Paul Ruseau]: What the superintendent said, I don't think is incorrect. I think it's, however, the adult view of the situation. That's how I'll put it. I don't think it's the student view of the situation. So, I don't have any, I can't be more specific than that, other than to say that, you know, that it just, this just feels like this is an adult assessment. The number is not an adult, is not an assessment of how the adults in the building perhaps feel about the places, but students and certainly some staff, I think, do not feel that we are particularly culturally proficient. We are incredibly diverse, which gives us a great opportunity to become culturally proficient. You know, if it was like, a, you know, someplace in New Hampshire where everybody's white and everybody's, you know, Christian or Protestant or whatever. Everybody's, you know, effectively the same to a large extent. it's harder, I think, to become culturally proficient. There's just no opportunities to exercise that muscle. But Medford has, frankly, has the opportunity that many communities could dream of to really become culturally proficient. I don't think we're there. And I don't so much feel like it's a reflection of the superintendent, because I think we've heard very clearly that the superintendent, is, you know, is a rock star in this arena. But the superintendent is not all the employees and the superintendent, we evaluate the superintendent and really re-evaluate the school system in this process. So I certainly would agree it's not a reflection on the superintendent on her specific cultural proficiencies, but making that come down and be part of all of the schools and all of the staff and not just be a I mean, I'm just saying, don't be a two hour PD. I have no idea how that even works out, but I'm just, that's my feedback, because I know you wanted feedback and it's a hard one for me to really kind of come up with on the spot.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just... Member Huston said something that also reminded me that, you know, When we're doing this review, the hardest part for us is that we are not walking the halls and sitting in every classroom in the district. And a lot of these questions, frankly, are things, especially the old version of the evaluation. It was as if we were everywhere all the time and could know everything. It was bizarre. This one's better, but it still has a lot of that, that we are expected to just mind meld with the entire staff of the district and all families. So, what something number of us don't said though, I'm sorry that Dr Edouard-Vincent said about you know that communications about becoming principals and assistant superintendent Lucy, and I'm just like, blind CCing us on things that, you know, aren't for us, we're not the target audience, but blind CCing us throughout the year on things that you're like, you know, this was in the evaluation and let's blind CC the school committee. So they see that it's happening because when we come back a year from now, a lot of us will look at the last review, our last comments, and we will be like, I don't feel like I know anything more about this than I did last year. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. And the time to try and convince us that this stuff happened is not when we sit down to do our review. So that's just a suggestion I had. And I see my case.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think the mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Betz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bissette.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Lococo.
[Paul Ruseau]: The school committee meeting calendar.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, actually. My question was actually about that. Do you have you know, you reference policies, do you actually know what the policies are? Like, is there a list?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, certainly. The issue of the handbooks being outdated in our website. I won't get into the website right now. But, um, so I think that I certainly support the motion. I just think that we need to know which policies we're reviewing, because I don't think it's appropriate to cast a net where the rules and policy subcommittee should essentially review the whole handbook, because the committee- Point of information. Approves the handbooks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I did find the incident reports policy, which I will admit, I did not know we had. And in fact, it does reference serious incidents, but what is fascinating about it is that nowhere in there, is there any suggestion that the family should be communicated with? So if we can, a friendly amendment to actually specify the particular policy, because I just don't wanna, I don't want a motion where it's like, I'm just hunting all the policies.
[Paul Ruseau]: Policy CLB incident report.
[Paul Ruseau]: CLB is the policy ID. It's incident report.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to quickly, can we have the back page updated to reflect the policy that we actually have on our website on the MASC page? There are several things, several items in here, which are not marked as no school days, but in fact are no school days on the policy, on the policy manual online. I went through each of them and thankfully none of them impact, none of them are occurring on a school day. So, you know, Eid al-Adha is a no school day. They're all on the website. Just use the list on the website, which is correct. There are three no school days that we approved. They are all on weekends. So it's not gonna affect us, but I want this back page to reflect the actual policy of the school committee. Right, yeah, we have these little ends for no school days and how we'll play it forward. But three items on here do not say they're no school days when they in fact are no school days. It just happened to land on weekends or in July. So I just don't want, I've seen this one circulated a few times in this quarter as we've tried to work this out. And I'm like, that's not the right one. The right one's on the website. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly understand the concerns. I believe this body is required to pass a calendar and this is our last meeting. So if we don't pass a calendar at all, there is no first day of school.
[Paul Ruseau]: We have somebody who wishes to speak online, I believe. Yes, Charlene.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I still don't know what the three numbers on each.
[Paul Ruseau]: Are you saying that every student that took the test got 219, 220, or 221?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I understand ranges. I just, I've never seen ranges displayed with three numbers or ranges like your 20 to 30 or your, there's never a middle number in a range as I've ever seen it. So I don't, this middle number, I mean, if you took all those middle numbers out, we would all be on exactly the same page that between 217 and 219 is 218. I don't think I'm fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I understand the middle number now, but when I'm looking at this, I don't understand what a range is if you're not telling me what is the worst score a kid got and the best score a kid got, because as a school committee member, I don't really know These ranges that are barely a point above or maybe two points above or below the median, they tell me nothing. I mean, really, unless you're telling me that every kid in the district is performing that close to the median, which I will have to tell you, I really hope nobody tries to tell us that. So I really do not still have a clue what the range part of this is trying to say. Because I mean, as a school committee member, I want to know how are the kids in fourth grade at the Brooks, the first one in that list, what's the range of scores that the fourth graders in science got in the winter? And it's just, the data looks completely unlike MCAS data, which everybody knows I hate. It looks different than any other data set we have, which shows that we have a very wide range of, outcomes for kids at different schools. Yet, if you look at this, frankly, the Brooks is doing worse in science than the McGlynn, and the McGlynn and the Missituk are doing identically almost, and the Roberts looks a lot like the Brooks. I just don't think that this is what this is saying.
[Paul Ruseau]: The median, I think everybody can understand that. Are these the error bars if this was a graph? Like 200, this is the error bars if it was in a graphical form. I've never seen these displayed as numbers. I've only ever seen them actually displayed as a graph where you have the line and then you have a box where there's above and below and you can get a sense of how much you can trust the actual number. So these other numbers outside of the median are telling you essentially how trustworthy that median is.
[Paul Ruseau]: I know we're going to get these reports again in the future. And I'm very happy about that I just I'm just asked that the the perspective of what the school committee might want to know. Front and center to what the presentation looks like because I love error bars, I really actually do, because I think they're really important for big data sets and really understanding trends, but I don't think that. I mean, I'm not going to speak for all of us, but I have a hunch none of us ever want to see error bars around this data again. I mean, I looked through this after we got it. I read it top to bottom more than once because I was like, how can I be so dumb to have no idea what this means, which wasn't a great feeling since I think I'm pretty good at math. And the story you're telling, you're talking about the medians over and over, and that's the story. And so, while I get that that NWEA is all about those three numbers. We're not theoreticians and statisticians and I think if it's possible to cut it out, it'll make it much easier and simpler to get through. Now, if they have a button you click to create the presentation for us, I understand that might be hard, but that's just my thoughts on getting this in the future, because I can guarantee a year from now, you will have to explain that all over again. for all of us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Were any student results removed from the data set used for evaluation to provide these numbers. So I'm thinking about newcomers and EL students. My understanding is the exams were only available in English. And I would hazard that a newcomer filling this out would get close to a zero as you can get.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So for the EL students, they did take it and they're included in the data set?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's the- That's good that we didn't put the newcomers down in front of a computer where it was all in English. But how many instructional, I don't know if it, I don't know, like at the different levels, I'm sure this is very different, but in an elementary classroom, is it a whole day of it? How many instructional days per, let's just do elementary, because it's frankly easier to do the. the mental gymnastics around. How many days in the school year did a elementary teacher spend doing just NWEA?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, no, I remember that when we were being introduced to it that we, I think, I certainly thought that was one of the better features was that, you know, it kind of goes up and down and how hard the test is based on the students' responses, which I thought is great, because then we can really see where the student is at on like an MCAS, where if you can't do it, you can't do it, and if it was all easy, then you don't really know anything more about the student either. So that's good to hear, and I'll let my colleagues ask other questions. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: That'd be great. Thank you. Have we considered whether or not we can scrap kindergarten entirely? I mean, I don't know, not kindergarten as in offering kindergarten. I mean, testing in kindergarten. I mean, I don't know how many more professional medical associations have to point out that kids shouldn't be sitting in front of a computer at all in kindergarten. I'm looking at our set, our report, I believe you, I can't remember who did it in May of 2019. We asked for an inventory of all assessments, which if you don't have it, I'll send it to you so you can maybe get it updated. Okay, but there are a number of assessments for kindergartners. There's the DRA, there's the ELA formative assessments, the ELA summative assessments, and more.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's from 2019, I mean. It was probably the first and only list for all time before that. So good. So if you could get us an updated assessment list, that would be fabulous because to member Graham's point, like what can we scratch off this list? If for no other reason to give teachers more time to actually do instruction, which is allegedly why they do their jobs.
[Paul Ruseau]: But nobody in this room is young enough to have gone through kindergarten like we put kids through kindergarten now. And it's a terrible shame. And I don't really wanna be a participant in making kindergarten even more of college prep, which is what it is. So I just wanna make it clear that when I talk about getting rid of assessments, it's not because I don't think the teachers need to know where their kids are, but, you know, I, there was a recent thing about what you needed to know to go into first grade in the 70s and what you need to go into first grade now. And one looks like a college application and the other looks like you're just gonna go out and play in the sand. We all turned out okay. Most of us, some of us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. First, I'd like to make a motion in compliance with rule number 76 to authorize the superintendent and assistant superintendent to attend City Council meetings for the purposes of delivering or answering questions related to the budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? When we went through our, I know it says five meetings, I think it was seven. seven budget meetings. You know, $71.1 million was a not cut number. Anything less than that was a cut between inflation and the increasing costs of buses and electricity and extra $200,000 for fuel. None of those things added a nickel of additional anything for a single student, a single staff member, no one. So regardless of the fact that it's 2.25 or 2.5% higher, it is absolutely a cut from a level service. Level service was 71.1 million, and I know those numbers are probably outdated and slightly off of it, but anything less than that is a cut. I mean, if you go get service anywhere and they give you less service, that's a cut. So I think that while it is certainly a valid point that it is more dollars, it's also true that Medford's budget from, I think, a decade ago, adjusted for inflation, is barely what we have now. So I'm not comfortable with changing the language, because in my mind, it is absolutely a cut. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: In 2020, we had exactly the same number of dollars as we did in the previous year. Would you have called that a cut?
[Paul Ruseau]: We were level funded for 2020 and we laid off, I don't know the number anymore. It's changed.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. But we didn't call them all back. So for those staff members that didn't get called back, I would suggest that they didn't see their job loss as not a cut, so a cut is it there's there's no world where a cut only means going from $100 to 99.
[Paul Ruseau]: You want to read it one more time?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to table the motion as undebatable. Is there a second? Motion to table. Point of order, that is not allowed. It was motioned and seconded. You cannot table it now. It was already motioned and seconded. It can only be withdrawn or voted.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do, one second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I'm sorry. We're voting on the thing that she ran, which was to approve the budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's not a motion that will be legal. I need a motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: This body has not approved a calendar for itself. We have no way to approve a calendar for ourselves now that we don't have another meeting ahead. Excuse me? I mean, for the upcoming fiscal year. we must approve a calendar for ourselves. We can't just start showing up out of the blue. So I'm feeling like we need to now make a decision to have another meeting. Otherwise, how does the decision to have a meeting happen?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm fine with that, but we need to make sure it happens.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau here. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Since I'm just getting the slides, are we going to, at some point, are we going to discuss the size of the fiscal cliff we're facing next year? Or is that, you have too much to do right now to talk about that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Looking at a different document, ESSER I is completely spent. ESSER II is completely spent.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: The first quarter of FY 24 right I was looking at the budget book that showed the extra grants in the back.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Esther to was listed as completely spent for FY 22 and Esther three had like a couple hundred thousand left, which budget book is that when you sent the one from this year.
[Paul Ruseau]: That does not include whatever you've just magically done to make this work, right? So that'll be a small number.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I'm just looking at the memo we got a couple days ago. ESSER 1 obligation deadlines, September 30, 2022. 22, yeah, right, exactly. And 2023 for ESSER II and 2024 for ESSER III, same date, September 30th.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't see any hands up on Zoom, so I'll just ask my quick question here. When we report, you were listing reasons to not have people on revolving accounts and stuff. You didn't include transparency, which I think is a very important part of it.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I know. But when we report to the state, the state lists some very fascinating data about what school districts are spending, which is, for the most part, absolute garbage. know, Somerville allegedly spends far less per student than us, but their buildings, their custodial, their food service workers, all of their entire IT infrastructure and staff and more utilities is all in the city side. So, you know, it makes it look like they have a pretty healthy budget. and then you divide it by the number of students, then it looks like things are really much worse over there. And that's just not fair and not accurate. My question, though, is when we put people off of the operating and put them onto revolving accounts and also grants, are they included in the numbers that we tell the state anymore? Are we telling them the budget?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I fully respect what you just said, and I definitely agree that certainly plenty of people are hurting. I will say Medford is one of four communities that has never done a debt exclusion or an override, and so My only real response to that is, I know you're from Medford and I'm not, but I don't think any of us know what the residents of Medford would say to an override. That's called democracy by letting them vote. It's not democracy by not letting them vote and choose. If the voters say no, the voters have said no. but we don't know what the voters would say. And so, you know, everybody gets a vote except nobody gets a vote because we won't let them choose. So I certainly understand that people are hurting and this is not, you know, I mean, are we entering a recession soon? Things don't look good, but how we respond to this fiscal situation matters. I mean, if the next budget is, all right, we've got to find 20, 50 teachers or staff to get rid of. As we've already discussed, it's definitely not going to be the principal teaching staff. It's going to be the paras, the nurses, the adjustment Councilors, all of the people that are helping kids that are in crisis. The regular teachers, of course, are doing that too, but they're not getting laid off because somebody has to stand in front of the classroom. And then a year after that, if it's really a recession, it's not going to be six months. What are we going to then get rid of electives and throw kids into gigantic rooms to quote study halls or whatever they're called nowadays? I mean, this situation, if the residents want to remedy it, we should let them remedy it. but we aren't letting them, and by we, I mean you and then perhaps the city council, I have to admit, I'm a little confused on the process still, aren't letting them decide. And to me, that doesn't feel like respecting the residents.
[Paul Ruseau]: Not a rebuttal. I would just say, though, that Medford, as far as I can tell, has the lowest public school enrollment in the entire state at 72%. And when people are deciding whether they want to send their kids to our schools, listening to the conversation we just had would definitely be a big decider for me to say, maybe not. You know, we are definitely not committing to making them better if we're just going to be like, we've got to live within our means. You know, people are buying million dollar plus homes and getting here and getting the same level of service they get from the little podunk town in New Hampshire where I grew up. I mean, that's what they get for their million dollar plus homes. They get a tax rate, not a tax rate, a tax bill that shocks many of them, shocks them. Is this right? How can this be all I have to pay in taxes? And while I understand plenty of people get their tax bill and have a very different response because they didn't buy a million dollar house, they bought a house in Medford 30, 40, 50 years ago and the tax bill is hard to swallow. But I think we're gonna have this sort of clash where we have residents moving in here paying top dollar for homes that, I mean, every single day on Facebook, it's another post for a home for sale. And you look at it and it's frequently like, know, a two or three bedroom capable one bathroom. And it's cost two plus times as much as my condo from 15 years ago. But they're moving here, paying $1 million for that, and then getting services that frankly, you can go to other Facebook groups, since we don't have media anymore, you can go to other Facebook groups and see, like, wait, when's this? When's this service? When's that service? The answer is, it doesn't exist, or you can't have it. So I You know, this really low percentage of public school enrollment has been an issue for me for years now, once I was able to finally find it on the state's website. And I understand we had a lot of people going to Catholic schools and that had nothing to do with the quality of our schools. But as other communities also had lots of kids going to Catholic schools, and they're not now. 72% is frankly embarrassing. It says something. Because when I door knocked my first campaign, I was on a street right outside of high street. And I can't remember the woman I spoke to, but she said, Oh no, all the people on the street, like we've been here for generations. We would never have sent our kids to the public schools. We moved here because the taxes were really low. We could get a big, beautiful house. And with that, we could send our kids to private school. That's not the community I want to live in. I want to live in a community where the public schools are something we joyfully send our kids to and want our neighbors to also feel like that's the place to go. So it was not meant as a rebuttal in any way, shape or form, but this lack of confidence by the public in our schools, which, you know, every time we meet where we say really great things are happening and they are, but an awful lot of people aren't hearing the message and they certainly have a message that they're passing down to their friends and their kids. And we're not doing anything to rebut that at all. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Member Mr. Stark.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes, Mayor Longo, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. She is here. I know she's here. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, here. Mayor Longo, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. I think there was a project at the high school on this as well, at least before the pandemic. I was wondering, who takes the compost bins out? In my own house, that sometimes is an issue.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I mean, like, from the building inside to the, I assume it goes.
[Paul Ruseau]: question about the motion. Um, was that for all the schools? Uh, Kathy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. So the rules and policy subcommittee met for the third time on the dress code policy, which we will look at later on in the agenda. I think, let's see, was there, oh, there was only one minor edit to the minutes that I would recommend. It says that we can prohibit something when in fact that should say we cannot. I'll send the exact line number. But other than that, I think the minutes speak for themselves. If anybody has any questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, we don't need to.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Ruseau? Thank you very much. In the May 25 presentation, the level funding, meaning we do not one nickel of more anything, was $71.1 million. So how is the number we're looking at? I understand that figuring out how we can add those those category A items is obviously critically important. We have to have enough EL teachers for the number of EL students, et cetera. But if we ignored that we have to add those, where are we cutting? $2.2 million.
[Paul Ruseau]: So in 2020, the schools, we laid off dozens of people and the rest of the city laid off zero people. I'm trying to understand how we're not in the same boat because getting a level number, if you have 10 open spots, don't hire your 10 open spots and everybody gets to come to work tomorrow. When you have no open spots or just a couple and you need to shave off millions of dollars, you're giving people notice that they're not gonna have a job. So I guess I'm trying to figure out how, I mean, do you, and I know it's only been a few days, but in 2020, my understanding is we scrubbed to the bone. We got rid of people that we didn't want to get rid of. We asked like people who wants to volunteer to retire early, you know, We did things that nobody wanted to do. And last year, we didn't go on a spending spree. So who else is there we're going to be able to get rid of? That sounds really crass, but if we're short millions of dollars, running a single dollar deficit is illegal, am I correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: I have just one more question before. I know we have a meeting next week, and hopefully, if you don't sleep, the next week you'll have more clarity for us on where adjustments might have to happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just hope that the school committee can be a participant in that guidance, because our parents are adjustment Councilors are nurses. all of our support staff, while not at the front of the classroom, while the paras sometimes are, they are as close to the students as the teachers are. Not all of the students all the time necessarily, but the notion that they're not, I mean, there's plenty of, and I'm sure there's plenty of classrooms where the teacher without a para would be pulling their hair out. So it's, I'm deeply concerned that we, and as you said, you know, the way this stuff rolls, it has to be the non-educators, whatever the technical terms are first that go, except they're not actually far from the classroom either. So, and I know you know all this, I just hope that if we have to choose between paras or I don't want to get into that exactly, but between different categories of people that we actually have an open conversation about it, because one para, you know, because para pay is a problem. One para, one, you know, person making, you know, a PhD level person or something, making a good salary might be five paras. I would have a hard time saying, keep the person over there. Five paras is, significant impact on a lot of kids.
[Paul Ruseau]: That too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just can't let pass the absurdness that a billionaire giving us three and a half million dollars for a library means we have to cut school funding. It's absolutely beyond comprehension. The building is built. I doubt Mr. Bloomberg will come and physically remove it send the check back. I'm not even kidding. Is it legally possible to send the check back because somebody in the finance department that didn't know this until a week ago, didn't do their job, I just want to say, I think this is a city finance questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Honestly, I mean, and I get it, we needed three and a half million because Medford refuses to pay for anything of ourselves. So we had to look for other people to pay for it and now we're being screwed, okay, by a donation of three and a half million dollars. It is beyond comprehension. I think it's also beyond comprehension that it was a failure to know that this would happen before we even requested the funds from him. I just cannot even believe that we're just going to roll with it that it's we took three and a half million for the library now we have to cut, whether it's 2.2 or 2.8 or 1.4, it doesn't matter what the number is we have to cut from the school, and the kids. After two years of a pandemic where the second and third graders who are now fourth and fifth graders, a huge number of them really can't do math because I've sat with parents whose kids sat The teachers did their best, but the kid was one of 20 tiles being taught math. And every time their name came up, they thought they were being yelled at and they were just being talked to. These kids, a lot of these kids didn't actually learn any math for two years. And when are we gonna do it? We're gonna cut the math interventionists. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna not worry about whether they're fed so they can come to school fully capable of engaging in the education they are getting. It's just beyond comprehension that we would even hear that a $3.5 million donation means we have to cut school funding, send it back. I'd like to see somebody come and try to physically remove the library. He can have his name on the building, I don't care. Is it legally not possible to send it back and why has that been investigated? Mayor, that's a question for you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Who said we can't send it back.
[Paul Ruseau]: But if we delayed it till July 1st, and you could use the free cash and the revenue replacement, you wouldn't be cutting this budget. And between July 1st and the next fiscal year, you could do an override, and then we wouldn't be in the hole. But you won't do an override.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I see this in my neighborhood house across the street, just sold for $1.1 million and I'm just like, what is going on? But because of prop two and a half, we can tax that house more, but we gotta tax other houses less because we cannot increase our taxes more than two and a half percent. So it doesn't matter if a whole quarter of the city sold their houses that were fully paid off and bought 30 years ago, for a price that now looks amazing. So if we sold all those houses for millions of dollars each, the taxes will go up exactly two and a half percent anyways.
[Paul Ruseau]: We re-evaluate.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's how come this year Some people's taxes went down because those million dollar homes are getting taxed appropriately for the sale price. But because we cannot collect more taxes than two and a half percent from the previous more than the last year. We got to subtract that from somebody else's property taxes. Is it absurd? The whole system is absurd. And honestly, I can't I get really. Yeah. worked up about how crazy the law is, but in the aggregate, the total amount of revenue collected from residential property tech property cannot increase more than two and a half. And it doesn't matter if somebody walked in and started paying by every house on the street for $10 million, they'll pay a lot of taxes, somebody else will pay less. to compensate for the increase in one place. It's crazy and it's gross, frankly.
[Paul Ruseau]: We did just adopt rules that require two readings of policies and while I think it's fine to wave the reading of policy updates. I think an entirely new policy of this nature does need to be read. Just this one time when we have it next time around I would hope we could perhaps wave the reading. So thank you, everyone. This is the dress code policy that we approved in the Rules and Policy Subcommittee on May 25th, and I will begin now. It is the policy of the committee that the student and their parent, guardian, or caregiver hold the primary responsibility in determining the student's personal attire, hairstyle, jewelry, and personal items, e.g. backpacks, book bags. Schools are responsible for ensuring that student attire, hairstyle, jewelry, and personal items do not interfere with the health or safety of any student and do not contribute to a hostile or intimidating environment for any student. The core values. In relation to student dress, the district's core values are the following. Students should be able to dress and style their hair for school in a manner that expresses their individuality without fear of unnecessary discipline or body shaming. Students have the right to be treated equitably. Dress code enforcement will not create disparities, reinforce or increase the marginalization of any group, nor will it be more strictly enforced against students because of racial identity, ethnicity, gender identity, gender expression, gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, culture or religious identity, household income, body size or type, or body maturity. Students and staff are responsible for managing their personal distractions students should not face unnecessary barriers to school attendance, the universal dress code students must wear. One, a top, which could be a shirt, blouse, sweater, sweatshirt, tank, tank top, et cetera, bottom, pants, shorts, skirt, dress, et cetera, and footwear. This policy permits additional student attire requirements when necessary to ensure safety in certain academic settings, e.g. physical education, science, or CTE courses, as well as recess. Additionally, this policy allows for reasonable variation in required student attire for participation in activities such as swimming or gymnastics students may not wear clothing jewelry or personal items that contain. that are pornographic, contain threats, or promote illegal or violent conduct, such as the unlawful use of weapons, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or drug paraphernalia. Demonstrate hate group association or affiliation and or use hate speech targeting groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or other protected groups. intentionally show private parts, nipples, genitals, or buttocks, or undergarments, with the exception of bra straps. Clothing must cover private parts in opaque, not able to be seen through material. cover the items that cover the student's face to the extent that the student is not identifiable except clothing, headgear worn for religious or medical purposes, or demonstrate gang association or affiliation. Attire worn in observance of a student's religion is not subject to this policy. Clothing that displays profanity or other vulgarities can disrupt the learning environment. School leaders reserve the right to address disruptions on a case-by-case basis. Enforcement. This is the last section member of stone principles are required to ensure that all staff are aware of and understand the core values and associated guidelines of this policy. Staff will use reasonable efforts to avoid issuing dress code discipline to individuals in front of other students. staff will use reasonable efforts to limit disciplinary, that disciplining or removing students from class as a consequence of wearing attire in violation of this policy, unless the attire creates a substantial disruption to the educational environment, poses a hazard to the health or safety of others, or factors into a student behavior rule violation, such as malicious harassment, or the prohibition on harassment, intimidation, and bullying. Further, no student shall be referred to as a distraction due to their appearance or attire. Typical consequences of a violation of this policy may include parent, guardian, caregiver conduct, or reference conference and the directive to cover change or remove the non complying attire. A student may be instructed to leave their classroom briefly to change clothes. The principal or their designee will notify a student's parent, guardian or caregiver of the school's response to violations of student dress code policy. And if I may just add a quick commentary, I really wanna thank aside from the members of the rules committee and Policy Subcommittee, Member Graham and Member McLaughlin. I also really want to thank the students of the Andrews Middle School, Mr. Scimante and Ms. Whalen's class. They worked on this project about the dress code around hoods. That was their angle. And of course, with this policy, hoods and hats will be allowed. And I just can't thank them enough because they also provided feedback that was really useful in fine tuning this policy. I also would recommend people listen to the podcast, No Caps, which was an NPR finalist. And there was a new version of the Medford Bites podcast this two days ago, I believe, which is again on this policy. Thank you to all of the students and the staff and the teachers that helped them. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I would say it speaks for itself that you're the doll that's speaking. So the fair share amendment is, is going to be on the ballot this fall and I urge everyone to vote for it because it will add a 4% additional tax for those with incomes, greater than a million dollars a year. For most of us, it's hard to conceptualize what that even means, but that additional 4% will be used for schools and roads and. We just had a very interesting evening about the lack of revenues. So to alleviate some of that burden coming from the state would be nice. So I do ask that everybody consider supporting this, not just tonight, but when you're talking to your friends and family and they're like, what is this fair share amendment? It is just on income over a million dollars. So if you have a million dollars in the bank, that's not income. These are people who are getting a paycheck throughout the year that is more than a million dollars. So it's 4% on that is not a lot of money, but it will add up to, I can't remember how many billions of dollars for education, so. Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't think that one's ready yet. I think we might want to have a rule update next time around to indicate when things are just here to be carried forward versus when they're actually ready. But we'll get to that next year. Gotcha.
[Paul Ruseau]: I sure will. Never Graham here. Number of days here. Democrats here. Remember Crawford here.
[Paul Ruseau]: My question was how many more slides? 10 more minutes sounds like I can wait.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Since we have seen this a few times, I have a motion that I'd like to make, and I'll put it in the chat. But I'd like to move that we submit a request for A, B, and D to the municipal government in the sum of $72.4 million. Further, in the event that the state of Massachusetts does not fund school meals as they are presently considering, the district will proceed with free meals nonetheless and make a request to the municipal government for supplemental funding to cover the costs of continuing our free meal policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: I guess it depends how the number comes down.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's not what I meant. I meant if it comes down because you're doing your analysis and you find ways to save money, I'm fine with the number getting smaller. If it comes down because you have conversations offline with other people and decide to move things into ESSER funds instead of part of the request, I'm not OK with that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Makes sense to me.
[Paul Ruseau]: That is correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn, absent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I greatly appreciate Mr. Murphy's opinions, frankly, on everything. And he and I disagree vehemently on this point about, um, the need for the school committee to spend so much energy and concerns about the municipal situation. Um, I just, it's important to point out that the only communication we ever hear about competing priorities and municipality has is from Mr. Murphy. We don't hear it from any other. You know, it's not coming out of the mayor's office, it's not coming out of the city council, it's, it's as if the finance director for the school system is doing the job of explaining to the public, how complicated municipal finances are, and how there are competing priorities, and nobody else that I have seen in the city says that out loud. It's not a commentary on the staff at the city hall, but I do not believe that when I look at the statute on school committees, our responsibility does not say a thing about being concerned about the minute municipal financial situation. Our responsibility is on is the children. and their education and it begins and ends there. It doesn't have to do with whether or not the rec department can get more staff or the police department can get more staff. And I vehemently disagree that we should spend more than a minute thinking about it. We should figure out what we need for the students and we should ask for it. And then let the mayor's office deal with whatever communications are required when that office cannot give us the money because of competing priorities, which I think are real. I don't live in a bubble, I get it, that they're real, but I just think that we spend too much time talking about and being worried about the municipal government's finances. We did start earlier with, we have no capacity to raise a nickel. And you know who does? The municipal government can raise taxes if they see fit, and they don't. So as far as I'm concerned, It's not my concern whether they can afford our budget request. And I'm just tired of the conversation and I don't mean to berate you. I'm certainly not trying to berate you, Mr. Murphy.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Yes. members. So yes, they're longer current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep. Thank you. Good afternoon, since the recording has begun and the four o'clock has arrived. Welcome, everyone. I'm going to call to order the rules and policies subcommittee meeting for May 25th at 4pm. Please be advised that on May 25th, I want my screen zoom. Sorry. Anyways, please be advised that on May 25 2022 from four to 5pm there will be a rules and policies subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via zoom. The meeting can be viewed through network community media on Comcast channel 22 and Verizon channel 43 at 4pm. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the link https://nps02155-org.zoom.us slash j slash 95821066679. If you'd like to call in the number is 312-626-6799. Meeting ID is 958-210-6679. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing me at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, and your question or comment. The agenda for tonight is, as approved by the committee on October 18th, 2021, the Rules, Policy, and Equity Subcommittee will draft a student dress code JICA policy for the Medford Public Schools. The policy recommendation will be returned to the school committee no later than February 28th, 2022. The subcommittee will hold at least two meetings on this topic before sending a recommended policy to the school committee. outreach to stakeholders will be made by the superintendent or her designee to ensure the subcommittee hears from students, teachers, and principals, the Mystic Valley NAACP, SAFE Medford, Interfaith Clergy Association of Medford, and any other advocacy group in Medford that may have an interest in this work. will be notified prior to these meetings as we embark on our efforts to create a just equitable and inclusive student dress code. I'm going to call the roll. First, I'd like to apologize that I am still having some shortness of breath and coughing from my COVID infection from two weeks ago. So forgive my shortness of breath and coughing all over the meeting. Member Graham. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau here, present and absent. So we've had two meetings on this so far and hopefully this will be the last one. since that February 28th date. I don't remember writing that down. I guess I should have been a little more generous with the time. But we have, if there's nobody who has a different idea, I'm going to share the current policy that we have been drafting. And then I'm going to review some of the recommendations that I've received from administration, and we can discuss those. And are there any, let's see. And for any of the public that is present on the meeting, if you want to speak or comment, don't hesitate to raise your hand through the chat, through the reactions, or wave, and one of us, I'm sure, will notice what I'm sharing. I probably won't be able to see that myself, but let's see.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm not going, since this is our third meeting, I'm not going to read the whole policy again, as we have seen it for a little bit. So I did look at the, feedback from the assistant superintendents, and I put some of them in here, the ones that I thought we certainly will want to adopt, and then the other ones I think we can talk about and get to that. So under the Under the universal dress code, the policy permits additional student attire requirements when necessary to ensure safety in certain academic settings. Physical activity was changed to physical education, which I think, does anybody have a problem with that? Nope. And then, so I'm just going to mark that as accepted. Further down, this was a rewording by assistant superintendent, Suzanne Colussy. And I actually liked this. It used to just say principles are required to ensure that all staff are aware of and understand the guidelines of this policy. I actually liked that she inserted the core values and associated guidelines Because the core values really are the driver, frankly. Is everybody able to see this, or is it too small? I apologize. I have no idea what it's like for you all.
[Paul Ruseau]: I sure can.
[Paul Ruseau]: Did it actually get bigger for you? OK, good. Yeah. So barring any Anybody have any problem with adding that and serving those? Hearing none. This I also really appreciated as less wordy than the old version or harder to understand. Staff will use reasonable effort to avoid Dress coding students in front of other students is what it said before. To avoid issuing dress code discipline to individuals in front of other students. I think that's nice and clear. Any thoughts?
[Paul Ruseau]: And I don't remember who suggested this, but changing from should to will. definitely think that's good. We don't really want to have problems that fester. And then, you know, when the parent finds out for the first time, it's actually the ninth time that it's been a problem. So, and I know that can that can happen. There's a lot going on in everybody's day. But I think that makes it clear.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. So we also, I think this was just left, the word may should be there. Makes more sense, sounds like English. Now I'd like to go up and grab the, can you all see the new tab that I just opened up? Excellent, great. So one of the suggestions was to change marginalization to marginalize. I actually like the use of the word marginalization. I know that has been a relatively, in the last few years, there's been some efforts to change the way we talk about the non-dominant groups. And instead of labeling them as if there's some kind of deficiency, and instead putting the fact that they are being marginalized on the dominant group that's doing the marginal, I mean, a non-dominant group doesn't marginalize itself. It's being marginalized by the dominant group, if it is in fact being marginalized. And obviously that's not required. So I like the use of the word marginalization to make it clear. that it's an active thing. I agree. Okay. This one, so this one here, recess. I agree and I have concerns. I 100% agree that, you know, especially obviously at the elementary level, I suppose at the middle level as well, but at the elementary level, We don't want teachers sending kids out in flip-flops and shorts when it's 20 degrees outside. I assume we would still go out for recess when it's 20 degrees. So on principle, I agree that there needs to be some level of, when appropriate, some level of adult decision-making and whether or not a student is dressed appropriately for recess. My hesitation, though, is that recess continues to be used as something that's taken for disciplinary reasons. And I don't see how this and discipline don't really come together in this point, but I just worry about any other reason why kids wouldn't get recess. And for those of us that are parents, looking at this list, many of us are parents, we've, I don't know if it's a gender free issue, but certainly, you know, with my own son, I've seen him happy to go outside in the middle of the winter, frankly, and just barely more than flip flops and shorts. And he doesn't get cold. And I'm horrified. But I guess I'm just, what do people think about this? I mean, we have to recognize that this is also for elementary and anybody wanna talk about this?
[Paul Ruseau]: That would be great.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I mean, I can't imagine why we wouldn't agree on that point. And I guess the recess. I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can everybody else hear me?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I find what just dawned on me that we did just send the recess policy to this subcommittee, I think at the last meeting. So we can sort of cover any kind of, overlapping issues around recess and this policy when we do the recess policy. So I'm fine with adding it in if the other members are as well.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just gonna put academic settings I would like to call academic settings recess to be academic settings, but Desi is adamant that it doesn't want to count recess as a part of the academic day, much to my chagrin. So I feel like it's important to put it like.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, thank you for thinking of it. That was just the original one. I actually had said they may wear all of these things. So I fixed that. We fixed that at the last meeting. So profanity is the one addition that on principle, I'm actually completely agree. But my understanding of the, case that really put a lot of this in motion in Massachusetts was around profanity on attire, in which case, in the Supreme Judicial Court said, we cannot restrict that. I really don't think that, just to be clear, I don't want a future where every kid is walking around with gigantic swears emblazoned on everything that they own. it's not the kind of school I would like to be, have gone to, and certainly, obviously our staff and many of our students would not appreciate it. On the other hand, given what the case, as JC said, I feel like we should leave out explicit language that is the opposite of what they have stated. So I'm not suggesting we add anything in here that says you can wear swears on your profanity on your outfits, but I think we don't want to get into a conversation or with our new policy immediately being somebody suggesting that it was, we just drafted it and we, these meetings are recorded and we purposefully just decided to go against what the court said. So that's my opinion on why I didn't suggest adding it in. What do others think?
[Paul Ruseau]: It makes some sense to me. I mean, there was certainly a time when if queer had been on an outfit, it would have qualified as profane. And if we were to have dress coded somebody for having queer on an outfit today, I might call the Boston Globe on the school system. what is profane both changes as well as does have an unfortunately large amount of room for interpretation. There are plenty of people who still think queer and gay and certainly other words are not, like, it's not uncommon in my day-to-day life, frankly, for people to whisper gay when they're suggesting somebody might be gay, as if there's something profane or wrong. And I just, who's gonna be the arbiter of this? And from an implementation perspective, every single teacher, staff member who, see something and wonders, is this profane? There's not like a hotline you can call and get an answer right away from Maurice or whoever. This is on the profane list. This is not on the profane list. And more importantly, there's going to be, you know, it's frankly, you know, it's the FCUK, the brand of clothing. I mean, it's a brand of clothing only because of actually I don't know for a fact.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, but thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, and I feel a bit concerned that we're going to get into battles. One of the reasons we're here is that from staff member to staff member, school to school, what was considered a violation of the dress code changes day to day.
[Paul Ruseau]: Ms. Galussi, I'm sorry, you were first, I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: swear words simply had all the vowels taken out. Every adult knows what it says. Is that a swear word? I mean, this is real life. This is going to happen. You know for a fact that's going to happen. So is it a swear word or not?
[Paul Ruseau]: You are. It's a moving target is a great way to look at it also because what isn't a moving target though? I'll count myself amongst the old people here. Our idea of these kinds of things, except for those of us that are really attuned to pop culture, and I think, I don't know if any of us are, our idea is relatively static or stagnant from a formative point in our life. And so the people that will be enforcing what is profane will almost by definition have to have a different idea of it than the students. So, I mean, other than in Milford or Milton or wherever it is where the 19 year old is on the school committee, most of us are not going to have a good, have a sense of this stuff that is helpful.
[Paul Ruseau]: Melanie, Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I hope that Peter's internet's good enough, because I don't know why I don't have that actually open as a tab. I'm not gonna hit Google. Was this the one, Peter, is this the case where, you know, one of the nicknames for Richard is often considered as, you know, everybody seems to have an Uncle Dick, but if you put that on your shirt, was that this case? I wish Peter's internet was better.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And we can, we can circle back after Peter's internet stabilizes if it does. So let me just get to these other things and we'll come back to profanity because Kyle versus South Hadley. Yes. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I think that the rest of that sentence is sort of the important thing. So if a student's wearing something, many of us might find vulgar, profane, whatever, offensive. And the student goes and sits in their chair and classroom operates fine. then it is not a problem. And the classroom not operating fine can't be because the teacher's uncomfortable with it. I mean, if the teacher is the only person who's finding it disruptive, then what I'm hearing when I hear that sentence, it's about whether or not the place could function. And it can't just be that the staff are the folks who are uncomfortable with it, because, I mean, then we're back to square one, where I don't like red, nobody should wear red in my school. I mean, that's kind of a crazy example, but it also is what the point of that ruling is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think that's a good idea. Let's hear from Mr. Regan, since his hand is up, before we check out the other stuff and then circle back. Sean.
[Paul Ruseau]: Dr. Cushing, do you wanna speak before we move on to this? Oh, audio is connected.
[Paul Ruseau]: I agree very much, Peter. Are encouraged to not.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, the right to have an education is also a right. And so that's sort of how I view that whole disruption, you know, the freedom of speech. impinging on students' right to an education is where limiting happens. Member McLaughlin, your hand's up still. I don't know if you wanted to talk again.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oops, and I got an echo. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. So, I mean, what does that send? The word disruptive is particularly something I don't want to be, That word has sadly been misused and essentially as a way of making sure girls bodies are not visible. And frankly, I think that the majority of complaints and problems we have are around. the word disruptive, and it frankly just means that at this point. We may be having a rather academic conversation right now where we think disruptive means something else, but I've got a barrage of emails from students on the new policy and disruptive doesn't mean anything to anybody but that. So does this sentence look okay? Excuse me.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I think, so for me, putting it in as they may not wear these things, I mean, I don't know, I mean, the Supreme Judicial Court said, yes, they may. So I feel very uncomfortable saying that they cannot come to school with the word dick emblazoned on it, because they can. I don't wanna encourage it, but the students can.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I like that. I like that better than this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm going to actually read that sentence out loud just because I'm not sure Member McLaughlin actually has her eyes on the screen right now. The new suggested sentence is, clothing that displays profanity or other vulgarities can disrupt the learning environment. School leaders are reserved the right to address disruptions on a case-by-case basis. If there's no objection from members, we will add that. Let me go back to the We managed to get through that one. It's the one I knew was going to eat up a lot of time. So I think that this one from Assistant Superintendent Galusi, I, what do we have up here? Students must wear, yeah, I mean, I guess, Bathing suits, I mean, frankly, my son does go to school in a bathing suit. It's his favorite kind of shorts. And undergarments, most T-shirts and tank tops are undergarments for people of my age group, at least. And I certainly understand the point. You don't want somebody just showing up with a frilly pair of underwear and, you know, or showing up in a bikini to school. On the other hand, which I mean, would be incredibly uncomfortable at the high school. It could be freezing or hot, you won't know. But I'm just not sure how to include this
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I do want to acknowledge that you are absolutely right. There are going to be students who are going to push the envelope very soon after this becomes policy, if it does pass. So I don't want to ignore that. I see Mr. Blanca.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think your point, though, that we're really just talking about girls. I don't want to see boy underwear either. to be clear. No, but about bathing suits. Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: If every boy tomorrow comes to school in swim trunks, there will be zero dress code, even with the current policy, not one boy will be receiving a dress code violation. And if girls wear those same swim trunks, they also will not receive it. So what we're really talking about here is how much of a the female body, are we okay having visible in class? That's what we're talking about. And that, if I go back up to here, the core values, girls are not responsible for the reactions of the rest of their classmates and their teachers to their bodies. That's our core value. And so I, I'm getting less and less comfortable around this idea. I don't envision many girls having an interest in going to school in a two-piece bikini. And if they do, it's for a reason such as attention and certainly not comfort. But, you know, Hey, I'd be okay with getting, saying no bathing suits, but I also want somebody at the door checking the backs of every one of the boys when they come in to see, is this a bathing suit or is this shorts? And we're not gonna do that for many different reasons. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know who was next. Suzanne, were you next? Go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do apologize for sharing it without actually even asking you, because I understood this as just being a jumping off a conversation point. Thank you. Mr. Began. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, thank you. I certainly agree. I also just, I'm just remembering an email I received from a student who pointed out that our current dress code policy seems to be perfectly fine with our cheerleaders wearing things that are not considered acceptable. And I thought that was a very interesting thing to note that we, even with our policy that has been traditionally rather restrictive and conservative, We not bad at an eyelash that in school sponsored during the school day events, we allowed the girls who are on the cheerleading team to wear clothes that they could not go to class in. So I just think that's, it's really not possible to ignore the fact that this is a gendered conversation. It is. And I lost my train of thought. Jane, did you wanna speak? I know your hand went up three or four times and then came back down.
[Paul Ruseau]: If you could just name and address for the record.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: I personally like calling out explicitly that, I mean, honestly, I'm still blown away that bra straps are considered anything other than just that they're, I don't know, I can't fathom how that's even an issue in anybody's mind. But does this sound okay? you know, like any policy, we can revisit if it doesn't, things don't roll well in the next year or two, we can come back and revisit. I did talk, I'm actually adding it to the wrong document.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graves, did you want to speak?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I believe those were all of the parts of the policy that we needed to review. And is there any last comments before I ask if there's a motion to report this out favorably, hopefully? No. Would anybody like to make a motion to report out the language as is?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Three in the affirmative. I want to thank everybody. This was a hard one. I think the outcome is Well, damn good. You know, it's a lot of society and history and ideals all coming together in one policy that makes it really, really challenging. And I just want to reiterate something I've said in other meetings. This is language we can change a week after we implement it. So if we've screwed stuff up, frankly, I shouldn't swear so much, but if we've messed things up so much in some way, we can revisit it. It's not set in stone. So I really appreciate all the open dialogue and effort to get us here. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Number so, yes. And thank you to all the public that came. A lot of public came to this and I greatly appreciated that as well as the administration. Have a good night, everyone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call. Roll call, please. I forgot my pad, so let me see if I can figure out the alphabet. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. I believe Member Hays will be joining us shortly. She's having some technical difficulties. Oh, there she is. She's here. Sorry. Member Hays, are you able to chime in for roll call?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I see your name. I'll check it. Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Sohir. Mayor Lungo-Kurt.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I would say that implementing this is actually its current policy of the school committee that it will be included and implemented. So I understand that the recommendation is that we are not going to assume that we can afford this, but I would say that absent a school committee member, any one of the seven of us putting something on the agenda to reverse a decision that we have already made, I don't really see it as a optional program at this point. Unless I have the wording of the motion that we passed seven zero, which I'm happy to read. If anybody wants to see it. But at the moment, it's the policy of the school committee that it will be free. So, I just, that's just a reminder because that didn't sound like it was being treated as our policy, when in fact it is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't, for a second, want to discount what we're asking you to do. We had a pretty heated discussion during the conversations around the discipline policy. even hinted that you all would just do what was right even if it was violating the policy. There were at least two of the senior administrative staff who were very unhappy with the notion that we would pass a policy where you could just violate it. And I think that either we're gonna follow policy or not. And it can't just be when it's you don't like that sentence And I certainly respected and apologize for suggesting that we should just write a policy that you'll just violate when you feel the need to. And I am completely on board with the notion that our policies are not, you know, if we leave wiggle room, we put the wiggle room in the language. And that's what we did for the discipline policy actually. But I just wanna be clear that the policy we passed did not include wiggle room. There are seven members. If any one of us wants to write a motion to rescind that or it wouldn't be rescind at this point, but to make a motion to start charging kids for food, that would have to be on a regular agenda. And until that happens, I don't really think we're having a conversation about whether it will be in the budget. That's just my opinion based on the vote of seven members who in affirmative said we will no longer charge for food.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to call out a couple of things. First of all, I understand that there is literally no one, probably no one even in the entire Zoom here, who wants to charge kids for food. Maybe I'm wrong. You know, the drop in participation is absolutely will happen. As we know this last year, participation was very robust over previous normal years. And, you know, the effects of the pandemic are not done. There are lots of people who are still hurting. And as Member Graham mentioned, there are lots of people for which applying represents in their minds a security risk to their families. And it's not really an appropriate decision that anybody should have to make. And I don't think anybody here is saying that's okay either. I do have a question about whether or not ESSER funds could be used for this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have been in contact with the Medford Food Security Task Force. They were reaching out about how we can, on the school committee, continue to move us towards the Hunger-Free Medford Proclamation that was made. And I had indicated that it is the current policy of the school committee that this will continue. I didn't answer that as a school committee as our opinion, but in fact, it was already voted so. And, you know, I think that the proclamation to make Medford hunger-free is, well, the city council made it. I don't actually remember if the mayor's office at the time was a participant in that, but, you know, it's three years old, two years old, the proclamation, three years old, I think. you know, that's not a lot of time to be deciding we're just gonna give up on proclamations that we made a big deal about. So not having this funded and free is moving us further away from making Medford hunger free. I think that should be universally understood. So if one direction is that there's nobody hungry in Medford, and one is that there are more people hungry in Medford, not including this in the budget will mean we have decided not the administrators, this is not a moral conversation about your desires and intent, but we will have decided to make Medford more hungry. It's just a simple fact, can't be denied. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. Can we go back? Nevermind, that's okay. We saw, that's okay. We saw, I was just gonna tell you what wasn't there that I wanted to see. So it's not on the slide. I didn't see a column for if we included A, B and C, A, B, C and D, A, B, C, D, E. I really think that that, I mean, what was the point of all of the C, D and E's if we were not even gonna include them in a column anywhere? So I would hope that tomorrow we can have that same slide with all of those columns filled in. And I do understand there's some question marks on a few things where there's like no number at all, but I think we should have that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just, you know, we have the new math curriculum that's a D or an E for the math coaches. And speaking to responsibility, purchasing something for which we cannot implement with fidelity is not responsible. And that's why the math coaches are so recommended and important for the curriculum. So I would just say that I want the community to know when we land on a number, because we will eventually land on a number, that here's the list of things, and if you cared about a full-time nurse at the Curtis-Tufts, and that's C, D, or E, which forgive me for not having it memorized, you know, that there was a way for us to have funded those, and it was not about what the school committee asked for. So I think that's, you know, You know, it's the awkwardness that the mayor is also the school committee chair that we have to talk about the mayor and the third person sometimes, which I think is very weird. But, you know, we do not have direct taxation and we can't run a deficit. So everything that people want that's not on that list already, that's where it isn't happening from is the, City is not allocating the resources and Mr. Murphy does beat it up a little bit over and over again about how we're just part of the city's portfolio, but as is the case in many school committees, we are not. We have one responsibility, and it is not about how bad the roads are, how much money the rec department needs. have any other departments need money. That is not our responsibility to consider. We don't have any way to get information about their needs. How could we consider it? So I think that focusing on what the schools need to the complete exclusion of the other stuff, since we cannot ask or know anything about it is just responsible. I think it's the only reasonable thing. I mean, I think our roads are abysmal. I drive them too. but we and the school committee don't have anything to do with the roads. So thank you for your presentation tonight. I did appreciate it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mistel?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Soyes, Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to sever the approval of the donations.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve the minutes?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. We met for a second time on April 27th, related to two policies that we're working on. One was the school attorney policy, which we have renamed the committee attorney policy. And at the next meeting, that policy will be on our agenda for us to review and hopefully approve. There's nothing terribly exciting to say about that policy, other than the members are using our school attorney effectively and respectfully. So it was just an update to language that looked outdated. The other thing that we're working on is the dress code policy. And at the last meeting on the 27th of April, we unveiled a potential dress code policy. I've received a bunch of feedback from members of the community, all positive. And we're going to have one more meeting on this so that the administration and staff have a chance to really think it through and think about what the impact of the new policy or a new policy will be. It's not something you can just read once and imagine how it works in the day to day. So we will be meeting again in May. I don't have the date yet, but we're meeting again in May, hopefully to finalize this policy and send it to the full committee in the first meeting of June so we can have it ready and going for implementation in the fall. And that's about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I just have a quick question about the robotics finals or nationals are we covering all of the costs associated with those with the team going.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's just gonna do the roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion for approval, yes, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Yes. Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? If the audience can't be heard, I'm not sure we can continue this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Those are just the increases. So when it says $200,000 for gas, it is not that we're spending $200,000 on gas, we're spending $200,000 more than we did this year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to provide a little more sort of to answer the question about our historical increases year over year. From 2007 to 2012, we increased by 1.9% total over the course of those five years.
[Paul Ruseau]: But, you know, we added $869,000 over the course of five years. So how on earth we functioned and ran a district during that time is sort of a fascinating thing. I'm sure somebody could write a book on. But, you know, we have plenty of years for which we not only didn't increase, but we even cut. 2010, we cut. 2011, we added enough to buy a copier. So I, you know, I'm happy that since 2013, it looks like we have been doing the percentage increases that are still probably too low in my book, but at least they're not like, what is going on? These zero percents and these cuts year over year, I don't even know how we functioned and I'm sure there's plenty of people here who were here then and could tell me, but, It must've been interesting. So I just did have that data and I wanted to provide some context.
[Paul Ruseau]: but only half of us have to abide by them. So when we are asked questions that we cannot answer, because that would be a Department of Labor violation, that's fine. But when the other side wants to violate those same rules, we don't say boo, we don't contact the Department of Labor over it. Instead, you get to like, say whatever you want, and we can't respond. Because if we respond, that's against the law. So I want the rules that were agreed to for this bargaining to be publicly available so that when they are violated by anyone, including us, everybody knows what's really going on. Because this is just, this is the same thing from the last time we had bargaining where I left the bargaining table because members of the bargaining table, not on the school committee, went on Facebook and talked about what was going on in the bargaining room, which is a violation of trust. And I think trust is critical to a good bargaining. So I want, there's a motion and a second. I don't want a conversation. There's a motion and a second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, if I may?
[Paul Ruseau]: I guess, I don't really know what the point of rules are if they are not followed by one half of the people at the table. And I see somebody shaking her head who went to Facebook after the last collective bargaining agreement and session that I was in and divulged everything that was being discussed. It's, you know, the community, we're the seven people that get beat up and you can say anything you want, I'm not saying everybody's lying, but you also can say anything you want. And we can't even respond to the emails. We can say, thank you for your email. We like our teachers too. And we think they should get a big raise. That's how I respond. But you could say, we offered you zero, zero, zero. And I couldn't respond and say, you asked for 20%, 20%, 20%. That would be against the law for me to do that. So I just don't know what the point of bargaining partners are that aren't actually partners. I'll withdraw this because I recognize that the motion as I put it was for all the bargaining agreement, bargaining partners, but I just would be nice if the other side of the table respected the process that they agreed upon, because we respect that process by staying silent and allowing the bargaining to happen according to the law.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to make a motion to suspend rule number 46, requiring two readings of this, since there is in fact no content change. It is just a correction to the numbering.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. In consultation with the superintendent's office, there's still some clarity we need to get to on our agenda creation, which, you know, we did make such a huge change that doesn't surprise me. The way that I had understood report requests is that we would make the report requests, they would be new business, and then they would stay on the agenda under reports requested until satisfied. So I believe that was the intent of the committee. And that's why it's on here. It is not that there's an actual report to come back today. I just think it's important for the committee to know that that's why it's here. Because I noticed in the last meeting, it wasn't. And I was like, wait, well, where did that report go? So I just wanted to let the committee know that that was why it's appearing on the agenda tonight, even though it's not something to discuss.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, it's 5.03. Hello. It's 5.03. I guess we should just get started because I know some of us have to be somewhere right after this meeting. So where's my agenda? Oops, too many windows. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Rules and Policy Subcommittee meeting of April 27th. I'm going to start with our attendance. Oh, I should just read the notice. Please be advised that on Wednesday, April 27, 2022, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., there will be a rules and policy subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 22 and Verizon Channel 43 at 5 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or call-in number. The Zoom link is https://nps02155-org.zoom.us slash j slash 99085403902. Meeting ID, if you want to call in, is 99085. excuse me, 990-8540-3902. The phone number to call is 1-929-205-6099. Additionally, comments or questions can be submitted during the meeting by emailing me at pruseau, excuse me, at medford.k12.ma.us. I almost did not spell my name. Those submitting questions or comments must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, and your question or comment. I'm gonna do this roll call. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: And member Rousseau here, three present, none absent. All right, so we're going to, we have two items on our agenda. This is a continuation, not a technically a continuation, but as a subsequent meeting to the same exact agenda. The first item on our agenda is to discuss the school attorney policy. I'm gonna share my screen once I minimize and move things around. All right, let's see. All right, I have a gigantic screen. Is everybody able to see this without it being too small? Look okay? Good, great. So on the school attorney policy that we discussed at the last meeting, we had one question regarding the last sentence. This last sentence being, this does not preclude individual member contact with legal counsel related to ongoing legal questions or matters before the school committee, before the committee. I did email our attorney, Attorney Granzband, and ask him about that question, about that sentence and his thoughts. I have his response right here. He said, things have been working fine. I like the wording that requires school committee action to seek legal advice, et cetera. So it's clear that the committee makes the decision. I have no objection if an individual seeks an update on a matter that has been referred to the entire committee. Everyone has been respectful of the process. And he said, thank you for asking. So unless there are any members that want to further discuss the policy or the sentence, it sounds like he's fine with it. We can always change it later if it turns out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: You did, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So, essentially, I read that as we have a retainer at Mr. Green's ban is paid the retainer, but if we're going to engage him in a process where we're going to start getting another $100,000 right here and there, that we need to approve that. It's not that we wouldn't approve it, but we just don't want to be like, as a secretary, I don't want to be showing up and seeing a bill for a quarter of a million dollars to an attorney, and we never approved it for our regular legal activities. So that's what that's meant to be.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, it's hard when we don't have specific sets.
[Paul Ruseau]: yeah i'm trying to figure out how to say it because I don't actually know the details about. I know that we have it in our budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I'm starting to type it. Unfortunately, since I'm sharing, it seems that Google. It goes slow, yeah. That Safari, I should have been in Google Chrome, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, this policy is just about the school attorney, the standard when we retain, it isn't about those other legal services, which I do think, I don't know if we have a policy on that and it's definitely worth looking into.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I agree that that I completely unaware of whether we even have a policy on those that matters. Okay, does that sentence look okay? because I got distracted by the typing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. And then they should be the superintendent.
[Paul Ruseau]: You had a pretty good reason. Great. And I mean, the superintendent obviously uses the services as well, but really it's acting on our behalf. in all of those matters. So I don't think we need to be more detailed. And actually the word school is a little, it's not like the Missittook has a school attorney.
[Paul Ruseau]: If anybody does see anybody raising hands, please let me know because while I'm sharing, it's hard to see
[Paul Ruseau]: It's certainly what I believe it is. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to add, you know, just to not to belabor the point, but, you know, I expect that the superintendent might speak with our attorney about personnel matters, for instance, for which I fully expect her to do, but neither the committee as a full vote or individual members can ask for any of that detail. So I think that that's a pretty interesting example for which the attorney works for us. But at the same time, there's these weird spots where we can't even really know what's going on. So, but anyways, if there are any other comments or questions, we always can amend this on the floor before hopefully approving it. And if not, is there a motion to approve?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. Okay, member Graham. Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau? Yes. Three in the affirmative. This policy will be sent to the full committee at the, I believe May 23rd, if my dates are correct, school committee meeting. Excellent.
[Paul Ruseau]: the dress code policy, which we discussed. We had some community feedback and input in the last meeting. We discussed, I was trying to have us not steer into the specific policy, but it was hard not to go there. And so I have drafted, and when I say I've drafted, I've stolen for the most part, as a lot of policies are. No sense to reinvent the wheel. A dress code policy that I thought we could use as a, As a place to begin, frankly, let me share that. I have sent it to member Graham, member McLaughlin, Dr. Edouard-Vincent, and the assistant superintendent for elementary as well as secondary, but they received it in a blind CC, so we could not have dialogue, but I wanted to give them a chance to read it beforehand.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so as I mentioned, a lot of this has been much, most of it, frankly, has been taken from the Seattle dress code policy, which I personally really like because it is, aside from being short, it leaves relatively little up to interpretation, which is sort of the biggest challenge around dress codes and implementation. So I'm going to, I am going to read it. It's two pages with lots of spacing. So the dress code is the policy of the committee that the student and their parent, guardian, caregiver hold the primary responsibility in determining the student's personal attire, hairstyle, jewelry, and personal items, i.e., or e.g., backpacks, book bags, Schools are responsible for ensuring that student attire, hairstyle, jewelry, and personal items do not interfere with the health or safety of any student and do not contribute to a hostile or intimidating environment for any student. Core values in relation to student dress, this district's core values are as follows. By the way, obviously, I'm asserting these are our core values having actually not been told that we all agree these are our core values. Students should be able to dress and style their hair for school in a manner that expresses their individuality without fear of unnecessary discipline or body shaming. Students have the right to be treated equitably Dress code enforcement will not create disparities, reinforce or increase marginalization of any group, nor will it be more strictly enforced against students because of racial identity, ethnicity, gender identity, gender expression, gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, cultural or religious identity, household income, body size, type, or body maturity. Students and staff are responsible for managing their personal distractions, and students should not face unnecessary barriers to school attendance. So those are the core values. The dress code is students must wear a top, which is a shirt, blouse, sweater, sweatshirt, tank, et cetera, bottom, pants, shorts, shirt, dress, et cetera, and footwear. This policy permits additional student attire requirements when necessary to ensure safety in certain academic settings, such as physical activity, gym, science, or CPE courses. There are specific requirements for many of those areas. Additionally, this policy allows for reasonable variation in required student attire for participation in activities such as swimming or gymnastics. Students may not wear clothing, jewelry, or personal items that are pornographic, contain threats or that promote illegal or violent conduct such as the unlawful use of weapons, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or drug paraphernalia, demonstrate hate group affiliation, association or affiliation, and or use hate speech targeting groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or other protected groups. Intentionally show private parts, nipples, genitals, or buttocks. Clothing must cover private parts and opaque, not able to be seen through materials. Cover the student's face to the extent that the student is not identifiable, except clothing or headgear worn for religious or medical purposes, or demonstrate gang affiliation or association. Attire worn in observance of a student's religion is not subject to this policy. Enforcement. This is probably where we'll probably want to have some real discussion around this because I frankly don't feel strongly about its principles or assistant superintendents, assistant But principles are required to ensure that all staff are aware of and understand the guidelines of this policy. Staff will use reasonable efforts to avoid dress coding students in front of other students. Students shall not be disciplined or removed from class as a consequence for wearing attire in violation of this policy, unless the attire creates a substantial disruption to the educational environment, poses a hazard to the health or safety of others, or factors into a student behavior rule violation, such as malicious harassment or the prohibition on harassment, intimidation, and bullying. No student shall be referred to as a distraction due to their appearance or attire. Typical consequences for a violation of this policy include parent, guardian, caregiver contact or conference and the directive to cover, change or remove the non-compliant attire. A student may be instructed to leave their classroom briefly to change clothes. The principal or their designee should notify a student's parent, guardian, caregiver of the school's response to violations of the student dress policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's draft one. I imagine there are people who have feedback. So I'll open the floor for thoughts, comments.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll just jump in on what my thoughts are on that particular thing. What I understand that to mean is students can be removed from class under certain circumstances, but if I come to school and It's really hard to come up with examples because frankly the stress code is very permissive. But if I come to school and I'm violating the dress code somehow, and I am not creating a substantial disruption to the environment or creating obviously the hazard and health and safety stuff, I'm still violating it, but like the class can go on. You know, a teacher stopping the class to say, you know, your pants are too low and I can see your buttocks. Well, the student is sitting in their chair in the back row. There's an example where it's like, that can wait till the class is over rather than stopping the class and making the student a spectacle. Or frankly, if you notice it when the student's coming in, then, you know, before class starts. But because it's such a permissive policy, it is kind of hard to think about like, How do you even get to the point where you're in a classroom. And at that point you realize there's a violation, I mean, nobody's coming to school barefoot, and nobody notices till they're sitting in their first period class right i mean. somebody notices before that probably. But that's just my thoughts. But I'll let Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that it's hard to discuss without a specific example sometimes, you know, a violation that isn't disrupting the class, but it's still a violation that needs to be taken care of.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, and in that example, I think this other issue of avoidance of dress coding students in front of their peers becomes an issue. Like if the students are coming in and there's the rigmarole of class squeezing through a door and the teacher sees it and says, look, you can either, before the class is assembled and everybody's looking at the teacher, can you go to the office and get a sweatshirt or do you have something to cover that versus you know, the student is sitting in their chair and on the back of it, there's something that is like causing problems with the students that can read it from behind. Well, in that case, that's disrupting the class. And obviously that needs to be addressed then. So there's so much about that. And I did say that, you know, what I like about the policy is that it leads less to the interpretation, but I think, My experience is the judgment of a lot of our teachers and staff is quite capable of handling that situation. And I know that Ms. Lucy really wants to speak.
[Paul Ruseau]: We can hear you. Okay, thank you. I don't think Ms. Galussi can hear me. She looks frozen, actually.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, she's moving. I don't know if she can hear me though.
[Paul Ruseau]: So can you hear me now?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Sorry. So is it the paragraph that I've highlighted is the issue or the one at the bottom in particular?
[Paul Ruseau]: So there was, in response to that, there was one sentence that I removed. Well, there's more than one sentence but there was a sentence I removed about the superintendent will promulgate. I don't remember the exact words but essentially, you know procedures around how this will be enforced. I sort of anticipate that that would happen anyways, like even with the current language. I mean, this does not get into the details of a kindergartner versus a senior versus a voc student who's half the time out on, you know, doing their internship. You know, it doesn't get into that nitty gritty that I certainly understand is different from a student who's going from one classroom to the next versus a student who's just in the same room all day. Excuse me. And I'm very open to language changes. If you have suggestions, we also do not have to finish this one tonight. If people want more time to think on it and obviously, Before it comes to the full committee, when it gets to the full committee, we can edit all we want there as well. Although it's preferred that we do it in a smaller setting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I feel like this sentence really the one above it covers it, but I certainly see how there are separate paragraph and. I mean, you know, no teacher wants to turn their whole classroom into a circus over a dress code violation. That's not anything anybody's interested in. So it's sort of, it's a bit of that, like we're saying it to make sure everybody gets that. But I mean, I was a student, no teacher wants their classroom to be turned upside down over a dress code violation. student who's got something inappropriate that something in violation on their on their sweater hoodie or or whatever else so I certainly I hear you miss closely but I also. I feel like this is like the intent is the goal here at this. I'm wondering what you think about this change because I do want it to make it clear that this is not a black and white issue. And there may be students that every single day they wanna show up violating the dress code at some moment in there. you know, for whatever reason. And so it's different if that's the situation, then you may end up dress coding somebody in front of a student in front of other students, because the student is tempting or taunting the whole situation and policy. So I think we wanna make sure that there is the wiggle room to deal with that. Dr. Edward-Vinson?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I, about, yeah, certainly going into the new year is when I was hoping we would approve this, if it gets approved, that it would begin. But I just have a quick question about procedure around the handbooks. I don't remember when the handbooks get updated. And I would like us to be sure that we don't approve all the handbooks and then, you know, two weeks later, a real part of the handbooks has to be replaced. Do you know when that happens? I mean,
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. So I wanna make sure to pay attention to the time. I believe somebody has to drive somewhere right now. But is there a motion to continue this one policy to one more subcommittee meeting?
[Paul Ruseau]: Any other comments? Oh, great. So we'll have one more meeting sometime in May. Hopefully, if we can send this up to the first meeting in June for approval, whatever it looks like then. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Three in the affirmative. This will be continued until the next, we'll have another subcommittee meeting on this topic. We may actually add another item I think that's a really good point. And I think that's another agenda item to that as well. Um and, um. No other comments. Is there a motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, three in the affirmative. Thank you,
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. One second, let me grab my iPad. And I was the secretary. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastone. I know she's joining us, she may just be a minute late. Member Ruseau here, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: make a motion to waive the reading of the rest of that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Was this the mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Yes. Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone. That's what we do with this. Yeah, yes. Oh, there you are. Sorry, we have technical difficulties. That's okay. Remember so yes fair longer.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Yes. Member Kreatz. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau here. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Will we be discussing the presentation after we take the roll call, though, or will we be moving on?
[Paul Ruseau]: I read the draft findings, and there were some pretty startling and, frankly, upsetting parts to it that we use. more than three times as much energy than we would need to to be considered net zero. 77% more energy than the average for the entire United States per square foot. And then, honestly, the most upsetting part was that it will be at a minimum $10 million just to get rid of all of the hazardous materials that our kids are, I realize not all of them are exposed, but to get rid of the PCBs, lead paint, asbestos, I think that $10 million is an awful lot of money, and that does not include the labor or replacement costs of anything that we actually would be mitigating. So I, I'm a little upset that this is where we are, that we're multiple years away from having a building that does not have that stuff removed. It's really hard to deal with that. So I just, I obviously support this and I'm wondering when we can expect to get the final draft, not the final draft, but the final report.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I signed the bills, as you know, and the warrants, and every single week I'm signing $10,000 plus electric bills, and it's a bit I mean, I don't know what a bill should be for such infrastructure, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize this is not an appropriate and lowers the answer, but a lot lower. I mean, I just couldn't even believe how big those are every single week.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Verso? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Can you remind me, cause I feel like I have to be reminded every year food services will or will not be part of any of our budget presentations.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And last year, forgive me for the date, we had passed a motion to make meals free, which unbeknownst, I don't remember who else co-sponsored that, but unbeknownst to the folks that put this on our agenda, the federal government over that weekend announced they were going to make it free for every school district across the country. But our motion did not indicate that it was free during the pandemic or free for a year. It was free, period. And so I think as long as that language is still understood and clear, I'm fine with that. But I do think that unless somebody is willing to put a motion on to start charging kids, the policy of our committee is that we will not be going forward. And I just don't have any idea what that's gonna really cost us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes. On the school meals, there is a, there's a forum on Thursday for the school meals that representative Vargas is running specifically because the federal government's sort of fallen flat on this effort. And I'll be attending that hopefully to find out how we can push because to suddenly start you know, the fact that participation went up is entirely not surprising. But the other way of describing participation going up is kids weren't eating who needed to eat. And that doesn't, none of us are surprised by that, but we have actual numbers now. So I think,
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Motion to suspend the 7 p.m. and make it 6 53 tonight.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I believe we did actually approve a report request two meetings ago. So we should just have that added to the agenda and coming in the future. I think that was just an oversight. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: member must own. Remember, so here may long occur here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Vice Chair Graham, we should sever before we can talk about an item. Because it's part of the consent agenda.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastone? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mesto.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lunker.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's OK. Member Mestone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: sure thank you um so um what was the date i'm sorry too many windows in my hand uh we met last week um to just the rules thank you the rules policy and equity sub rules and policy uh subcommittee met last week um on the 30th to um address two issues that was sent to the subcommittee uh one was on the attorney policy school attorney policy uh we made a lot of progress on that. We have one outstanding query that I have to make about one sentence in that, and we'll be bringing that back to the next subcommittee meeting, which will be happening at the end of April, hopefully to finalize that recommendation. And then the other, the majority of the meeting was spent on creating address code, For the district, and we heard from six members of the community, actually maybe one six sorry. And I thought we got some really excellent feedback about what people like and didn't like and really covered a bunch of the areas that we need to take into consideration when crafting a policy. In particular, things such as the vocational school, we wanna make sure to draft a policy that works for their very specific needs. So we're having another meeting. Again, I don't have the date yet, but the end of April, and we will be reviewing a couple of policies that, well, there was one policy we sort of briefly went over as a potential for our policy language. Since we're not editing an existing policy, we are drafting from scratch. So in that way, it makes more sense to look to other policies rather than starting from nowhere. So I'm looking forward to that next meeting where we'll focus on the language of a policy that we hopefully will be able to finish up in that meeting and bring back to the full committee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes, thank you. I also want to thank everybody involved in this process. I know that it was having a process just getting going and then having it derailed can make it a lot harder to get back to where you were. I do just, I want to mention that school committees are explicitly forbidden from selecting curriculum. So I would just ask that we actually not take a vote to approve or not. Obviously it should be in the budget, but I think that there's a precedent issue here. If we approve this, the next curriculum somebody else comes forward with, if we disagree with it, it would be awkward for us to either not be asked to approve it or to not approve it when in fact we don't have authority in that regard. So I would just ask that we not take any vote. I'm very supportive of this, but that's not our authority. So that's just my opinion. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. There was a lot there. I noticed this. There's a focus on the summer for the summer stuff for the rising 10th graders. Can you just tell me, you know, Desi apparently feels like these rising 11th and 12th graders don't need anything. I'm assuming we have a good number of rising, we don't have the MCAS results yet. So I'm gonna go out on a limb and bet we have a number of rising 11th and 12th graders who still have not passed their MCAS competencies. Pardon me, I hope that was not really loud. Since we're not offering any camps for them, what are we doing for those kids?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I just follow up real quick?
[Paul Ruseau]: So the current 10th graders are the first students, the 11th and 12th graders are excluded from having to have passed their competencies to get a diploma, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I realized that we won't really know until we get MCAS results this fall or this summer, whether we're talking about, I mean, I don't know what a normal year, how many 10th graders are not going to get a diploma if we don't do something, if it's two or three, but if it's, and I suppose the state is very much waiting, I'm sure Jesse is already feverishly looking at results, and either there's a huge wave of students who they're gonna have to either not give a diploma to after they, get through 12 years of school, or they're going to have to throw out the competency requirement. And I'm sure that will be a front page story for several days. But I always want to go on the assumption that DESE won't change their mind. And so if they're not going to change their mind, I just want to make sure we are maybe it's a bit cart before the horse since we don't have results, but I'm just very worried about 10th graders that are not going to get a diploma and are we throwing enough resources at them to get them there? So I may be off topic slightly, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have heard as well that some teachers definitely like ECRI, and I know that's not the purpose of this presentation, I would just ask that we also consider student engagement, because I have heard, the number one thing I've heard is from parents whose students would rather do almost anything else. So, and I'm guessing there's students, for instance, that don't particularly need any assistance with reading, et cetera. So that's all I just wanted to add, because I know that that's not the purpose of the presentation. I am very, I'm sort of giggling a little because I know how much the superintendent absolutely loved doing this work. I'm not able to see her face very clearly, but I know her well enough to know that this is probably her favorite thing she's done in the last two years. And I'm looking forward to her being able to go out and really get into the classrooms and learning tours or learning walks. Again, I didn't get a chance to participate in one with her. prior to the pandemic and then the pandemic shut those down. So I look forward to that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Risseau, yes. Mayor Longo-Kurt. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Katz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Mayor Lungo-Kearns?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone. Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lococo, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I had a couple of questions. I was happy to see that the funds in the revolving account are used to offset transportation, uniform costs, game officials, etc. Do we offset transportation and other costs for any other for band, for field trips? I think PTOs are still paying for that stuff. Do we offset for any other group of students that you're aware of?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just, you know, when we talk about You know, the fact that we charge a user fee which obviously I'm in favor of getting rid of user fees. I also think we have to look at the things that we not only don't have a user fee for, but we don't even do any coverage at all on right now. I mean the PTO is still raising money to send kids on official school field trips. is sort of mind blowing to me still. So it'd be nice to know that I feel like I might know the answer, but I'd like to hear it out of an official from an official perspective. But thank you for the report. I guess. You know, Member Graham brought up universal user fees. Dr. Cushing, you mentioned limiting students, and I was a little unsure how that would happen. I just feel like if we had one user fee, and if a student wanted to participate in band or hockey or, well, frankly, anything else, they'd pay the one fee for the year, and they could participate in all of the things. The only way I can see how that could limit would be as if participation rates went through the roof and we couldn't figure out how to have enough coaches and transportation. If the band was tripled in size overnight, I'm sure that the band folks would be more than thrilled, but we have to acknowledge that would also cost an awful lot more money. So I'm not sure what you meant by limiting when you referenced the idea of getting rid of user fees or universal user fees.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, I certainly, when I was talking about a universal fee was, one fee, like you pay once, you know, when you go to college, as many of us remember, or have seen, if we have kids that we're enrolling and you compare tuition, you'll get a very, very, you'll be in for a shock when you discover that most of what you're paying is called fees. And that's how they sort of hidden that stuff. But, you know, in my mind, like if students want to participate in anything and they pay whatever it is, whether it's $100 for the year, then they can participate in anything. And I just feel like that that would encourage kids to try out for things that they may not truly have an aptitude for already. If my son comes home and says, I wanna do hockey and he's never skated and he's never played hockey. And then you tell me it's $200, I'm probably gonna be a little bit like, well, we need to really think this through and not be the most encouraging parent on earth, especially if $200 is a lot of money for me. So lowering the barriers, but also keeping the students on free and reduced lunch, not paying anything. You know, I think that that could open the door to a heck of a lot more participation by students, but I'll stop talking. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Just real quick, I did want to also speak. Thank you. I certainly understand how many steps are involved with a lot of things is something that can be burdensome. And I don't, for a second, want to disagree with that. I do want to say that my interest in this actually was about holding us accountable. This is my fifth year. And I keep my I have my own tracker for the things that I put forward but I do not track the things that other members put forward. And so, if I didn't write it, and somebody says to me as member of my stone just said, you know, what about that thing, I can remember the conversations I can remember the vote. I don't have any way to, I mean, do we want to fill the agenda up every week with the 20 or 30 things that we've all thought of as wait, didn't we vote on that three years ago, let's get an update. I mean, the number of reports that will show up to give us updates to things for which, you know, Mr. Murphy wasn't even here, we've asked for things that didn't get fulfilled from before he was here. And we don't know we don't have a clean list of outstanding things and the council does. And I think the council's spreadsheet which looks to me like a Google Doc is. is the way to go, and short of buying some kind of software to make it an easier, but I understand that it is in fact additional tedium, really, I mean it's just additional tedium but I agree with my room of stone that we just, we have to have this for ourselves. above and beyond accountability with the administration. I mean, I just can't, I can't personally be tracking what every member writes. That's just not my job or role. So I look forward to voting on this, hopefully.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Krebs.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. We never had a motion to approve the rules at all yet. We were just doing the Rule 88 amendment. So one second while I clean up my notes here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, yes. Mayor Longo, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have. a few amendments. If I could offer them all together. They are all corrections after having gone through it. And none of them are changes to rules other than the fact that they're changes to language. So if it's okay, may I just read these and see if we can accept them as a group?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so, um, Rule number nine in your packet says that the meeting will be at 6.30. We had agreed in other rules that it will be six o'clock. So that is to change rule number nine to say six o'clock. The current language of rule number nine 2020 says that the chair will schedule one annual meeting with the city council but it doesn't say the school committee isn't part of that language. So, the language that I have written down as to replace that as the chair will schedule one annual joint meeting of the school committee and the city council, which is clearly what we intended when we were speaking. Rule 47 presently has a reference to the work to rule 74 but it should say rule 75 and rule 75 has a reference to rule 47, but it said should say 46 and rule 87. has, again, another number that's just the wrong number, because we had removed and added some rules. So it will say rule 86 will be applied to new members upon a vacancy of the school committee. So those are the items. I don't know if there's a motion to approve those.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Member Mustone? Yes. Members say yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Member Mustone? Number so yes, member McLaughlin did I not call you I'm sorry. Yes, thank you, Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Gretz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Mustone. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Landau-Kerr.
[Paul Ruseau]: We haven't taken a roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I'm using my memory since I left a little thing at home. So I'm sorry they're going to be out of order. I don't know. Member Hays? Here. Member McLaughlin? Here. Oh, Member Kreatz, you would have been ahead. Yes, here, here. One, two, three, four. Member Mustone will be joining us later. And wait, one, two, three, four. Member Ruseau? Five. Mayor Lungo-Koehn, did I skip somebody? I'm sorry. I think that's all of us. I'm used to having it written down.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, member Ruseau. Thank you. Um, that is, uh, member Hays's interpretation was correct that this was, uh, sort of drawing a line in the sand. We've gone past 11 o'clock on many occasions. Um, and I just thought it's important to remind us, the body, um, and anybody else watching that our meeting in February before the last one, I'm sorry, I don't have the date, had one item on the agenda, one item, and we went to 930. Um, and that was a light That was as light of an agenda as I think I can recall us ever having. So, I guess I don't mind 930. I would just like to know what is the body intending to do when there's six unfinished items on the agenda, when there's public that has come to speak on items on the agenda that aren't going to happen till 1030 which would be awful but has happened. Um, I mean, if this is going to be whatever our rules are, I mean, I, I, the language as it is, regardless of whether it's nine 30 or 11 is the meeting is over and that somebody stands up and makes a motion to say, let's just keep powering through it. It's not that we will discuss, Hey, it's late. I retired. Should we keep going? It's the meeting is over. That's the language of the role. Um, so, um, It's, to me, it seems like 9.30, I'd like to be out at 9.32. I go to bed at nine o'clock on a regular night, but we will have, we will certainly have to discuss going to weekly meetings. And I know the administration's not interested in that. We will have to go to weekly meetings if we're quitting at 9.30 on a regular basis. We have one item on the agenda and we went to 9.30. I assume that we have lots of work to do, that the school committee is not a rubber stamp. And I mean, when this item goes to the floor of our meeting, this could drag one meeting past 9.30 and just approving these set of rules if the public has comments on it. So the intent was 11 o'clock is the sort of the red line. As it's approaching 11 o'clock, we make it clear we're gonna bump everything or we have a conversation about the two extra items that are on the agenda that we can't get to, but that we all have something in our minds that is like, okay, this is getting ridiculous. We've got to stop because we all agree, none of us, I'm not, and I've heard from other members, none of us are at our best at 11 o'clock. and certainly the administration and God forbid, principals have to be at a meeting that late because they have to be at school to crack a dawn the next day. So that's all the 11 o'clock was intended for, but that was the intent. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think the current motion is 6 p.m. start, 9.30 p.m. end.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. Member Hays. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lunko, current.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Shall I do the 930 now? Yes, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? No. Mayor Longo turns.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Yes. Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. Yes, it is complicated. There is absolutely no question about it. I actually, this is just Robert's rules here. It is, I included it as a rule because it's so complicated, but also because it often gets confused between, rescinded gets confused with, what's the one after, the motion to reconsider. And I thought it was really important to have the two of them back to back and have them in here so that if a member is in a meeting and needs to, do one of these two things, or they don't have to go, you know, you can go to the Roberts Rules website, you will not find this, they want you to buy their book. So you'll have to find your book and you'll have to figure out the right way to do it. So this is, there is nothing in this that is not exactly what Roberts Rules requires. And so I do want that to be clear that I've not changed the rules. I'm just, this is a particular rule that I'm elevating into the document because I know as a member, I think this is a complicated thing to keep those two things under, to keep them clear. And it felt like other members might also find that helpful.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was gonna wait till we get to the end of this, but I was actually going to make a motion to be given authority to go through and add Robert Rules of Order references to all the places that it belongs. I don't have those available right now, but that was something I was gonna suggest that we do add to this document, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, the word hyperlink was used, hyperlinks mean going to a webpage, but these are not available on the web. So can we just, would you change the language of that to be just a reference?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, Robert's rules. No, the rules, our rules. I'm not sure I'm following what the request is.
[Paul Ruseau]: The website does not actually provide you with the Roberts Rules of Order. There are a few, there's an FAQ where you can sort of see some summaries of questions that are common, And even within their own FAQ, they will include a reference, you know, the RONR page 146 and edition 29 or 12 or whatever it is. You cannot refer to the individual rules of Robert Rules of Order on the web because they are proprietary copyrighted or whatever the right language is. So it is not possible to add a reference to what the language in Robert Rules of Order is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call, please. I need the language, Mayor. I can't call it until I can type it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll go back to the recording and write all that down.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Thank you. Member Mustone. Yes. Member Rissell. Yes. Mayor Longovern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I have in my notes that member Graham had made a motion to accept the rule as written. I don't know if that got lost.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, yes. Mayor Longo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So, the part about adding to the agenda I actually, I don't know what the right process should be the city council in the last couple of years has in fact asked things that they wanted the school committee to respond to, and we got an email from somebody I think in the mayor's office. To all of us as individuals, we as individuals have no authority to respond to the for the school committee, so we have no process right now at the school at the city council wants to ask the school committee a question. There's no way for that to happen. And any of us showing up at the city council to answer as the representative of the school committee in our last meeting, we just made that clear. That is not acceptable either. So I don't know what the process is now, but ignoring the city council, which I think we should respect them and as another body in our city, they deserve our respect, but we have no process for how to respond to them. So that's all I'm trying to lay out here is some process. It can be any process. It doesn't have to be using our format. It can be somebody, the president of the council, the city clerk. I don't care who sends an email to the superintendent and asks that it be added to the agenda. I don't have any preferences at all in that. This was just my first thought is that we already have a process. So it's not that complicated. So why not use it? But it doesn't have to be that. As for the part about the superintendent, being called to the city council. We have an org chart on page, I think, two or three of our budget every single year, going back to at least 1997, that says the organization of our government, the superintendent has no line in any way, shape or form with the city council. When the city council beckons a superintendent, she should not jump. there is absolutely no relationship between the superintendent and the city council. And I think it's not fair to the superintendent. I mean, what if we had a city council that expected the superintendent at every meeting to answer questions? So now Monday nights are school committee and Tuesday nights are city council meetings. We need to make it crystal clear that if the city council wants to talk to the superintendent, we have to give permission for that to happen because that's actually the facts. That is a fact. It's not really a discussion point, it's a fact. And I think it might be collegial and nice if the superintendent just shows up whenever they ask, but there's only so many hours in the day the superintendent works for this body. And I think that expecting the superintendent to report to two public bodies is just highly inappropriate. So that's why I wrote this rule. That's all I can say so far.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Superintendent said something really important that I want to highlight. The individual Councilors emailing the superintendent to ask a question is absolutely not what this is about. Just like with school committee members, individual Councilors have no authority. And if they email the superintendent and ask a question and the superintendent responds, they're a member of the public asking a question and that's fine. I'm talking about when there are votes happening and they are, you know, if they, As member Graham mentioned, we have big expensive things coming up in conversations around our schools. And it is both, I expect, and it would be surprised if the council does not have questions, big questions, report size questions, go do some analysis questions. I mean, these are big expensive things that they have to consider if if there's going to be a debt exclusion or something like that. So I expect them to be doing this and for them to have, you know, a direct line to the superintendent when it is, I mean, and I know that the superintendent said, you know, if they ask for something big, then obviously she'll not necessarily push back, but she'll seek the guidance of the committee on an agenda. But I think that having a process ahead of time is also good because then it doesn't look like we have gotten sick of all these requests from the council and we're pushing back. That's not the goal of this at all. I would agree that in my, this is my fifth year now, it's not been a problem, but I expect it will become not a problem, but something that will happen as we deal with ARPA and perhaps a new high school. So this is definitely just about when the body takes the time to take a vote, what happens to that communication? Because I think there have been at least two instances where the body took a vote asking for something, I think from the school committee and nobody knew what to do with it. I mean, how do we respond? And I don't even think we even have a rule in there, maybe we do, about how do we respond? What do we do with a response to the city council if we have a response? I don't know. We vote and hope they watch the meeting on Monday night That's not a real line of communication, but that's a different rule probably. So that's all I have to say on this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Cress just made a point that I think is really important. Nobody here knew what the process was, but apparently the mayor and the superintendent. The point of the rules document is that we are all equal on this board. None of us knew what the process was. So I think it's fascinating that we're putting all kinds of trust in the process and nobody knew what it was, but the mayor. That seems kind of hard to wrap my head around. I also don't think we can pass a rule that tells the city council president what she will do. So I don't think we can specify that the city council president will do something. So I think that part of that motion doesn't make sense to me because we don't have the authority to tell the city council president what to do. I suppose you could say that the city clerk We also can't tell the city clerk what to do. However, the city clerk is an employee and is the person who manages motions that are passed by the council. So that person certainly seems the obvious natural one. I guess we could also have the rule say that a member of administration will watch all city council meetings and respond appropriately if they come up, but that would be horrible and burdensome. We did have a motion earlier to change the language to be strength-based, to remove the not authorized and make it authorized and change the without a majority vote to just with a majority vote. I would second that before we start going into the three or four amendments and changes we've gotten into. So I don't know if there's interest in a roll call on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Oh. Member Ruseau. And just to make sure I am writing down exactly this correctly. So this would replace the beginning where it starts with all and continue all the way through till really until we can just get rid of that how to add items to the agenda section. So right up until the sentence, the school committee may refer such requests. No, actually that sentence seems like that needs to go as well, right? So this would be replacing everything up to that last sentence.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, it's kind of funny, this would actually be much harder in person than it is on Zoom.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes, I'm waiting for something. Mayor Longo, correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Perfect. need a little more, what does it say?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think I did. Member Haynes? I typed Member Haynes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second. May I just speak on this real quick?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When more than one person is responsible for doing something like that, then when all three of us are in this meeting, the secretary, the superintendent, Peter, we're all there and a hand goes up and one of us is responsible. That means that it's sort of like when you arrive on the scene and everybody's like, somebody must've called 911, right? And it turns out everybody's standing around with their phones assuming somebody else called 911. So I do feel a little concerned that we are not specifying who is responsible. It's not that other people can't do it because certainly even in the present day, if the mayor hasn't noticed a hand going up, I'll jump up or jump in and say, mayor, there's somebody with their hand up. I just think that we need to be precise about who's responsible, whether it's at every meeting saying, at the beginning of the meeting, somebody is who's on first because otherwise we're going to move on to and we've had this happen in meetings on zoom on frankly a number of occasions where hands were up and none of you know we didn't have a laptop in the particular setting or whatever we were in person and there were this is usually a problem with somebody's in we're in person and there's public that's not and the hands go up and we move on to the next agenda item um and that it creates this weird thing where it looks like we just didn't let the public speak, which I do not want us to be in that situation. So I'm just a little concerned that we are not saying who's going to do this because I know in our last meeting and the meeting before where the superintendent had a laptop up where she sits and both the mayor and the chair and the superintendent would notice the hands are up and I was trying to like say hands are up. It gets confusing if three of us are trying to say that there's somebody wants to speak. And I don't really care who it is, but it has to be, somebody has to know it's their responsibility to make sure that it happens or we move on and the public doesn't get to speak. So I just wanted my little say on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thumbs up. Nice to see you, Mia. You can put a thumb up. There, okay. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Longo turns.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lococo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Wussow, then Member Krentz. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Member McLaughlin. I appreciate it, and I definitely, you know, as much as I felt like I came here with a set of rules that I thought was, this is great, we should just go with this, I will admit that they are, in fact, much better now that we have collaborated on them. I wish that there was, sometimes I wish the open meeting was a little at exceptions where we could literally have just done this through the years in a Google Doc, but that isn't an option. So I really appreciate that. I do have a motion that I think would cover those concerns and if I can just make that right now. I motion to allow the secretary or anybody else interested to go through these rules and provide references as appropriate after each rule or in line as appropriate for mass general law, school committee policy and Robert's rules, which we've discussed earlier in the format. And I just provided a format of like policy ID or whatever. Further, I will embed hypertext links to these references when possible. further the secretary in the event the rules are adopted, we'll provide a list of policies that must be updated to reflect the changes contained within the approved rules of the Medford School Committee and bring this list to the committee for referral to the appropriate subcommittees at the regular meeting following approval. It's a lot of words, let me put it in the chat so you can see it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not okay with that friendly amendment because that's hundreds of pages of policy. This current document is 13 pages, and I really don't have the bandwidth to spend weeks or months reformatting our entire policy manual. I agree wholeheartedly with Member McLaughlin that the policy service format is a mess.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, if I may, I think, and you can make that motion, send it to the next school committee meeting. It doesn't seem relevant to what we're doing. That's why I don't wanna change this motion to include additional work that's not related to the rules document.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, yes. Um, I guess I will just make a motion to, um, correct a couple of the there's actually two other. Errors in item number 90 in D. It says date sent. It should say the subcommittee. Um and in F, it says meeting dates of subcommittee where the item has been on and should say the agenda. and those two plus changing, continuing to containing. So that's my motion to make those three changes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Number. So yes, Mayor Lingo here.
[Paul Ruseau]: It is, yes, rule number 85. I'd like to motion to strike the second to the last, the last line where it says, be the custodian of the school committee records and other papers. I believe that that actually role has been assigned by the superintendent to someone else. And I don't think we need to specify that. I don't know if the superintendent has thoughts on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. It's number 85, and it's identifying a bunch of things that the superintendent will do, but it also says that the superintendent will be the custodian of school committee records and other papers.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's fine as written? Is it fine as written? No, we're striking the part where it says, be this custodian of school committee's records and other papers.
[Paul Ruseau]: My understanding of this is that it's a legally required role that has to be applied An employee has to be identified as being that person. So I don't think our rule can say the superintendent if it's not the superintendent. I'm fine with changing it to some other language, but who the custodian is has to be transparent, I think. And I mean, if we want to add another rule, although I don't know that it goes under duties of superintendent, maybe another rule that says the superintendent will appoint a superintendent custodian of our records.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion. Sorry, may I just try to get the language. So I would change the language to end after record keeping system period. The superintendent will ensure that there is an appointed Custodian of records and this information will be posted on our website.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Luggo-Kern?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, before we do that, should we have a motion to report this out to the committee at our next meeting? Motion to report.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member, I skipped, Member Hays? I'm sorry. Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member, Member Mustone? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Haynes? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. Member Miss Stone? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi, Mayor. I think since two of us are remote one, we have to do roll calls for everything.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm very excited by this, this integrated approach. I know that as a student myself, when I remember math, I was very strong in math, but terrible in geometry. And it really derailed my entire mathematics education because there was like a whole year bump. And so this is very exciting. I have a number of questions, I'll just ask two and then we can go around Robin if other people have questions and come back to me. But so how will this be reported on report cards in the student record? Because I mean, I have to admit, I don't remember how colleges consume the student's record, but a math course simply saying course one probably isn't much to go on and much to compare when they're looking at students to admit that'd be my first question.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, that answers my second question but my third question is, are there any. Well, it feels like there are going to be some risks associated with students that are coming in midstream or leaving midstream in their academic career and have you already. I realized we're doing a pilot this year with grade nine so you don't have to have answers yet, but that in particular concerns me, I suppose, since we're going to be keeping both for now. it's probably less of a concern, but like if Waltham has abandoned the traditional approach completely, and a student comes in and they have just completed algebra one in Medford, and they're going there and they want to take geometry, but they just have course two, which isn't geometry. This seems like this could be a risk for students transitioning in and out of our district. So have you been thinking about that or?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. I mean, certainly, you know, when I think about a student in this situation, I mean, they may not be on an IEP, or they may be, and each student, especially if they were not coming from a district in Massachusetts, for instance, I suppose this is a longstanding problem for students coming from other countries or just from other states, but I would just want to make sure we've prepared so that the students who may in fact end up being future engineers and mathematicians don't land here and get completely derailed by that because it seems like too much to ask that the math teacher. who is teaching a curriculum to the class of students is then also attempting to teach a totally different curriculum, frankly, to one or two students in their class. So I know that you've said you've been thinking about it. It's just something that worries me because we do have relatively high turnover of students, although I don't actually know where is that in the younger grades or in the older grades. And so, For students that are experiencing those transitions, they're often experiencing them, especially mid year, not in the best of circumstances. So we just want to make sure we can find a way to take care of them and help them along their academic careers. I'll just ask my last question since I only have one more. Does this create any problems or has the MCAS already been aligned to this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So as the members may know, the Medford City Council is drafting a new ordinance called the CCOPS or C-C-O-P-S. And that is in layman terms, how the police camera, the body worn cameras, how that data will be managed and the oversight and maintenance of that data and all that stuff they're drafting an ordinance on that. And one thing I consider it concerns about was that while the city council obviously is drafting an ordinance that covers all of Medford, they are not necessarily particularly well versed in education law and the federal education privacy. I probably can't remember all the letters, what they mean. And so my request is that the committee gives one of us, and I obviously volunteer, the authority to show up to these meetings and speak, not just as a member of the public, but as a member of the school committee, which we shouldn't be doing unless we all agree that that's appropriate, just to make sure that they're not missing this issue. One thing that I know if you agree to this and you select me, I will insist that they have passed the ordinance through educational law specialists, not just the regular legal services that they use, but that they have passed it through that because an ordinance on how body-worn cameras can be used once you're on school property, you know, the City Council can't pass an ordinance that exceeds federal or state law. That's not one of their options. None of us can do that. So I just think it's really important that before this ordinance is fully drafted and becomes, you know, approved, that we've had some kind of, had our fingers in the pie, because there's really nothing worse than an ordinance that is completely done and approved And then turns out it's violating the law. Nobody wants that. So that's what this is about. And I believe the next meeting is on March 16th, which I believe is a Wednesday. And if the members approve this, I do volunteer. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, I'm not a lawyer so I can't actually make that determination. But members, we as a body can certainly appoint a member to act on our behalf. but that is not to say that I don't have the voting rights on the city council. So when I say acting on our behalf, it's making sure that the conversation is including, okay, when the police show up and they're on school property, that is not the same law as when they're not on school property. And has the ordinance considered it? Did they actually pull in? Because all their ordinances go through a legal review. They don't just like, like a lot of our policies, we don't just jot them down and pass them and call it a day. They go through a legal department to make sure that they're meeting whatever laws they need to meet. And it's entirely plausible that that would happen here. But it seems also possible that it could be a blind spot. that this is a relatively new thing that the police reform, I forget what it's called, the Reform Act of last year around police accountability, that's all from last year, maybe the year before. So I just think it's important that we get out ahead of it because if we don't, and the ordinance allows, for instance, the police to come on campus with their recording going on, And then that turns out to be a violation of FERPA, which I don't know that it would be. I mean, again, my point is to make sure that we are, before this is passed, that we are actually making sure that the specialized case of student privacy is really being included in the ordinance when it's drafted. It's not to say that I, as I'm not a lawyer, and I could not comment on to whether the language is legal or not, But, and since I wouldn't be voting, all I'm asking is that you give one of us and it doesn't have to be me permission to go and speak for us and speaking for us since we're not voting is not. I would obviously be very happy to come back and report back on what's going on in that group. I think that makes a lot of sense that the subcommittee, that I come back and report to the full committee, you know, what I'm seeing and hearing. And if I have any other, if I have any concerns, be happy to do that. But yeah, so I do think it's really important that, I mean, I could just go as a member of the public, we're not just members of the public. And if I go there and I stand there and I'm talking about school committee policy and educational law, that's not really okay. That's not appropriate for us to be doing that. It looks like, whether or not it is, it will look like I'm speaking for the school committee. And so that's why I think it's important that somebody here goes and speaks for the school committee.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I certainly understand the reservation. I think that that just sounds like going as a member of the public. And just as if the mayor shows up to a public meeting and speaks, nobody in the community thinks he's just Breanna Lungo-Koehn, nobody. So you can't speak as a member of the public, even though technically you can. because you are the mayor and I can't speak as a member of the public because I'm an elected official. So I think, if I show up to the meeting as a member of the public and I see that they're just totally ignoring or not even considering it and I speak, it's really a bad look. It's a very bad look. And I think we can't We can't insert ourselves into the ordinance making process. We can't tell them we want to see it before they approve it. I also have watched how ordinances are made. And aside from being, well, taking an enormous amount of time, by the time they are done with an ordinance to the point where they would pass it to us, if they wanted to, by the way, because we can't ask them, demand it, you know, the cake is made. So, I mean, I know that in the last two or three years, there's been, I don't remember which ordinance it was, the one that keeps timing out and has to start over. So I guess I'm just like, what is the, as complicated as it is, and I have looked at the language right now, and it is complicated, I think it seems like it would be far worse for us to wait for them to pass the ordinance and then what let students and parents sue the city for violating FERPA, I mean, or whatever other laws are appropriate. It just seems to me that not having our fingers in this, I keep using pie and I'm terrible with these analogies, but having at least a voice there to say, you know, the current language says nothing about when you walk into the schools, is there any difference? And there is a difference and that's a fact. So I just think it seems it behooves us to not wait till it's over. And I also think it's really, I'm not interested in going to this meeting as a member of the public because I don't think I can speak as a member of the public.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have not been on city council mayor and I know you have, I guess my question is what if you pass and if the city council passes an ordinance that is clearly a violation of law. I don't know who's who's who's who's who. You know, how do we respond, I know I'm not interested in how I spend my Wednesday evening I'm interested in not having. body worn cameras in our schools recording students without permission, we go through an absurd number of hoops to make sure we don't accidentally take a picture of a kid. I mean, it's sort of like amazing that we don't screw that up more because frankly, it's so like, you know, there'll be a whole class and there'll be one kid who's the no picture kid and that's fine, that's great. But we somehow manage that. And, you know, does the ordinance say anything about when you walk onto school property, you turn the camera off? Or does the data go to the same place in the sky as it would when you're not on school property? I don't know, it just seems to me like we're just... leaving it all out there and hoping for the best. And I just, it doesn't feel responsible for me as a school committee member. And obviously if the majority of the members feel it's more responsible to just hope that the city council does the right thing and hope that the right kinds of lawyers take a look at this before it gets approved, then that's up to the committee. I mean, as I said, not like I really want to spend my Wednesday night doing this.
[Paul Ruseau]: I made a point about disagreeing that we could act as members of the public and I guess I should have been more clear, certainly I have no trouble sending in commentary to the city council when they're drafting ordinance or making a decision about parking or the budget. Or, you know, anything that's not related to schools, the moments it's related to schools, I just think it is, it's really a stretch to believe that we are not seen as school committee members when we're making our comments. So, in that regard, I think. You know, as individuals I think we're all welcome to write our letters, I think a letter is different than than participating and trying to have a voice at such a meeting. I certainly am happy to write a letter to each of the city Councilors and you know, remind them that school law is not the same as just regular law and that they, I hope that they will take the time to consider it I mean, they may be watching this meeting but. I guess I, my biggest concern is that, considering how long it takes to write an ordinance considering the complexity of this and many other ordinances, knowing that they got it right before it's approved and ends up in muni code. Just, it just seems reasonable I mean I know we, we actually have the City Council has a joint education subcommittee with the school committee that I don't know that has, I don't know when that's met, probably not since the new buildings for the middle and elementary schools, and I think other communities do have a joint I don't think it's a subcommittee, whatever. It's some kind of joint meeting between the city council and the school committee and this seems like the situation where that kind of thing would be very appropriate to discuss it but we don't have those at this time so it feels like, you know, that's in our potential rules if we get to keep that part that we will do something like that. So, it, you know, considering that so many it's clear there's a reason, like nobody wants just more meetings, but there are some times when the city council and the school committee really do have to have an interaction, an official interaction, not just a memo to the people you know or something. So, I mean, if there's, we can just vote this down, I can withdraw it. It sounds like there's not support.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. So thank you, Mayor Graham. So I just wanted to read a little statement I had drafted around this. So last Thursday, March 3rd, Senate Bill 1445 was unanimously passed by the Massachusetts Senate. The bill, an act to increase access to disposable menstrual products in prisons, homeless shelters, and public schools is the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people. And it is important to mention the names of these people right here in Medford. From 2016 to 2018 Maya Gomez and will address school created the free the pad project as part of the Center for citizenship and social responsibility from 2019 to 2020 Christina saying and Elizabeth hunt. continued and expanded this work with their Tax Less Tampons Free Feminine Products project, also as part of the CCSR. And now Malina McGovern and Mariana Constantara are continuing this important work with their project as part of the CCSR. I want to thank Maya, Willa, Christina, Elizabeth, Malina, and Mariana. for all they've done to make sure that this doesn't, that this stays an issue that we keep talking about. And I'm very excited that the state house is doing something about it. The lead sponsor of the Senate bill is none other than our own Senator Pat Jalen of, well, she lives in Somerville, but she's our Medford Senator. And I wanna thank Pat for all of her hard work on getting this to the floor of the Senate and getting it voted. And it was unanimously approved. There are two lead sponsors in the House, our own Christine Barber and also Representative Jay Livingstone of Boston. I want to thank Christine and Jay for all of their hard work and all the work that is definitely to come as they attempt to marshal this into becoming law through the House of Representatives. I also want to thank the CCSR and their benefactors who ensure that the resources are available so our students can become the leaders that we know that they can be. And finally, I want to thank the leadership of the Massachusetts menstrual equity coalition in the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization of Women for their sustained work, which is needed to keep this important effort moving forward.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Yes. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, we'll call member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Chris.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think the part about the website I agree with, although the rest of it is about, you know, the communication strategy, because I think the website is definitely a part of our communication strategy, but I think it's just one piece. And so, I mean, I think the other parts of a cohesive communication strategy, I think we still need to, you know, in particular, I'm interested in understanding more about like the funding requirements. None of this stuff is ever free. So that's why I would still support this I agree that the website part, you know, that there's probably. Until we have it, we can't really probably say much. Although maybe during the subcommittee, there can be a sneak peek, maybe.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, because I think I would, you know, I love websites and technology and all that stuff, but this big meeting doesn't, this big, there's nobody here, but this format doesn't feel like the meeting to go through the website and for us to poke around in it and really dig in. And I think a subcommittee is a much better place for that, but again, that's just a piece of the communication strategy that I think, I'm not part of this subcommittee, so I have to admit I'm a little, it's out of my wheelhouse, so I don't know who else is on it. I'm not on that, right? No, okay. So I would still support moving forward with this, but the website part is actually just part of the whereas, it's not the what should be done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Yes. Member Soyes? Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, the policy is about a lot of things, but the part that this actually was a motion that I had put on just when the pandemic was beginning. And this is the recess policy amongst, is the key part. And considering we were, nobody was going to school, the recess policy felt a little out of left field at that moment in time. So we tabled it. So I'm re-offering it instead of trying to take it from the table because we didn't have a numbering system back then. So it's really hard to like, dig up an old agenda and try and pull something from the table without numbers. So that's why I've offered it again. And again, this is to take a look at and perhaps revise our recess policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastone? Yes. Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Member Hays. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member of a stone number so yes Morell occur.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to let you know there are two people with their hands up online.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, I actually had a question too. Thanks to Member Hays, I do at least. So I guess, To get a little more specific, I just want to know that, you know, we've had this issue where the all the elementary schools are not the same. And we, I believe it's the title one reading, where effectively, you take the bottom from some tests, the bottom number of students, and they get the services. And the cutoff is per school. So if one school, the bottom is all the way up here, those students get services, because there's nobody down here. And in another school, because there's so many students that are further down, they get services, but the kids at the same level as another school, they don't get services. I wanna know that when we do these, this math to determine what students need services, that it's the same across the district.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we won't have students who, had they been at a different school, they would have gotten services, but because they're at school X, they don't get it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. You know what I'm getting at, though, in that- I 100% do. Okay. That's all I'm going to- Yes. It's complicated to talk about without specific data, and teachers, and schools, and all that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mister thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Do you need motions on any of these things? It sounds like you want our opinion to be clear.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I mean, just to put this EEC vouchers in context of Medford, you said we had 14 out of 400 students, that's 3.5%. If we had the correct percent adjusted for our economically disadvantaged students, we've got 160 students. Okay. We're at 40.5%, but we are only servicing 3.5% of our students. I cannot imagine a reason to delay. I would certainly vote for, you know, patience is not my strong suit. And unless you told me that you felt that it would be You know, administratively, just too much to figure out in this short order. I would certainly motion to do away with the voucher program effective, the end of this current school year, it we really can't do much worse from an equity perspective serving 3.5% of our, our economically disadvantaged families we have 30%
[Paul Ruseau]: But it's actually worse means that there are people who qualify who don't really have the resources, but we're making them pay anyways. So, yeah, I mean, and obviously the 14 students who already have vouchers as you pointed out will be grandfathered. And that would carry over.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I do make a motion to end the EEC program.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I would like to make a motion that we approve the cost rate. I believe I was in the middle of a motion when that was interrupted. So can I have the floor again?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I made a motion to move the EEC up to 2021-2022 school year. I don't know if there was anybody interested in a second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. The motion was to take the recommendation number two and change that to be the school year 2021-2022.
[Paul Ruseau]: The motion is to discontinue the use of EEC vouchers subsequent to the 2021-2022 school year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Member McLaughlin? No. Member Mestel? Oh, member Hays, excuse me, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Restone. Member Rossell, yes. Mayor Longo, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? The motion does not include the EEC part. That was the motion was made for bullet one, two, one, three, four, five, six.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Seven in the affirmative. Zero in the negative. One, three,
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you, Mayor. And I do apologize that we keep talking about bathrooms. I feel like we talk about them every other meeting. But this appears to be a continuing problem that bathrooms are not available where students expect them to be. I'm quite concerned about the ability of closures to be communicated to a student who discovers they have to go to the bathroom and then finds out that the closest bathroom is not actually open. I worry about the obvious, frankly, trauma of a student who would have an accident in high school, especially. And I also, I worry about, do the teachers know that the bathroom close to them is closed at this moment in time? And that's why the student took three times as long to get back from the bathroom. It just feels a bit kind of cruel that every bathroom is not just open all the time. And I'm trying to understand the staffing requirements to have all the bathrooms open all the time. And I know that we have a presentation, which I assume we're about to hear, right? We have a report.
[Paul Ruseau]: That'd be great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, I appreciate the memo. It's quite detailed and I was quite impressed by that. I think it's also important to note that, you know, I gotta go pee is one scenario where you need a bathroom. We have students menstruating who have to find a nurse's office because we don't dispense these products in our bathrooms. It just seems like we have such a focus on social and emotional wellness and to risk traumatizing a student at such a socially challenging time of their lives as high school. I guess, like, do we need more custodians? What do we need at every bathroom? I understand we have far more bathrooms, the building was built for far more students than we have, but we have not closed off whole wings of the building and consolidated the students. Students are spread out all over the place. And just as if we had 5,000 students, the bathrooms are near where the students will be. So the number of students and the number of bathrooms to me is not really a very valid argument. And we didn't, when it was built for 5,000 students or whatever the number was, there wasn't like, let's build two or three bathrooms right beside each other. Cause there'll be so many kids. So I guess I just want to know that we don't have kids who can't get to the bathroom.
[Paul Ruseau]: so that we don't have any issues around keeping the bathrooms cleaned, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Here. Oh. Member Kreatz? Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau here. Mayor Landau here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Not tonight. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? I'm not actually sure procedurally if we're supposed to ask Member Hays for her vote. I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I also agree the long agenda is fine and looking at the last agenda of the Worcester school committee it's 184 pages long. So I think a little context on how big an agenda can be is important. They don't go through all of it, of course. Could you just speak up a little bit, Member Ruseau? Sorry. Sorry. I was just saying, I'm looking at the last agenda for the Worcester School Committee. It's 184 pages long. So I too am in favor of everything that is not disposed of remains in a section, but I think that we also have to acknowledge that we can't make a rule or make a motion as part of good of the order.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't have that in the list of things that are queued up in the rules subcommittee right now. I do have the review of the rules of the bullying prevention, which we just went through, but I don't have the other... thing that you're mentioning, which does have some sounds vaguely familiar, to be honest. So I don't know. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Most important question that a good question.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may remember so I believe that the legislation that requires there's funding. And I also know that the Well, while we apparently have a law preventing us from having unfunded mandates, we also know they still come at us fast and furious. So yeah, but I understand that there's money expected to be allocated. And actually there was money allocated for some of this this year already by Governor Baker.
[Paul Ruseau]: The testimony on this, I believe, is happening next week. So it has not been reported out yet. And the idea is to get us on the list of people for that testimony.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I have nothing to say unless anybody wants to talk about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, would you like me to take attendance?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham? I see her. Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Not yet. Member Sohir? Mayor Wendell Kern?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, it says actually after each biennial election. So it's actually only every two years.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, we did. How did we elect myself and vice chair? That was our caucus.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, actually, I think we might've done that the last time, sort of like a baby committee of the whole or something. And I don't really have a strong preference for either method that we did. My first two terms, I think we actually did have a little meeting before the regular meeting. I didn't find it to be difficult to just include it as an agenda item in our regular meeting. I don't have strong preference, but I certainly agree it should only be every two years.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Since member Kreatz mentioned that we had agreed to 630, so I'd like to make a motion to amend Um, rule nine and to strike 6 30 PM and make it six strike 6 PM and make it 6 30 PM.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just really think- Member Mustone? Okay. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: I thought we were still on number one or two, but everybody gets their one through 10 comments, so I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Also on number nine, I would like to remove, add after June, pursuant to policy BE-meetings, since that's not there and there is a policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone. Member Mustone is not here yet, I don't think. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lundgren.
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually it was last, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's okay. Mr. Greenspan, so if we add simply, you know, as allowed by law, that would be fine? Yes. So I make a motion to amend number 11 to include as allowed by law.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, you know, this is my first three years. We did not have any meetings in July or August, and I greatly appreciated it. It's an understatement. And then my fourth year was COVID all summer. Maybe it's my first two years where no meetings and then COVID summer. But this particular last August, I mean, I don't know if you all don't get the same emails I get, but I got asked by an awful lot of people about a lot of things related to school opening, not just related to the pandemic. And there was no place to have a presentation of the opening plan. A school committee meeting this particular August, I felt like, frankly, it was kind of crazy we didn't do one. There was just so much concern and questions in the community and between us. And, you know, the superintendent can either respond to seven of us individually, which I'm sure doesn't take a lot of time, or just to the whole body at once with an audience. I found it really difficult that we really didn't, I personally don't reach out to the administration to expect them to do any work since They shouldn't do any work unless the body has asked them to. So I went into the first of the school year with the same information as any other parent who got it out of MPS. And I will say that it felt like there wasn't enough, not that the administration wasn't doing enough, but that there was not enough information. And so I also want to say that, you know, I wrote this particular rule. I am also, cognizant of the fact that I don't want the whole school committee to have to not take summer vacations or do whatever else you might do with your time in the summer. That's sort of why this whole rule in when I wrote it is predicated on remote technology. Um, and, um, you know, if the legislature fails to pass anything, I would probably motion to, uh, bring it to the school committee to strike it entirely because, um, or to perhaps substitute it with something. Um, that's legal. It doesn't require us to meet as a body, but, um, um, you know, I, I, I think considering the demands on the, this, this body, I mean, I think. having to figure out how to work your school, your summer plans around a meeting that hopefully will be a short meeting is too much in my mind. So I just wanted to get out that information on the intent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, my hand was up. Can I just wanna add, you know, we're 32 minutes into this. We agreed earlier how we were gonna proceed. I was hoping maybe the members could agree that since we've agreed how we will proceed, that we will proceed the way we agreed. Because this is going to take 12 hours if we continue to discuss whether we should be discussing this. And I have to admit, I'm not particularly pleased with the progress we're making, and we aren't talking about the rules.
[Paul Ruseau]: Would you like me to do the roll call on these?
[Paul Ruseau]: What information?
[Paul Ruseau]: Since I don't see the policy myself, I'm just curious how long this is. I mean, some of these policies are many pages long. That's why I was like- Yeah, no, no, no.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. We can't be discussing a third option when we have two amendments on the floor. We have to vote the last, the second amendment is the last one we can be discussing. I mean, it can't go three amendments deep, Mayor, I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it was, um, uh, yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member, so this is the, to strike it or to replace it with a superintendent will send out a broadcast memo to all members each week in August. Yes, to amend it.
[Paul Ruseau]: that number 11 is amended. Uh, member is so, um. No. That mayor. Okay?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know procedurally, well, actually there was no second to the as allowed by law. So does the first amendment just die and we don't, I don't know how to dispose of it, that's why.
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually, that's my motion, so I'll just withdraw it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Member Ruseau. Thank you. Can I ask members to use the exact words that you want added changed the exact words. It feels like members are saying something and then the next time and they repeat it it's different than the third time they repeat it, it's different. The exact words matter, because those have to be words that are written into this document, and I don't want to be accused of making it up off of what I thought you might have meant. When we make motions and amendments and resolutions, every word as it is expected to be written has to be precisely given by the members. And it's just a constant problem that we have. And I know that's not on the agenda tonight, but as I try to keep up, I wanna know what words you want.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then the rest of it is gone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you hear me? Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone? Yes. Member Ruseau? Yes. And Mayor Wangokirik?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I would say I don't think there is an answer, but Member Cress, this is the exact reason that I spent all this time writing this document. It's because whether we decide it's at the superintendent's pleasure or whether, you know, whoever's third in the alphabet on the school committee wants to have the authority to cancel meetings, it doesn't matter what the rules are. We just have to agree they are what they are. And so that's exactly why this one's here because we had, you know, the January meeting, I mean, there was no written procedure or policy on how or who can do what. And I, you know, it got changed. And I feel like I didn't know about it until, you know, I should have known about it sooner. So, and this is actually a Many of these things for which we don't have a past practice or it's been variable have just been taken from other school committees policy rules, manuals that I've found in Cambridge and Belmont and other towns. So that, you know, mostly because I didn't want to write it from scratch if somebody else has already written it. And this one seems to be the norm. I also think that if a meeting is posted, there's something in open meeting law about it, but regardless, This was my proposal for number 14.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, I certainly agree that from a. reading perspective, putting them together makes sense, but rules really need to be one thing. One's about when we're having meetings, one's about canceling meetings, another one, this one's about emergencies. And whether it's this whole document, we could just call it the rules document and not put numbers in front of them, even just reference line numbers. And actually some school committees don't use rule numbers, which I think is, weird because then you can't talk about them like you know that rule number 18 that we keep bringing up except instead we say that page 32 subsection 9 but I'm not I'm opposed to combining them because I think that you know if there's an emergency it's easier to find a rule about emergencies than it is to find a rule about cancellations but It's six of one, half of them together. I'm not gonna die on this hill.
[Paul Ruseau]: I hate that. Actually, it was in the recording. We'll go back for it. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember must own.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members. So no. Mayor Long occur.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, since we have our, uh, uh, attorney fan here, um, I just want to ask him, we should have asked before we voted, but kind of moved into that quickly. Um, so the superintendent who is, is allowed to cancel meetings that are posted open meeting while allows not a lot of people to do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I completely agree with Member Graham. We have already voted to give the superintendent this authority. So I'd rather we not belabor something I disagree with.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It's clear. We are voting already even though nobody asked me what it means there, the chair, remembering that rules are about one thing only the chair will schedule to annual joint meetings with the city council period. One of those meetings will be a spring meeting, the budget meeting. So it will be a joint meeting. We don't have to keep adding the word joint everywhere. The rest of this is about the two annual joint meetings of the city council. So then we will have a spring meeting, which would be a budget with them. And then a more general meeting sometime between October and March, which is on goals and progress. That's the second meeting. There's only two meetings. They're both joint meetings because that's what this rule is about. And certainly if the city council isn't ready or able to actually have such a meeting, then, you know, their rules at present do not actually I forget if this is in there. If there is some rule in there where they have a joint session with us. But, you know, these are rules, these are. what we want to happen. And, you know, if the superintendent comes and says, you know, we, we can't find a date this year, or we can't, you know, it says spring, maybe, I mean, it's just nice to imagine that before the summer gets here, we finished with our budget. But, you know, these are rules. These are not like we're not etching them in concrete on the side of City Hall. If this isn't going to work this year, or or whatever, then you know superintendent can simply ask that we suspend rule 20 for this year. That's how it works. City Council does it. Well, they used to do it continuously suspending the rules, all of these things can just be suspended by a majority vote at any moment. and can even be stricken from the rule set. This is just an attempt to get us to have a better relation with city council, which I'm quite aware they actually want to have a better relationship with us. And this is something taken from another school committee's manual that I liked and thought, wow, this is good. But if we don't wanna do it at all, then somebody should just vote to strike it. Motion, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I make a motion to strike rules 20 entirely.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bestone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion fails. Mayor, I don't have the language for the other motion, the other amendment that was on the floor and I apologize. Yep.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So just making sure I get this right, the chair will schedule one annual meeting, joint meeting with the city council.
[Paul Ruseau]: Period. Get rid of the rest of the rule?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm perfectly amenable to that. So those two changes, actually just one change, and then the deletion of the rest of that is what I have here.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll second that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Member Mayor Long-Legger?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. So there were a number of types of meetings that I'm not a lawyer, so I didn't go reading all of Mass General Law. There were a number of types of meetings. There's the hearing, like we have for the budget every year. There's our regular meetings where we have to vote everything that we actually ever vote in other meetings. And we know executive sessions and special meetings. And these were other types of meetings. I didn't do much research into what's the difference between a workshop and a retreat. They, of course, if we are all there, it is in fact a public meeting. So I certainly would think that it would be reasonable to add that, you know, that they will not be broadcast or recorded to add that language from 20 to 21. If that's the motion, I can write that down.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. One second, sorry, Mayor. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Member Ayer-Lungo-Koehn?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't hear a second. Thank you, Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay Um, one second. I have to write that before I. Um so, um, this meet more than just during our school committee meetings. I mean, whether it's, you know, phone call, I mean, I don't know that they have necessarily a standing meeting, maybe they do. But this just makes it so that that's an expectation of the school committee. I think that the mayor and the superintendent, as I've often spoken about how I find that particular relationship to be difficult in that you know the mayor is the mayor but she's also just another member of the school committee so it's, I've often spoke about how important it is that the mayor's role in the school system is that of every other school committee member. I also recognize that when we're having workshops, meetings, et cetera, that scheduling and figuring out the agenda, which is normal for the mayor as the agenda setter in our policies, or it's the standard one, that they meet and they actually talk and this happens. And all this inclusion advice chair here is to say that if the mayor decides that while she meets with the superintendent as needed, that she wants to pass on the authority of, this regular meeting of like, how's the agenda looking? Is it too big? I don't know what the heck the meeting would look like. But that it doesn't have to be the chair, because the chair is the mayor. If we did not have a mayor who is also the chair of the school committee, I can assure you, I would not have put the words vice chair there. But the mayor is not a part time job. And And honestly, I don't know how she's standing still. So that's why I think it's important to give her the leverage to pass on something which looking at this rule is really just administrative and nothing more. So I would not support that amendment.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to remind everybody that the chair can always delegate anything other than what's legally not allowed to be delegated. It feels a bit like this is not, I don't honestly feel like people are being honest about why we're talking about this particular piece in here. It does not make any sense unless there's a problem with who the vice chair is. And this seems a bit absurd and we are on page number 23. We have 47 minutes left before we decide whether to accept the whole thing. Are we gonna really discuss things that don't matter endlessly?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bestone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? No.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. And I'm going to need member Kreatz to send the exact language because I couldn't keep up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you I agree we need more rules actually than this I have five or six queued up that I thought were too much to add here, things that you know like a rule on how method public members school committee for instance formats resolutions. there's a couple competing ones in the country, and it would be nice if we all did it the same way so that there was some uniformity. But I didn't include that here, and I would expect and hope other members will offer new rules when they feel the urge to.
[Paul Ruseau]: Could that be repeated again?
[Paul Ruseau]: uh, as related to policy for school committee evaluation and objectives.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, we have information member so effort is it I'm asking the mayor, I believe she knows that Medford is not a online posting city that is a specific designation that we have to do with the Secretary of State correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: For you to remember, McLaughlin, I will need the new rule written out so I can read it and type it in. And we should talk about numbering of rules when we get to the end, because we've added and removed some, but I'll need that in order to call a roll call on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, so this is only for new, this is actually, um, number 42 is a, um, we actually just passed the new rule on this. Um, last meeting on the numbering of items. And so, and the, just for some context, the sort of the template on how I drafted this in our last meeting, which we did pass, is just to follow the city council's rule. On January 1st, the year changes. And as items are submitted to the city clerk, which in our cases, as items are submitted to the superintendent, they just get the next number and the numbers just go up from there. And then on the next year, 2021, it becomes the first one to coming in is number one. And yeah, this will give us so many ability, so much ability to keep track of what's where, which is just impossible to do now because it's like, you know, The January 7 agenda item number 400 new business, where is that like, just give them a number. And that's their number. We will probably have to discuss the city council has rules on how to dispose of all items. So, and something gets a number. And there has to be a term in it terminus to this it has to be, you know, resolved, performed, responded to all kinds of, we don't have any of those, that level of detail, but I think this is in much greater detail in the thing that we passed last meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: There was also Metro Public Library to be removed.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll second this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Long-Wood.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz. Yes. Member Mistow. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. And Mayor Landau-Kern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Musto? Yes. Remember Rousseau? Yes. Mayor Long-Leclerc?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I got this. This rule from another community, there's several communities around us that actually do this. It's not like you have to bring a birth certificate or anything. I believe, not Zoom, but there's another meeting software that's popular in cities where if you wanna register, if you wanna, you know, when we have our meetings here, you do register to speak, you put your thumb up. and they have a button in their version of the software. You click it and say, I'd like to speak on this topic and you just have to give your name and then you're in the queue. This also allows, I know at least in Somerville, public comment is limited to a certain amount of time. If two people want to speak, then they get their three minutes or whatever they use there and it's over. If 200 people want to speak, then the first 10 people get to speak. This is not a public meeting this is a meeting in public, a critically important distinction. And it is drilled into us at MSC. For a reason. The superintendent, and all the staff that come to these meetings, it is not like the city council. You know, if the city council meets for a long time and the clerk needs to come in late, then the clerk comes in late. The superintendent, a half a dozen principals, these are not people who can be just at our leisure until midnight and then expected to show up at 6.30 or seven the next morning all rosy. And we do this to them over and over again. So the only point here, there's two points, one, I really thought that it would be helpful for minutes to simply say, I want to speak. Do we have the technology to accomplish that at this moment? Perhaps that's not the case. And then the other part of this amendment is to strike based on the number of individuals signed up to speak. agree with striking that, I actually just need something. Otherwise the chair may limit comment to two minutes. It's like, then we should just change it. The chair can set comment to anything she wants up to two minutes. I think I need some, in my mind, I need something else after the chair may limit comment to two minutes. And like something to indicate, you know, not that the chair would do this, but like if the chair just wanted to get out early tonight, I was like I'm going to make public comment two minutes, so I can get to the bar, I mean that's not our intent, I think, as a school committee to be limiting public comment. Sorry. But you know. I don't know what we want to say if we're going to limit it to two minutes why why or how.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, sorry. Member... So, yeah, just could I... make a friendly amendment to that based on the number of individuals signed up to speak, just simply based on the number of individuals appearing to want to speak.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes, Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, sorry, Mayor. My hand's down.
[Paul Ruseau]: Robert's rules also clearly states very early on that all these rules are do what you want with them, you can change them. It can be anything you want. And I don't think for a body such as ours where we're not coming to work eight hours a day, although sometimes it feels like that as a school committee member that such a strict timeline makes any sense. We have a process requiring us to have two meetings about a policy change. You know, if we all make a change and, you know, you have to have been somebody who was in the affirmative. So, you know, this was, this is only gonna happen when somebody is a supporter of the thing that happened. And then we find out something that says, oh, we just made a mistake. That's, Yeah, I don't see any.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I would say, the mayor, the superintendent, our request to get something on the agenda, which we would be putting a motion to rescind on the agenda. Just like if we put a motion on there to discuss an individual child's IEP and an open public meeting, we couldn't discuss it ever. The superintendent and certainly the chair would be like, no, you cannot have that on the agenda as an elected official. the law still applies. So I would imagine that if one of us sent this in, that the superintendent who receives it would be like, oh, and pause with the anticipation that the thing could be rescinded, unless we put a timeline or something. I don't know that we don't have to get into how specifically this would work, because it would really depend on what the motion was.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kritz. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone. Member Mustone, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, no. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, since we don't have a set of rules as a school committee, I don't know what to do with a tabled part of a rule that we have not passed.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, is that what the language was?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. This is actually a pretty common practice, and it is for one meeting. It's not that We no longer use Roberts rules, we do this actually on a regular basis that our meetings, we suspend the rules, which is a formality we say with no meaning since we don't have any. We suspend the rules to move an item out of it out of the out of order on the agenda, that's a suspension that this number 74 allows. all rule, like we wouldn't just like descend into chaos. Something's still happening. We still have a chair. This is just pretty standard stuff. That's all I have to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? No. Mayor Lococo? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Sorry, Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, here. Member Mayor Mungo-Kern?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I apologize. I did not ask if there was a student representative on the Zoom. I don't know if anybody knows.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the presentation. So I certainly understand my HR is sort of the first thing here is there a plan to keep coming. I mean, HR isn't the whole shebang. I get that it's sort of like a critical step, because it's like how we get our people, or even how we treat our people. There's a lot about that. But is it too soon, having not done this yet for HR, to know what the next step is, or have you been engaged for a next step?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham had asked a question that made me remember my other question. Will we get your recommendations even if some of them are not the most solvable? Like, if you come back and say, we can hire all of the We can hire candidates that are of all kinds of diverse backgrounds. They're going to move here from wherever they went to college and they're going to go to the W's and get a 25% pay raise. I want to know, will you tell us if the problem, one of the major problems is that our pay is, I'm just making numbers up, is 10 or 15% too low. You can do all you want. You're never going to have a diversified staff because They're in demand and districts with money to burn or nobody has money to burn other than Cambridge, but other districts who have a higher pay scale are also looking and I don't for a second, of course, have any problems with staff going to find a place where they can get paid more. That is a That's life, and that's what they should do if that's what they want. But I want us to hear it, even if it puts us in an uncomfortable position when it's time to start our next negotiations for a contract. I mean, if you come here and say, your teacher pay is 15% too low, and I'm just making up a number, I want to hear it, because I want to be able to answer to the community who will be like, OK, you know, year two, year three, year four, and you're still have, you know, essentially an all white workforce, what's happening? And the answer is, if part of the answer is we need to override to dramatically increase pay across the board, I'd like to know that instead of just imagining, you know, reading an ed report or comparing us to other towns by myself on the DESI documentation. It'd be nice to have somebody who doesn't really have a stake in this. to say, you can do all you want and you may have some success, but if a big root problem is your pay is not going to cut it, somebody has to tell us that other than me and other than the teachers union. And, you know, like we all have too much in this game. It's not a game, but so will you tell us that even if it's a very uncomfortable truth?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's a long way to ask that question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Member Ruseau. Thank you. Um, I, I really appreciate having the plan for future weeks, which is, seems like a huge turning point that we can plan more than the next day.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I also think there's another dependency, that's that the state can come through with tests. I still can't buy one at the CVS, can you? But somehow they're gonna distribute millions of them. That's fascinating. But my question was about, in the last, and on Friday's update from the superintendent, it said that you were doing PCRs this week, individual PCRs. Was that just a?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to share, nothing changed.
[Paul Ruseau]: I hate to just ask such a technical question because there was so much good stuff there, but do we have to approve that grant or is it being a DESE grant we are not required to approve?
[Paul Ruseau]: And so I certainly don't mean to apply. I just mean to like to receive the funds to receive the funds we do, but I. I feel like, you know, like we don't approve like title, whatever funds. So I'm just wondering if being a state grant, if we don't have to approve those funds also, I don't know. But if we do, I just, you know, somebody should throw it on the agenda sometime so we can do that. But okay. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is very exciting. Actually, this was something I was going to ask about and then this is sitting on my desk right here. So is this being covered through our ARPA funding and all that other stuff?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The number of meetings, I mean, I'm not particularly in love with any particular number. I do want us to stop having the directors and the principals putting on a dog and pony show because as we have discussed, it puts them in a really awkward position, you know, in that, well, they don't work for us. They work for the superintendent. And we are supposed to articulate the goals that the superintendent is expected to meet. And we're supposed to trust that, well, not trust, but trust and verify that she is meeting those goals. We are not supposed to be saying to each principal what they should be doing. It's, in fact, not appropriate.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And so, you know, when I think about the things that I want, I mean, I want to know that students participating in sports and band and that there is an equitable spending on that, that we are not spending a fortune on sports buses and nothing on band buses. Those are the kinds of things I want to know. And I just want to be able to see in black and white, yes, it's happening. And a check mark, I'm literally fine. If you can prove that all students, regardless of whether it's sports or band, are getting access to the tax dollars that we're providing equally, because it is not happening now and nobody can convince me otherwise, then I mean, that's like something I feel like we could just wrap up and stop talking about in budgets. Instead, I'm sitting here taking multiple teacher contracts and the payments to coaches, and I'm trying to figure out how many students and I don't have that information. And I'm trying to do all this like magical division in math and creating a spreadsheet that doesn't make any damn sense and cobble together information to try to intuit it. And I understand that the accounting system isn't really helpful here, in that it's all over the place, and some of it's in community schools, and some of it's in student account fees, and some of it's, it's just that it feels like, you know, this is year five for me, and, you know, it's year five of wondering, are we ever gonna let all the kids be treated like they're valued, instead of sports always getting everything?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. I just want to thank Member McLaughlin for her point about transparency and the value of the budget meetings that we've had in the past. And something I had meant to mention earlier, and her comment reminded me, when the mayor did her first budget, that was an award-winning budget, know, I don't know for sure that the content is truly identical, but it is accessible. And transparency is a weird word. I mean, it's all there, so it's transparent. But if it's not actually consumable or accessible, then it's sort of a not, I wouldn't really call it the most accessible document. So, I mean, and obviously this isn't, in the middle of a pandemic, this is not the year, but I hope that within a couple of years, we're able to do something magical like happened with the budget that we have at the city. I'm not sure if you've compared the before and after, but it's kind of a shocking transformation. And when I look at our documents, They're rough. I mean, the content's there. It's just not a cohesive, here's our community, here's our school system. And when I think about transparency, I bet people would much rather look at a document similar to the city budget than sit through any number of hours of meetings if they could just go to it and find what they want and learn about it. So I just wanted to thank Member McLaughlin for that. reminding me about that word transparency, because I think it's really important, but not important for this year, obviously.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you repeat that new be it resolved, since I didn't quite follow?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Russell. Suzy, do you have that exact language? Okay, thank you. Oh, I'm supposed to do the roll call, aren't I?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion to waive the reading of this. It's a rather technical motion and will not really come across well if it's read out loud.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So this is an update to our policy BDB. Last year, we made some major renovations as an understatement to this policy, and I certainly saw that our renovations last year were a First, very good step. This is a step to offer us the ability to do what City Council does and what all legislative bodies do, and that is that all motions and resolutions put forth by the members get an actual number, so that instead of us talking about that thing we did that month ago and without having a number attached to it, it's challenging to talk about, but more importantly than how hard it is to talk about, it is really difficult to track, to track things that we send a subcommittee to track reports we've asked for, and they just become this big blob of things that hopefully can be taken care of. And so this change would actually add, the numbering system, and the numbering system that is proposed here matches the one that city council uses. I just thought it was important that we, within the city of Medford, have some consistency. So it would be the year, and it's the calendar year, and then a number, and the number is assigned by the superintendent's office as they receive motions and resolutions from members. and it's not really the most complicated thing. You would not know your number, but you would send in a request to get on the agenda, and a superintendent's executive assistant would reply, and instead of saying it's on the agenda, would also tell us what the number is for our own records. And... I included some examples because I personally find examples to be very helpful. It also includes a slight change to the format as it will appear on the agenda, but it is and there's an additional piece of information, two pieces of information. One is the meeting date requested and the submitted date. So you may recall in December, I had two motions related to discipline that appeared at a very inopportune time on the agenda, even though I had submitted them weeks ahead of time. So this just allows for clarification for when the member submitted it. and when the member expected it to be on the agenda. So, with, if there's any questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: Number two.
[Paul Ruseau]: We waived the reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: We waived the reading of it. So there was a, I believe member Graham, were there any answers?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion to waive the reading of number three.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is actually an update to what is further up on our regular agenda. We had actually previously, we've already changed policy BDH around public participation at our last meeting, but we had, I had failed to realize that that language is actually present in another policy. So this just brings it in line with the other policy. So there's really, it's a policy that references another policy that didn't get updated. So. Any questions? Yeah, I know, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, member Ruseau. On January 10th, seven of us voted to do exactly that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information, excuse me. Point of information. The email address is in the policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that's not it. Policy BEDH, Unarmed Policy Manual.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just think that not passing this means that we have a policy we approved. and we say something completely different on our actual agenda. I mean, I'm not really, if the policy we approved last week, people have a problem with, we can totally revisit it and change it, but we shouldn't have a policy that says this. And then the physical agenda we're sending out this week, and then presumably the next time, if we don't pass this, will be completely wrong. It will say, you can email, and you will have it read out loud. And guess what? It's not going to happen because that's not our policy. It's just what's printed on the agenda right now. So, I mean, I'm a little surprised about this conversation because that was what we changed in the last meeting. This was just record keeping to clear things up so that they were correct with what we already approved.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're gonna have to read that at every meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: But Mayor, I mean, the goal of this was also to dramatically reduce the amount of this stuff you have to read. So if you wanna add more to read, That's up to you.
[Paul Ruseau]: What are we doing?
[Paul Ruseau]: Number five?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, absolutely. I'm not tabling number, the number, the second number three. No. Can you repeat yourself, please? No, I would not like to table number three. I've worked for three and a half years on this document, and we don't have a set of rules. I'm not tabling it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Ruseau? I'd be fine with setting up a committee of the whole for later this week. But I mean, how many years can a school committee go without a set of rules? Apparently generations, but I mean, come on, time's up. It's kind of crazy. I mean, we have a new member here who has no idea how we operate. No idea. And guess what? Half the members in this room have asked me the same questions over and over and over again in my four years.
[Paul Ruseau]: I couldn't hear you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members, so point of information. Thank you. I appreciate that we all have busy lives. I sent this to all members over two weeks ago. So, I mean, the policies on our policy manual is not a rules document for members. And I mean, I'm not interested in operating in an essentially lawless environment, which is what we've done for the four years I've been on this committee. Basic questions, none of us could agree right now what those answers are. And it's just, it's embarrassing. It is embarrassing. So, and I'm personally opposed to sending it back to my own subcommittee to talk about with myself and Melanie and member McLaughlin and member Graham. I mean, all of us don't get to actually have a conversation about it there. So Committee of the Whole is absolutely the only place, because, I mean, the mayor has comments, other people have comments, they won't get to be heard at a subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. If people can get their calendars out, how's the time to schedule?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, point of information.
[Paul Ruseau]: There isn't one.
[Paul Ruseau]: So that we can get a hard copy. The rules document is not a policy. Like MASC is policies. These are rules.
[Paul Ruseau]: Some of these rules reference policies, but most of them do not.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Ruseau. I mean, you can go to the policy manual and hit the print button. There's hundreds, if not thousands. Are you asking that somebody is dedicated to copying, pasting out of a online repository and creating a document that you can then review, because it will be hundreds, if not thousands of pages long, because it is policies on every aspect of public schools. There is no rules manual. There's no comparison to. That is the main reason that I spent this time, because it's embarrassing that we don't have one.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's 350 pages.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, we were going to schedule this now.
[Paul Ruseau]: For this week?
[Paul Ruseau]: So Thursday?
[Paul Ruseau]: And we're all here. If we do emails and texts, I mean, it's gonna drag it out for days to get this done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, she's not able to come, sorry, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Tuesday the 1st. Can we make sure it's not an hour? I mean, if people are going to want to go line by line, I don't think an hour is a rational number. And if we do small sections at a time, it'll be 2023 before we've even gotten through the document.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is a motion to repeal this policy, which does not exist in the policy manual anymore, and it smells a bit like something that might have existed before open meeting law, frankly. This whole members may, it's, oh, I didn't put the full language, I apologize, but it says the four members shall constitute a quorum, oh, but a smaller number may meet and adjourn from day to day. No, actually, three members, if they're a part of a subcommittee, is a quorum. It just doesn't make any sense, and it's not in the policy manual. So I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Three members who are not part of a subcommittee actually cannot adjourn. Adjourn requires that there was, in fact, a meeting. This language doesn't exist at MASC anymore, and I suspect it is from the days before meeting law when, well, things were. very different. But there's no way for three members who are not part of a subcommittee to get together from time to time and adjourn because you can't have met. There's no internal consistency to the policy or sentence. I just noticed it when I was looking for the word quorum. So it's non-existent policy anywhere else. And I just think it makes sense that we do the hard work of cleaning up our policies that are outdated.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, that is correct. And in fact, specifying four members is actually problematic as well, because if there was an absence on the, if there was a vacancy on the school committee, for instance, then in fact, well, if there were six, then I guess four is still the number. But anyways, the open meeting law supersedes all of this stuff and goes into graphic detail. So that's correct. Is there a motion to approve?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, mayor. I was reading this policy and It does not look like it's been updated in a long time and was quite concerning. So just, you know, references to towns and we're not a town and a bunch of other little things that comparing it to the current policy and our policy service, it needed to be updated, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin is correct that the procedure policy, which are good definitions for which word to use and when, does say that everything is in here is part of what is expected, but I'll just say policy says that the superintendent would take this information back and make a determination of effort, and then we would vote If after hearing that, whether to fulfill the request, the procedure policy also does say that the superintendent has the freedom to just fill it, fulfill the request if it turns out that, you know, you go back and it's a half an hour of work and you're like, well, it'll take more time to put it on the agenda and come back in two weeks and get us to approve it. So that is what it says. So, I mean, there's nothing wrong with this as written other than If the superintendent goes back and says, this is going to take a person, you know, a week of work, then that shouldn't happen. We should vote once we know that. Which I mean, obviously this sounds rather important. So I certainly suggest we would vote for it. But if it's, if it turns out that this is just a huge labor cost.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Landau-Kerr?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm a member of the Special Education Subcommittee. Well, I was in the last term. And I guess my question is, what policies have we actually I don't recall any policy discussion or dialogue or passing a single policy in the two years that that subcommittee has met. So I absolutely think that we need to have a whole lot of policy modification, but we're sitting here as a committee unaware that we have a partial sentence in our existing policy. that we have a policy that says stuff that none of us even knew about. So, I mean, I think it's our job as school committee members to, it's our number one job is to write policy. And if we're not writing policy and just talking about policy, we're not, we're just talking. Anybody can talk. We were elected to write, edit, change, delete policy. And I don't recall any policy coming out of that subcommittee, even though I wish there was. So I just think it's important to clarify that. I don't think that that letter around, that point in that letter about policy was just not accurate. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think that practice is certainly organic, and the policy should be black and white, printed, well, in our manual, and enforceable. If it's organic, then how can we hold the superintendent accountable to enforcing our policies that we pass? She needs to know in black and white what we said is our policy. And if we don't, then it's up to her and we can't come back and say, you didn't enforce the policy. I mean, we had a conversation here last year about the out-of-school suspension. And I had made a comment that was rebuffed by the assistant superintendent and probably the superintendent, I can't remember the details. And they were right, where I said, well, I'm sure if things are really bad, like somebody commits a murder, our policy doesn't have to take that into account. The superintendent will just do what she should do. And the point that they made was, that was made was that we should not be passing policy that intends for it to be violated in certain circumstances. That's just not, that's like a, you know, this isn't law, but you know, it'd be like passing a law that expects people to just break the law when it's appropriate or inconvenient. So I don't disagree that practice is certainly organic and practice should, When practice is changing, policy should be changed, but what policy is absolutely, in my mind, 100% not organic. Policy can certainly be written to be vague, where it can't be too detailed. Sometimes there's just no way to be as explicit as we perhaps would like. An example is the out-of-school suspension policy, where we left that except where The law requires, for instance, a suspension or expulsion or whatever we said. So, you know, we didn't go into the gory details. We sort of left a vague sentence that covered our bases. But I think that policy is absolutely not organic. It's on paper, and that's our job. It's our number one job, is to, if practice is not matching policy, and we like practice, It is our responsibility as a legislative body to write a motion, to change the policy, to match what we want it to. It is not to say, well, that's not what really happens, and just move along. I mean, that's why we have probably hundreds of policies that are out of date.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, it would be a member could put a motion to send to the subcommittee a recommendation on whether to implement or how to implement. Implementation is definitely not our responsibility as a school committee, but whether or not to write a policy requiring that the buddy program exists in all of the schools and at what levels. you know, all that work around the buddy program in the subcommittee that didn't come to this committee, there was an implied expectation that the full committee already agreed. You know, the new sign at the high school, I think is gorgeous. I saw it again the other day when I was signing the bills. It's beautiful. I don't know that this full committee said to the subcommittee, hey, go do a sign. I think it started in the subcommittee. So all that work was done, all that like excitement, happened, it came to the full committee, and we were all essentially screwed. If we decided we didn't want to have the sign, we would have all looked like jerks because all the work had been done. The work should not get done if this committee does not, by a four vote majority, agree it should get done. That's like baseline. So doing work as members, we should all be doing work as members, and we do. But that's not committee work. That's not with the authority of the school system or with the spending of resources, the school system. Maurice comes to those meetings. Joan, sorry, Superintendent Edouard-Vincent comes to those meetings. Director of People's Services comes to those meetings. These are people who are all getting paid to be there. And none of us as a full committee asked them to do that. And to me, that's just, It's not that the work isn't good or that the work shouldn't continue. It's that we should be voting for work to happen before we spend money on the behalf of the taxpayers. None of us have that authority as individuals or as subcommittee chairs.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to motion to nominate Jenny Graham for vice chair.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, Jenny Graham. I don't know why I'm saying yes, Jenny Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Paul Russo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think this particular go to the order is, relevant to something I'll be putting on the next agenda, which is a full set of rules that I spent three years writing. And in there is a set of parts related to orientation. And I will be sending that to the committee tonight so that we will have plenty of, individually have time to read the entire set of rules. And I hope that there can be a whole section built out on orientation and what it means what we mean by orientation, because I think that is definitely something that is, I've asked our new member, Hayes, when I sent her the rules tonight to bring a truly unique, we all were in her position at one point of not knowing how to be a school committee member at all. Um, so I've asked her to write as many notes as possible as she reads the rules, because I feel a little concerned that our rules that I'm going to send you all tonight, um, we are all sort of living it already. So, um, her perspective as somebody who does not have any rules and will surely have lots of questions is probably the most valuable one, but, um, around orientation, I could not agree more that we need to, we really need to build that out. What do we even mean? So thank you. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: I won't, I'll let you. I'll leave it to suspense for tonight. There's 84 of them so far, and they're not really part. Some of them are part of our policies. Much of them are not. A lot of them are just past practice that I've observed in my four years. And then I trolled school committees all around the state for their rules. Interestingly, we're not the only school committee that has no written set of rules, which shocked me. But a bunch of them do have rules written down and they were really quite good documents to serve as the springboard. But I'll send that tonight. I didn't want to put it on the agenda tonight because it's, it's, it's not a small effort to read the full 18 pages. But I think it'll be worth it once we have something approved.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was just looking for the mayor and... Jenny Graham, vice chair, might get to be the fastest vice chair actually running a meeting in history.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't remember the proper order. Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz? Yes. I feel like I'm in third grade learning the alphabet or whatever that was. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, that's me remember so is yes, and Mayor logo car.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. First of all, thank you, Mayor Hines and all of your staff and actually all the staff of MPS. It's hard to fathom that after the exhaustion that was already upon everybody, that somehow that could look like a good day after this last couple of weeks. I have a couple of sort of detailed questions about test and stay. Other districts that have done test and stay, what I've heard from school committee members and other districts is that because of an inability to have 10,000 tests available per week or more, the nursing staff has had to ration it and decide which symptoms are bad enough to suggest that the students should actually get a rapid test. And that just seems to me to be reckless and playing with fire. In my mind, If we do test and stay, if a kid comes in and goes sniffles once, we use a test. Are there hopes that we're going to be able to have enough tests to implement test and stay? I mean, I don't know if the supply chain is different for schools than it is for literally the rest of us, but as somebody wrote a funny little thing about trying to get a test on walmart.com, and I almost cried, I laughed so hard. because I mean, I don't know about you all, but I've been to walmart.com probably a thousand times and gotten tests once. So I just want us to not dangle test and stay if we're not gonna have thousands of tests a week coming in. I also wanna remind everybody who's on the call, not us, not on the members, but that test and stay has nothing to do with your unvaccinated child. It's a friendly reminder that And I did have one question other than the volume of inventory. Is the isolation timeframe the same for unvaccinated students as it is for vaccinated?
[Paul Ruseau]: I do not. The password has been changed since I last had access to it. So I see Dr. Cushing is probably going to send that over to me. Great.
[Paul Ruseau]: given at this, yes. I'd be fine with waiving the reading, since we have read it several times, unless somebody else wants to hear it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call, Mayor, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Stowe, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So, this is a motion asking that the administration prepare a presentation to us that includes what the plan was, implementations, details, and this was offered On December 6th, there it is under the table, sorry. So the date that I was looking for data was between the start of school and October 31st. I would like to change that to be December 31st, unless somebody has already done the work to do the present, to gather the data. But if nobody has gathered the data, it makes sense to just get the first half of the year. So that is my request. I would like to hear from, I'm assuming Dr. Cushing, whether he has gathered any data before changing that. It's not a problem to change the date. Thank you. So that's, That's my motion to move that ahead with December 31st date, or wherever the last day of school was in December. Is there a motion to approve?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays? Yes. Member Kreatz?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Miss Stone. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Langevin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Katz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Ms. Jones.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Estella, yes. Member Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Number three is how the city council does their work, the state legislature, the federal government, all legislative bodies. So I do think it's appropriate that when we spend our money, that the full committee has agreed to it. And we are spending our money when we have the superintendent, assistant superintendents, directors, principles all coming together to discuss something, that is an expense. And without a majority vote of the committee, I don't believe we have the authority as individual subcommittee chairs to spend resources. So do I like it all the time? No, because it can be clunky. But it's literally how every legislative body in this country works. So I don't really feel like It's a change, there's no question, but I certainly support it. Not so much because I like things to just take longer, but because it's not free. It's not free. And that we as individual subcommittees do not have the authority to spend money. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: One moment. Still getting used to the fact that when you say that, that's me. Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion that we schedule that immediately right this moment.
[Paul Ruseau]: Whoever wants to speak. Thank you. Do we have an analysis of the cost of this? I don't certainly have any issue with the, conceptually, I mean, as everybody knows, I think we should charge nothing for anything if it's public school. But, I mean, are we talking $10,000? Are we talking a million dollars? Like, I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays. Yes. Member Kreatz. Yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone. Yes. Member Russell. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. So we've had a year. year or five years or something. Sorry, I don't remember when we started doing this, where we were, since the pandemic started, where emails were read into the record. I'll just be blunt, I don't think it works. This results in you know, presentations from the public health update, superintendent's update, and then we read in out loud questions from the public where they ask all the questions that were just answered moments ago. It doesn't make any sense. There's, I honestly can't remember why we decided to start doing this, but the access that the public has to our meetings is greater than it has ever been. As we can see there, well, we're down to 32, but we were up to 60 people on a meeting with, frankly, a rather boring agenda. So if the public wishes to speak in our meetings, they can raise their hands and say their piece, as they have always been able to do and still could, even with this policy as it was written. But I think reading the emails into the record is just not, it's not working and it's not something I see any other community doing. So I recommend that we, the middle ground here that I recommend is that we change it, that the secretary will continue to monitor the inbox as we expect the secretary to do, and that the secretary will forward those emails on. My recommendation is just immediately upon seeing them, there's no reason to wait to the meeting because then the rest of us don't have a chance to see them because we're interacting in the meeting. So this is my recommendation.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. Yes, actually, you're right. It was the vice chair that was doing the reading of them because I was the vice chair for the first year of the pandemic. And so I just picked it up as the person who was at a gigantic screen and it was easiest, I thought. But I've switched it in this change to be the secretary since I was hoping I would be the secretary. I'm sure you've all noticed I bring my computer to the meetings. I mean, doing this kind of work in our meeting on an iPhone is going to be a challenge. And I certainly don't have any problems or qualms doing that task as the secretary. You're right, it was the vice chair.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't actually inherently have a problem with that. The issue I have is implementation. So I mean, I would be okay with it if we would say something like the secretary can read the message and decide that it is not necessary. So like in our most recent meetings, people email in and they list nine questions to ask. And it's just like it's an interrogation of an administrator from an email, not even from a person standing there asking questions which, and I, I'm particularly uncomfortable where I get to decide whether it gets read into the record or not, I don't feel, I don't know if other members would be comfortable with that, but it just feels like. a good way for one of us to be targeted because we decided we weren't going to read it because we didn't think it was necessary or appropriate. It's also worth noting, we sort of had this problem that we didn't address. And we, I don't think we, well, I take it back. Remember Vanderclue, a couple of times last year when she was reading emails, really declined to read the email because of the content. People write things that they wouldn't say out loud. And I'm not talking about questions about grading or something, I'm talking about things they wouldn't be willing to come to the podium and say, they will happily type it in. And so, I mean, I didn't make a stink about it when member VanderKloof made that decision. But the bottom line is, is that she was, you know, using her judgment to do something that I don't know that we all should be doing that we should be censoring the public comment. So I prefer something more black and white, where I don't read them in that there may all emails received. our public record and freedom member, it's not freedom, public records requests can be used to access them. And obviously if they're forwarded to all the members, you know, we're free to do what we want with them as well. I just find it, you know, the issue, I do think there is an issue we need to address around. And I think member McLaughlin, you brought it up when we did the policy updates around public comment where we expect members of the public to provide their name and residential address in Medford. And that there are certain circumstances for which that's not safe for some people to do. And I know Massachusetts has a law that, I forget what it's called, but there's a mechanism for that. But that's not what you're talking about here. You're talking about just like how uncomfortable it is to get up and speak. And that I can certainly relate to. I'm certainly open to finding another way, but using up tens of minutes, an hour meeting is just too much of mine on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you, sorry. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mustone. Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lococo?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Hays.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Kreatz.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Musil.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rizzo, yes. Mayor Lococo.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. I noticed that for the incoming kindergartners where we are at capacity, we're dispersing them to the other schools. What's the plan or thinking for those students for next year? Will they have to remain away from their zoned school communities? Will they be offered or will they be required to go back to the other school?
[Paul Ruseau]: So it won't be a one size fits all.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great. And I mean, the sibling thing, I assume, of course, you'd handle that. I'm just particularly worried about transportation because it's really a suffer run, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, okay. Thank you. Glad you're thinking about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I also meant to ask, could each of these documents that were left with us please be emailed to us? Yes. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I haven't spoken from this one I think ever actually. So I'll start with just my remarks. So joining a school committee is quite an experience. My very first term within a couple of weeks, we had a crisis, which at the time everybody said, once you've been through this, you're gonna be good. And then apparently that was a lie. made me feel very much like just so comfortable. She was so calm, I think Mr. Kuchar had mentioned that calmness is a feature, actually several people have probably mentioned that. And I think that calmness came from experience, I assume. And, you know, when I think about what Paulette brought to the school committee, although for a couple more hours, I think about how the context of how we, you know, how we got where we are today. Having that historical knowledge, I assume helps her become, and it certainly provides calmness to me and I believe my colleagues, when we're facing things that are new to us. My first question is, well, what does Paulette know about this? Because I assume you know. a lot about a lot of the things that we have faced, although I'm not sure you've been through a pandemic before. So I just wanna say, I greatly appreciate your historical knowledge and the fact that your context gives you this calmness. I don't know if you, maybe you were calm before you joined the school committee. How would I know? But it's definitely something that changes the air and I'm going to miss that greatly. I am still probably going to call you every time I'm like, how did we get where we are today? Because most of us now will not actually have answers to that question. And as Beth Fuller mentioned, it was before the internet and all that other stuff. So we can't just Google, how did we get here? So thank you so much for providing just that context and history and calmness and the room to feel so welcome. So this one isn't as wordy. This is from representative Catherine Clark, who was also a school committee member. I do love to remind everybody of people who have gone into other offices who were school committee members. The first time I met Catherine was at the high school for a run, I forget which run, And one of the first things she said was, was the hardest job ever and that is sort of a theme from anybody who's in a different elected office now, they say that the school committee was the hardest job they ever had in politics. I mean, I don't have context to say whether that's true, but it seems pretty good, like a good assessment. So this is a certificate of special congressional recognition presented to Paula Van der Kloot in recognition of outstanding and invaluable service to the community, signed today by Catherine M. Clark, member of Congress.
[Paul Ruseau]: We did table this to the January meeting. I forget the exact date.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there a mask mandate in city hall?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can we have everybody use a mask as required? The mandate wasn't a request, it was a mandate, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll motion to adjourn this meeting if I do not have masks on everybody in the room. I'm not sure what the point of a mandate is, if it is not actually gonna be followed in the very chamber where we're actually governing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't see on the agenda the Boy Scout part of the... I know there's some Boy Scout thing going on tonight, and I would like to not have them wait until hours from now. Is there any way we can... I don't know where it is on the agenda, so it's hard to take it out of order.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. I just had a quick question about our dashboard. Does the dashboard include Kids' Corner staff and children that are in the Kids' Corner for positive cases?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. But I don't, if you don't know, I mean, we can just, I'm not sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? I've just got a question about the format here, because I'm assuming a bunch of us have questions. Is the format going to be that we will, sometimes we do the public first, sometimes we do us first, or us at the beginning and the end, and I don't really have a preference, but I just want to know what it is so that we don't just move on and none of us have asked our question.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have lots of questions. First, I'd like to thank Ms. Puccio and Ms. Retromel. I know speaking at the podium isn't really, well, always easy, and I appreciate the details, and I also greatly appreciate getting a copy of one of the statements. I look forward to the other one, because a second time through is always helpful. I do have a couple of sort of technical questions, and I don't know the answers. I'm not asking them to be facetious, but I'm hoping Dr. Cushing can answer them. Because there's certainly questions that I've seen asked on social media, they have been asked tonight, and I'm asking them because I wanted somebody with a definitive answer. So one of the questions that I have is, privacy laws and all that other stuff, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, Maybe there isn't, I don't know. But my question is really simple. Can a victim be told what the punishment was that was given to somebody who harmed them if we assume that there was a perpetrator, if you will? Can they be told what the punishment was?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you and I asked the question, I wasn't really quite sure, because, you know, if anybody's been victimized, knowing. that there was an appropriate response is really important. And for adults, when that happens, there's the news, there's the court filings, there's all that other stuff. And FERPA obviously has nothing to do with anything. And we are accustomed to being able to know that. And actually I think victims of crimes like are given this information purposefully. because they kind of deserve it, but in the under 18 crowd, whether they deserve it or not isn't really relevant because they can't have it, and I just think that's an awful place for us to be, but it is what it is and I just want everybody to understand that because I've just. know, it's just been a lot of online commentary about this. And, you know, this, I've noticed that none of the school committee members have had a statement on what's been going on. And, and somebody asked me why. And I said, because we don't know what's going on. We don't have the rights as a school committee to know anything about this case at all. No more rights than anybody else living in Medford. And so you know, that makes it uncomfortable because people would assume we know lots of things that we do not know. And I think it's important for the community to know that we don't know all this stuff and we're keeping it to ourselves or we're, you know, being coy or anything else. We don't know, we should not be asking, and certainly we should not be told if we were to ask. And, you know, I just think that's really important to be clear I had a lot of other stuff that was from the presentation, actually, not so much there, but I don't know if we wanna do the questions on the presentation now, because mine are really just a small set of those.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll ask one question then, one more question and we'll move on. I also wanna thank the community members that have stepped up to be substitute teachers. I know a couple of them and I know that it was a huge, I had a lot of conversations with one person who decided to do it. It's a hard thing to, you know, you've not been teaching or you're not in the workforce right now and to volunteer to be a substitute when then the news makes it sounds like being a teacher is going into a war zone every day. It's a huge thing. And I would just encourage anybody else who might be thinking about it. Look, if you try it and you don't like it nobody's gonna be angry, but You might like it and we really, really, really need you to do that. And I also wanna thank our staff. When we talk about the lack of mental health services in the community, our staff are doing these evaluations, determining kids need services and then sending them back to class because guess what? There's no services. So that means that the teachers are dealing with kids that are having unmet needs And that's just the way it's gonna be. There's no magical group of Councilors for us to hire. And it's horrible and it's ugly. And I just really wanna thank the staff that deal with this every day that are trying to help the students to the best of, but I mean, most of these referrals out of the school system are for things that our staff are not trained to do. So, but they still have the students and they're doing their best and I just think it's really important to thank them for that. I'll stop because I have lots of other questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. Thank you, Member Graham, for asking those questions about the numbers. Do we have any social workers in the high school? School adjustment Councilors are social workers. Thank you. You're welcome. That answers that question. And then all my other questions are really about the presentation and the exclusion. And I'm gonna save those for subcommittee, I think, because there's a lot in here I just don't think really matched up with our conversation over a year ago, but this is probably not the right meeting for that. I do just want to point out around exclusion, you know, and data, because I mean, it matters. I went and looked at the Department of Ed's data just before our meeting tonight, and it says that since 2013, we've actually had zero expulsions in our school system. I would like to believe that's true, I think more likely what's happening is our reporting is abysmal, and I don't put that on any individuals particularly, but I know of specific suspensions that occurred in the elementary level that do not show up in that reporting. So I think it's really important for people to understand that when we talk about exclusion and suspension, we're talking about the stuff that's actually happening, not what's on the website for the Department of Ed, and the differences are shocking. the differences and what's really happening versus what's showing up on that website. And I think some of it's related to the data systems that we have and how they're all connected and how things get coded. But I just, this issue of suspensions is much bigger than if you just go look at our website. So I'll save the rest of my questions for subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Before I offer, before I motion to table this, I just want to, I've received a couple of communications about concerns about my items on the agenda in context to what's happened in the last week. And I just think it's, and I'm going to actually at a subsequent meeting make a suggestion change to our rules. But I wanted to make it clear to the community that this item number two was actually emailed to the superintendent's office on November 10th for this meeting. It was not in relation to what has gone on in the last week. I try to plan my motions out far in advance and apparently I did not hit the jackpot with the timing on this particular one. So for number two, I would like to make a motion to table this to the next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Number two, I would just like to send to the next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, the 20th is quite a rather interesting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's do the first meeting in January.
[Paul Ruseau]: January 3rd.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. This also was submitted on November 16th, not related to the last week. Again, two strikes and I'm out, I guess. But I would like to just motion to send this to subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, I think wants to answer that. Thank you. Yes, I have the actual report in front of me. It was only for the McGlynn Middle, although there was a little bit of the McGlynn Elementary included because of the fact that it's one building. And, you know, the report was done by the Center for Trauma Care and School Alliance of Inclusion and Prevention Incorporated, possibly the longest name for a company I think existing. That's one long name. And I remember when we got the report, and I, The biggest takeaway was that things were dandy, which was surprising. And maybe it was just that things were pretty good, considering what everybody thought. And I think that might have been really what was happening is that everybody thought the McGlynn medal was, you know, You know, culturally a disaster. They came in and they they surveyed students, the Yale population, I don't have the full list in front of me, and the staff MTA, and things were much better than I think people had imagined. the gun clip incident was months before when they finally were in doing their work. So of course, things can improve. So we did have one, but it was not for the high school. And I can't remember, was it last year or the year before? That was one of my budget priorities that I have is that we would be doing these on a rolling basis through all of the school communities, you know, like one every other year, but because I think it is hard to keep the pulse as staff and students and families and principals and everybody's changing. And the state and the federal government is telling us to change all these things all the time. And it's school committee members, certainly we can't keep a pulse on this ourselves. But I think in the short term, the focus for me and why I'm also a co-signer on this is that it seems that the high school is definitely where it needs to happen. And I just wanna also comment on the amount.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the amount is completely a mystery because it was paid for by the mayor at the time. So we were not even consulted. The mayor just I presume picked up the phone or the superintendent picked up the phone and made the call so we'd I have no idea what it costs. And so, therefore, there was no basis for the number in here, but we had to put something in here, so this number may well be wildly more than is needed. I emailed the company that did the last one, and they really could not give me a number without consultation. And I said, well, it's not me they should be consulting, it's the superintendent. So we just picked the number that hopefully will be the right number or big enough, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And to kind of build off of that, You know, when I remember Graham and I were talking about this. You know, I think everybody in this room can probably come up with some examples of things we think should get done that would have effects on the culture and the climate. But what seems most important is that somebody who will create this list. will tell us the order to do them, because we can't do them all at once, even in the best of cases and best of years. So I don't want us doing feel-good projects around climate and culture that have no real effect, because we've missed the elephants in the room. And I expect some of those elephants in the room to be uncomfortable. If they're not uncomfortable, then just send out a Google survey and call it a day because that's a waste of money. This, this should be telling us things like is our health curriculum, missing the mark on relationships and you know like there should be some pretty big things that are identified. I don't know what they would be actually, but so it's really important that not just that it's a big list, maybe it isn't a huge list, but it's the order that it needs to happen is really important, I think, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, why not? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just feel a little uncomfortable that this is a subcommittee. We can't direct anybody to do anything at all, ever. We can send recommendations to the full committee to vote. And I feel like in this particular meeting, we're often doing and saying things as if the committee has spoken and it has not. So, I have no concerns about, you know, the goals and making sure we don't just drop last year's goals I think that's a terrible way to to improve the district. I just think it's important to note that until the full committee, get something to vote on. Nobody should be doing anything based on what we're talking about here. I mean, unless we ask for some data or something, but you know, like nobody should be changing curriculums or implementing a class program, you know, that we've just, we're talking about, sorry, I forget the name of it.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may, I know that we vote on the minutes. I just don't see motions added coming out of our meeting to adopt a new policy or to just simply make a motion to, for instance, implement this program across a certain number of classrooms and levels. And then, you know, I think this committee could make a recommendation that in the following year to expand it based on our success from the last year. But I don't think that being embedded in minutes is not an approval by the committee to do anything. And I think we have to just try to write the words, because we have to write the words and this subcommittee agree to the words, and then they can be sent up as approved by the subcommittee. And I just don't see that happening.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. My questions have been answered.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. We did approve the job descriptions for the engagement specialist earlier this year, correct? Correct. Yep. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have one question. How quickly can they get going on this? Because I mean, my next statement will be a motion to approve this, but I mean, I don't want to hear in 2024, we're discussing that they finally are able to start the work.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to clarify that Robert rules of order is part of our charter actually in the city that that's how we will operate. But open meeting law supplants Robert rules and every every way we cannot suspend the law. We could suspend Robert rules of order, but the law does make it quite clear that we can't discuss something that on the agenda. Unless it's an emergency and emergency a leak that was already done. There's nobody who believes that would be considered an emergency. If we had a fire in the school building this morning, we can talk about it tonight. That's an emergency. But a leak that is no longer happening, I certainly wouldn't want to be at the attorney general's office trying to explain why that's considered an emergency and that the law should be suspended. So I just wanted to clarify that, no, we cannot discuss or suspend the rules because suspending the rules does not suspend the law.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to place the report on file.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I'd like to make a motion to suspend the rules to allow public participation.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think when I was looking at the dashboard today, and I think everybody here has heard from the community, it's from parents, but the number of students quarantining really needs to be on the dashboard. So if you want a motion, I'll make a motion unless you will just do it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I certainly feel like, I mean, I did not visualize what it might look like, but like the number of student quarantine days per week, perhaps, per school, because then you can ignore the fact that a student might have been quarantining Monday, Tuesday, you know. But whatever you work out, as long as, you know, you'll think it through, and I trust that you can get it to make sense.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When I was at the conference this past week, I never missed an opportunity to ask, how on earth are you getting this test and stay thing done? And there was a question I asked that not one person could answer, perhaps because it's at a level that a school committee member doesn't typically have access to, but where are you getting your tests from? I mean, every day there's another news story about there are no tests, the fact that we can't pump out enough tests. I can't find a test when we need tests at home, and we don't have thousands of them laying around at the schools. Test and stay, the first word is test. That implies that you can test. And no school committee member that I talked to, and I don't know how many people I asked, it was not two, it was not five, it was more than that, had a clue. They all trotted out the well, we're just getting it done. And occasionally they would say, well, we're doing it only in the elementary school because we don't have enough. But you know, if we had one classroom of unvaccinated kids, and we're going to test and stay for five days, we need 100 tests as 20 kids. And I I'm not asking you to dig into your inventory for the whole district, but 100 tests is a lot of tests. And I just I'm very confused how all these districts say they can do it when nobody can buy tests.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Richards. Can we suspend the order of business?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, motion to suspend the order.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm really happy to see that early literacy is the student learning goal. Had it been anything else, we would be here for a lot longer tonight. And in the blue section at the top, there's by deepening teacher and principal knowledge of early literacy practices. I don't have any problem with the intent. Unfortunately, knowledge and practice are worlds apart in human nature, and knowing that our teachers and principals have the knowledge, to me just feels very baby steps, really. Lots of us have knowledge that we should be doing vigorous exercise three to four or five times a week, and we should be not eating all this other stuff, and like 99% of us are doing everything that we're not supposed to be doing. Knowledge isn't the problem. So I just wonder if we can't find a more strong way of phrasing that to get beyond knowledge. Knowledge obviously is really important, but I mean, knowledge, if knowledge is the goal, that doesn't help students. So I don't know, I'm not suggesting an edit right now, but just some way to strengthen that sentence to be clear that them knowing doesn't mean it's a check mark. it's that the student literacy is impacted, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know. Well, I think that's, I like measurable things for sure. I don't know if I, I don't feel the need to edit this right now, because I don't feel like we're going to get this done tonight. At least that's my preference.
[Paul Ruseau]: Not at the moment.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to thank you. And thank you to Member Graham for her comments, because there was one I wanted to make, and I have it on a different version of this. So I get very concerned about average. When we talk about averages, you don't have it in here, but around literacy, and again, I don't know how the metrics are laid out in the literacy area, but if we just look at averages, we can have high-end numbers really skewing averages. And so, if all the students were laid out in quartiles and their ability to read, you could make it all look rosy by moving those people at the top way up, but they're the least needy as far as reading instruction. because they were the ones that were already gonna get a lot better. So I just make, to make sure that like the kids in the bottom 20%, those are the ones that need to move the most. And that's my concern around averages. So I just, finding a way to include that in the outcome so that we know that we really focused on the students with the greatest need, not that the average just moved in a good direction. which could mean that, but it also could mean that those that were above average in reading just got really good. So that's just my comment around trying to find some way to word that into outcomes before we approve these.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I like that we have a list. This is good to see. What is MHS security enhancements is actually it was it's one of those things you can't tell me unless we're an executive session, more or less. Okay, I won't ask more on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I am a little, oh, this is McGlynn, I'm sorry. I was misreading and thought it was a suggestion we were gonna do AC at the high school, which isn't on this list and shouldn't be on this list right now. Not at this high school. That's my point, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: But a high school might be something. A high school, yes. I don't really have any other questions then, because the rest is explanatory.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Who applied for this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, sorry. I know, it's not like we've done anything for a couple years here so I guess I just don't remember but you know, okay, that's good to know that we did to apply for it.
[Paul Ruseau]: My question is, I mean, I shouldn't be talking because we have a motion to table. I actually haven't been seconded yet. But what I need, I mean, aside from the date, I need to know how much work is expected of our district regardless of the date. And I mean, I need to know that. We don't even approve a simple ad hoc report without getting an answer to how much work is involved. So, I mean, are we talking an hour a month of an administrator or are we talking, you know, five people committing to multiple hours a week? I mean, I need to know that to agree to any additional work when I feel like our district is short-staffed and burning. I wouldn't say burning out, they're just literally burning. for me that's critical information if you can get that when we find out the date. Obviously the date's critical too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. First, I have a process question. So I've had less than 48 hours with these documents since I was at the conference. And can you quickly give us an overview of the embargo date issue? Because I just feel like I would have liked to have had two or three weeks with this, not less than two days. And it's a lot of data. I think you all had more than 48 hours before you presented tonight. And I believe a lot of this has to do with the state's embargo rules, correct? Or have you had this and we could have had it weeks ago?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So you all get this stuff in the, at the end of the summer, I understand, and it's embargoed. You can't tell anybody anything about it, right? The data you get.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. And then there's an embargo date where you can tell us in this meeting, and that happens before the reports are sent to families.
[Paul Ruseau]: When is the report to families going?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, so I guess I'm just trying to find out, is it possible in the future for us to have two weeks with this instead of 48 hours? Because this is a lot of data. I love data, but it's also an awful lot of information for me to have tried to get through in the amount of time we had. And I love that you all do the highlights. And not to sound negative, but I don't see a low lights option on the listing. You know, I mean, I'm happy to celebrate the positives, but there's surely plenty in this data that is not something we're gonna celebrate. And I mean, 48 hours after getting back from the conference is not enough time for me to do that. So is it possible in the future to get us this significantly? I mean, if it's not possible because of the embargo dates, that's what I'm wondering is like, is there a technical reason for which we can't get it earlier? And I don't know, if there is, then that's the way it is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, that would be wonderful. I mean, this is how it's happened in the other three times I've received this. So it's not like new that this is happening, but I did have a question though, Ms. Khan on, There's with the exception of 22 classrooms in this envisions are those why are there classrooms not using envisions. I think you've told me, but I forgot.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great. Thank you. That was my question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You said a small number of students, but wouldn't all remote ninth graders last year have not taken the paper-based MCAS?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, some did? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly remember that. And we chose not to send our child in. We would have sent them in all year. We probably got one of my emails about this, so. Probably, okay. So, but we were, it was not lots of kids that are now in 10th grade that have taken no competency tests.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're welcome. Just one more question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just noticed that actually the biology exam, if I'm reading it correctly, is actually the only one that doesn't list, oh, and the physics, oh, the physics is irrelevant, sorry. The biology one doesn't list participation rates and like every other one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yeah, the I always find the grade level scores to be this like, like suspension of reality. that the 13% below two years ago, those are the seventh graders. The fifth graders who are 13% below two years ago, those are the seventh graders and they're still below. But I do like very much that the growth percentages or percentile shows that while they were significantly below, behind or whatever the right word is, it's shrinking. So that the middle school staff are, bringing the kids up, and you know that the, the, you know, while the seventh grade scores are just glancing at the chart around seven or 8% below the state average. just leftover from having been so far below is how I read it. Possibly. So I think that that's important to recognize that these are, you know, the current fifth graders are a group of students that are not the same group of students that were last year's fifth graders. And it's so weird that we always look at how's the fifth grade doing every year But every year it's a different group of kids and there's nothing like, every kid is different. So, I mean, I just think it's a weird thing where we compare year after year, our grade. I understand from a teaching perspective, there's something to learn, but I just think that's strange. You mentioned that the data drives with their students are handed to the teachers at the beginning of the year, I assume?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, well, my other question about that makes me sad because I know the answer now, but I mean, so one of my main beefs, and I'm not alone on the MCAS, is if you could tell me that before school opened, a teacher would get a, document or set of documents says here's johnny here Susie and here's where their weaknesses are based on their last year's m cast data, so you know, so we can try and lift them up. That would almost make me be okay with them. But we don't do that. that the teacher just gets the student and then maybe sub partway through the year, the teacher finds out how Susie and Johnny are doing. Guess what the teacher already knows how Susie and Johnny are doing. They're in the teacher's class. So I just, I'm continually disappointed that we get data on the individual student and we don't give it to the new teachers to make and take specific action on that student. And we just talk about a grade level as if, know, is if that helps, you know, the seventh graders, these individual seventh graders who were in the fifth grade, and where we got the really unattractive 13% below state. Do each of those teachers know where those individual students were falling behind? Like, explicitly, specifically, not like your general class has a challenge around this, what we've done in the past, obviously, we didn't do it last year, because
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, that's great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, and then I guess my, just from a pragmatic perspective, is there enough time for teachers to do that work in the current schedule?
[Paul Ruseau]: If that answers your question. It does, yes, thank you. Excuse me.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just one more question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. Thank you. It's actually not specific to this one. But is it, I know that this is a, this document is an output from the state, correct? This is not, is this ours or is this?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's just, you know, like, I think I asked this a couple of times in the past, but, you know, when we look at percentages between us and the state, You know if there's 500 students and where one percentage point above the state. Then we're just there's no significant difference when there's three students or 24 students and we're five. percentages above the state, that's huge. And I'm happy to do this on my own, but I don't wanna type all this over into Excel myself. I guess my question is, can this be sent to us in a document where we can do that? Because there really should be a column here. 24 Asian students, five percentage points below the state scaled, or five points below the state scaled score in grade four. But 24 is a small number of students. And then, you know, and some of these other numbers are much bigger and have, you know, whatever kinds of differences in their numbers. And I just, when you look at these differences, they don't mean anything. They don't, they have to be in context to the number of students and I mean, I think these are all great to have, but the Latino Hispanic fifth graders are nine percentage points above state, but there's only 32 people in that group. So is that significant or not? Like statistically significant. I mean, you know, cause I don't want to get all worried and upset about differences that are not statistically significant based on the number of students in the group. And I never see that column here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. And you can use the number of students to tell you whether or not, because, I mean, being five points above something when there's 1,000 people in a group versus five points above when there's five people in a group is not the same thing. So I'm happy to do it myself. I'm just wondering, can we get these sent to us in a form where we can do it ourselves in Excel? Not as a PDM, thank you, that's all I want.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just noticing there's four people in the waiting room. I don't know who's doing all that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I apologize for using my phone. I'm just giving somebody the link to the Zoom. But anyways, I just want to make sure we When we say we're testing, I feel like we should always include in the second half of that sentence, we are testing students that we have received consents for, because we are definitely not testing every student in any classroom in this district, is my understanding, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: And can you remind us again why it is we cannot inform parents of the percentage of in the elementary level, at least where it's relatively easy and I certainly understand at the high school, it'd be a full time job to figure out. But why in the elementary level, we can't tell parents the percentage of students in their child's classroom that are getting tested that who have consented, I don't.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I'm sorry. Let me clarify. I don't mean the kindergartens. I mean, I have Mrs. Smith.
[Paul Ruseau]: What percentage of kids in my Mrs. Smith's class have consented. I understand that kids are missing on days of testing, but parents who are very upset to find out that testing is really only happening if parents return a piece of paper. are left to their imagination, you know, is the 90% mean like half my class isn't getting tested, or is it one kid that's not getting tested. And I understand we're not going to, who's not consented, I keep saying tested, but I mean consented. But it just doesn't seem like a piece of information that, especially for parents who are particularly concerned about their unvaccinated children because they can't be vaccinated yet. The parents will take their kids out of school the day they can be vaccinated to go get them stabbed with a needle. To me, it's not an unfair piece of information. And we've had this conversation around MMR and other vaccinations. And the answer I've been given is Privacy, I just find interesting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just have one more question for me. Three years ago, which I know was before both of your times, I asked the question about, so we're not at 100% for MMR vaccinations, although actually in some of the schools, I was looking at the data recently, there are actually, I think, two of the schools are at 100%. But I asked the question because this was a real life situation with a friend of mine whose husband was undergoing chemotherapy. And the question was, Could we guarantee that the children of that person with a compromised immune system was not in a classroom with unvaccinated kids? And the answer was not only could we not guarantee that, but we could not inform that family of that, which I found to be a little surprising and I would enjoy a long conversation about ethics on that. So I guess the same question is what I'm asking now. Do we have kids who at home have a parent who is a severely compromised immune system, who are sitting next to students who are not even getting tested? And do we follow that up and see and do we Do we even track it down or do we just cross our fingers the kid doesn't go kill their parent, which was really the source of the initial conversation I had with the parent, because they were very concerned and the kids were suffering severe anxiety that they were going to school and they want to come back and kill their father.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would certainly be fine with Director Hines not being at these meetings. I think that's, I don't say overkill, but it's a long day already, which I understand lots of other people are dealing with too, but that makes complete sense to me. I would not be okay with it being on the consent agenda just because there's a huge, This isn't news to anybody, an awful lot of people want to talk about the pandemic like it's over consent agenda items are frankly things that are like not worthy of conversation for the most part, and we should be talking about the pandemic, every time we meet. I feel very strongly that Well, I'll just say it, our vaccination rate for our eligible students is terrible. It is not acceptable, it is embarrassing. this pandemic isn't going anywhere if parents are going to continue to not get their kids vaccinated. And I'm just going to say it out loud. I mean, that's the facts.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would certainly agree that. are talking about it in this meeting is not getting any. Zero additional children have probably gone to get vaccinated because we talked about it, or because you prepare for the meeting to have us ask you questions about it that's definitely, and I know there's limited time. But I also have two children in the school system, and while they do have have been vaccinated. I mean, I don't, we did talk about systems last week at last meeting, and they're much better in this area of our school system than in many of our other parts of our system. But if you tell me that you're sending notices out just to unvaccinated families, I'll believe you, but I don't think that's actually happening. It's just, we're not sending notices and reminders and trying to get people to get vaccinated. And Anything we can do to give you more time to do that, I'm totally for it. But I mean, I don't recall receiving anything that says go get vaccinated. I mean, I know that the superintendent's update has included that, but it's no offense to the superintendent, but it's a bit impersonal. I want my principal sending a direct message that says, you know, this is where we're at, and this isn't going to get us through the pandemic. Not just like, hey, it'd be nice if you could get vaccinated. Like, just be honest. These are all adults. The parents are all adults. Let's just be honest with them. This pandemic is going on for at least another two years if we can't get this dealt with. It's another year for sure. But, I mean, another year. Can that be the end of it?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll just speak quickly. You know, we don't actually have a policy. The school committee does not have a policy. And so all I'm looking for here is to get us to create one. dialogue with all of the stakeholders and move us towards a policy we can all agree on and support.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, member Rousseau. Thank you. Yes. I mean, we certainly have, you know, as with, I think, I don't know about all policies, but most policies, if the school committee does not assert a policy, the superintendent is free to do so. But the school committee, in fact, has no policy and it's not in our policy service.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just assert that we don't have a policy to discuss. Just like we don't have a policy on masks, the superintendent has a policy on masks.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm saying is the school committee does not have a policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I'm just I'm just sorry I'm just mentioning that we have a policy manual with MASC. So there's a handbook policy there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. If a student has symptoms but cannot be tested since they don't have a consent form, are they isolated and sent home immediately?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And you answered my next question, which is great. How are we handling a positive student that was positive in school who has siblings in another classroom or in a different school? How are we contact tracing that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. So if it was a five-year-old who tested positive and there's a seven-year-old, I mean, not all five-year-olds and seven-year-olds are rough and tumble all day long, but a lot of them probably are. And so would we immediately, assuming we have consents, of course, would we immediately be testing that seven-year-old before the day's out so we could do close contacts on that classroom?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great. Thank you. And then my last question is, um, Well, I was really surprised we could ramp up the daily kindergarten testing. I was happy with the memo, but my first thought was we still don't have cloning technology to duplicate the nurses.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, yeah. Sorry, just trying to make light of what I'm sure is not a polite situation. Have we considered, you know, I know that I was reading something in, I don't know if it was the Globe or the New York Times about The very active traveling nurse programs that are out there, nurses can, frankly, traveling nurses right now can pretty much write their own checks. Have we considered, it sounds like we're at the edge of staffing. And, you know, when I looked at the testing numbers, one of the things about the elementary school, so in the elementary grades, I sort of think of the students as captives, the whole classroom goes to get tested, right? So if 90% of those students have a consent, then 90% of those students should get tested. Looking at the numbers that we got, unless we have a 25% absenteeism in elementary, which I think is not realistic, it looks to me like whole classes just didn't go get tested.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. I just, you know, two of the elementary schools I mean I know that each elementary school is getting tested on one day so it's a snapshot for a week but really like the MISA took on the day that they do testing. And to use that just as an example, 28% of the kids who could have been tested on that day, 103 of them didn't get tested. And to me, it seems unreasonable to imagine that that larger portion of students we're absent, I just think that's outside the realm of possibility. Dessie would be at our door if we had 28% absenteeism. So I'm just thinking, 103 students to me is not a few absent kids. To me, it's several classrooms just didn't go get tested.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Because I mean, I not this isn't about blame. It's just about like, you know, are the nurses running out of time and the classes they're in line and now it's now it's like
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Ruseau, then Member Van der Kloot. Thank you. Last week when we met, not last week, whenever we last met, it became clear to me that this is our new format and things New don't always work quite the way we intended, but public comment this this thing that you just read this is not an item on the agenda for public comment, this is a statement that the mayor reads to remind the public and us. Of our policy, this is not an item where we anybody can speak, this is simply a reminder of how what our policy is because I remember in the last meeting. We then took public comment that was not about items on the agenda. And that surprised me, but I just, you know, you did read that sentence that we only take public comment for items on the agenda. That's been the policy of the school committee since I've been on the school committee. And we didn't change that with this new update. So I just wanted to reiterate that this is not an open mic. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. The full policy actually explains that, no, a presentation of the public, there's a procedure for how to get yourself on this list. And that is a presentation. It usually could be a It could be a PowerPoint, it could be just a, you come up and speak. I remember we had one in the spring around reading, and that is people submit the presentation to the superintendent according to the details and the policy, which I don't have it in front of me. And so that's what the presentation is. There's nothing showing up there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um but we don't take public comment. Does anything you want to have a conversation?
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember, so, thank you. That's definitely not how the subcommittee when we talked about this or and when we pass this policy in the spring. That is definitely not what we talked about at all.
[Paul Ruseau]: But part of why we made this decision to be more explicit about what actually was always past practice was that this committee and frankly, every body like us is unable to have somebody come up and ask a question and we don't answer. Open meeting law dictates we don't answer questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I mean, we can go back and watch our meetings. All of us fail miserably and violate open meeting law. So that- So the full policy says if somebody has a question that they want to be answered, that there's seven of us. send us an email, any one of us can put it on the agenda for the next meeting, and then it's a regular agenda item for a conversation.
[Paul Ruseau]: A motion to- Point of order, we are not discussing or making a motion on anything related to that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Any one of us can make a motion to do that at the next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, we have to follow our existing policy on motions to add things to the agenda. Okay, so in a man member member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. And I apologize if this isn't the normal way of asking you to do something. I just feel it's, you know, we're on the school committee getting it and it's, you know, because you're our chairperson, it feels like sort of an unusual opportunity that other districts don't have because the chair isn't usually the mayor. But, you know, when I wrote this, which I believe was a week or two ago, there was standing water and, you know, I was getting flooded with stuff about West Nile and and it wasn't actually cold out already. But there is another resolution on here around the McGlynn, so I'm not gonna get into the specifics of the playground, but when I've heard that there's significant standing water that, not the morning after it rains, but like for days, that just seems like a really, like a bad thing that we, could really regret. And I don't know the effort involved with dealing with standing water. I'm not suggesting somebody gets out there with a broom. It's a huge playground. But if there is anything DPW can do to clear it so that it's not sitting there, that would be great.
[Paul Ruseau]: could I speak first? Member Ruseau. Thank you very much, Mayor. Earlier in the evening, under the public health update, there was actually one element of the public health update that I think was going to be presented, but then we moved along too quickly. It was around the NPS personnel vaccination status. And it seems relevant and perhaps an okay time to include that. I believe Mr. Murphy was literally about to speak about it, but then we moved along. And I know at our last meeting, we did discuss that this was gonna be presented tonight and it has not been presented and it's not on our website yet. And it just feels like the public has kind of been waiting. So, I mean, if that could be part of the presentation, if there will be one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So when I wrote this, you know, I know we have the you know the covert exposure guidance, and we've had many conversations that I feel like are really providing clarity, but, you know, in the medical world protocols are literally written down in black and white. They're not education, they're not training. You read this, you do this. And I just feel like while I'm hearing that we have some really great stuff going on, consistency, which has been referenced over and over again, is critical, but consistency requires that there is no question about what it is people are supposed to be doing. So I envisioned that protocols, meaning written documentation, and it doesn't have to be a PowerPoint, it can just be Google Docs or something, of how we do contact tracing, how do we communicate with families around close contacts, so that every nurse in every situation in every school is following the same exact protocols. Because if they're not protocols, then that's OK. We just call them what they are. But I hear the word protocols over and over again. Protocols are? Anybody, a new nurse could show up tomorrow in our school system, be handed the protocols and would know what to do. And I'd like to know that we have those.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would be perfectly satisfied if it was just something that shows up on the website and you let us know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you member so thank you. Yeah, I mean when I when I look at this this this can't be the protocol the nurses use because there's nothing to do, there's nothing in here that says anything about students who don't have consents to test for instance. So, I'm fine with a document that targeted, where the audiences, you know, the general public or parents that that should look very different than one that the nursing staff is using. But none of this takes into consideration what if the student doesn't? You know, the tested positive for COVID-19, zero students without a consent will ever be tested positive for COVID-19 in our schools.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just would like to say thank you. As Mr. Murphy and I have talked about this sort of ad nauseum over the last year, or since he started, which was just barely over a year, that our school system's capacity for system thinking and doing things at a systemic approach is not where it needs to be. And so for me, I didn't come at this with the assumption that we had good systems in place, because frankly, we don't have good systems in place in many parts of our school system, and we're working on it. But this sounds actually really quite excellent.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have one quick question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When a staff member has had COVID and can't get vaccinated yet, will you be counting them in the vaccinated numbers so that we're not... It would be one of the exemptions. Okay, but if we could just I don't know how many that is but you know. If we just go purely by have you gotten the shot and they can't get the shot that would be awful to say we're not at 100% when we.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm glad we're having this conversation on the right side of the potential catastrophe here. I do, and I realize we don't have a lot of runway to do long term planning, considering the state we're in. I'm just looking at some of this and thinking, you know, our other school districts going to the cloud for a lot of this stuff, and we're buying servers, and in 2033 we can come back and talk about these old servers that are going to fail on us again? Or is part of this, you know, get us over the hump so that we can at least be sure that tomorrow morning or whenever we will still have a network. And when there's some space, is somebody tasked with eventually coming up with a longer term plan so that we aren't just rinsing and repeating this problem every 10 years?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: What's changed?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm unclear what is revised.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So, the calendar before, if I may, sorry. Member Ruseau. Thank you. So the calendar that we have on the website at the moment has us actually going one day later than we will be going.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just, I just worry about parents that bought their tickets to hop on a plane the morning after which I mean, that's not me but I know some people are really planners like that so that's great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I wish to hold the regular school committee meeting minutes of June 14th.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think we may. I think we just motion to approve all the rest.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, on the minutes for June 14th, I have only one requested change on page six or page seven, depending on which version you're looking at. There is a public comment speaker named Paul with no last name. This was not me and I just would like it to be reflected that it was not school committee member Rousseau. just for clarity. And if that's acceptable, I make a motion to approve these with that as amended.
[Paul Ruseau]: We held this item.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just also want to reiterate the thank you to the staff working over the summer if ever there was a summer you needed to not work, it was this summer, like, in a whole lifetime, right, and these, these people came, because they were incredible. Yes, and it speaks volumes of them so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do, yes. I really love this enrollments document a lot. I like the layout. It's new this year and I appreciate it. Okay, well, thank you, Kim. We did also get another, there were several enrollment sheets in the past. And one of the ones I did like was, a per school, per a teacher's name and grade and how many students were in that class. That would be helpful if you could, you know, I mean, I'm sure you have that data already, so I don't, thank you. Sorry, I have one more question. Is this, looking at the middle school enrollment, are we actually in year one where all students have gone through the lottery now?
[Paul Ruseau]: Good, excellent, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I know that there's a lot of logistical things to work out. I've just heard some, a couple of families reporting that their students are still in line when lunch period ends and they don't get to eat. They're not allowed to just, it's not like voting. So I just, I'm not sure what we can do about it, but I do feel a bit like if you're in line to eat, It doesn't matter what your next period is should be or maybe we allow kids to bring food around the building and, God forbid, the mess, they should be allowed to eat.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then I have one other question around. Most of the school committee members were able to do a tour recently, which was wonderful and greatly appreciated. And I don't know about all the buildings, but the buildings that I visited, the Missittook and the Andrews, the temperature in much of the building was quite surprising, especially since it wasn't even a terribly hot out or hot out the day before. Can you just clarify that, well, first of all, that temperature and air changes per hour are completely unrelated?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. Just from a COVID safety perspective.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then I'm sure your offices working on a plan around the temperatures, they were kind of staggering, really, for our brief visit in some of these rooms. I can't really imagine teaching in them, let alone. And and so I'm, I know that from our tour, which you are on with me and. member Graham, that some of this is quite a substantial expense. And I'm. Do you have the resources, whether it's extra funds or whatever or do you need to come to us for resources and other other things such as supply chain problems that will actually get in the way because, you know, the cool seasons coming. But so is June.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Well I was the message that I heard from today that it was, I didn't say that quite hot.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor quick follow up on that member result. Thank you. I thought it I mean I think I've been hearing in other districts that the state's database of who's vaccinated is used to just generate this information without us dealing with pieces of paper and photocopies.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And that report will be based on the database from the state, not on. There's just been too many news stories about fake vaccination cards. I don't want anybody to believe that it can be verified through the board health, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I make a motion to suspend the rules to take item 8.8, number two, out of order?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, ma'am. I am the Medford school committee representative on the shore educational collaboratives board of directors and the chairman chairperson excuse me, and our executive director Jackie Clark is here to answer any questions about this plan. And I'm going to assume she is on zoom so I have no idea how to get her on zoom so she can answer questions that we might have. But who's running is Dr. Cushing running this. Do you see Jackie in there.
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe we were founding member, but Jackie will know that off the top of her head.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: We should call it a roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Jackie.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, motion to revert to the regular order of business to revert to the regular order of business.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Trying to think how to write a word all this. Sometimes we have students that don't get specialized transportation, but that's because they can get on the bus and get off at the right stop and be met by a parent or or the stop is right in front of their house or whatever. And that works. And I experienced this in middle school where nobody knew where my son was and it happened several times. And I guess my question is around, I'm sort of afraid we're gonna end up like taking dozens or a hundred students and saying they need specialized transportation because just getting on the bus and getting off at the right stop, which might move day to day, isn't gonna work. You know, students on IEPs that, I mean, I would never imagine that my son needed to be on a specialized bus. However, if he just gets dropped off at some random other place because of the, because of a shutdown of a road or because of all kinds of other reasons where there's an assumption, he'll just find his way home, he's a high schooler. That can quickly turn into me making it part of his IEP and dramatically jacking up our transportation costs. I mean this was sixth grade he's not it's not really an issue anymore but I'm wondering what is the responsibility when a kid gets on a bus, who's responsible for for knowing where the kid is? Is it Eastern Bus who's responsible for every child that gets on a bus and where they're supposed to get off? Or is there short of an IEP statement or some kind of specialized transportation? And I know nothing about how that stuff works, forgive me. Are all students just, if it's regular transportation, you get on, you get off, not our issue. Sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I would just add one little additional comment on that question on this. I know that there was a case where the student was brought back to the middle school. It was today or whatever the day was. And, you know, the we have in previous years, you know, we've done the wait till eight to get kids to not have cell phones and kindergarten. And, you know, wait till eight means there's lots of middle schoolers that don't have cell phones. Well, ideally. By the time a kid is brought back to the school, if they don't have a phone, do we always have staffing for at least an hour or two after school ends? Okay, I just wasn't 100% sure, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor, I know if I should nominate myself I will be attending the conference this year and if any other members would be coming with me or would like to be nominated, I'm happy to do that too.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I? Member Ruseau. I have been the delegate before, and I found it to be very rewarding. I don't believe member Graham or member McLaughlin have yet been to the conference. So I certainly would be happy to nominate one of them as the alternate. I think it's helpful to go as an alternate before being the one in the hot seat. It's not that hot seat, but you know, I don't know if either one of them is interested. I wasn't prepared for three of us to go. Normally it's me and then Paulette shows up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Ruseau. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, you know, when somebody has missed all of ninth grade at home and the first experience of Medford High is they go to every classroom and they can't write. I don't know, it just, that seems pretty devastating to me. Welcome to finally getting to your high school and you can't use the desks in every classroom you go to. I mean, I just think we wouldn't put up with that for a whole host of other things. I'm not left handed so I don't know the experience. But, you know, I mean, I don't know that being left-handed has ever been considered a disability, but I certainly think if we just said to somebody in a wheelchair, well, you know what, we'll just, you'll have to make do with that classroom, even if it's not accessible to you. We would all find that to be highly offensive. And I think asking every, at the beginning of every semester, having the teachers, everybody who's left-handed, raise your hand so I can then get the right desk in here. That also just seems a little, I mean, I don't know that lefties anymore are ashamed of being lefties.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, I did the compilation this year and I will say one of the things I'm, you know, I'm a bit of a nerd. So I'm very, very interested in things like big discrepancies and how individuals might grade the superintendent on the 42 things that we grade you on. And certainly some of us are harder graders than others. but I was happy to see no gigantic, you know, like nobody said you were a one, and then other people were saying you were a four, like there were none of these giant gaps, which I think is really, well, I think it's a great, I think it's a great thing, because when there's a giant gap, I think that there might be questions about, you know, the review process itself, which is still fairly new, and I think has, I think we're still kicking the tires. I hope that the state, the DESE, does some more fine tuning instead of waiting for 25 years like they did the last time before making an update. But the one of the things about the current review process that I still find very challenging is that when you read the review process that they lay out, it's all about your goals. And that's great. That makes so much sense. And then we get 42 things to grade you on which seem to have nothing to do with the goals. So to me, it's still a very, very confusing, it's a very cute dog, but it's a very confusing process even after they've made a huge improvement, but I was very happy to see that there were not giant discrepancies in any of the grading by the individual members, which I know you don't see all that, but I just wanted to say that. And I appreciate all the members for sending me your scores and your comments. I integrated the comments as best I could. Some of them didn't make it in because they might've been duplicates and I wanted to make it sound like one voice because that's the review is just one voice. It's all of us. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I know. Yes. Member Ruseau. Thank you. I do see that you're in that evaluation, Kathy. Yeah. Member Kreatz, sorry. That's not yours. That says SC folder copy 2020-2021. Okay. It doesn't have all of the individual scores, because we're not supposed to share all of our individual scores. This is the combined one. OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, this is the averaging. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: I actually was gonna do that, so Member McLaughlin can get to it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think there's a competition at the Statehouse for size of documents. So the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Senate official citation, be it known that the Massachusetts Senate hereby extends its congratulations to Toni Wray in recognition of your dedication and support of the students, staff, and families of Metro Public Schools. And be it further known that the Massachusetts Senate extends its best wishes for continued success that this citation be duly signed by the President of the Senate and attested to, and a copy thereof transmitted by the Clerk of the Senate. Signed by President of the Senate, Karen Spilka, Clerk of the Senate, Michael Hurley, I should know that, and State Senator, Patricia Jaylin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? We have several other items on the agenda, including one that if we don't vote on tonight, it means it'll be an entire year, which children will not be eating in our school system. So do we want to take that one up at 1 AM?
[Paul Ruseau]: I am perfectly fine, but if that means we're here when the sun comes up, I'll hold you to it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: This was an excellent presentation. I have to admit, I was completely shocked that the state of Massachusetts won't pay for 100%. We don't usually get a lot of things that don't cost us anything coming before us. I drive an electric car, and the challenges around charging are very real. I don't have off-street parking. I don't have a home charger. And it is a real problem. We certainly don't want electric car uptake to only be for people who have off-street parking garages. That does not describe most of the residents of Medford, so I'm very excited by this. I do have a question around authority. Do we simply make a vote to say we want one installed at every parking lot that we have authority over, whereas the city, I don't actually know legally what's involved.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'd like to make a motion to, well, first of all, it would be helpful to, we get an email or something about whether or not this program expires, if there is an expiration date, what it is, because I think that would affect the urgency with which we want to take advantage of it. If it doesn't expire over the summer or something, then I think a little bit more planning makes sense. But I would certainly make a motion to have at least one electric car charger installed at every single public school building parking area. I mean, we can assess whether that's enough, but, you know, teachers and staff that are considering buying a new vehicle, charging at work is where I always charged. And then when the pandemic hit and I couldn't go to work, it was a real problem, but our teachers are still coming to work. And so I think that taking that out of the equation for them when they decide whether to buy a new vehicle is really critical. So I would make a motion that we install one per building within the confines of the I don't know the law or whatever that's reimbursed.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just also, I think it'd be good to also remind that lots of children are watching, especially the Columbus students. I think they're, they're all glued to their TVs, I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Missituk.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, can I make an amendment? to remove the public participation emails from those minutes and then motion to approve them without those.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, the motion is to remove. May, sorry. Freedom of Information Act requirements, all emails are the same.
[Paul Ruseau]: The motion was to remove the public participation e-mails from the minutes and approve them without that, which is what we do in all of our other minutes. The names would be in there, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So the rules, policy and equity subcommittee meeting met on June 9th to review three policies. They are contained in your packet. I won't read the minutes because, well, because I assume you've read the minutes. The first is, so I guess then we, I always forget. Do we just first do a motion on the minutes and then we do the three policies, Mayor? I always get confused.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. So we had three items on our agenda. One was policy ICICA, which is the school year calendar. We had a meeting to discuss updating it to include Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and Lunar New Year as excused as no school days. the committee, the subcommittee voted unanimously to recommend that the full committee makes that change. We had an extensive conversation around snow days and one of the interesting things is that the majority of our, well, these three holidays are holidays that are lunar holidays or based on the lunar calendar. So each year there'll be a different number of, of days that actually end up landing on a school day. So I believe a member of the community on the meeting looked out like five years and they were not all actually going to be school days that would be an excused day off. So, but it's possible that at some future date, there will be too many holidays in a particular year. It would be rare, but it could happen. and we've actually amended the policy to include, to cover that particular scenario if it should happen. So that was the first item. The second item was a, I'm sorry, there's too many different papers in front of me. The second item was our public participation policy. Thank you. So the current public participation policy is like I would like to make a comment on this. I think it is a dramatic expansion of the policy. It really makes things much more explicit for the public, for the committee, for the chair. well frankly for for new members but also for people in the public who are newly interested in public participation that they know which ends up because frankly the old policy which was just a few sentences is really not it's not instructional it's it's sort of it's just not instructional um so for the uninitiated and frankly for the initiated frankly on a regular basis, the old policy was not enough to go on. We experienced that in our last meeting last Monday, where there was confusion. And I think that this new policy, which was unanimously recommended by the subcommittee, will in fact clarify a lot of that and that we shouldn't really have those problems going forward. And then the third item that we unanimously approved as well was an entirely new format for our agenda. And I assume that the members have all read this, so I'm not going to read the whole thing, but the highlights are that We have moved things around a bit. We've created a consent agenda so that there's just one vote to cover a bunch of things that we might normally do as separate votes. Really a key goal of the subcommittee's work on this was to chip away at the time we spend in our meeting. And anything we can do to make the meeting shorter without actually affecting the quality or the work that we're doing seemed like a really good idea. then so we've moved the consent agenda to the front we have the report of the subcommittees we've also identified a few things as being informational only at the end of the agenda we for instance are adding an item called next meetings this is not something that the chair will read this will just be printed on the agenda and We looked at many different agenda formats in other communities to create this, but Medford, every community is so different in their format, and as everybody here knows, Medford's school committee meetings are three times longer. on a regular basis than a normal meeting in other communities. My goal is not to get us to an hour and a half, because I think that's like boiling the ocean with a match. It's just too big of a leap. But if we can chip away and bring it down a half an hour, an hour, I think that will be good for everybody. The there's some other. So this new policy on the agenda, though, is this is not a copy of what an agenda will look like. These are instructions, frankly. And so this entire document will be the policy and it helps. One of the things we discussed was that when the mayor became chair, she hadn't chaired the school committee before and we didn't hand her a packet with an instruction set on how to do it. And we're not like the city council. So it seemed really like we had a lot and when we have new members, we also have that problem of new members come in and there's like, well, how does this work? And so this is sort of trying to build that muscle so that the uninitiated, whether it's the mayor, or it's the school committee members, or the public, you know what it is we, what's our process. There's some things in here for the mayor explicitly, for the chair. We've actually added, Instructions, you know, I do need to make an, offer an amendment on page one of the agenda policy. It says each item under sections four, five, six, and seven, the chair will proceed as follows. It's actually sections seven and eight. On the very first page of the policy for the agenda. Yeah, it's this document. No, there's no, it's on the very first page. This is agenda item VI 6.1.3, if you're looking for it. We rearranged things during the meeting and I forgot to update the numbers. This new policy on the agenda also helps us with the fact that we will have people on Zoom and people in the room and it just makes things clear so that we don't end up where we accidentally move along and then somebody was waiting to speak on an item. And then, you know, when we get to the point where we think we're ready to go, we vote and move because it's late. So this will help to prevent the vote and move. And then, you know, 15 minutes later, somebody wants to talk about something that we're already done with. And that happens a lot, frankly, or they just give up because they're like, oh, I missed my chance. So, and what else? The other members of the subcommittee, member McLaughlin and member Graham, are there other highlights of these policies you think are really important?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, Member Ruseau. Thank you. And also along those lines of the not starting the item six until 7 p.m., we what you won't see here is that we've specified a start time. So last Monday's meeting, the report of the superintendent included actually 10, there was the superintendent update, there were 10 other reports, and there were no superfluous reports, they all had to happen. So if that was what the superintendent imagined that the agenda needed to look like, well, this sort of gives her the authority to say, we're starting at five tonight, folks, and seven o'clock is the public part, the public participation part, will not begin before seven. If she looks at those 10 items and says, it's gonna take two hours, she can set the agenda for 5 p.m. But if the next week there's one item, I think we have one item on the superintendent's thing here tonight, then she can start at 6.30. It's not setting the start time because that stuff is, the public doesn't come up in like, interview people doing a presentation to us. We're the part, we represent the community when we're getting reports. And so there is no public participation on those items for a reason. That's our job. But once the public participation part starts, we swear that we won't start till seven, even if we all have to like, you know, chit chat for half an hour. And I just think that when I look back at other agendas, sometimes there's 10, sometimes there's one, and it's like setting a specific start time in stone means that we really have to set the start time really late. And then the administrators and principals and other folks are here till midnight and have to be back at 7 a.m. So that was the goal in hopes of that. That was a lot of summary, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So we already have adopted two floating holidays, um, in December.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I certainly agree that when we communicate out our schedule, which will now be happening in November, so this is actually for the 2022-2023 year, because we've already released the upcoming calendar year. But because we are now going to be announcing our following year calendar far earlier than ever, we also wanna make sure to incorporate a more robust messaging about the fact that, you know, you've always, you know, even if you're not Christian, you've always known in this country, at least January 25th, whether you like it or not, you know it. Like, from childhood, you know it. You mean December 25th? That's what, what did I say? January 25th. Oh, sorry, December 25th. I do know that, okay. But my point is just like, we will have to make sure to message that a little more strongly that, you know, in the years where these end up landing on a day that, you know, you're like in the middle of March, and there's no holidays in March, right? And then suddenly there is one year. Parents are gonna wanna have that information, but I think that's easy to solve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually for the next five years. Okay. Member Ruseau. I also want to make sure the committee sees on the second page, just before section three observance list, there is a new paragraph we added. So we didn't sit down and like it's actually a little bit of work to look up every single holiday and the number of years out. I'm sure Susie knows this. But we did add a paragraph here so that in the unlikely event, not impossible though, in the unlikely event that when the calendar is being created, the superintendent is like, oh God, that means we have to go to July 1, which we can't legally even do. that the policy says she'll come to us, and we will make a decision, frankly, as to which holiday to cut, which will be a very unfun conversation, but we have a legally required number of school days, and that's that. So it's not really a conversation I wanna have, but it's many years into the future, and I think that if we were to ask any of the community impacted by the addition of these holidays, If once every 20 years, you had to give up one of your holidays to get your holidays, the other 19 years, I find it hard to believe they would be like, nevermind. We don't want them for the other 19 years. That doesn't make sense as a conversation. So I just wanted to point that out.
[Paul Ruseau]: I also just want to, um, when we, as members, if we approve this, go out into the community, some of us may get emails like more. And I mean, I got them when we added the two in December, actually. And I also like, I wanna pack the camper the day after school gets out and frankly get out of here. So I'm totally in line with the earlier release is a better thing. But I think that, It's a, it's helpful to have the, I had this conversation actually over the summer at rights pawn and a chair six feet away from another member of our community about how Christian centered everything is that we don't know it, it's like it's the air, we don't know it. And, you know, we don't have winter break, we have Christmas. And if anybody wants to argue with me, I suggest you look at the teacher's contract, which explicitly calls it the Christmas break. So we take all kinds of days off all year long for Christian holidays, whether you are Christian or not. And I'm not saying we change any of that. I'm just saying that adding one day for our Chinese community, where Lunar New Year is a huge deal, when we have 10 days for Christmas and We have Good Friday. I mean, we have like so many other days for other members of our community and value that, and I think we should. That it's important to kind of, you know, put it side by side with reality and say, look, we're not giving Ramadan off. Like Ramadan's a lot of days. We're not asking for Ramadan off. but if this was a majority Muslim community, actually that's too many days, I don't think anybody would do that, but that's just my point is you can take that information to that conversation and I think it's really helpful to kind of like be open about what do we really already do for the Christian holidays? So that's just my suggestion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So really quickly peruse this. This is the policy that will, I mean, our current policy is like two or three sentences. This breaks, we're going to all have to kind of help each other to change our language a little bit here. We have in our current policy and in our agendas, we call it public participation or community, we like kind of just roam around what we call it. And that caused a lot of confusion and frankly, very upset people last week. And it's fair that they were upset because our language was not clear. So this new policy, if it's approved, we have public comment, public comment is on items on the agenda, that's it. We're not going to call it community participation or public input. We have to kind of hold each other to this to rename it public comment because the words get mixed up and nobody knows which one we're talking about. None of this conceptually is new, though. So public comment is that thing where we just did public comment. We have changed the community presentation or public presentations, I forget what the old name was, if we adopt this, to submitting a presentation. We actually just got rid of a bunch of the words and chose a new one, submitting a presentation. That's the dyslexia presentation we had. I'm sorry, could I? No, sorry, presentations of the public. Forgive me, I've already screwed up. So we have public comment and we have presentations of the public. So that dyslexia, I constantly reference it because it's the last one we had where somebody submits a presentation and then they're on the agenda. Those are called presentations of the public. Other than that, the other big change, I'm just gonna quickly go to the public comment. everything there is actually the same, I believe, from our current thing, current policy or statement. We did add under section two, it's on page one, it says when writing or emailing, please provide this information, this required information We did ask them to actually say the number and name of the item on the agenda in their communication. That should help member van der Klooter, whoever's job it is at that point in time, to know when you've got 30 emails, which ones go with which items on the agenda. And then the other change is that When a member of the public submits a presentation for consideration at our meeting, this hasn't happened that I'm aware of, but I'm a software developer, so I'm always thinking about the what ifs. And it really became evident to me that the current policy provided no opportunity if the superintendent said, no, you can't present that to the school committee. And there are very, very valid legal reasons why some presentations would absolutely not be allowed here if somebody wanted to give a presentation on the performance of a principal. No, we don't want to write a big check to a loss for a lawsuit. So the superintendent needs to have the ability to say no, you cannot give that presentation. then I also added this whole thing where if they disagree with the superintendent, how can they appeal that determination? It's a lot of language, but it's really just lays out the steps that I think are rational and both give the superintendent the ability to protect the district as well as us to frankly override the superintendent if we determine that we just don't agree with the determination that it's not appropriate. You know, an example, Like the legal one I just gave, it'd be hard to imagine us overriding the superintendent and say, yes, let's invite a lawsuit. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But another example might be if somebody submits a presentation about city street potholes, the superintendent will reject it saying, this is not within the authority of the school committee, that doesn't make any sense. If for some reason the majority of us actually wanna hear this presentation, then this will allow that to happen. Hopefully we won't. So that's a substantial change to our current policy. Most of it is actually, I think, how things would happen. It's just laid out in English. That's what I have to say on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's not true.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we literally never allow that.
[Paul Ruseau]: But it says it right on the agenda what exactly we mean. It must be an item on the agenda.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, if it's an item on the agenda, then that's fine. If it's not an item on the agenda for which we have authority, then it's an open meeting law violations. That's, that's the key part of this. Um, You know, tonight we heard from several members of the community who commented that they came and spoke and we just sat here in silence, which is the law. Oh my God, that's lovely. The air conditioning went out and it's so quiet. We cannot just engage in things that are within our authority that are not on the agenda. That is a violation of, I'll write an open meeting law violation against us if I have to. Like, we cannot just go off the rails and talk about whatever we want. And that's, you know, do I think that, you know, when there's a real emergency, we have the ability to call an emergency meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, that's just... Just a statement. I mean, the superintendent could probably put that in her section there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, or I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: When we get to the next agenda, sorry, if I may, the next agenda item, we actually have this next meetings on the agenda, but you're right, if it's like, it's not written down yet because of that, but I think the superintendent or the mayor can make a statement like that and nobody cares. We're not voting on it. There's no deliberation.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to be clear on what we're voting for. Which page are you on?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's the minutes, we already approved those. We're on to item 6.1.2, which is the actual policy. I know there's so many pages in this packet, I'm sorry. So this is the policy that we're hopefully going to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: in what way?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, we could certainly, if we approve it, we could send it to Howard for comment. That would be a good idea. OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: motion to approve. I have a question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. So our current language, first of all, the language on our agenda is not actually our policy. In the policy website, you go and look, that's not our policy. It's a couple of sentences that are not that helpful. But you actually just said the most important thing about why I think this is important. When somebody says, how do you do community participation, do you answer them that they can submit a presentation to the superintendent? or do you answer them, well, they can speak for three minutes on any item. Those are such different things, but we call them the same thing, and they are not the same. I mean, writing a presentation, sending it to the superintendent by Wednesday is nothing like just coming and speaking about an item on an agenda, but we call them the same thing right now, and the result of that is people ask, how do I participate in the meeting on an item, and, you know, do we, which paragraph do we read to them? Which one do they think is for them? And that happened last Monday. The mayor read both sections, and I think what happened, I mean, I can't be in the mind of the people that were in the audience, is the first sentence was about speaking on the items on the agenda. And then she kept reading, because that's what's on our agenda. And that second thing is not about that at all. It's about doing something for the following meeting. you know, submitting something for our agenda. So it's like, it just means two different things. And all we tried to do here was saying public comment is that first sentence on our current agenda. We're just relabeling that and calling it public comment. And then that second thing which we call community participation also is actually being renamed completely differently to presentations of the public, which is actually a fairly good name, I think. I don't remember who thought of it, somebody in the meeting. And those are presentations of the public. So that there's just not that confusion. Mayor. Did that answer your question?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think that the issue of the full street address, I think it's a really good one and definitely ties in with the equity part of the subcommittee that I chair. I mean, I would, the most important part of this change actually was not your full street address. It was that where you reside, because I think it's just really important that we understand that the people we are receiving feedback from are actually members of our community and not just folks that used to live here or whose grandparents live here. And, you know, we are responsible to the community. the residents of Medford, not people who don't live here anymore or who have some other vested interest in some other related to our policies. And I'm sure we've all received some interesting emails of weight. So, but the full Medford part, I mean, I would be happy to take that back and try and find a way to include something about those people that are unhoused and and what can we do to make sure that their feedback can still be included.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So this, our current policy is also a very, very short policy, which essentially just lists the, you know, item one through nine or 11 or whatever it is. And so I'll just, I gave an overview earlier, but there was a couple other things I wanted to point out. So I did say next meetings, that's informational. Nobody will read it, nobody will have anything to say about it. I'm sorry, the mayor may want to if she feels the need to, but it does say that she doesn't have to, it's on the agenda. And also for reports requested, You know, there's a lot of like language in here and I suspect we will need to amend this once this gets used in September, if we approve it. And it turns out that this, that or the other is clunky, but there are a number of things that are really instructions for the mayor to make sure that we're not missing things or that we, and it's not a reflection of the mayor at all, but like, you know, in number nine reports requested, there'll be a list of our outstanding reports and the chair will simply ask, are there any updates on outstanding reports? And the superintendent will say yay or nay, and then there's instructions here for members that want to remove items that they've put on there. You asked for a report on some reopening thing in June of last year, and here we are, and that report is still there, and it doesn't make any sense, because it was for, September of 2020, and it just stays there until one of us removes it. There's instructions actually for reports, should one of us no longer be on the committee, and somebody's asked for it, so that it doesn't just stay on there in perpetuity. The old business has been renamed to continued business. MASC is very clear, old business is a terrible name for it. I never actually thought old business was a problem, but it's definitely best practice to call it continued business. And there's a key at the very bottom, just before the policy information, which provides the document format information. So italicized text is content that will be filled in by the superintendent or her assistant to create the actual agenda. Content that's in quotes will actually be read by the chair, and information in brackets is intended to be removed and is simply instruction, so it's part of the policy, but if you are first time doing it or unfamiliar, this tells you how this works. I did also say that we need to amend the sentence that says each item under sections five, six, and seven really does need to say sections seven and eight.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Ruseau? We will roll call vote the consent agenda. We don't have to do them separately.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, once.
[Paul Ruseau]: Because it includes the finance stuff in there. We'll roll call vote it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. 6.30 works.
[Paul Ruseau]: So are you, through the chair, are you suggesting that number six would say not to begin before 6.30? Or are you saying the whole meeting?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's late, so forgive the filtered disappearing. We need to get real here. School committees are done in an hour and a half to two hours everywhere else in this state, and we are on six and seven hour meetings. I can't believe our employees are not leaving. I really can't. We want to call it community participation. We want everybody in the world to have everything they can say. We can ask endless questions for which we could have just sent an email.
[Paul Ruseau]: 6.30. Last week that means we would have begun the item on this agenda at 9.30.
[Paul Ruseau]: Members, I would agree that not everybody's gonna be happy. We could also do what most other communities that I've looked at are doing. Give a sign-up sheet and we have 20 minutes for public comment and then it's off. The public comment ends after 20 minutes. It doesn't matter if there were 400 people here to talk. That's what they do in other communities so that we don't have staff that finds out what they've signed up for and are like updating their resumes. I mean, I don't want to be blunt, but that's the truth. I mean, you know, I can put up, I can talk all night, as I mentioned earlier to Member Van der Kloot. I'm happy to stay here until the sun comes up, but I also don't have to be at work at 7 a.m., and Mia's looking at me that that's not okay either. But everybody being happy I didn't think was the goal, and this isn't City Council where it's just us. We have a host of people who have to stay and will be at work at 7 a.m. City Council can stay all night if they want.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to withdraw this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 34.2% of our students are categorized as economically disadvantaged. The real number is likely closer to 60%. Massachusetts Law Reform Institute in their latest report estimates that 4,852 of our neighbors are eligible for SNAP benefits, but do not receive them. And nearly 26% of those individuals are food insecure children in our school system. To put this another way, nearly one in four of our school-age students qualify for free or reduced lunch, but do not receive those benefits. That's one in four on top of the 34% that are getting benefits. We cannot stand on the false notion that there are ways to feed these children without impacting our bottom line or that Medford cannot afford to do this. The Medford I know and love is not a community that is willing to pretend children are fed when we know that they are not. This resolution will move us towards meeting our unanimously approved proclamation from just last year. We as a school committee and as a community must meet this challenge with action and not just words, and I ask my colleagues to support this resolution.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: We already have 34.2% of our students that are on free or reduced lunch, so whatever the costs that are already covered with that amount are being covered through the federal, I don't think it's the state, I think it's the federal government, so it is, it's not the full cost, because we already received a substantial amount of the cost. I think the cost is important, and that's part of the original motion that I actually asked for, the administration to tell us what it's going to be. But what it's going to be is if it comes down to it, it's going to be decisions between potholes and feeding kids. And I really can't imagine that that's a conversation I think I want to lose.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information. As a person who was hungry my entire childhood, the cost is not relevant. Sorry. What is the acceptable cost, Member Van der Kloot, to feeding kids?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Wondering if the members might read our SnapGap report. It sounds like some of the questions suggest that we have not read the SnapGap report. I'm not sure if everybody's aware, the last four years, people who were immigrants, even people with green cards, have had the fear of deportation, even when they're here completely legally, the fear of deportation drilled into them by our former administration. one in four, 1,000 kids in our school system should qualify and they are not filling out the forms because appropriately they are terrified of being deported. Not legally, but they are absolutely terrified of it. And to think that we can like make the administration or the principals or the teachers push harder to get forms filled out is not a, rational response to the fear that they live with. So I think that getting the forms filled out is absolutely important. And it actually is a very important piece of information for DESE and for a whole host of other things that the Food Security Task Force has talked about. We use that data for a lot of other things. We should continue to push to get that data and to get people to fill out these forms. but that is an unrelated activity in my mind to not having hungry kids at school. We all spent a lot of time on that proclamation just over a year ago. Did we think we were gonna have to do anything to get this to happen or did we make it so we felt good? There was no way to make Medford Hunger Free for free. That wasn't one of our choices. I think we all knew that last February, right? So are we gonna spend the money to make Medford free or are we just gonna like, put it in the annals of the school committee's minutes. And 20 years from now, somebody will have a great idea to make Medford Hunger free. We'll do a new resolution.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there a second? Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't accept that as a
[Paul Ruseau]: It's been seconded now, it can't be tabled.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I? Member Ruseau? The school meal program is not part of our budget, so it can't be in our budget. It's one of the weird and unfortunate problems about this program is we can't put it. It's not a part of our budget, but we still have authority over it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I think we've all received the emails after the last couple of weeks. So obviously it's not an argument about having air conditioning. I just, I'm seeking some clarification on fix it. I mean, because much of the high school does not have air conditioning to be fixed. And I just wanna be clear, are you seeking- Fix the problem. Fix the problem. So you mean installation of air conditioning throughout the high school that doesn't have it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I just suggest that that say that specifically because because we have previously talked in I think every year frankly about installing it in parts of the building that do not have it at all and usually John McLaughlin like has this look on his face like does Medford have all that? Do we have that much money for the city to even afford that normally? So I just wanna make sure that the report is something you can get in a reasonable timeframe because I think if I remember correctly from buildings and grounds, insulation in the building that is a concrete structure, I mean, like that's not even been assessed, it's just assumed to be a massive investment beyond imagination, millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars to install air conditioning in a concrete structure like that. So I'm hoping we can, I can understand the scope of your resolution before we vote on it. So that, I mean, I agree in principle without any question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you member Graham members up. Thank you. Yes, so around the procedure and timeline so I mean I my suggestion here would be that I know we have to have at least one more meeting to prove the allocation the city's budget. I believe that's a committee of the whole. I think that if we were to finalize and approve at that same meeting and then revote it at our first regular we have to do a real vote at a regular meeting. But I think that if we did that vote of the committee of the whole that I I'm suspect expecting that that could be submitted to death see without anybody be concerned if we can plan to vote it in September. That sounds reasonable to everybody.
[Paul Ruseau]: And if I may, then I believe our regular votes actually count there as well, so. Yeah, we could change it to that, special meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello. You know, let me just check in with Member McLaughlin real quick, because I know that she may not be able to make it. Hi, everyone. Sorry for the delay. We're just waiting to see if one more member will join us. And if she can't, we can start without her. All right, I think we should get started. Wait a second, I just see she just got the message. All right, well, we'll get started. I'm gonna actually share my screen out so that I can see you and do the,
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, it's 4.03. Thank you all for coming tonight. I'm going to call to order the Rules Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting of the Medford School Committee. And then I will get to the, actually, do I read the agenda first or after I take attendance? I always forget that. Does it matter?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you, sorry. So this is to all interested parties from me and the other members. Please be advised that on Wednesday, June 9 2021 from four to 6pm there will be a rules policy and equity subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via zoom pursuant to Governor, we probably need to get this language updated as I'm reading it since I think these ended right, or, but I'll just read it anyways because that's what's on the agenda but pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. and the governor's March 15th, 2020 orders imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Medford School Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information and the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the City of Medford website. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on channel Comcast channel 22, Verizon channel 43 at four o'clock. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call in by using the following links or call in number. The Zoom is https://nps02155-org.zoom.us slash j slash 96851394965. Or you can call in by dialing 1312-626-6799. And the meeting ID is 9685134965. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing me at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. The submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question and or comment. I will take the attendance now. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. I don't know if she is here. I'll mark her absent for now. And Member Ruseau, here to present, we have Quorum. All right, so our agenda for tonight we have three items. The first one is to review policy I see I see a the school year calendar which we actually just approved in December of 2020. And during that somewhat lengthy process we we acknowledge that we. probably weren't gonna get it exactly right the first time out, cause it was a pretty substantial change from past practice. We created something we call variable date observances. Actually, I'll bring that policy up. So we created, let me scroll down to that part, it's up here. So we've created three different categories for each of the items on the observance list. We have no school days, which I think everybody knows what a no school day is, an excused absence day, which is not new, and a blocked day, which means that we are essentially forbidding school-related events that are school-sponsored to occur on those days, in particular, major tests and exams, et cetera. And then, so that, I take it back. Those three types of categories existed already. They were not explicit in the old policy. What we have also done here is we've created an observance list that will help the superintendent roll this out each November. We have what we call static date observances. So date observances that occur on a specific date, kind of obvious. And then there's a whole host of observances that occur on different kinds of calendars, whether it's a lunar calendar or I believe the, well, I don't know all the different calendars. I won't pretend to know all that, but these are all calendar types, observance types that actually have a different date each year. So they have to kind of be looked up before they can be put into the calendar. So, We are here to discuss the addition, if that's how the members here and then the full school committee wants to go, of three additional days. I will preface that by saying that what our current calendar does not actually seem to have is anything related to snow days. The current process as I understand it is that the superintendent, and I don't know if this is across the whole state or just a historical Medford thing, but seven snow days are built into our calendar each year. And other than Snowmageddon five years, six years ago, there's just been no need for such a massive number of days added into the calendar. So I, What I'm proposing in this is that we add the two Eid, and I probably should have learned how to say them before, Al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, as well as Lunar New Year as full-blown, moving them from the excused absence list to being a no school type of observance beginning in the 2022-2023 school year. We've already released the calendar for this year, so I don't think it would be, possible to make that kind of a change, considering we won't even be actually discussing this until the 14th, if it passes. So, Member Graham, do you have any commentary before I go to the other folks?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so, One thing I didn't do was physically bring a calendar to this is one of those times when paper can be very helpful. So, can you can you just be a little more clear like if we added three days and then had the five days that literally is impossible.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I know you're not offering an opinion actually on that. I guess, one of the other challenges with the variable date observances and we have, is that some of these dates in some years will land when we don't have school. So it's one of those things where, We don't want a policy that some years works and some years doesn't work, obviously, because then the superintendent's gonna have to come to us in November and say, I followed the policy, we have to go to school until July 1st. Or worst case, July 3rd, if Monday is, if the first were a Saturday, for instance.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, no, yeah, no, I know. I mean, if the superintendent followed the policy, played it all out, and was like, we don't have a calendar that can be approved because of that. I don't want the policy to be functional most years, but on occasion, not functional. That's sort of my point. You know, Juneteenth this year, for instance, is on a Saturday. And we got lucky because Juneteenth was added after our last calendar was approved. And it's the no school day if it had been Any of the six other days of the week, we would have had to use a snow day, essentially, because we would have had to take it off, but the last calendar did not consider it. Okay, so two days right now is the maximum is what I'm hearing we can fit, unless we are going to address the bigger issue of February vacation, which I don't think we can cover tonight, because it's not on the agenda, but also because It's a multi-community effort is how I understand other communities have addressed the February vacation problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely, thank you. Ms. Weiss, if you could just notate that Member McLaughlin has joined us and I see a hand up. Michael, could you state your name and address or just your Medford Street address for the record, please? Yeah. Oops, I might've muted you or unmuted you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, Michael. the 2021 calendar year, the 19th is on a Saturday and the state law for state holidays is that Saturday holidays just are Saturday holidays. Sunday holidays roll on to being a Monday holiday and then there's a couple of exceptions like Christmas and I don't know what else it was. Next year, is I think what you're talking about.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. And I appreciate also the sort of threading that needle of, you know, I have not sat down and tried to play out, which it would not be hard to do. Well, it would be tedious, but it would not be hard to like play out the next 10 years of these and find out, do we really run into a problem or not? And actually thinking about that and the way you talked about how, you know, there'll be things that end up in July, or things that are, you know, something could end up in February vacation or some other already declared non-school time, that maybe we just simply add something to the policy to say, you know, in the event that the policy creates a, the policy as written cannot create enough school days to meet state compliance, that the school committee will be uh, consulted on how to proceed. Um, you know, I don't really look forward to trying to figure out, well, whose holiday do we cut this year? Um, but, um, I, you know, I know that I certainly played out a number of these when we were writing the policy and it was interesting to see, you know, cause I, I observed no holidays that are lunar holidays. So it was just so fascinating to see how well they move. I mean, everybody who follows those kinds of holidays know this. But anybody else want to have something to say on this? Barbara Graham, I see you muted.
[Paul Ruseau]: Horia Jalabi, could you just state your name and address for the record, just your street address for the record, please?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can't see the whole name because of Zoom. But Humayun, I'm gonna unmute you if you'd like to speak. If you could say your name and street address. Hello? Hello. Nope, we made a joke. Let's try that again. Okay, I think we should be able to hear you now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Humayun. Melanie's got a thumbs up, but I don't know if she wants to speak. Zoom sometimes is funky that way. Member McLaughlin, did you wanna speak? Let me unmute you, I don't know if you're a host.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. I do appreciate that. I've talked about the February vacation a couple of times about how teachers just get back from the winter break slash Christmas break, and then they start going, and then boom, everybody's out for another week. My understanding is teachers do not like February vacation. And I'm sure that saying that implies all teachers think the same thing, which is not exactly very useful, but that it's not an uncommon opinion from teachers that February vacation is just, not good for academics and for continued work. But in my conversations, I think with Dr. Cushing, or maybe it was Dr. Murphy, Mr. Murphy, I forget all the right doctors. It's a problem that is best resolved sort of regionally. We don't want to require our teachers to come to school in February when All of those with children are in districts where they are home. You know, we just want to try not to create a childcare crisis every single February. And, you know, another community could do it to us too. And so I think it makes sense to broach that conversation. in another setting or the superintendent, of course, has, you know, regional contacts with all of the districts around us, you know, around calling snow days and all this other stuff. So I just want everybody to know that is something that we have talked about, but it's actually much more complicated than, certainly than I had considered, you know, living and working in the same town. Maria, would you like to speak again?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Yes, I mean, I will just say that this new policy is new this year. And I think I know that I have heard from, I think two principals separately, how much they appreciated this, that it was all written down as in one place. And, you know, there's no, expectation that all the teachers are out there trying to figure out, you know, I mean, I have my calendar and my computer and sometimes I'm like, I thought today was a holiday. And then other times, you know, I just looked at Juneteenth and it says at the top Juneteenth five times, like, I don't know why there's five Juneteenths in my calendar. So, you know, to expect all of the teachers to just figure it all out every year has sort of kind of, has been sort of the past practice. Now there's one document that says it all and explains it all. And I know that the superintendent was very thankful when we passed that policy because I won't say it makes things easier, it makes things clear. And that I think is really critical. Does anybody else have any?
[Paul Ruseau]: Was anybody else like to speak on this? I, in the meeting, I wrote a, is it one sentence? One sentence as a potential amendment to the policy. Member Graham, I presume you can see it. I will read it for Member McLaughlin because I believe she may not be able to see the Zoom right now, but I added to the our school year calendar policy, a sentence under the policy section says, in the event that this policy creates a situation where we will have an insufficient number of school days, the superintendent will bring this to the school committee for advice on how to proceed to ensure the minimum 180 school days. It feels a little clunky, that sentence at the end. What do you think, Memorandum? Any thoughts that sound good? It's clear, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I think that's a good point, because I did start the meeting earlier by saying there's nothing in here about snow days. So I'm sure the minimum 180 school days and 185 scheduled school days per the, I'm gonna bet it's in CMR 27, but per the state requirement to include five. Are they called inclement weather days or snow days, Dr. Edwards-Vincent, do you know?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. So I added that little bit. Member McLaughlin, did you want to motion? Oh, Mr. Kane wants to speak. Let me unmute you. Nick, hello. Hello. Name and street address for the record, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, one of the challenges is you have to kind of schedule all of the days for a year, and then you can do the math. And I suppose if I had done a little more due diligence, I might have actually done that, and I apologize. I guess I didn't really understand that we could not pull back any of our inclement weather days. That was sort of my out. But that appears to not be an option. So member McLaughlin, are you- Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. I will take the roll call on that. And that is just the amendment to the policy, by the way. So that member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, three in the affirmative. The amendment to the policy regarding the situation where there are insufficient number of days using the policy. So now I think we should vote on whether or not we wish to Motion to approve. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think his hand just didn't come down. And so the motion, right, is to add these three as no school days beginning in 2022, 2023. And for anybody watching, this is just the subcommittee recommendation. The full committee will surely have an opinion and conversation on that. Is there a second?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes, three in the affirmative. So the two updates to this policy will be sent to the full school committee on Monday, the 14th, which is five minutes, it feels like. Thank you, everyone, for joining on that topic. Motion to adjourn? Oh, sorry. Nope, we have two more. I know you can't see the agenda.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's all right. So the second item on the agenda is policy BEDH, our public participation policy. We did discuss this. Let me close this out for now. So I guess I'll stay on that. So last meeting we held, we discussed a substantial number of, frankly, an entirely new policy on public participation. The policy, the major changes, okay, it's all new, so it's all major changes. I should just not try to say it was just a little change, is to, first of all, make it crystal clear that there are two kinds of public participation at school committee meetings. The language in our current policy is like three sentences long. And it is clear from well, it was clear on Monday at our meeting. But it's been clear before as well that the public and frankly, the committee members, some of us at least have found it confusing to talk about public participation because there are two kinds. So The new policy starts off with just a simple reference to what part of the Massachusetts general laws actually govern public participation. And that's there. So anybody reading the policy can link right to it and know what the law says, which I think is important. The public comment section. So what we have decided in this policy, if we approve it, is to call the public comment section and a community participation section. We're just trying not to use participation or public or community in both of them. So public comment is when a member of the public wants to speak on an item that is on the agenda that we're discussing. Procedurally, it's not new. This has been what we've done. And so this is just a long winded version of explaining how that will function. This new policy does presume that the state will allow remote participation via zoom so we could pass this whole thing, the state could decide No, we're not gonna extend it. Zoom goes away, which I really hope they don't do. If they do, we'll have to revisit this policy in the fall.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So when somebody wants to speak on an item on the agenda, we're calling that public comment. The whole committee is going to have to work to redo our language to make sure it's clear. When somebody in the public wants to do a presentation, like our dyslexia presentation we had a few meetings back, that's community participation. And that is, I can, actually, I believe you were in this meeting before, so you did see the language. That isn't changing. We're revisiting it for a different reason. Member Graham, I see your hand up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Love it. So, so presentations from the public or should we just say public presentations?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Great. I like that. Let me just look at the rest of this language to see include a community, a
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. So, and then the rest of this is just the procedure. And for those that weren't in the last meeting, we defined a procedure because there are scenarios for which the presentation will be rejected by the superintendent. And I wanted to make sure that the procedure allowed, the policy allowed for, essentially the school committee to have a vote if we disagree. And the superintendent, I mean, I don't think the superintendent has had an opportunity to reject the presentation, but for instance, if his presentation was sent in that was around the performance of a teacher or a principal, that absolutely will be rejected by the superintendent. It would be illegal. And if the person who submitted it, felt that that rejection was in fact not valid, they can submit what we call here an authority, appealing the authority determination. So the superintendent also would reject it. For instance, if you wanted to do a presentation on the potholes on Route 16, that is not within the authority of the school committee and we have a lot of work to do. We're not going to let you have a presentation on the potholes on Route 16. If it's about how we're damaging our school infrastructure, maybe, but so anyways, so we have this authority determination appeal where the school committee will make a vote to whether to sustain the determination of the superintendent. We did work all that out last time. Now there is also after this last meeting, there were some concerns about this middle section And I'll just read it. It says a welcoming community is both a value of the school committee and an aspirational goal to move us towards this goal. Is it toward or towards? Who's the English person here? I couldn't even get Google to help me. Anyway, towards this goal. And then the language that we approved last time, but we're going to probably change tonight because after hearing from some members of the public, I completely agree. It said, we ask that the duration of your residency in Medford not be provided as all residents have the same rights and responsibilities regardless of the duration of their residency. So, you know, upon reflection and hearing from members across the community, frankly, as well as frankly, some of my friends who were like, oh, I do that by default. I mean, I don't even know how I could ever stop myself. It really, the point of this message is actually the second half. of this sentence. So less is more, less for the superintendent, the mayor to read. And I think it's a more positive sounding sentence. If we were to change it to move us towards this goal, we acknowledge that all residents have the same rights and responsibilities regardless of the duration of their residency in our city, which I think gets to the whole point that we were trying to get at in the last meeting that, you know, you're a resident of the city and like that's the beginning and the end how we will value what you have to say. What you say will have value, of course, but who you are as a member of the public speaking, that that's the point of this. Member Graham, did you seem to want to say something? Please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. So this sentence though is, so the next item on the agenda is our agenda creation or a modified agenda format. And so this sentence would be literally read by the super, by the mayor at each meeting. So brevity is important because, you know, as member Graham mentioned, you know, if there are no, I apologize, that's different sections. So this would get read every meeting and, you know, So that for me brevity is important.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know that I, it feels out of place because what we're saying is, okay, welcome to our meeting, speak. Yeah. And whether we discriminate or not, which I mean, obviously we, we don't, but, doesn't seem relevant to the person who is about to speak. This is a sort of like almost an instruction to the member of the public that is here before us to speak. And the fact that we don't discriminate or that it's our policy that we don't discriminate seems out of place to me. It's not that it shouldn't, like I see it actually on some school committees, literally it's on their agenda right at the bottom of this like nice fancy font. And maybe that's actually something to consider. But it just seems like an odd way to like lead into, hi, I'd like to hear what you have to say. By the way, the school committee doesn't discriminate.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, yes, of course.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, something you said just made what member McLaughlin said make more sense to me. Because if we took out that regardless of the duration of your residency and put like, regardless of your gender or regardless of your, we can go through the list. it does feel like there's only one thing on this list. And that is what I think member McLaughlin was really getting at was that's just one of the things that can make our meetings not always feel very welcoming.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Dr. Robinson, did you seem to, I thought you might have had something to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Dr. Edvinson. Yeah, I actually like that sentence that you suggested and literally just ending there, because when it ends there, it does kind of drop, you know, like that mic drop thing that, you know, like, here we are, and here's what we would like you to help us with. And it feels, I think, I remember Graham said that, or maybe it was Aaron McLaughlin about the whole, it's, you know, we need your help.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So if I, ditch all of that and add that. I'm saying that forgetting that member of my class can't see my screen. We add the word. So the new statement as I have it on screen right now, be a welcoming, inclusive community. It's both a value of the school community and an aspirational goal. We ask for your help in achieving this, this goal, this goal. Or do we get rid of the end and aspirational goal? Feels
[Paul Ruseau]: comments, given that it's the public comment section. Perspective. Your, yeah, like perspective. All right, we can probably go all night, but does anybody in the public, Member Graham, Member McLaughlin, I think you're, I seem to think you're okay. Does anybody else want to speak on this change to this language? If you can raise your hand with the Zoom raise your hand thing, or... All right, seeing and hearing none, I will make sure that this gets, I don't wanna mess with these things on Google, because I may end up deleting the wrong thing, but I will make sure. So is there a motion?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Okay, motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Excellent. So the new public participation policy, proposed public participation policy will be sent to the school committee on Monday the 14th. And then I'm going to switch us to the third item on our agenda, which was the policy BEDB, the agenda creation and format for regular meetings of the school committee. At our last meeting, we also, this is a dramatic change. Actually, I think it's entirely new as well. I had an interesting email with a member of the public. Now I'm forgetting which member of the public it was. I had an interesting email exchange this week. And it was related to Monday's meeting where I think everyone was confused, frankly, as to when and how the public was supposed to get their opportunity to speak. I don't think anybody was actually clear on what was happening on Monday there. And in that email dialogue, it became very evident that there was something I articulated in my email that I thought was important. And I also had another email with another school committee member in another town today, whose entire school committee is new with a new superintendent starting July one. Like there is nobody with historical information to help them continue. And I feel really bad for them. And, but anyways, my point was, you know, we had a new mayor in January of last year, a still relatively new superintendent and the way we run our meetings wasn't written down, frankly. It was, you know, historical or whatever that right word is. And so, and you know, the mayor quickly became capable of running our meetings just fine, but she had not been on the school committee before. So she really came to our meeting with frankly, I think a experienced deficit that can only exist by doing it. But we had nothing to give her to say, this is how we run our meetings. So in that email exchange, I realized that we probably should provide something much more explicit. So this policy is not what the agenda looks like. I mean, that is partially in here, but it's a how-to, how to create the agenda. And it's also a how-to for, in some regards, for the mayor, the chair. So this is a sentence, a section I added since our last meeting as a potential offer. And what it says is that as each item under sections five, six, and seven, sorry, the chair will proceed as follows. Read the text of the item on the agenda. The chair will ask, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? The chair will wait the appropriate few seconds to look around and wait for Zoom people to pop their hands up. And if none, the chair will state seeing and hearing none and then proceed. And this is actually very similar to language I believe the city council uses. And I certainly have appreciated hearing that. And then the chair will then ask the vice chair, are there any public comments that you have received So this is the emails. If somebody physically delivers a letter, if there are, they will be read. And otherwise the chair will proceed with the item to engage the committee. Now this last part of this sentence, I don't actually know what the best practice is. Should the committee have a conversation about an item before or after public comment? I feel strongly that it should not be both, because it will just go on all night. And I know in some school committees, all public comment for the whole night is like the first 20 minutes of the agenda. There's a signup sheet, 20 minutes is up. Whoever didn't get to talk is done, which I just think is too much. It's not how I understand Medford. And maybe we do need to eventually add some limit on time, but the question I'm asking member Graham and member McLaughlin is, do we want public participation I'm sorry, I'm calling it public participation, public comment. Do we want public comment to proceed before we do our debate on an item that we're gonna vote on or after? And then we vote at the end, like I- Sometimes, yes. please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, That's actually, I mean, you know, if you don't get up and do your public comment when the item is being addressed on the agenda, you can't get up, you know, 10 minutes later, a half an hour later and talk about that item.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, sorry. Member McLaughlin, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but if I did mean to interrupt, I apologize for it. No, the public comment is not actually an item on the agenda because it would be an item on every, it would be every item on the agenda would have a public comment section. So this is sort of the precursor. This is not on the agenda specifically because then the agenda would be 30 pages. Well, it would be multiple pages long where we just state over and over again that this is how public comment works. So what you'll see later on is that, so after this report of the superintendent, assuming we agreed to this format, the mayor will read the statement that says, this is our policy on public comment and I'll fix all that. She will read that once. Then the actual items on the agenda will happen. And then, you know, like under new business, there's a motion that I put on to do something or ask superintendent for something. The chair will read the item on the agenda, which she does now. And then the chair will say, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on the item?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that part I thought, I hadn't imagined there was any real conversation. The chair will read the text or the presentation will be delivered. And then the public will have an opportunity to comment.
[Paul Ruseau]: Whether it comes before or after, we, the members, do our bit where we ask questions and we make motions and amendments and vote up and down on whatever the item is. I mean, to me, it's weird that we would vote and then listen to the public. That doesn't seem very... Right, no, you're right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Gambis, before that, Dr. Edward-Vincent has her hand up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Robinson. One moment, Member McLaughlin, before I just wanted to explain something here that isn't necessarily obvious. It is not obvious. So, you know, part of the motivation for redoing this agenda, absolutely one of the most important motivations was to find a way to clarify the agenda format, but also to make it so that it is, you know, you mentioned Dr. Everett Vincent, that sometimes the agenda looks super light, rarely, but sometimes, and then it's still a five hour meeting. Like there is just no way to predict our agenda having anything to do with how long we'll be sitting together. And I think there are a number of causes of that. But what I think isn't clear here is that report of the superintendent is in our last meeting on Monday, I think there were nine reports and they were all under, well, whatever the section number was then. Those reports are not, in my opinion, are not moments when the public is allowed to come up and talk. These are reports that are being delivered to us. And if we, as members of the committee, feel like there's something in there that requires us to deliberate or to make a motion or write a policy, that we, as members, make a motion to send whatever to the whatever subcommittee for whatever that purpose is that we're interested in. Two years ago, we had a binder this big on a study that we approved with Mass General Hospital and resiliency. My daughter actually is a participant. The presentation was probably a half an hour, 45 minutes long, and it should have been. And this was a very important and big decision for us to approve this. But I did not see that as a time for the public to come up and comment on whether we approved it or not for so many reasons. Like, first of all, the public doesn't have this document, this thousand page binder. Do we want to hear from people who have absolutely no way to know what it is we're deliberating on? There is no way. I mean, we received those binders ahead of time. We read some parts. I mean, I didn't read the whole thing, but you know, That doesn't seem like an opportunity for the public to come up and comment on something that they cannot know about, because we don't provide it to them. It was provided to us as a presentation. So those reports we got on Monday, we didn't have public participation in any of those, and I didn't expect us to. So that's why, at least in this format, you do all of your reports. At this point in the meeting, if there were no presentations of the public from the public, you do all of those reports and the public has still not really spoken and done any public comment because the items under continued business or new business have not even been come up yet. I certainly understand what you're saying and it is common practice in other school committees to, you know, welcome to the meeting, salute the flag and take our attendance, open the room up for half an hour people can say whatever they want, and that's it for the night. I just feel like Medford is so far away from that, that it just, I don't see that passing at our Monday meeting is my point. And if we put the commentary ahead of time and at the end, the end part is gonna be after we've already voted to do something, we're gonna, We're definitely not going to be able to achieve that language. We ask for your help in achieving this goal and valuing your perspective when we've already made the vote. It isn't very, doesn't feel genuine. Member, sorry, Dr. Ever-Vincent and then Member Glocken.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't see them as three things we have always allowed members of the public to come up and speak on every single item all night long. We've never had a block at the end where people can come up and, you know, do a city council thing where. All right, we're opening up the floor, everybody come and talk about what you want, whether it was on the agenda or not. We've never had that. And I don't, I don't.
[Paul Ruseau]: You could also- Sorry. I brought the agenda up, and we have item number seven, community participation. And then it says, any citizen in the audience may be given permission to speak once for three minutes. And then it continues on and says, again, This is where we've labeled the two different things with the exact same words. Then it says community participation portion of the agenda will be established to give any citizens to do the presentation thing. And then, so there is not, I've never seen it where we say this or the mayor reads this. If there's a presentation like the dyslexia presentation, the most recent one I can think of, it's literally on the agenda here. But when this is read, I've never seen our meetings where people just get up and start talking, but that's not what happens. They wait for the item on the agenda to come up. So all we're doing here is saying early, you know, which by the way, if we read this at six o'clock and somebody knows it's way in the, so at eight o'clock, they joined the meeting because it's a long agenda. They didn't hear this. And then those in the know, know that they can speak for three minutes on any item on the agenda. And those that don't end up like Monday at the end of the meeting, wondering, well, what happened? Nobody asked us when we wanted to talk. So I see it as the splitting it up into presentations of the public, which was that presentation section, putting that at the top of the hour, which it already is very near to the top now. It's just after approval of minutes and bills. So that's not really a particularly interesting change in my mind. And then with the big difference here in the language I have here is that superintendent would do all the presentations, which here on Monday, there were 10 of them, I take it back, where we approve accepting a donation or we hear from the CCSR, et cetera. I won't go through Monday's meeting. But like all of those things on Monday, we did not have public participation. And I never sensed that any of us expected there was public participation on those items. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's not how it's been.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanna respond to that and then I'll go to Ms. Brown, to Eunice. One of our responsibilities, and I'm not, sounds a bit, I don't mean this to sound quite the way it's coming out, but a huge portion of our job is monitoring, is accepting reports that the legislature or DESE said we have to receive and the superintendent has to give us. We're not making decisions. We have to accept this $350,000 grant. I mean, that's not a choice. For me, everything under the report of the superintendent is a superintendent's way of talking to us and the public. And if somebody in the public wants to get up to talk about that item, my understanding of how that would work, and I have language for that later, is, well, there are seven school committee members. We can all put a motion anytime we want on the agenda. I just don't think it's fair to the administration to anybody who's standing there giving a presentation. I mean, we had the CPAC report. So it would have been fair to allow anybody in the public who has a bone to pick with the report or how much we spend on special education to come up and start like a full-blown dialogue with that person who's doing the report. And like, that is not what I think of as an appropriate public participation It's not fair to the presenter. It's certainly not fair to the administration who was unprepared for that to happen. And as members, we don't have any ability to prepare for that. Like I come to the meetings prepared for the items on the new business and continued business or old business with having read and if I didn't understand something, asking questions like, but these presentations are, most of them are frankly, you know, mandatory or And they're for our consumption. And if we wanna make a new policy about something, we can do that. But I just don't know why the, and as the superintendent said, I mean, we already have meetings that are three times longer than most school committees. It's embarrassing at this point. If we're going to open every item up for public comment and dialogue, I mean, but who, what's the, we're going to not accept the $350,000 grant because of public comment. So I just don't know that I think unbounded public comment. I mean, it just, we're already out of control. And I think You know, it's not fair to staff. And frankly, if I was looking for a job in a school district, and you told me I had to attend every school committee meeting, and I had to choose between one that was an hour and a half, twice a month, and one that was seven hours, twice a month. I'd be like, thanks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. The proposal is after the report of the superintendent, which is in the current, in the last meeting, all of this, the mayor will then read a statement about public comment. The one we just reviewed actually in the previous policy. So this isn't quite exactly correct. And then after that, there won't be a public comment period. There would be, we would move on with the agenda. The mayor will say this, meaning from this point on public comment is an option, is essentially what that means. And perhaps I should say that. Then we would have report of committees, continued slash old business, new business, And then we've moved these boring things down here where we're gonna vote for minutes and stuff. So, I mean, these, I mean, report committees also does not, I don't recall any interaction with the public ever on a report of committees, but the continued business and new business is the meat, that's the policymaking, that's our job. And so those are the only two sections I envision the mayor saying the words Um, um, you know, um, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? So it would have been, you know, the mayor made the motion to extend the advisory committee a week. That gets asked. Um, and on Monday, frankly, I think some members of the public would have stood up then. Um, then we talk and we vote and then number two, three, four, and we didn't have an old business.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, reports in the new format should be, you mean the superintendent's update? Report of the superintendent, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is all, sorry. This is all report of the superintendent. All 10 of these things are the report of the superintendent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I would like to hear from Eunice. Thank you. Eunice, let me unmute you. Yes. Name and street address, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just will, I just wanna, you know, the difference between the school committee and city council is stark. this is our list of the annual reports that we must receive and vote on. This list, I don't know what the list is for the city council, but we had 10 on the agenda on Monday, and that's not unusual for every single meeting. We have so many, I mean, if we received 15 different donations this week from members of the public, we will have 15 items to vote on, and You know, I don't know that it's fair to compare us in any way, shape or form to city council. I mean, the format, it's a perfectly valid conversation, but our responsibilities and the city council's responsibilities are worlds apart, frankly. And, you know, the city council doesn't have, you know, a dozen staff members who have to be back at seven o'clock in the morning that are required to be at our meeting to do their presentations. So I'm, you know, it is a problem that I don't think there is no beautiful solution. Do we have all of our staff wait till the end of the night and start giving their presentation starting at eight o'clock so that they can get out at 10 or 11 and then drive home? Many of them don't even live in Medford to be back at 7 a.m. Do we do that every night or, sorry?
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, the public who all definitely lives here and has chosen to be here versus has to be here. And also the public has the option to provide, you know, all the school committee members, like we have email addresses. I feel like we get communicated to, at least I do, you know, 50 times a week or more. So it's not that this is the only opportunity. Unfortunately, for the director of special education to give her annual audit report, there are no alternatives for her. She can't mail it in. And so if I have to choose between the public having to wait till the end of the night or all the staff, and frankly, I really, this is a employer's market. I'm sorry, an employee's market. So, you know, we keep doing seven hour meetings and I am quite concerned about staff turnover when there are countless opportunities for all of our staff. So keeping the district operational is a more important thing than keeping the public, allowing the public to feel like they are being heard at every opportunity. Because our job does not include public participation and comment that is actually not part of our job description. I think it's important as an elected official, but it is definitely not the job of the school committee to hear the public. Member Graham, I hope I got that in the right order.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, Member Graham, when you're saying public participation, are you referring to public comment?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham, before I call on Member McLaughlin, I'm just, you know, the new language of we're calling these different sections is garbling me. What you're seeing on screen is that... I would put report of subcommittees.
[Paul Ruseau]: Number six would be new business.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, continued business should come before new business. And that may just be the equivalent of new business that we said, it's too late, let's do it next week. So I think those two really should be together. And then so what I dislike is that this text that will float on the agenda that's not an item, it looks weird here. I think it will look normal once you play out the actual agenda and create one. This is the policy of the agenda. So it's a little wonky, maybe an extra space.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, and actually a lot of agendas do try to guess time, a lot of them. I think we're not ready for that yet.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, right, and we'll just move the consent agenda to the top since we now have that rub. Correct. We can just do consent agenda right there, actually.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I should just make myself an editor instead of making suggestions, but because it's agenda report of the superintendent. So these first four items, well, the first three items, well, the first three items though, could be literally, you know, three minutes total. The report of the committees is sort of the, you know, sort of the one where some of us talk a long time, some of us don't, and sometimes there are none. typically it's less than 15 minutes. Then we can get to all those reports and then presentations of the public not to begin before 7 p.m. Yeah, I mean, worst case scenario, we have to take a 10 minute break while we all scarf down some food. And that's not the worst thing that could happen. I actually like this because it does reduce, it sort of satisfies the needs of the staff and the public in making it so they're not waiting longer while all those other presentations come in. And, you know, I just also want to state like the members, I hear from a lot of people, I know that other members hear from a lot of people, you know, if there's anything that has happened on the agenda or that you want us to make a motion on, I don't, know that that's really, I know city council, it's sort of a practice that, you know, you want to put something on the agenda. I think city councilor has to sponsor it or something like that. I forget the right word. So, you know, we don't have that as an explicit policy, but obviously that would be totally doable. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I obviously do value that. I think that sometimes I do say things that can be taken out of context too easily. I think as individual members and as elected officials, it is an absolutely critical part of our job, but as an actual body, it is absolutely not part of our job. And that is defined in the law. There's nothing about the public in our required responsibilities. And I think it's important that we as a body stick to our responsibilities. Otherwise, we're going to have presentations on potholes and, you know, and the city budget and, you know, and I think that, but I appreciate you giving me a little bit of room to not look like I just didn't care about the public because I obviously do. But that is not the responsibility of that's not one of the things listed on what a school committee does.
[Paul Ruseau]: You know them, you're trying to get.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, it's to supervise and evaluate or hire and fire the superintendent, approve a budget and write policy. There's always that fourth one of like voting yes on all of these mandatory reports we must receive. I don't really know where that fits. You know, we have to vote yes to receive a grant for instance. And that's not really any of those three. I guess technically counts as a policy decision. So I did, I just want to quickly, member McLaughlin add also like this section six is only the presentations of the public. This is just floating language that begins before the part of the agenda for which that is an option. And it's sort of like, no matter how much I try, we can't seem to get them completely separated so that it's not confusing. I just added a little line and I think it does help a little. Another option is simply that this has a different font or something like that, but this, you know, this is not part of number six.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, it's just, you know, and truth be told, none of this technically needs to be on the agenda. I just like it there because I think the new person coming to our agenda, the new mayor, the new school committee member, like this being on the agenda, I think is incredibly helpful because it doesn't say, go see policy BDH, and then you're like, well, where are our policies? It just kind of doubles down on what it is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, three in the affirmative. This will go on our Monday agenda. I appreciate everybody's time. Motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Second. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Thank you, everyone, and have a good night.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I'm just trying to be 100% clear that our request. If, if that was the allocation that the mayor actually gives us in her budget that that will be the line item in her budget, not a different number with understanding that funds are coming from s or other places.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then I have lots of questions, but I have sort of a specific question. about transportation, the budget shows it going up 50,000 or 56,000, which I assume is actually the increase that the contract requires each year. It shows us going up to 18 buses. We're currently at 17. We're gonna be able to cut that down to 16 to give us the two bus buffer to accomplish the transportation for the high school. But I don't see any money related to actually doing that. Where's that money?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I know member Vanderfoot spoke about a fine arts director. I do hope that next year we can prioritize that. You know, if you look at departments and you organize them how they should be versus how they are in the budget, fine arts took a pretty huge hit last year. And we do need to restore that. I mean, as great as all of our fine arts department staff are, I felt like I got to know the fine arts director at every single program, at every single school. He was not just a paper pusher or any kind of derogatory term you could think of for, not that you all are administrators of that kind, but sometimes people take administrators and they just think somebody who sits and writes emails. And that was not what we had for a finance director. And I want us to return to a time when the finance director can do what that person's supposed to do. But that's for next year. Last year, we had a cover letter, a memo, which I realized we're not gonna really have time to do this year. It's a different year. There's a pandemic still going on. But in that, we had about $9.6 million of identified unmet needs. And you know, as excited as I am for the number, the big number, I just think it's important to recognize that it's not as big as it looks, the increase, because we took such a huge cut last year by going to not adding the, well, we laid a lot of people off. And so, you know, it's sort of like the sale for buying a diamond, you know, but the week before the price went way up. So you're not getting that good of a deal. So it's sort of the reverse of that. You know, my estimate is that biggest number is about a 5.2% increase, not a 9.4% increase. When you consider a three and a half percent increase, have we gotten it last year? And 5.4 or 5.5% is a big increase for Medford. I would just also suggest we think about 5.4 or 5.5% increase in the context of vast sums of money coming from the federal government showered on our city and schools, it doesn't feel very big. And to put it in context, and I know we're not Cambridge with their crazy tax base, but last year in the pandemic, they only gave their school system a 5.5% increase. That was like, they suffered and give them a 5.5% increase. So I think it's important to not get too joyful about a potentially 9.4% increase. It is not reflection of going from a good place to a better place. It's a place where our buildings and ground budget in 2017 was $56 million. In 2018, it was 58. This year, we're going up to 57 million. No, we're going down. So, you know, we cut $400,000 from 2018 to 2019 in buildings and crafts. So I just don't feel like maintenance is still, like, what's the right number for maintaining, like, if I was a company and had to figure out a business plan, what would be the right amount of maintenance for the amount of buildings and structures we have? Because it's certainly, I'm sorry, I said 58, 5.8. We went down to 5.4, but this year we're going to 5.7. So I'm happy that this number is as big as it is, definitely happy. But I just think it's not a reason to have a party because 30 or 40 years now of figuring out how to cut year after year, it's an improvement, but that's not much more than that in my opinion. But the memo that we had last year where we identified 9.6 million of critical needs, or not all of them are critical, six million of them are critical. I believe somewhere in one of our myriad budget meetings, we did ask that this memo be updated, not to be sent to the city council or the mayor's office, but just be updated so that we could say something like, you know, we had on here, cybersecurity training and professional development for $10,000. If it was done, we should check it off and cross it off the list. We have a lot of things on here that did get done through the pandemic because of the money we got. but we also, there's no way we spent nearly $10 million in covering these needs. So I would just ask that we already motioned to have this document updated. I don't need to reiterate that, but I don't wanna come the fall or worst case next budget season being like, what about that 2020-21 document? Where are we? It feels like this is the right time to get this updated so that It's fresh, and also when we go into the next budget cycle, we are not just completely confused about where we are from just what would have been two short years before. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Murphy, can I just, can I just jump? This was the letter that we, this was the government memo that we sent to the city council. So this was for the request, which as you pointed out, was the same thing. So this was to them when we adopt the appropriation, at least as I understand the process, we're not sending them something else, we're done, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, but I mean, and I realized this was before your time last year, but the city council got the memo and talked about it and what was in it and what we were saying we weren't, we didn't have the money for. And so that whole conversation where they will be adopting the budget that the mayor sends to them will have already happened before we vote on our appropriation. So it feels like it's a bit of a, that. Um car before the horse problem. We can write a lovely memo to them. But they have gone for the summer and well, they are because the city council needs in the summer, but It's just it's too late. Other than just feel like we wrote a memo and sent it to
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, point of something, that's not right. We did just pass a motion, I believe, and the date we specified was August 1st. We don't have the minutes yet, so I can't confirm, but I believe we said August 1st.
[Paul Ruseau]: You want to move a motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yeah, this is all very exciting. And I know my son absolutely loves the rotation this year through electrical as a ninth grader. I have a question about, obviously I'm not an electrician, but are there any specialized things in the electrical program related to, you know, solar and car chargers and all of those things that I think of as new, but if you're an electrician, they're just electricity, I'm sure. But is there anything in our program for those, or is there a need for something like that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Based on the feedback we've been receiving around the school name change, I'm wondering if we shouldn't find a way to engage the entire community in a poll of some sort and let them choose. I mean, I don't think we can put a logo on a ballot. I don't know that the format of ballots allows for anything other than text, but I'm uncomfortable deciding something that's important.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't disagree in principle, but the renaming of the Columbus is absolutely explicitly in the law within our purview. The community disagrees greatly. that we should be making as such a decision. So I don't know where to draw the line, but if it's what's in our authority, then that's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: And spending far more than we're gonna spend on the Columbus renaming. And the principal argument against the Columbus renaming is we can't afford it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just not willing to vote to spend $25,000 on a new sign when there's already signage that isn't perhaps adequate. I'm not going to disagree with that. But I think if we're going to spend that kind of money after the number of communications we received about spending money on a sign about another building, it seems really tone deaf.
[Paul Ruseau]: Peter.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo, go ahead. Thank you. I'm not sure what renovation you're talking about, but I mean, if we do a new- Potential. Okay, if we do a new high school, I'm not sure $25,000 is part of the conversation. I concur.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I need to see six again.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm looking at the documents we received. So those are not numbered the same.
[Paul Ruseau]: Number six.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, then that wasn't the one I wanted to see. Number seven, maybe?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, we probably should use rank choice voting and drop below us and have everybody vote again.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just, I'm not particularly interested in whether it's transferable. I just also have no interest in renovating the building. So I don't think that for me would be part of my calculation. And I am not sure if that affects pricing. I also, the subcommittee can only make recommendations if the full committee decides. So I feel like if there's two options, the full committee really should get both options at least.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is that what you say? No, you know yourself. That's good. That's therapy for you. I would just ask that we do in like the top three are the yeah, I like never Vanderquilt I was uncomfortable with the other logo. And we don't it didn't make our top three so we don't have to get into the reasons. But
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have a quick question for Aggie. Does the city plant many maples? I feel like when I walk around, I never see maple trees in any of the newly planted trees. And I walk a lot. Is there, do we just not plant maples for a reason? Do they get too big? What's the deal?
[Paul Ruseau]: That might be... Yeah, I'm in the hillside, and every... trees under a wire, even all the new trees. So maybe that's what it is that, you know, cause I was, I'm just walking around and I listened to an audio book about maple trees and I'm like, but I, and that's why I was observing all these trees that were planted in like the last decade. And I'm like, I couldn't find a single maple tree to be, to be found, but I think it is the wires.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I don't really. Now, if anybody here knows the answer, do we really even have to be involved or vote? I mean, honestly, they can't do a thing until June 7th. That's every day counts as far as I'm hearing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, but my concern is we have two meetings left. I'd like us, not you, but I'd like us to, I don't know if it's our attorney or the finance people or whoever it is, make a decision as to whether we really have to be involved with voting on this. I know we just do it as a matter of course, but you know, if the RFP goes on June 15th and it comes back on June 23rd and we are actually have to vote, well, then we all need to be told ahead of time we're going to have an emergency meeting so we can be prepared. None of us are like hiding away in Vermont next to a river, which I might hope to be doing. And if we are not involved, I'd like us to not be involved, to not clog the process up. You know, we don't get called that the electric bill this year must have been shockingly higher than a normal year with all the type of filters. Nobody's we've not voted on that. just don't want us to be involved if we don't have to be. Nothing for you, Alicia, but if John or the superintendent can, you know, and that can be done all at once, but if he can get an answer whether we have to be involved, I'm fine with just voting this up and going up to our June 7th to agree to it. But if it turns out we don't need to be involved, we shouldn't be involved. Because we're all obviously in agreement, we're gonna replace it no matter what the number looks like.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep. I want to be us tying you down. This has to happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll take it at 10, we can't adjourn yet.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin? Member Mustone has just joined us.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't think she can unmute herself yet.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there a- Motion to adjourn? Motion to approve?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you mayor. So I'll do the minutes first and then we can do the policy, which we had tabled as well. So on May 5th, yes, sorry. On May 5th, the rules policy and equity subcommittee met with member Graham and member McLaughlin. and we had a number of members of the community joining us, as well as our leadership team. So we were reviewing, we had three things on our agenda. One was policy BEDH, which is our public participation policy. Our current policy is remarkably brief. So we went through line by line the proposed update. We talked about how Much of the law and the current policies really don't consider remote participation very well. We talked about speech and how mute or kicking somebody out of a meeting on Zoom or putting them into a waiting room. All of those things are sort of unconsidered at this point in time. And they felt very much like suppression, frankly, to many of the members. the members of the school committee that were in the meeting, we were very adamant about ensuring people had their three minutes. We did discuss going to two minutes, but we felt strongly that three minutes made more sense. We also discussed some language around, let's see, there was a lot of discussion, sorry. So we discussed different language options to put on our actual agendas, because one of the confusions that appear to be very common today is that public participation and community participation are two different things. One is that section on our agenda that we occasionally have where somebody does a presentation, and the other one is where people speak on items on the agenda. So we've drafted new language that is quite explicit so there's less confusion about which one is which and what the members can and can't do during those times. We also, let's see. So we also compared our own process to the state house when they have subcommittee meetings and other types of hearings. We probably won't have anything quite as robust as that without having a whole lot more staff at technology in every space. So we did approve an updated policy, but due to community feedback, that will actually be getting re-reviewed on our June 16th at 4.30 p.m. subcommittee meeting. I don't believe it's posted, but the agenda has been created and sent to the superintendent. So that particular policy is not ready for prime time with the school committee. The second item addressed was the agenda creation and format for regular meetings. So there's, we have over the last couple of months talked extensively about how to improve the meetings, whether it's making them shorter or getting rid of items that don't need to ever be there, moving things around. And it finally became too much to try and incrementally change things we end up. So this is an entirely new format for our agenda. It is not going to startle anybody or anything. So we worked on and made clarifications to the proposed new agenda format, as well as some process for the public on how to get on the agenda. We made that robust by adding, putting it right into the policy issues of what if somebody asks the superintendent to put something on the agenda that is not legal. you know, personnel matters are not school committee within school committee authority. If somebody wants to come and speak on that, the answer is no, that's not legal. So we put a whole process in there for how the public can, if they are rejected by the superintendent, what can they do about it? How can they get the school committee to be aware of the rejection and actually allow us to override the superintendent if we should decide that that's the right thing to do. That one was, I think almost completely ready to go, but it dovetailed with some of the public participation policy. So that one will not be coming before the school committee until after the June 16th meeting as well. These two policies really are related to each other so much so that we couldn't put them forward yet. The other policy is the sexual harassment procedures policy, which is just called harassment, the policy on harassment. We discussed some boilerplate texts that we received. This is all related to the 2020 changes that the former administration made to Title IX. And so we had to have all of this stuff approved to protect us, frankly, as a school system in cases of sexual harassment. But we also didn't want to spend too much time on it because we fully acknowledged that the new administration will be in all likelihood reverting back to the prior Title IX language. So instead of spending weeks or more, we are just gonna accept the boilerplate language and then have to do it all over again, hopefully in September when there's new language. So those are the minutes. Does anybody wants to motion to approve those?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, shall I just keep going with the policy on harassment?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So in our last meeting, I believe the policy on harassment had not been included in our packets, that's why it was tabled, So the language is in our packets at this point. And the only thing I would comment, unless you have questions, of course, on this, is that on the last page, the text that we have in front of us includes sort of three pieces of information that need to be filled in by the superintendent's office prior to it being sent up to the policy service. So I would just ask that if there could be a motion to approve this it be amended to include the proper phone number and address for the high school, middle school and elementary level reporting individuals to report harassment to.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'd like to make a motion to send to the Rules Policy and Equity Subcommittee to draft a policy on how we are supposed, a recommendation for a policy on inclusion of community participation emails in our minutes. This appears to be an entirely new thing since COVID began, and I've contacted two other school committees, and minutes do not typically include the emails as written, which would be quite a problem if those emails were in fact vulgar.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, I can do that and put it on the agenda.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Make a motion to provide an extension to June 7th.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I actually, unless there's any questions about what this is, I don't have anything to say on the matter.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, so a whitelist is, it's a technical term. So it's an exception list. So our email system does not allow parents to email their own children or their children to email their parents in the K-8 grades. All in and out of communications for K-8 students is completely blocked. And many parents have complained to me about this in the last three and a half years. And the workarounds are rather, are simple, but they're not exactly equitable. Parents give their kids iPhones, they give them They have their kids logging in and other devices with other email accounts so that the kids can accomplish that. But of course, not all kids have those things and it's expensive, frankly. And so I don't exactly, I can't actually remember what communications I was having with a parent about this recently about that made me write the resolution. I'd have to look at my notes, but we can simply have a whitelist created Any email distribution system, and certainly Google, will have the capability of having a whitelist added to allow emails in and out to those email addresses.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I think that it's clear from the conversation at this moment that nobody on this who's spoken so far knows what whitelisting or blacklisting means or knows anything about email administration. And I would just point out that any notion that are opening up our email system for nine through 12, The reasons we open it up, I support. If I was to show you what the inbox of a ninth grader looked like and the amount of porn that a ninth grader gets in our school system, you would be shocked. Okay. So the, and I'm talking from experience as a parent of a ninth grader. Okay. So if we don't have anybody on the call, who knows what white listing is or email management system management is, then this isn't gonna go anywhere. And I'm just really a little concerned that even the point of this motion is completely missed because every kid who has a parent that's just gonna hand them an iPhone to communicate with can look up all of the porn and all of the stuff we don't want them to look at without any control that we have. I mean, I remember elementary school. Dr. K is right there. How many elementary school kids in kindergarten show up with iPhones? Do you think we have any restrictions, control, porn, spam, any control over any of that? If you do, then we're just pretending that there's something that's going on that's not real. So I'm not sure. A whitelist does not allow anybody in. It also does not open our network in any way, shape or form. A whitelist has nothing to do with our network. It allows an email address, a specific email address to get through the filter. Or when you go to send an email from within the school system, if that email address is on the whitelist, it goes out. It's not a security risk any more than the vast security risks that we already have in our school system.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I certainly want to acknowledge the data cleanliness problem. It's a staffing problem. It's a systems problem. None of this data cleanliness is not free. And it's not just a matter of whether or not parents have written a legible email address on paper or versus typed it into school brains. It's far more complicated than that. I'm a little surprised that that's an issue after a whole year of what I think of is unprecedented need to communicate with families. Are we saying we have lots of families where we have no valid way to communicate with them today? Because if that's the case, that seems kind of crazy in the middle of a pandemic. Mr. Murphy wants to answer that question before I keep going, I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just, the equity point of that though, I think, I appreciate that you're pointing that out. The other side of it as I see it is, if you must communicate with your child K to eight, pardon me, then your option is to buy them an iPhone or Android or whatever. And when I ask, when I think about who can afford that, equity has to be part of that conversation. I mean, there's always, of course, parents who are like, I'm not giving my phone and, you know, the wait till eight system, which I was a supporter of, and I waited till they were in eighth grade, but I didn't need to communicate with my kids because there was somebody home all the time. But if there were going to be transportation or childcare issues, or you don't go home to mom, you got to go home to dad's house today because You know, parents aren't living together. A thousand reasons for which a parent must communicate during the day. And we just say no. We just say no.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, mayor. I too am very excited to return to the chambers actually. My concern is around subcommittees and committees as a whole. I think it's, I'll just say, I think it would be wildly irresponsible to pack the superintendent's conference room to the gills with people. There is no technology in that room. So anybody who would be interested in a meeting there will have to come to that room. And I'm quite curious. I'm sorry, could you, it seems like somebody is unmuted. So without having, without any technology capabilities in that superintendent's conference room, I'm also very curious what the HVAC situation is and how many people are allowed in that particular space.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So having watched the city council meeting recently where the rule was that people had to wear a mask and the public just essentially gave the middle finger to the city councilors. And I guess I'm wondering, since you are the presiding officer, and all of us are presiding officers in subcommittee meetings, if we are in the superintendent's conference room, and somebody from the public refuses to wear a mask, and the superintendent still has the authority to say a mask is required. I would like to know what the next steps are when that does happen, because I would like to be clear, it will happen. And according to the open meeting law, the proper course is for us to call the police. That just seems really a lot of a very heavy lift, but I'm not interested in being like the city council where They are ordered to wear a mask and the public just says, okay, and then puts it under their chin. So what are we going to do as a school committee when that happens? Because it's going to happen. And, you know, wearing a mask when you're vaccinated doesn't make any sense anymore. Also, by the way, wearing a, you know, it's fine to not wear a mask if you don't have COVID. It's the same thing. We don't know who's vaccinated. We're not gonna be checking vaccination cards when people come into these meetings. So as long as we're in the school system in that building, anybody not wearing a mask should be removed. And how do we do that?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, we would not.
[Paul Ruseau]: The superintendent has that authority, not us or the board of health.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I am very excited for June 7th. I would just ask that, unlike the city council, we don't have Larry. I don't know Larry's title or his last name, but he does the check-in of everybody, they have to sign in, so the contact tracing can take place, unless we're expecting by June 7th that there'll be no more contact tracing. I don't know, but if there is still contact tracing requirements, sorry, go ahead, Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just think we should decide whether we're going to do that now since the next meeting is that meeting. Yeah, I just feel like the people that think that the pandemic was a hoax aren't signing in. And they're also not getting vaccinated. I'm happy to sign in, I'm vaccinated, I have no fear of the pandemic getting me. So I get what's the point of contact tracing and even doing that effort if people will actively not sign in. So I'm fine just saying we're not gonna put a pen up and we're not gonna have any kind of, it's theater is my point. There's nobody who disagrees that there's been plenty of theater, safety theater going on in some situations. Most of it has not been theater, but I am not a fan of theater. It costs money, people's time and effort. And I would be fine with no sign in and no contact tracing if we're not going to have somebody there to every person walking through the door, what's your name and address? And then when they put down, you know, Pete Rose, no, what's your name? You know, what's your real name? We're not going to do that. Then I would be fine with no None of that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I do appreciate it. I am wondering where, and forgive me if we've already covered it, but I don't think we have transportation for sports and band. And is that coming up?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. I just, you know, it feels like remembering pre-pandemic sometimes is actually a challenge, but, you know, my memory is that, you know, We did not have an equitable distribution of transportation funding for different kinds of groups that I'll just say it. We were more than generous with the sports related transportation funding and the band folks had to sell whatever they had to sell to get enough money for busing. And this is my fourth budget. And for four years now, I've not been alone in saying we need a breakdown of what we're spending on extracurriculars per student. Because just trusting my gut, I don't have kids to participate in sports. I do have kids that participate in band. I'm not interested in making grand statements or suggesting policy changes without any data. But my sense, looking at the stipends for sports, coaches in our contract versus the people that are running the band and other stipends, there's clearly some kind of discrepancy that maybe is appropriate based on the number of hours put into it, but I have no way to know. And so I really want to know that we are not favoring kids who decide to participate in a sport and lessening the burden on their families to fundraise for transportation. compared to kids that are in band or, and I'm just using those two examples. I'm sure there are others. So, restoration obviously is better than not restoration, but I just don't have any way to know that this is in fact fair. And that's really, it's a big issue for me. And this is the fourth budget where this has been a topic the fourth year where I've wanted, and I realize you were not in the last three budgets. So, but you know, a breakdown of per student, what are we spending? And I mean, that includes the stipends that are in the teacher's contracts. And that, I mean, all the money that we spend on not the K to eight education, what are we spending? Where's it going? And is it actually fair? I mean, cause I mean, I know that sports are matter a lot to a lot of people, ban matters an awful lot to a lot of people. And I just really think we have to get to the bottom of that. I don't think this is something we can solve tonight. And I was just surprised to not really get a sense so far as to whether or not that's being addressed. But I realized, of course, that you weren't there for the last three budgets, so. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And so I guess I'll just ask my other question around, I see there's the projects around bathrooms. Again, this is my fourth year and this is the fourth year that students are doing the hard work of figuring out how to get menstrual products to our students. It's embarrassing. I know that not everybody on this meeting necessarily agrees, but it is embarrassing. Four years in a row, there are CCSR projects to make sure that the students that are menstruating don't have a problem getting access to these products. It's just kind of mind-foggling. And I just wanna be clear that I won't vote for any bathroom renovations if they do not include free menstrual product dispensers in every renovated bathroom.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. If I could just quickly respond, Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I understand that. And I would never for a second suggest anybody is trying to deny these things. I would just suggest that we get a map of the high school and imagine a student who is at the furthest point from the medical suite. And I mean, of the school committee members, I'm the only one here hasn't had these experiences. I'm just making assumptions about you all, but, you know, even I can't even imagine being as far away from the medical suite as you can be in this building that is just vast and being told, you know where it is. I walked that building to get to whatever. And I'm like, first of all, it is not a two minute walk. We're talking, I mean, I don't even know what the timing is, but I just think that the, the bar for what we think of as access seems just to be really, really low and, or high, whatever the right analogy is. And I just, you know, there are other districts have done this and I don't, they don't make the front page of the globe as becoming a huge problem. And I understand that, you know, what I've read about, you know, the healthy, it's not the Healthy Youth Act, I forget which act it was that would actually require these in schools last year, But there is an initial like, when you first install these and make them available for free, they're gonna be stuck to the ceiling and they're gonna be kids that need them might take home baskets full of them. But like a lot of things, they're gonna get bored of it. And then when students need them, they'll be there. So I don't pretend it's a super like no effort kind of project. I just firmly believe that, The CCSR, I believe it was a CCSR project, and it came across my inbox on Facebook, I think a week ago, about students that are doing this. They're not doing this because they got nothing else to do. So I just think we're not listening to the students. I'm looking at the CCSR page from 2016, and that's one of their projects from that year. And I just don't know when we're gonna get to it, but thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I know that we've already passed the resolution on the transportation plan. I had to walk 1.1 miles to the bus stop every day growing up. And if I missed the bus, it was a four hour and 29 minute walk to get to school. Obviously that's a little bigger than Medford. So it was 13 miles. But my point is my experience of making it to the bus or not going to school, Um, was that if you looked at my absences, um, you know, Massachusetts, I'd probably have DCF at my house, frankly. Um, so I, I just hope that when we do the plan, um, and we are talking about two miles versus one mile, um, I, I think, uh, this ties in a bit to Mr. Murphy's staffing levels. Um, I want to know our kids that are within the two mile radius. tardy or absent more than kids that are outside of the two mile radius. And I don't actually think you have the capacity to go through a year's worth of parties and a year's worth of absences and figure out distance from the school and whether they use the busing or like that seems that's a heavy lift. But that's a policy decision we are making with no idea of the impact on the educational outcomes because, you know, if we always go back to that, if you're not in school, you certainly aren't learning. So I just, you know, my own experience of you make it to the bus stop or you don't go to school, that surely happens in Medford too. So when we talk about one mile versus two mile, I think we have to also recognize there isn't just a financial impact. There's an impact on all the scores the superintendent really likes her MCAS score, you know, they're metrics, whether she likes MCAS or not, they're metrics and that's important. But this is a specific policy that will have impact on metrics. And I'm not, I mean, I don't, I'm not asking for a report, but I know from my own experience that it's absolutely a fact. If you miss the bus, you don't go to school. And granted, I couldn't walk to school if I missed the bus and didn't have transportation otherwise, but I'm sure there are plenty of kids who, if they missed the bus, screw it. But for all the kids under that two mile radius, there is no bus. So when it's bitter, nasty, cold rain, which we used to get before global warming made everything 70 degrees, those days, if you're getting to the bus, different than if you're not getting to the bus and you're expected to walk at least 40 minutes to get to school. So I don't have a question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I guess I'll just start at the top of the presentation. So we have no math interventionists in the elementary schools today?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I heard reference, a lot of these long-term budgetary priorities are expensive, it seems like we are doing an awful lot of putting all the expensive things into the future as if they'll actually be a day when we have more money than today. It feels a bit Twilight Zone like situation here. Do we really think we're gonna have more money in the future than we have now? I'm a little surprised. It feels like between the members here and the educators and superintendents, we have lifetimes of experience. Does anybody remember having more money ever? I think the answer is no. So, you know, I think when we talk about long-term priorities, we should just call them what they are, things we know we're not gonna get. So a lot of these things feel like things we know we need. And by putting them in this category, we're saying, We know we need them, they're really important, but it makes it look like we're gonna get to them. And that's just not true. So, up until this meeting, the first two meetings or three, I forget which one we're on, first three meetings, I was understanding the long-term budgetary priorities to be included in the budget proposal we will be offering. So I was a little surprised to hear that clarification or how it can be framed. Do we want to go department by department, Mayor? Do you think that makes more sense?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I have a few of those. That's why I didn't want to jump down there. So I guess my second question, I'm not even sure if I ever asked the first question, sorry. The EL item in the long-term budgetary priorities, this seems very aligned to the Student Opportunity Act and community and family engagement. So I'm surprised to see it there. I understand that it says TBD for budgetary impact because perhaps there just hasn't been time to get around to figuring out what that might look like in cost. But when I think about families that are at risk or students that are at risk, this seems like a surprising thing to be a, we'll get to it in the future. You know, a lot of, I mean, I don't know how many, I said a lot, I don't know. There certainly are EL students whose families have not been able to receive the benefits that have come to middle income folks like myself this last year. And these seem to me like the kind of people that, the kind of people, I apologize for that, the students and families that we should be focused on making sure we can actually reach them. So support orientation and registration processes for families of BL students. I'm just very surprised to see that notch. It's a critical item, frankly. And I'm wondering if there's any commentary on why that is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. May I ask a quick clarifying question? Sure. So before the pandemic, but I thought we had math coaches at the elementary schools. Were we not set up for these people to actually do work? Or were they not effective? I'm just, you know, and I certainly, you know, from our previous meetings, I fully understand and support the need for some structural and organizational change for all the reasons that you have detailed very clearly. But we did have some of these people. I don't know if we had as many as we describe as future goals here, but we had them. I did not hear that they were wandering the halls looking for something to do.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. So if they were on the rolls and they were doing work and being effective, how is it they can't be effective today if we hired them?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So I had, frankly, an awful lot of questions about the technology stuff. I guess I just spend too much time reading about technology stuff because of my particular profession. But, you know, The latest survey from this year is in the last 12 months, 54% of medium to large organizations, and we certainly qualify as a medium sized organization, have experienced a ransomware attack or intrusion of that nature. And so I guess my question is, I see a lot of great things that are listed as capital. Do we have promises for every item that says capital that we are getting that money? have promises. Do we do we know that that money is really coming to us? Or is that like a we've had a conversation with somebody in finance in the city, and they said they're going to give it to us, but it may not show up because some of these things here are not things that are can wait or be at risk of not happening.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me rephrase my question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. So let me just kind of go through some of my questions. I was surprised to not see in here a big spend on a brand new website and infrastructure for a municipal information system or whatever the equivalent is for school systems. You know, I don't mean this to be, it's not an attack on employees that are doing the hard work right now of maintaining our website by opening up HTML files and saving them, but that is not, that's not an information system and that is not a website. That's what I created in 1995 in my senior computer science class. That's how old the technology we're using is. And we can't do this work. We should be outsourcing this work, or at least outsourcing the getting it up and running. There are literally countless firms that do this for municipalities and school systems. And, you know, I get tired and I also feel bad emailing assistant superintendents to say, this page has a link that doesn't work, this page I can't find it. I go into the search and I type the most basic things. As a school committee member who's on the website all the time, basic things I do a search for, I can't find it at all. And I know they're there. So I guess I'm just surprised to see that we aren't actually going to go forward with something as important as a new website. It again ties into SOA and the family and community engagement. I mean, if the community is told to go to mps or metropublicschools.org or whatever it is, .com, I forget now suddenly, and they go there and they can't find what they're looking for, then it doesn't matter what we're doing. It's literally the same as not doing it. And I guess I'm just really surprised that our plan is to get a part-time webmaster, it just seems like, you know, throwing a couple of pennies at your retirement and hoping in a couple of years, you're going to be okay. It's not going to really solve the problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I think- May I interrupt Mr. Murphy? it doesn't have to function differently. It's a collection of static web pages. That's not a website in this day and age. And it hasn't been for like 20 years. It should not be a collection of static web pages. So we don't need it to function differently. We need an entirely new platform from beginning to end. And I just can't agree that it needs to function differently. That's tiny little iterative changes And I don't know how many emails you've gotten from me, but I can't find this link. Throughout the pandemic, every week we were gonna get an update on the current numbers. And I emailed many times, like, I don't see the update. I found the page actually. And you're like, it's there. And it's not that it started getting there when I expected to see it. I just gave up asking you because I felt bad about the fact that you all had a lot of other work to do than service me as a school committee member. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. And I'll just ask one more technology question before passing it off to somebody else. Oops. I have two, I just kept to get them off the page. How many full-time employees are dedicated to supporting staff and students' technology needs on a day-to-day basis? You know, the help desk, the people that are like, go over because the cable was broken or the device isn't functioning. And do we, when you answer that question, do we have any sense of turn? I mean, if that, there's not seven, I'm assuming. So when you're at the Columbus and there is not somebody there, does that mean a teacher is without a computer or the services they need for half the class a day? What are our turnaround times on that given the answer you're gonna give me around how many people are full-time dedicated to just supporting the technology needs of our students and staff?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I'll ask one more quick question since I think it's an easier one, quicker one answer. Those, the answers are great. And I'm glad adding one is a 50% increase. And I think that that's a good trend. We have a number of technology security practices that are pretty distressing. I mean, I work for a large healthcare company and of course we have a lot of money we spend on security, technology security. I've never changed my password since I joined the Medford School Committee. And I'm gonna bet that some of the staff that's been here for a decade or more has never changed their password or had to. Do we have anybody or any committee or group working on fixing what are frankly pretty glaring holes? I have to acknowledge, if you have password resets every 90 days or six months, you need staff to do it. That's not like a staff free policy. You just click a button and boom, it's there. It's gonna require support staff. So I understand from a priority perspective, adding that right now might not be a goal, It seems like we need to outline where are our security, technology security gaps, and what's the plan where, is there a plan and where are we gonna get, how are we gonna get there?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Can you can we get an update in the next when we have a next executive session planned? I don't want a special one just for that, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mr. Murphy, are you saying that the disruption was an intentional act? And if so, why were we not notified?
[Paul Ruseau]: Not really point of information, but I would hope we can get an update at the next school committee meeting, because this is news to me.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. And I'm happy to see even though we've been in a pandemic, but there has been progress. Not that I didn't expect that you would continue working during the pandemic, but I just, I don't see any reading specialists for the high school. And, you know, I know that the superintendent's goals from her first, after her first year, math was pretty much, was the number one goal. I know you all can walk and chew gum at the same time, So it's not like I think it's all math and nothing else happens. I don't think that for a second. But when I look at reading, I keep going back to the only two studies I can find on reading. And the two studies show that about half the prisoners in our entire prison system are dyslexic and two thirds of them have terrible reading comprehension. both of those things seem like rather critical inputs to literally every other academic area. If you're dyslexic and have terrible reading comprehension and haven't had the services to overcome your dyslexia or compensate, I don't think any of us believe looking at what we see on MCAS questions or SAT questions, that there's a chance for these kids. There isn't, let's just be clear and honest. You know, if you get out of our high school and your reading comprehension is not good, you know, we're not sending you off into the world with the skills you need and that's on us. So I just, you know, if we have to choose between math and reading, regardless of the, sorry, I'm a little tired today, of the grant, I mean, I will, as I have said multiple times at each budget, reading should be ahead of math. It should be ahead of world languages. It should be ahead of even music, which I tend to struggle to put anything ahead of fine arts. But if our kids are not, all of our kids are not reading and having exceptional, you know, meeting standards, according to the state for reading comprehension, You know, I find it, I feel like we will then, you know, when that is evident, we turn to look at our AP and honors students and be very proud of that. And we should be. But I just feel like that focusing on the bright spots and not focusing where there isn't much light is a real problem. It's not a Medford only problem, of course, but I just, you know, the schedule that I heard sounded like one or two years, maybe we'll have all the staff up and running and then we'll be not putting out students that are not getting what they need to be able to read properly. And, but then again, this budget does not include any high school reading specialists. And so, you know, the last 10 years of students, we're just gonna not, worry about them? I don't know. It just feels a bit like that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mayor, if I could just quickly respond.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think you did mention the literacy class or whatever it was called. I apologize for forgetting it that quickly, but at the high school and that's exciting. And certainly if we could figure out how to get reading specialists to either be assisting or doing the teaching in that, that would be wonderful. But as for dyslexia and special ed and being on IEP, I mean, the estimates I keep seeing are 15% of the population, 15 to 20% of the population is dyslexic. I'm quite sure that 15 to 20% of our students are not diagnosed with dyslexia. So, for all the students that are reading good enough that they've never get an IEP or they don't have parents who feel empowered enough to force it down our throats to get an IEP, which isn't, I'm not saying we don't do that on our own, but we all know that certain, parents of certain characteristics get IEPs more than other parents of other characteristics. That's just a fact. And so for all those kids that don't have, you know, masters and PhD level parents who are going to make sure their kids get what they need no matter what, they're the ones that are going out into the world having never been identified with dyslexia and never having learned how to read and do proper, read sufficiently or to have the reading comprehension that the world demands. I'm not talking about the demands of going into a PhD program. We're talking about the demands for just office work or many other kinds of jobs that we want our students to be able to have success in. So I do appreciate that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Um, my, I just have a quick, uh, uh, sort of a point last question. Um, so when we went with the new FOSS program, um, you know, we obviously talked a lot about it. Um, and I just hope that, um, you know, Maybe next year, the fact that we're going to have renewables every year, like we just bake it in. It doesn't really, to me, it feels like, why do we keep talking about it? When we agreed to it, we knew they were gonna be renewables every year. And we don't talk about the cost of water or electricity. And I fully, and I understand that it's here, cause this is new still, but I hope at some point soon we can just stop bringing it up the fact that we have to pay for this. Cause we knew that when we agreed to buy the program and the program doesn't even function if we don't do it. That's just sort of a point to make maybe these move along. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I just have one question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So, wait, am I in the wrong? I apologize, I'm in the wrong slide on my computer. So the health, I was, the 160,000 was sort of for everything. But the description is of a certified PE teacher at each building. And that's that conversation, Mr. Murphy, you talked about where with the negotiations about we're not gonna add another PE teacher at every building, but we're gonna end up hopefully with a PE teacher who is certified. And then one perhaps who is literally like we hire a specialist.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruzzo. Thank you. I just wanted to sort of double check. Will we say a health teacher for the Michigan model? This is the sort of the health teacher we've talked about numerous times. This is that person, correct? Who will fill in and be able to... Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just hope we do not get too liberal around certifications, teaching. Well, frankly, the sex ed parts are not for the faint of heart. as I understand it. And, you know, if we struggle to find the right person that rather we struggle to keep finding rather than put somebody in who doesn't really do it justice or does worse, you know, cause this stuff taught the wrong way or taught in a way that it can be taught in a harmful way. And I think that's what I'm afraid of. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you, Mayor. So I have some concerns about the fine arts department and not the staff, obviously. I noticed that the fine arts department, as far as I can see, is the only one we have not indicated that it might be appropriate to have extended school day. We did talk about how the sciences will pull kids into extended school day. I'm pretty sure music does the same thing. So I'll just ask my couple of questions and then let them get answered. So I'm wondering why the discrepancy there. And then, I guess there were three quick questions here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. And so I also noticed, thinking about, I believe there are some funds left in ESSER I, I don't know anything about what's left in ESSER II, but don't share your instruments, even though the science around contact transmission of COVID, I think is practically settled at this point. But I mean, is there not a case to be made for get all the instruments that we think we could possibly need. It looks like a COVID expense on paper based on the guidance that has come out in the past. I mean, if we already are gonna spend all that money on something else, then of course you have to prioritize. But at the end of the day, if we have a nickel left of that money and we didn't buy extra instruments when we could have, that will seem like a sad day, because someday we're in the future, we're gonna have a budget where we're gonna need to decide whether we're gonna have enough violins or we're going to have health education somewhere. I mean, you know, we're going to have awful choices in a future budget, just like we do in every budget, frankly. So I just wonder why we are, have we considered, you know, maxing out our spending of our ESSER funds to make sure that we, I mean, the thing about buying extra, you know, violins, if you buy too many, you stick them in the storeroom. And when they start to, the ones we're using start to get destroyed by the kids, you take them out and there they are. It's not like, they don't go bad by sitting in a storeroom, unlike many other things. So, textbooks age, a violin in a box can sit there for probably a century.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you I mean I'm not advocating for us just having a a stock of a million dollars worth of violins that we have hidden away somewhere in the vast high school. But I do, you know, like if we can buy these instruments, we can stop making kids find the money to rent them. And that gets very much to my other issues around expecting families to pony up money to go to public school. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I thank you, Mr. Murphy for that question slash point. I personally feel like they should not be together. I think that when we finish the part like we're doing right now, I know I'm gonna wanna be able to sit down and do some math and add some things together and talk to people I know that are paying attention who may be on this meeting now, or simply at whom I'm gonna be like, care about this, this is what's actually in that, in the budget, so that they can think about and prepare themselves to come and speak as members of the public. And I think that there's, that happening together doesn't give enough time. That's my opinion. I see everybody else's hands are up too, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Thank you, I just have a quick question for Mr. Murphy about the, you know, since we've always done the one vote, does the statute say that we must post for the first vote or the second vote?
[Paul Ruseau]: For the hearing, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Are we going to go all the way through before asking questions or are we going to do?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Mustone asked part of what I was trying to the similar question around the 0.6. Can I, I need help to understand, do we advertise for a 0.6 FTE and are there really people looking for 0.6 FTE work, especially in this setting, in this environment and the skillset we need? Because I don't want to hear that we have students that need these people, we budgeted for them, but they don't exist or they only exist at 1.0 FTEs. And if that's the case, then I think we need to really think about this? Where did the point six come from?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to make sure we avoid, you know, at one point we had, we didn't have a full-time nurse at each school a couple of years ago, and that was resolved, but, you know, kids don't need nurses necessarily on a schedule, you know, when there's accidents. And similarly, we didn't have enough adjustment Councilors all the time and the elementary schools. And when a kid has a meltdown needs an adjustment Councilor, they do it when they do it, not when we have scheduled somebody to be in the building. So I just wanna hear you say there will be, for our EL population, the entire time the kids are at school, every single day of the week, there will be an EL support person in this role, five days a week. I don't care where the funding comes from, but I don't wanna hear that two days of the week, hopefully they won't need one. That's not responsible.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have a sort of a request where we talk about structural deficits. Each time I hear it discussed, it's discussed in the context of, you know, we're going to hire a bunch of teachers and have to lay them off. hear anybody suggesting we hire a bunch of teachers. And for me being fiscally conservative, because we're afraid of what will happen in three years, when we know what is happening now to our children, and what will happen in the next year, that they have significant now and in the next year or two, at least significant emotional and mental health needs. And it seems totally irresponsible to be so concerned that three years from now, we may have a difficulty to deal with. The federal government has been wildly generous to help us meet the needs of our children. And we should be wildly aggressive in meeting those needs. And if that means three years from now, the city has to make a choice that is uncomfortable. Well, the city is making uncomfortable choices for 39 years since Prop 2.5 went into effect. I don't remember the mayor in the last budget being very happy about the choices that were before her. It was horrible, it was uncomfortable. And as far as I'm concerned, it has been for 39 years. Different levels of discomfort, sure. But I just think that worrying about three years from now, meaning we won't go whole hog in addressing the needs of our kids, to me just, know, I don't want to hear about what's going to happen in three years. If in three years we have to lay a bunch of people off because there is no other option, if you tell me that has to happen, but between now and three years from now we have kept a bunch of kids from going over the cliff, I'm game. Hire the people and we will suffer terribly in three years when we have to figure out who we have to let go. But the kids are now. We're not supposed to be meeting the needs of the employees three years from now. We're supposed to be meeting the needs of the kids now. So if we could talk about the fiscal cliff a little differently, I would greatly appreciate it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to, you know, I'm not questioning anybody's motives, by the way. I'm just saying our messaging here is not good. It is not good that we are so concerned about three years from now, what's going to happen to our employees. when I don't hear anybody in the public clamoring for what's gonna happen to employees in three years from now. All I hear them clamoring about is the kids now and in the fall. And frankly, I think if we surveyed the Medford residents, we would be shocked at how few people were concerned about what was gonna happen to employees of the school system three years from now. I know you have to care about it. I do care about it. I do care about it. But from a messaging perspective, it just is not coming across. This is about the kids. It's about the money. And that just really is getting, it's just continuous, it seems. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, if I may, Mayor, I mean, three years from now, you can decide to give all other departments a 0% raise in the entire city and give the school system all that other money. And then there will be no layoffs, no matter what we do today. So, I mean, these are choices that can be made and pretending that they're just, we don't have options is not helpful. So I'm not worried about- I never said we don't have options.
[Paul Ruseau]: I want to actually build a budget that meets the needs of the students. And then we talk about money.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have a question. Member Ruseau. Thank you. This is for many new students coming in with mental health needs. Some of those students will end up with IEPs because of this, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: And just from a logistical perspective, I know that I think everybody here who's aware of this stuff knows that If you had anything short of an emergency room need from a mental health crisis perspective, you can't get an appointment for a kid, even if you're rich. I mean, paying out of pocket is probably your only option and still there's wait lists. So have you been planning for a flood of new IEPs related to mental health services that will not, the only option for mental health services will be within the school system?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. I mean, my concern is that kids who have low level needs that might've typically been relatively easy to get resolved with a, you know, visiting a Councilor or something in the community, that since that will not happen, that these needs will escalate and create a bigger demand on your services and on Ms. Schulman's services as well. And I'm just worried about whether or not Well, I mean, how quickly can we respond to that? And from a budget perspective, are there other options? I'm guessing ESSER would clearly qualify for spending that money. And so maybe this isn't necessary in the budget, but it's just something. And I, of course, understand that finding the professionals in the community to do services isn't possible, while hiring more staff to do that work also is probably as equally impossible as well. So then I'm just hoping that you're planning for things around, you know, what other training do the current, the current people that are here in the district, you know, the teachers and everybody like whether they like it or not, the kids are coming into their classes, and they're going to need their more than they've needed before. And there's not going to be somebody to send them to. So but I guess that's all extra stuff. And I we don't have to keep going.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's May 5th, I'm calling to order the rules policy and equity subcommittee meeting that is scheduled for tonight from four to 6 p.m. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Medford School Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information and the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the city of Medford website. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed on Medford Community Media Comcast channel 22 and Verizon Channel 43 at four o'clock. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or call in number. The Zoom link, oops, which I just clicked, hopefully doesn't take me to another, one sec, it's trying to take me to another meeting. The Zoom link is https://mps02155-org or you can call in at 301-715-8592 and the meeting ID is 969-500-81661. Questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing me at PRUSEAU at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford street address, your question or comment. We'll take roll right now. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau present. Member McLaughlin will be joining us shortly. She had a partial conflict. to present the quorum. So the agenda for tonight, we have three items listed. We have policy BEDH, which is the public participation policy. And we're going to be reviewing a possible update for that. We also have policy BEDB, the agenda creation and format for regular meetings of the school committee, which will be also an update. And then we have the sexual harassment procedures, which are new. So I'm gonna start with the public participation policy and I'm gonna just share my screen.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so I'm gonna just read my introduction that I wrote for myself to read to you all, but since it's on screen. The current policy is quite brief and does not include much detail that is necessary for concise understanding of our expectations as a committee. this major update to this policy should provide clarity to the public and to ourselves about what we mean by the phrases public comment and community participation, as well as lays out some expectations to ensure we can perform the work we are charged with in a welcoming and efficient manner. I expect there to be a discussion on the addition of full Medford Street address where you reside, to which I will remind folks that owning a rental home here or having a friend or relative in Medford does not grant you a voice before the committee If we fail to limit participation to residents, we open ourselves up to participation by anyone across the entire nation, which will become a real challenge when we deliberate on controversial matters and diminish the voice of the residents of Medford by drowning them out. So I'm going to just first bring up our current policy, which is remarkably brief. So if it was long, I wouldn't take this approach. The current policy says that any citizen in the audience may be given permission to speak once at school committee meetings regarding any item on the agenda for up to three minutes on any one item. Community participation portion of the agenda be established, which will give any citizen the privilege of placing any item for the school committee or be heard on any item. Any item to be presented must be submitted in writing to the superintendent of schools by the Wednesday noon prior to the scheduled meeting. with a maximum of five minutes allowed for any one presentation. So I've done a little bit of legwork to prepare for this meeting. So this is the language that I am proposing. I did look at other school committees policies on this. I didn't just start writing. And this particular section here is actually called out in several other communities. the new policies. In fact, it's actually written right on the agendas of some of them. Um, although I don't ask me which ones, um And this is this is, uh So this would be the new policy starting. Right here. Apologies for not including Start. And this just calls out the often confusion about, well, what are the requirements around, you know, do people truly just have the freedom to come and talk about whatever they want? And this is just language right out of the law that I thought was particularly important that really says, you know, if the chair, no person shall address a meeting of the public body without permission of the chair. And then it just goes on, I won't quote the whole part of the law, but essentially if somebody, wants to disturb the meeting and prevent the committee from doing our work, that they can be removed. I can't imagine that this has happened in ages, but I do recall seeing that on medfordtv.org a couple of times prior to being in office. So that's just a reference to there, and there's a link to the full law. And then this is where there's really new stuff. public comments on agenda items. So I've broken the new policy out to really make it, to beef up the language. Any resident in the audience may be given permission to speak once on any item on the agenda for up to three minutes. The speaker is expected to keep their comments to the item on the agenda. The speaker will speak to the full committee through the chair and will not address individual members or administrators. The speaker must begin their comments by providing their full name and full Medford Street address where they reside. Residents may also submit their comments in writing to the superintendent prior to the meeting, and then there's the email address. Written comments must be kept to a length that allows for them to be read into the record in less than three minutes, or the comments will be summarized by the secretary of the school committee. That's the person who typically reads in comments during the meeting. A welcoming community is, this is a new couple of sentences based on feedback I know I've heard many times in the last three and a half years on the school committee. So this language may not survive to the full committee, but I drafted this in hopes that it will at least survive at a subcommittee. A welcoming community is both a value to the school committee, a value of the school committee and an aspirational goal. To move us towards this goal, we ask that the duration of your residency in Medford not be provided as all residents have the same rights and responsibilities regardless of the duration of their residency in our city. And then there's just the, if you're writing or providing a comment, name and number of the item on the agenda, your first and last name, your Medford street address and your question or comment. Before I go on to community participation, are there any comments or questions about what I've presented so far? Mr. Cushing.
[Paul Ruseau]: So like, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: I realize this doesn't work for Zoom.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, no, I certainly understand that that's a really excellent point that this does not address the fact that somebody may have to be put into the waiting room or I don't even know what the language would look like. And then somebody clearly would have to investigate legally, like what does any of that mean? Like even just muting somebody, I think is something that is not yet decided. And, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's an interesting suggestion. And I certainly what isn't in the this new policy here, assuming we adopt it, is something that I do see in many other communities. And that is public comment has a time limit. It's 20 minutes, it's 30 minutes, whatever. And if there's 500 people that show up, it's 30 minutes. And when you hit the 30 minutes, everybody else can submit it in writing or whatever. And I'm a little surprised that other communities don't explode over that. Like if you take the effort to show up and to prepare comments, and then you're number 48 on the list, And they also require you to sign up ahead of time, like before the meeting begins, you must provide your details, what item you're gonna talk about, and then it happens. But it ends when it ends based on the time, which is partially how they're able to, many communities are able to have much shorter meetings. But I just feel like that, I personally like to keep three minutes, and maybe that's because I'm not, I talked too much. Member Graham, do you have thoughts on that?
[Paul Ruseau]: So the next item on our agenda is the agenda format. And I'll give you a sneak peek, but yes, much of this language does end up on the actual agenda. But we'll get to that exact thing after we get through this one. Because I agree that it should be part of the agenda and actually read out loud, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I don't think anything would happen. I mean, I think I did include it on the agenda statement. We'll get to that one later. But I think just repeating it at the meeting you know, if people are going to, some people may feel that they're going to say it now, especially because there's a change in policy. But, you know, that'll be up to the chair, frankly, to, to say something or, or not. Yeah. But I mean, I wouldn't imagine if somebody decides they will, they're going to say it because it's also remember, it is sort of automatic, I think for a lot of people. I don't that people say this usually out of any kind of like any attempt to make it an unwelcoming environment. I think it's just like, you know, I was born and raised in Medford and like when you're speaking at a public meeting and it's you're speaking both to the to us and to frankly the public that's watching. It's sort of like it just rolls off the tongue. So I don't imagine it's anything that like causes any consequence of any sort. But I just think it's important to state it clearly that we as a committee, that your duration of residency in no way affects the value of your opinion on what you have to say, and that that's our statement, even if individuals may feel differently about that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I think I completely agree. One of the challenges is that the language that the chair will be reading, you know, after, especially after having just said the governor's statement, you know, we don't want the chair to have to read for 15 straight minutes. And I think that some, most of this stuff, you know, the speaker will speak to the full committee through the chair. Like that's not our opinions. That's Robert Bowles. It's literally in our city charter. It's not optional. And so, you know, pulling that out and saying that it's just sort of highlight what I see are things that, we don't always adhere to as norms, even as members, frankly. And the question of what do we pull out and put up in the policy, this is the policy, this isn't the agenda though. What do we pull up and add into the policy and what do we not, even though it's all really there behind the scenes automatically is important. So, because of this being the actual policy, it can be as long as we want. You know, there's no reason to be brief here. The current policy is surprisingly brief in my opinion. So, you know, if there's thoughts on an additional sentence about being welcoming, I mean, what I would suggest is, you know, we can certainly amend this, well, we can amend it tonight if we have that sentence, but we don't want them to go all night you could also, you know, think on it and send any one of us, you know, suggested change, and I can offer an amendment in the actual meeting when we hopefully adopt this, rather than putting us on the spot to wordsmith it and come up with a new additional statement. If that sounds okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. Yeah. And when I've been to the state house for subcommittee meetings or whatever they call them there, there's a screen, the timekeeping is going on. It doesn't matter if it's not contentious or contentious. It's just always there. to be expected and it will, you know, flash and then it will be, it doesn't care who you are. And that's sort of, you know, that's the core of Robert's rules is that there's fairness and that the idea of being preferential is impossible if you follow the rules. So I certainly like that, I guess, you know, I just worry about operationally and, And I mean, superintendent, do you have thoughts on that? I mean, cause it feels to me like it's a role in addition to. taking notes, minutes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there any other comments on this before we go out of the community participation section? All right, so community participation. So the purpose of community participation, regular meetings of the school committee will include a community participation agenda item. give any resident the opportunity to place a presentation before the school committee. A resident may only present once at any meeting. These presentations are an opportunity for the public to make a presentation to the committee, but are not opportunities for dialogue with the committee. If one or more members of the committee wishes to have a conversation about the topic presented, the member may request that the item be added to a subsequent regular meeting. I'm going to stop there because this particular paragraph I think, well, first of all, I believe this is not typically how our community participation presentations are understood by most members. And certainly they're not understood by the public. I mean, it is so common for somebody to come to a community participation and ask a question. And certainly the superintendent is more than legally and under open meeting law can answer the question or say that she'll have somebody get back to them or whatever. But the person coming to speak does not have the opportunity to circumvent open meeting law. So if they bring up something within our authority, which is their only option, like if it's not within our authority, it shouldn't be here at all. if it is within our authority, then it is not on the agenda for other members of the public who might be interested in dialoguing on a particular topic. So it's important to understand that. And we see this in meetings where people ask a question and there's like really significant concern about the fact that we aren't responding. And it can be about a topic for which, of course, we all have opinions and we all really want to respond. So I think it's really important to spell it out that this is not an opportunity to essentially circumvent open meeting law and have us start making motions and deliberating on topics. There's other reasons for which I think it's also just a bad idea. I mean, to take a presentation and assume that the superintendent may disagree with some of the information presented, for instance. It's not fair to her and the administration, and it's not fair to the members who may wanna go off and read and do some actual background work on the presentation that was given. So I think it's really critical to point this out so that, Everybody's on the same page about why we all just sit like deer in their headlights when these situations come up. Because, I mean, I've seen some pretty nasty comments, like, I can't believe nobody had anything to say on something as important as that. And the answer is, because we are not supposed to have something to say. Any other comments on those two paragraphs under purpose?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So then I also looking at the current policy, which essentially says, you know, the public can submit something to school, the superintendent for a presentation. It says nothing about, you know, I mean, if you submitted a presentation to talk about, about, you know, the speed of cars on 93. That seems slightly out of the authority of the school committee. And this doesn't say anything about, you know, what if the superintendent is just like, that's not appropriate. So, you know, I took that first issue of like, okay, it's, you know, the things that are presented should be things within our authority. And then, well, what if there's a disagreement on that? So that's where I sort of went a little deep on the submitting a presentation. Lisa, did you want to speak before I keep going?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just- That's really, sorry. That's incredibly important. And that's on the second I'd edge. on our agenda tonight is the agenda actual format. So I think that will be addressed when we get to the agenda format. And if not, please raise your hand and say you don't think that covers it. Certainly the public knowing this, you know, writing a policy that gets stuck up on our policy service that nobody knows about, that's not really, that's not a good idea. So I laid out a process for submitting a presentation, which the current policy just says that it has to be sent to the superintendent before the Wednesday before noon. It says almost everything is the same. It says it cannot exceed five minutes in duration. This adds that it must be a topic within the authority of the school committee, which I think is really implied in the old policy, but I thought, why not just say it? The submission timeframe is the same, Wednesday before noon. It has to include, we didn't say that this stuff is included, but I mean, if you sent us a presentation to the superintendent and didn't tell her who you were or anything, that would be kind of strange. So here it just lays out the details. And then what happens there is the superintendent makes a determination on whether the topic is within the authority of the school committee, which is not new. always just done that. And then in the event that the superintendent says this is not within the authority of the school committee, the person has the, what I added here is an entire appeal process. The person would write back and say, I disagree, or I'd like to appeal this. And it would actually show up on the agenda. I guess I should read all of this, I'm sorry. determination made the appeal by submitting and writing to the superintendent and request for an appeal. The appeal will be placed on the next scheduled regular meeting of the school committee under the community participation agenda item as appeals of authority determination with the full name, full Medford street address and a very brief description of the denied presentation topic. The superintendent will then, so when we get down to community participation on the agenda, this appeals and the superintendent and the presenter will have two minutes to address the committee on why the item is or is not within the authority of the school committee. So, you know, hypothetically, somebody wants to do a presentation on the performance of a teacher. I mean, that is not within our authority. The superintendent would reject that. The person would have two minutes to explain why they believe that is within their authority. not the actual performance, not the presentation itself. And then the committee will not discuss the performance of the teacher, but we'll simply discuss whether something is within their authority or not. And then the vice chair or some other member make a motion to sustain the determination of the superintendent. And if we sustain that, then the presentation will not be coming to us. If it, is if we disagree with the superintendent, that actually this is within our authority, then at the following meeting, it will appear on the agenda, obviously under the objection of the superintendent. This of course does not give us the authority to, for instance, you know, violate employment law. I mean, like we're still bound by law, but I think there are plenty of situations for which there's lots of confusion about who's authority, what is our authority? And I know I frequently have to look it up, like, well, do we really have authority here? And I think, you know, things like curriculum, we don't have authority to decide on the curriculum. We have authority to decide whether to buy it. So, I mean, there's like, there's some gray area. So I envisioned this being about the gray area and it gives the members of the public who, you know, took the effort to create a presentation for us. The superintendent is saying, no, you can't. I think the public needs to have an opportunity to explain or to perhaps have us override the superintendent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so how about a step after a determination? So let's say the person sends you an appeal, like the superintendent will seek advice from the- District council. District council. Once I spell it right, that's the right one, right? It's too many councils.
[Paul Ruseau]: The, I don't wanna say petitioner, I don't know what we call a person, the presenter will be informed. How's that sound? So I think that's really, I think that's good, because I do worry about, I did worry greatly in my example, like if they can come in and even have the microphone and talk about personnel, they could easily go off the rails a bit, and then we get in trouble, real trouble. So I do like this out for our council to simply say, no, this cannot proceed, and that's the end of story. Member Graham, do you think that sounds okay?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Actually, I'm gonna put the superintendent may seek, you know, if it's a curriculum issue and you're like, Howard, you know, he's already said many times, yeah, you know, if he throws his hands up and says, it's the gray area, then you may, you know, may not wanna ask him, but for things that you're just like, whoa, we cannot have this, Are there any other comments on the language of that? Did I finish reading it all? I'm sorry. Oh, I do have this thing in here about, okay, in the event that there is no majority due to an absence, abstention or vacancy within the committee, the determination will be deemed rejected and the presentation will be placed at the next meeting agenda. So this is, if it's a split vote for any reason, then the public presenter will be given the benefit of the doubt. It does also include that no member may vote present. This is in my opinion, and the members can disagree, but this is a matter for which you can't just be like, I don't wanna get involved. Like you're on the school committee, you signed up for the job, make a vote one way or the other. And it says that we may only vote abstain if there has been a conflict of interest that we have presented and has been determined to be valid.
[Paul Ruseau]: And welcome, Member McLaughlin, hi. And did you have a question? Were you raising your hand because you couldn't unmute?
[Paul Ruseau]: So can I make a motion to approve? You can, although I see Mr. Cushing has his hand up. I figured we should listen to him.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you, Dr. Kashigi. Actually, that, that, so there was a second sort of like level on this policy that I have refrained from, because I feel like this is a huge movement from our current policy of just a few sentences. And I felt a bit like, do we go all the way or do we go a lot of the way and then revisit this? And then, because one of the things that I've also heard is, when people come to speak in the chambers, there's, you can't have your screen, you know, the equivalent of not turning your video on doesn't exist. And I know that I personally like wish that anybody speaking had to put their camera on. I mean, but I think there are some issues with that that concern me that are just beyond the amount of time and scope to getting something done. So, and I know that, I believe Zoom allows you, for instance, to configure it so that nobody can have a background image. Because I joined plenty of meetings where my photo doesn't ever show up at all. And I'm always surprised. I'm like, where am I? Because most meetings, the photo is there. So that's configurable. And I don't know that we have to put that in policy. I think that a member could simply motion at a meeting and say, going forward, you know, Dr. Cushing, could you configure our meetings that don't allow people to have anything but a black screen or there's their video? Like it is right this moment, I don't know if people have actually chosen this or if it was just a configuration that happened to be in place. It is distracting, but at the same time, you know, when we go into the chambers, you know, I'm thinking of when the Red for Ed, when all the teachers were there with their red shirts on, And like the red shirts were speech. They were, you know, we didn't have name and address and we didn't have who they were. They could have all been from another community, frankly, but there was speech and we allowed it. So, you know, thinking about that and how is that terribly different than somebody who changes their background to, you know, to Medford Pride or something else. I don't feel like I have the bandwidth to philosophically work through that. And I prefer to err on the side of speech should be protected. We are the government. So, you know, freedom of speech is actually about us and what we do around it versus what the public generally thinks freedom of speech is. So I prefer to go slow. I'm sure there are other communities that have gone much more, gone hard on this stuff. And I'm expecting that they will go through the lawsuits and go find out what the real answer is. I don't know, other people wanna speak on this? If not, that's okay too.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I agree. I also think this piece from the law, which is very clear, the chair has, frankly, an enormous amount of authority around ejecting people if the person's being disruptive and they've been warned. The chair, I read this as the chair could eject somebody from a Zoom meeting just as, I mean, if they can call the police and have them removed from a public meeting, that is consequential. consequentially the same as clicking the remove from the meeting. So I think in my opinion where we have enough so far, I certainly want to acknowledge though that Dr. Cushing who does our meetings from a technology perspective has to keep a remarkably high level of vigilance and stress hormones flowing to make sure that we are not zoom bombed with some truly, you know, I mean, it's not, every meeting, thankfully, but he doesn't know when it's going to come. That's the thing. So you got to kind of like be ready at all, every moment. And I do want to acknowledge that, but I don't, I don't think we're, it doesn't sound like we're ready to move towards anything more restrictive. Any other comments?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, good, thank you. Well, we did talk about it and I did talk to, I sent an email to the, so you had communicated with me about the, what about somebody who is the victim of internet partner violence, I believe is the current language. And I emailed the, MASC, our Schools Committee Association, to ask folks what they have done about it, how have they put that into policy explicitly. And what I did get back was apparently there's a Massachusetts law that allows for, I don't know if it's a fake name, it's certainly a fake address, but I think also a fake name. for the purposes of allowing this kind of thing. To me, that seems like an awful lot of work to expect to somebody who just wants to comment on a bus schedule or something. Like if they've never needed to do that, it seems like a huge lift. And that is still an ongoing conversation in the responses I'm getting. So I think we can amend that. or even have a separate policy that sort of covers all policies around this situation once we have some more clarity there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that's, sorry, let me interrupt. Yeah, I think along the same lines, we may wanna have a separate policy to, because then we can, if you have a separate policy that affects all policy, you can tweak and change and update, especially as the law changes and not have to run around and find all the instances where it is. And I certainly, We'll take a note on that, because I think that's a, you know, I have not looked through our policy manual to see if such a thing already exists. We should get moving along. Is there a motion to approve this for the full committee?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member, so yes, three in the affirmative. This will be sent up to the school committee at our May 10th meeting for approval. And now we're gonna move on to the second part. So this one is, our current policy BEDB is for our, it's incredibly brief. I'll show it to you real quick. And BEDB-E is the policy that includes the specific of our agenda. I'll start with the- Point of information. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: It doesn't stand for anything. It's a numbering system.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, the B I believe stands for, let's see, board governance. But then under that- Yeah, I see what it is. Yeah. Okay. I tried to figure it out myself, but I, and so many policies could belong in multiple places.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I mean, You know, if you went to another school committee and looked up BEDG minutes would be what you would find there. So we subscribe to the service from MASC. Yeah. And, you know, this dash E for instance, most people don't have it. So I think that once you start adding things in a finer granularity, they just start adding letters. So our current meeting agenda policy, which I am recommending we actually I don't even know the language to retire. That's the real language, lists the order of business. And I believe this is in fact what we have done. We have had many conversations about the problems with this. So I'm just showing this to you before we go to my suggestions. And then there's also this other one here called agenda format. I won't read it. but it is just the arrangement of the agenda, who will do it. And nothing in here is being changed in my suggested policy. So let me come back up here. So I had initially been working towards very, very slow evolution of our agenda, but I feel like we keep coming into things where it's like, it's time to stop being quite so evolutionary and to just take a big bite here. So this is a policy that when implemented by Susie, frankly, will create the agenda. So as a result, it is not a typical policy. At the bottom here, there's this document format information. It says that things are italicized, indicates that they should be filled in when building the agenda. Content that is in quotes must be read by the chair and information in the brackets is purely instructional and does not get included in the actual agenda. So there's some policy before there's some actual formatting. Superintendent conferring with the chair of the school committee will rearrange the order of the items on meeting agendas as provided in this policy. The committee will be judicious in their use of rearranging the agenda at a meeting as this can lead to open meeting about complaints when an item was indicated to be later in the agenda, but it's suddenly taken up early, resulting in a limitation of the public to participate in our open meetings. We saw this in city council where something was early in the meeting, it was tabled and then like, At midnight, it was taken from the table and nobody was paying any attention anymore. And I don't think there was anything malicious going on there, but the public was not happy. And if we put something as the 12th thing on our agenda and you're making dinner or whatever else you're doing, and then suddenly it's the first thing on the agenda and you come to the meeting an hour in and we're on number five and you're there for number 10, but number 10 never comes because it was taken early. We need to be far more judicious with our use of that and just rearrange the agenda before we actually send it out to the public. That's what we're gonna do. That's my logic behind that language. Oh, and I literally said those exactly those same words right here. Superintendent in consultation with the chair will rearrange the agenda prior to the posting of the meeting to accommodate presentations to the committee as may happen from time to time, but these may not include community participation presentations. So frequently, if we have somebody coming to present on some product we've purchased or curriculum, we've asked somebody to come from Harvard or something to come and speak about some project, making them spend all night waiting to do their presentation is just ridiculous and not professional. Rearranging the agenda to move those people up ahead of time to the early part of the agenda is totally normal and allowed, but community presentation should be in the format. It should be in line. It shouldn't be that community participation just is wherever. Any school committee member, staff member, or resident may suggest items of business. The inclusion of such items, however, will be to the discretion of the chair of the committee. A staff member who wishes to have a topic scheduled on the agenda should submit the request to the superintendent. That's current language. I mean, I may have moved or changed the words slightly, but the agenda together with supporting materials will be distributed to the school committee members at least three days prior to the meeting to an adequate time to prepare for the meeting. Materials that are already earlier than the three days prior to the meeting should be distributed to the school committee members when these materials are substantial in length. I'm just thinking if we're gonna get a 500 page document about a Harvard study, Friday evening isn't gonna be enough time for me to read it for Monday. So that's not a, it happens frankly a couple of times a year and we need time to actually read the stuff. Agendas will be posted in the compliance of the meeting law and be available to the press. So here's the bulk of this. The format of the agenda will be, Some of the stuff I've taken from city council that I have found very, very just nice. And what number of meeting of regular meeting of the Metric School Committee are we in? The first, the 12th, whatever. Obviously the very first time Susie does this, she'll have to go and look and count, but then from then forward, she'll know, cause she'll just look at the last one. The month of the date and the time, the meeting location, And here I have specified a few options. So part of this new format is to compensate for our current situation of being on Zoom and to also compensate for when we get off of Zoom or we're also on Zoom so that we don't have to redo this all over. So meeting location would be remote by Zoom only or in-person at the and then Alden Chambers and by Zoom or in-person at the superintendents conference room only, whatever is the right language, but then this is all part of the policy. So any active provisions of emergency orders. So this is that giant blob. When it's active, it'll be here. And when it goes away, it'll be gone. And then should there be another reason for emergency orders, they would just be inserted. We don't have to change the policy. Finally, we get to the actual agenda. Roll call of attendance of members and the student representative. Salute the flag. And then next is community participation, which has been moved way up. And looking at lots of other communities, this is pretty normal. They put community participation way up. And I think that that's, I think that's just respectful. Yes, ma'am.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, and that is so this is just the presentations that we just discussed. This is not you have something to say about an item on the agenda. So it based on my experience in the last year and a half, I 80% of the time there is no public, there is no community, there's nobody doing a presentation. We just have one on dyslexia. Did we have that? I'm sorry, I forget. So this is just those, this is not the public comment.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll just read this. I'll just read this out loud because it answers some of the questions that the superintendent and Lisa had earlier, I think prior to your joining. So this is a sort of a summary slash rewording of much of the policy we just worked on, trying to make it so that the chair does not have to read for half an hour. Regular meetings of the school committee include this community participation agenda item to give any resident the opportunity to place a presentation before the school committee. A resident may only present once at any meeting. These presentations are an opportunity for the public to make a presentation to the, probably should find another word for that, but to the committee, but are not opportunities to dialogue with the committee. If one or more members of the committee wishes to have a conversation about the topic presented, the member may, A member may request that the item be added to a subsequent regular meeting. The details for submitting a presentation can be found within the policy BDH public comment and community participation. So this part here, Lisa had asked about earlier, This is really a substantial clarification. It's not actually a change, but for most people it will look like a change. And so this will be part, so this stuff in quotes would be read by the mayor every single meeting, sort of like a refresher. Yes, member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is not the normal business, you know, CPAC presentations or the PTO presentations. This is not those things.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. I mean, the example from the last year that is most salient is Ms. Ronay presents on dyslexia. or I frankly am running short of other presentations, but this is anybody in the community, they want to do a presentation to us about something within our authority. And it's not the things on our schedule. We have that schedule. I believe the CPAC presentation is in there. And honestly, I do expect this to be usually empty as it frequently is now. But I think having this here and explicit may make members of the public feel that they want to do one. I don't think that's bad. If every week we have 15 presentations, we're going to have to revisit this, but that's always been the policy, so it's not like it's new.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I think you turned just after we finished that conversation. So I'm sorry. So I'm sorry. No, that's okay. That's okay. You've got to have you got to ask your questions here. So no, so this is about, you know, the presentation. And I don't mean any recent presentation. We're not fact checking presentations. We're not fact checking the law that might be referenced. We're not This is, I sit down at PowerPoint and I write what I wanna write. I do it on Wednesday and I send it to the superintendent. Whether or not it's accurate, whether the superintendent may want to do some work to respond, whether we may wanna go and do our own research as members and investigate, well, is that what I heard? Is that really what I, is that true? And all of that takes, time and energy and planning that is completely, it would be short circuited if members of the public could just simply come in and decide our agenda, which is really what would be happening here. So, you know, we also are not supposed to be deliberating on this. So this by its nature has to be stuff within our authority. So if this is within our authority and the presentation is within our authority, if we start talking about it and make emotions and like that's deliberation and it's not on the agenda as our business. And so, I know this is your first term and I don't mean that in any way other than simply a statement, but in Zoom it's very different, but in the actual Alden Chambers, we would have a presentation come to us and we would all sit there like deer in the headlights and not say anything. And if the presenter was asking a question for which we all wanted to answer, we would not answer. And it was super awkward, so awkward. And I think this language can make it clear that this is why. And it isn't that we don't care. And one of us is probably gonna reach out to you about, you know, maybe getting this on the agenda. So, and I see this same problem happen at City Council and not problem, but I see this same scenario roll out City Council and at other meetings and other communities. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're welcome. Anybody else wanna talk on the community participation statement look okay? I do realize now that, oh, actually, let's move on to the report of the superintendent. So, oh, that's just the report of the superintendent. This stuff under here is not related to that. So being that this is the policy, it looks wonky. When it gets actually created, an agenda gets created, it won't look so weird. So the superintendent's report would come next after community participation. I think that sometimes is a little later. It is later. And frankly, I've certainly heard the feedback that that's the best part of the meeting. It's often the best part of the meeting for me. So moving it way up, I think is really important. And then the next part. So this is, again, so pursuant to policy BEDH, the public comment and community participation. Any resident in the audience may be given permission to speak once on any item of the agenda for up to three minutes. Okay, we've just read this whole thing. I'm not gonna read it all again to you. And there's that a welcoming community is both a value of the school committee and an aspirational goal about our rights and responsibilities regardless of the duration in our city. And then when writing provide all of those details. So that just gets read. That's not a, at that moment, people can start raising their hands to talk because that's not actually an item on the agenda. But prior to this, there's nothing on the agenda for the community to raise their hands and talk about. The roll call, the presentation by another member of the community, the superintendent's update, that's not the time when we have community people raising their hands to ask questions. After that though, is what we do. So we, the superintendent would, sorry, the chair would read that language, and then we would go straight into stuff that is often earlier. We have the report of subcommittees, and if there are none, I'll say none. Dr. Edward-Vincent?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then next, so continued business. Yeah, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I remember Graham. I forgot all about that, even though I wrote this. That's correct. So yes. So continued business, this is formerly known as old business. I can go to another school committee conference and they yell at us for using the words old business. It's apparently very much not an acceptable way to describe things. So this would be items that were tabled from a previous meeting. We sometimes struggle with this, but we table something to the next meeting and then we sort of forget. the most recent example is the face mask policy. We tabled it to the meeting, the very next meeting, and this is not a criticism, by the way, of anybody here. Frankly, I didn't even realize it until it was too late. But this is continued business, anything we've tabled. And then I realized that I think we have a lot to learn from the city council. this is not the end game here as far as I'm concerned. We don't have a numbering system for motions and all that other stuff that the city council has that I think is excellent. Stuff doesn't just kind of get lost. And when I look at why it doesn't get lost, it's because it has a number. We can have a number and we can have a what happened to it. But we don't go there in this particular agenda update to this policy yet. anything that has been tabled will show up on this list. It must be disposed of by an up or down vote to approve or deny it, or the member who submitted it, one of the members who submitted it can withdraw the item so that it just drops off the agenda going forward. This is something I imagine where we have a motion, it gets tabled, and then come the next meeting, it's actually resolved and not even needed anymore. The member can just motion to withdraw it. And the entire item will be on the agenda. So as it was when it was under new business, this is actually necessary to comply with meeting law versus just having a placeholder that doesn't tell anybody anything. And I've indicated that it would say tabled on and then the date so we can all you know, maybe once a year go through our table stuff and say, all right, I don't want that anymore and get the agenda down from 40 pages down to three again. Any questions on continued business? Okay. New business is new business. It's practically the only thing on here I didn't think needed to change other than where in the agenda it is. And then the consent agenda, which we have previously approved in the full school committee. This just simply moves it in the actual agenda and I've added language. So I, you know, I'm trying to make this policy both descriptive and instructive and prescriptive so that, you know, the chair will know how do you do this the first time the chair sees this. And, you know, the chair will ask, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? That's the words. That won't be on the agenda. That's not gonna be printed on the agenda, but that will be in the policy. So the actual agenda would show, consent agenda, and then on the next line would be like, number one, approval of minutes for a date, approval of payrolls, approval of bills. And then the chair will ask this. Somebody hopefully will motion to approve the consent agenda. There'll be a second. we do the vote and then everything on there is just approved. And then if there's something in there that a member wants to talk about, we have a consent agenda. I sometimes have an edit to the minutes of a particular meeting. I do not offer my edit. I say, I would like a division to take item number four out. So then the rest of it is approved. And then item number four is called specifically, and then I could make my change to the minutes. Dr. Edward Benson, did you have a question?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that's number five up here, the report of subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, so the, if a special meeting is just, if a meeting is called, we had a special meeting just before we closed the schools for the pandemic. Well, it's not a committee of the whole, it's not a regular meeting, it's a special meeting. I mean, I think there's been two in my three and a half years and they're never for good reasons, so. It's a special meeting, we're not happy. So let's see, the next is item number nine, reports requested. And this will take a little time to get us to really be in compliance with this policy because a lot of the information that is listed here, I don't know that we necessarily had our fingertips. So I don't, you know, the first time this new policy is used to draft an agenda, it may not end up perfect That's fine, we'll get there. So this would be a list of the reports that are outstanding that we have approved. So the chair will ask, are there any updates on outstanding reports? The superintendent may provide an update on any item. Members may ask for an update to their particular report. Like I've been waiting for this report since June last year, is it coming or not? You know, we also can, by the way, send an email. We don't have to make everything public. Everything doesn't have to happen in public as individuals. We can ask the superintendent these questions about whether something's forthcoming. We may request that it be rescinded. So we got approval for a report and it turns out, oh, well, that's actually a report that the DESE website has. You know, none of us knew it. we found out later we wanna ask for it to be removed or it's just not important. There might be reports on the first day of school during the pandemic. I'm gonna bet that if we have some, it might be okay to rescind those. And there's just details on how to do that. Only members have asked for the report may rescind them unless the requester is no longer on the committee. So if a former member has requested a report, it should still be here. We voted as a committee, it is the committee's request. But if that member is no longer here, the members may, any member may ask for it to be rescinded, it would have to be voted of course. And then the reports would list the following information, the date the report was approved by the committee, the name of the report, the members that requested the report and the date the report is or was expected. And our whole report policy, which we approved in 2019, does require a name, for instance, of a report. That's why it should be there. Any questions on that? And then this is new. I see it on agendas and I absolutely adore it more than I can tell you. The next meeting's listing. This should be a list in, you know, I understand this is not always gonna be complete, especially when there's those big three week gaps between meetings. It'll be all of our meetings between now and the next regular meeting, inclusive of the next regular meeting. So not the whole year, but subcommittees, committee halls, special meetings, hearings, and the next regular meeting, the date, the time, and the meeting location. And if the Zoom information is available, and that would be handy too. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I actually, I definitely did not envision that this would get read at all. And although sometimes the chair might want to say the next regular meeting is, but so I've changed the actual text from next meetings to next meetings and then for informational or informational information only just informational. And then I added to the instructions that the chair would know that this is not read. Cause I agree. Is there other things on here that should not be read? No. Oh, reports requested. Oh, no. She simply will ask, are there any updates? Does that satisfy that number, Graham? Yeah, that's fine. And then I added condolences as an actual thing. It's literally on every single meeting, unfortunately, and we don't have it officially part of our agenda. policy. So I so I know it's a lot to digest. And I think I sort of look, look at this is we try and then whatever doesn't work, we come back and fix it. But I hope that looks good.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's smart. And it also sort of reinforces that number 11 doesn't actually get read. I will actually, I just realized that I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That adjournment. It's literally on agendas. Um. We should have that there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. So yes, three and affirmative. And then we have. The last item on our agenda. Thank you, I have the right one up. Dr. Cushing, is this the right one? Great.
[Paul Ruseau]: So what is it you changed? I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. So we are, by the way, just for some context, this is a policy we approved.
[Paul Ruseau]: Conversion. There's some conversion stuff going on here. Yup. The Medford High School assistant. Assistant principal.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we want to have one individual for each level. Correct. And I guess, you know, operationally, if I'm going through this as somebody who wants to file a complaint or something, you know, there's four assistant principals at the high school, there's two in the middle school, there's four in the elementary schools. So how do we write that to make it clear? Remember McLaughlin? Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, but back to my question about, Where's Chandler Street?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so would you, do we want actual names here or?
[Paul Ruseau]: So do we want to specify the actual address and phone number or just... I would say the director of people services, you can put 49 Winthrop Street.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think unless, sorry. Lisa, was that you? Go ahead, Lisa.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, I don't, I don't, you know, what we approve here has to go to the whole school committee to become actual policy. So I know I, as a subcommittee chair, certainly feel comfortable approving this with the assumption that these pieces of information will be filled in prior to arriving at our meeting. And I, Do the other members have any qualms with that? No, okay. Were there other changes?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know if the bullying prevention and intervention plan references this. I have to admit, I would I don't know where I have this in digital format, so I'm searching for it. It doesn't look quite from a format perspective to be related. And actually, let me look to the last page for the legal references, because if there are different legal references, then that would sort of answer the question.
[Paul Ruseau]: So this one is a reference to National Law 71, Section 370. Totally different sections of the law. So, you know. rational to think that there's a relationship and there maybe could be integrated or overlap.
[Paul Ruseau]: But yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, Dr. Cushing, could you just, I think I talked to you about this, about how this change is related to the prior federal administration's view of Title IX that was a bit unwelcome to public schools, and that there's an expectation that we will be redoing all of this yet again once the new administration has had a chance to get to this issue, is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I just, so we also are going to be, we approved an update to the bullying prevention and intervention plan just because we had to get one through quickly. But I believe it's on my board here of, things to actually go with a fine-tooth comb and go through this whole bullying prevention and intervention plan. And I feel like that that is probably easier to work this stuff into the bullying, because this is a plan with actual steps and what to do and when to do it. And in my mind, frankly, it's a much better policy. and this thing that we have perceived, which is just a reflection of Title IX. I don't know if anybody has thoughts on that. Because this came before this update for the sexual harassment, for this policy we're looking at today. And given that this policy we're looking at today is going to be before us again by the end of the summer, maybe. hopefully will look significantly different. I don't know, I just think maybe we can put our focus on the one, the thing that we know isn't gonna be changing every 15 minutes, the bullying prevention and prevention plan.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, it's a good thing you had nothing else going on last summer that might've kept you busy. My goodness. So, I mean, Member McArthur, do you have any specifics about the current language that you would like us to change?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, we actually sometimes have a related policies in the policy information section. This was copied from MASC, so it didn't come in. I just have to find, I'm just going to actually call it the bullying
[Paul Ruseau]: What's that called? Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'll put down that you'll get me the exact words. Okay. Um, so, um, let me hold this so I don't forget that and send that off to the policy service. Um, and what was the other one I want to bold so that we don't send that off?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, everybody. Um member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember my coffin? Yes. There is no yesterday in the affirmative. This If we don't have answers to these folded items, do the members mind if this actually gets held back one meeting?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. So if you can't get that done before Monday, you can have the next couple of weeks after that too. Because you have to pick the person, I think, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. That's fine. Great. Great. So are there any other questions or comments? Thank you all. I appreciate that we were all willing to go an extra hour tonight. I just didn't think any of these things could really wait. So is there a motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, yes. Three in the affirmative. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you, Dr. Edwards and Dr. Cushing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Are we assuming for this entire budget that elementary students will be coming back, all of them in the fall, since there probably won't be a vaccine for them yet?
[Paul Ruseau]: And are we planning to continue pool testing until vaccine is generally available to all students and grade levels?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I'll ask one more question before letting others ask questions. In our June of 2020 budget, we created a document that was sourced from the department heads you know, that document identified over 25 FTEs just at the elementary level, you know, nine tier two interventionists, literacy leaders, math leaders, lots and lots of staff at the elementary level. And I know we restored, we have some people restored. I guess my question is, can we take that list which is only a few pages long and sort of create another column, indicate what of that has actually been included in this budget or restored through other methods between then and now so we can have a differential. And then perhaps have a conversation around why did we just say we needed nine tier two interventionists at the elementary schools and we're adding one per school or none. And I think that would be a useful conversation. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't have another question. I just want to point out ambitious is what I hear parents want us to do. So, you know, I think that's actually a good thing. I'm asking people, you know, how can we make something 0.1% better? I mean, I don't think any of us on the school committee ran so we can make things 0.1% better. And I don't think people who, the voters are interested in that kind of level of incremental improvement. So ambitious to me is absolutely should be a pretty major goal. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. And I greatly appreciate the explanation about the discrepancy in those two numbers. I think the middle school one is the most fascinating one, which appears to show four people working at each middle school.
[Paul Ruseau]: I guess my other question was around the elementary school and the need for an additional special, you know, the three FTEs, Well, that won't be free, of course. And I feel like we can easily identify a nearly endless number of additional staff we want for other reasons. I feel like I know the answer to this question, but why are we not considering a second recess? These kids, you know, as the learning loss is what Jesse wants to talk about day in and day out. And the academic journals have sort of turned a bit towards, maybe learning loss isn't actually the biggest issue and this need for social emotional learning and recess, which I've sort of been on for the last three and a half years, even before the pandemic. And I feel like, you know, DESE has time and learning requirements and, you know, we as a school committee could vote to add another recess. But the only way to technically do that I understood was to make the day longer. because the number of hours, minutes of learning are restricted to what they are. So I guess my question is, has there been any conversation that you all are aware of with the Department of Ed around whether or not the time and learning requirements are going to remain the same for the upcoming year, or is there actually a chance we can add another recess? When I heard Dr. Kaye, talk about the structured learning. That all sounded really fun and interesting, but I mean, I don't have to tell the educators here that structured learning and unstructured free play are completely unrelated skills, and our kids are gonna need those unstructured free play as well. And so, adding some more academic time might sound like a good idea, but, you know, you know, the teachers might really suffer, frankly, if their kids have yet more academic time when they really just need more recess time. So has that been looked into as an actual option?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, yes. So I'm reviewing our presentation from February 25th from last year, you know, just before the end of days started. And I realized that that is the, we have the national standard that you presented, each of the different core concepts and, you know, where they occurred, what grade level. And that presentation is a, as detailed as this presentation was, that one was far more granular. And I just want to know, you know, some of the things that I didn't hear mentioned were gender identity. I mean, telling seniors about gender identity is sort of, you know, telling an 80 year old about retirement. It's kind of like, yeah, they've heard of it already. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we have it listed that it will be in the six through eight. Are we doing that in six through eight or? Are we really not talking about it until they could teach us about gender identity?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Cause like in the, I think gender, the only thing I remember from the entire progression was around seniors and, you know, understanding gender and how gender, you know, influences everything. Um, and my, my first reaction was, isn't that for kindergartners and first graders before they have already decided that, no, that's for boys and that's for girls and, um, waiting until their seniors seems, strangely late, but maybe it's just that it's not in the presentation, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Um, and then my other question was around, um, you know, I heard a lot of words in the elementary section that are, when I look at the, you know, the various curriculum around the word around consent, um, and, you know, as you know, the having the right language, a consistent language that progresses all the way through so that, you know, you get to middle school and the teachers and staff aren't talking a totally different language. And I didn't hear the word consent. I heard all of the pieces of consent. But, you know, what I read is that we should be teaching consent, obviously not, you know, teach kindergartners around about sexual consent, but about touching and using the word consent so that it's literally the word they all know and they, it's not foreign to them when it becomes a different thing as they get older. Are we doing that yet?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. So do we, do we, do we specifically teach positive consent? You know, affirmative consent, I think actually is what it's called. Sorry. just because the girl didn't say no isn't good enough.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, good. And then my last thing was, I kept hearing, I heard the word abstinence probably 150 times, not 150 times, but I heard it more than any other word, probably three or four times more than any other word. And I obviously don't have any problem with abstinence. I just, it felt a bit like, here's all the bad stuff, as if sex is not a good thing. Everybody on this call is an adult, and I don't know your personal lives, but I'll go out on a limb, and we don't all actually think sex is a bad thing. And do we ever talk about sex in a positive light?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, it just sounds like we have a curriculum to make parents happy. We don't have one that takes the kids as the primary consideration, which is every health curriculum probably in the entire country. But I mean, I'm not disappointed in you. I'm disappointed in the entire orientation that once you get to college, then you can discover that sex isn't a horrible thing. And all the mental health consequences of teaching our kids that their bodies are bad for 12 straight years. I'm glad Stacey's not on the call. I guess that's my only other comment. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Jenny, can I interrupt for a second? Sure. Are we still showing the girls, the girls' videos and the boys, the boys' videos?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I think we need to urgently look at that. I mean, the laws of this country are written by men who don't know what women's bodies are. And we're literally reinforcing that. And I think we need to urgently make sure that boys don't think Menstruation is this abomination that can't be mentioned or even taught to them. I mean, we can't wait another year or two years or three years for something that should have been 50 years ago.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I just wanted to add one. I certainly don't have any issues with separating the students out for the videos, if that's what makes sense developmentally. but that they would only see one side of the story of half the human race is the part that I, and I'm really happy to hear that since we are separating them out, that for students that are transitioning, that we are allowing them to pick the one that works best is I think is fabulous. And that if the students are broken out by the binary genders, that that still needs to continue. But the videos they're seeing is sort of was my issue. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. As somebody with a computer science degree, when I see computer science as a course, I feel like that'd be offering a course called science, which I know we don't offer a science course. So I'm just a little, I mean, curious, what do we mean by a computer science? That's just seems kind of as like, it's like offering a math course and calling it the math course. What do we mean?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, Rocco. So it's not that the course is called Computer Science. There's a set of courses. Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying there was literally a course called Computer Science. That was very confusing to me. Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And Paulette, I have to pop up at exactly 5 o'clock, so forgive my just vanishing.
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe you were gonna actually name your second person before we continued.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aaron Genia.
[Paul Ruseau]: I also am not comfortable with additional alternates. We were very clear in the language that we will not be backfilling. And I don't know where that's coming from.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present. Did you not get that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Member Ruseau? Yes, thank you. I appreciate the good of the order today. I would just like to suggest that we all take a refresher course on Robert's Rules. We typically allow members to speak for as long as they want to speak, which is actually a violation of Robert's rules. We don't let everybody have turns. Some members will ask six or seven questions in a row, leaving the other members who may have had questions to sit there silently and look like they had nothing to say, which looks bad for those of us that came with a set of questions. So I think as a committee, we can do an awful lot better at acting like a committee instead of as individuals approaching an election.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. We also passed the motion last June, July, August, it all runs together to get updated binders, because I mean, we do literally, I mean, I know most of us probably keep these right at the ready, but this is the binder we use to approve the budget that is absolutely not correct. So, you know, you put 62.3 million on that slide. This does not say 62.3 million, neither does the city budget. I go to the city's website. So, I'm not saying 62.3 is not correct, because I know that that is money that came in out of the normal process, but the documents that the public will look at 20 years from now, I looked at 20 years of our city budgets. They can't be lies, they can't be fictions. We need a budget document that actually reflects what the budget was, or a very rational person looking at the actual documents we approved will say in perpetuity that our budget last year was 61.3. And I don't want us to be in that position. I need to know what the budget was. And I feel like I still don't even know because there's this other number that we never approved. And I think we're the only ones who statutorily are allowed to approve a budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm feeling a bit of deja vu here. I've literally watched videos in this last year of communities that have school committees that send budgets up far greater than their municipal appropriation and the world doesn't come to an end. Can you explain to me why that isn't actually an option for us?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. So if the mayor through her office gives you a number, the school committee's authority around the budget is to vote yes or no on that number. That is our entire, we have all these meetings, we have all this process. At the end of the day, we're voting yes or no on the number that the mayor gave us. And that is the entirety of what we do. I'm saying in other communities, we develop a budget based on the school committee's priorities and obviously, with the administration and we send up an $85 million budget. And the mayor says in her budget, it's 65 million and sends it to the city council and they approve it for $65 million. And we can go to sleep with a good conscience because we talk about priorities, getting to the priorities that have been on our lists. We talk about that like it's like new uniforms for the band. No, we're talking about, reading services for kids in high school that are not on IEPs that can't read well enough to get through life. We have zero reading service providers for kids that are not on IEPs that do not read properly, sufficiently. That's not a priority. Those are kids for going out into the world without basic skills. And, you know, I mean, there's the middle school sex ed that we don't have. We don't have any physical ed We don't have an adaptive physical ed person. We keep talking about priorities, like we're talking about whether to get a new car this year or wait a year, like it's our personal budget. There are actual children on the other end who are going off out of our schools, not prepared to survive. And so I would be able to go to bed if we sent an $85 million budget up, just picking a number randomly, that reflected what we said we needed. And then it's on the mayor and then it's on the city council and it's on the taxpayers who will then not be able to deny that this is what we need. But every year we send up a budget that is the exact to the nickel number we're given from the city hall. And it doesn't matter what we need. It doesn't matter. And that's true. So I just, you know, this notion that we are in a, we're in a machine and we have no other options is just not true. and other communities have figured it out. They send a budget up that is ethical and reflects the needs of the kids. And if the community isn't willing to pay for it, then it's on the community. But if we won't send that budget up, it's on us. It's not on the community, it's on us. I'm just tired of this talk about priorities. It's like whether or not to paint your house this year or next, or this year or not.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Mayor, may I just have a quick follow-up? Member Ruseau. Thank you. Can we get an attorney who can answer the questions about this onto a meeting? Because I was under the impression from our last round was that if we had voted the budget down and the city appropriated the funds anyways, our voting it down would have no impact at all on people getting paid. So, you know, the notion that we shut the building down on July 1st and you all just go home wait it out while the politicians get raked over on Facebook or something, I don't think is reality. And I think there is certainly a time when it becomes a problem. I need to actually have an answer to what happens if we refuse to approve a budget that we don't feel is adequate. And I don't wanna find out after we are there, what the consequences are. I think we need an answer. The, you know, several members last year were like, well, what will happen? And here we are coming up on another year where several of us are asking what will happen. And I can't believe that in Massachusetts with 351 communities. And I know there's very different forms of government that nobody has ever refused to pass a budget. That just doesn't seem plausible.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to thank the administration for their work on an entirely new calendar this year and the way it's being done. I'm quite proud of the work that went into that new calendar. So I'm very excited. And I love that the calendar itself includes the statement of how much we value our community. So just want to thank everybody that did the work on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When I talked earlier about like the budget we actually need, this is a prime example of something that without any question should just be in the budget. The word free is literally, I think, almost all legislation around a public education. And it's also a joke. It's actually a joke. It costs literally hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year to send your kid to free public school every year per child. And so, and I think of that as a failure of society, frankly, but also perhaps a failure of us to just imagine that schools should actually be free. It seems so obvious. awful to have to say it, but so, you know, when we talk about the budget and we talk about building a budget that's bigger than our allocation, I don't know why this wouldn't have just been on the list. Of course, we're going to provide kids a way to get to school. If some kids just didn't show up to school because of this in a course of a year, if just 10 or 20 kids didn't, how much money would the public have spent on courts and And, you know, officers to go to their houses and like all of that stuff will add up to more than $350,000 pretty easily. So I certainly think never grams point about like looking at this in the context of the actual transportation budget. And is there an opportunity to make this number smaller? I mean, I am not looking to spend all the money that we can possibly spend. That's not my goal, but getting kids to school should be part of a free public education. So I really appreciate that you did the numbers on this because they're actually even bigger than the numbers I had come up with on my own. But I think we need to solve this and hopefully soon, and it seems like a good time to do it because we can build a budget these next three years that show the public, the residents of Medford, the taxpayers, This is what your public school system can provide if we have the resources. And it's a heck of a good way to also market it at the time to say, look, if we can't get more revenue from wherever, this is the list of things we're taking away from your kids. I mean, that's, you know, we talk about what we're not gonna give them, what we don't talk about, but if we are giving it to them, so that they can actually get to school and they don't have to have six-figure incomes in their houses to be able to do the things that we think of as part of school. It's a lot harder, Phil, to swallow to tell people, we're gonna take this away from hundreds or thousands of kids. And I think that that's a motivation we should put on the taxpayers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I'd just like to, again, motion to approve as amended with the amendment to move the date to October 1st.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So yeah, so we received this, well, the mayor's office received this letter on March 16th, and I will just read the letter. Dear members of the Medford School Committee, and then it lists us all. The Education Committee of the Mississippi Valley NAACP would like to express its appreciation for the June 2020 decision of the Medford School Committee to erase and replace the name of Columbus from the Columbus School. The Education Committee agrees that Columbus is cruel, barbaric, treatment of indigenous people disqualifies Columbus from being honored in this way. We applaud the democratic search process that has been established to find a more appropriate name for the school, once called the Mystic School in honor of the mystic tribe who inhabited Medford before the colonial period. The education committee also lauds the school committee for the unanimous passage of the resolution eliminating out of school suspensions. For years, this destructive policy has disproportionately victimized black children, and other children of color and special needs children. Medford's in-school alternatives and mandatory education is positive and welcome evidence of progress in the right direction. In addition, we understand that there's a commitment to recruit and maintain black, indigenous and other people of color who will more accurately reflect the increasingly diverse Medford community as administrators and teachers and that school staff have received anti-racist trainings. The success of these initiatives will improve educational equity While the evaluation of the clothing code has taken a backseat to the COVID-19 crisis, we trust that the Medford School Committee will, when possible, review and revise the clothing code to avoid the discrimination Black students and students of color identified at the Duggar Park rally last summer. Sincerely, the Mystic Valley NAACP Education Committee, Eileen Lerner, Regina Caines, Wendy Cliggett, Pearl Morrison, Vincent Dixon, Erga Pierret, Susan Girard, Jillian Harvey, and Greg Bartlett. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, Mayor. Thank you. I don't think there's too much to say other than this is in the statute and is related to integration of the student representatives and holding elections for student representatives. So that's why I put this forward and I hope that Dr. Edouard-Vincent doesn't mind that I picked somebody on her staff without actually having talked to her. But he seemed like the right candidate considering his role in secondary, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there a motion to enter executive session?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. On page seven, the bottom paragraph where I am speaking, the sentence is, there's a member trying to get attention and I don't know the name. I believe I said a member of the public. I certainly know the names of all the members of the committee. That could just be changed to say member of the public.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. I did have a couple of small amendments. Could we just update the, there's a couple of places that says $816, it's just missing the K, because it's 816,000 unpaid. And also there's 155, which is 155K. And then on page two, let me just bring this up to a large enough spot, sorry. On page three, there are several instances where Member McLaughlin's name has been inserted as part of what looks like an autofill when somebody was typing. It's clearly the word committee or community has been auto filled with member McLaughlin's names. Those can be removed. And I can send my screenshots to Ms. Weitz for those clarifications. And then there's also a, this one doesn't have page numbers, so forgive me. It says, Mr. Murphy says internally through Mr. MCL, I'm assuming that's Mr. McLaughlin, if that could be updated. Other than that, that was my only question, comments.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. One second, I just gotta bring up the right minutes. Okay, thank you. So on March 24th, the Rose Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting met to discuss two items on our agenda. One, we had a pretty in-depth conversation about the role of the student representatives. More work is forthcoming on that. So I won't get into too much detail on that this evening. I did want to thank our student representatives, David May, and Colin Bailey for a very open and honest conversation and for their dedication to improving how this legislatively mandated role is currently integrated into our school system and into our deliberations in this committee. While it is clear we have not been in compliance with chapter 71, section 38M of the laws, I'm confident that work will begin shortly to get Medford Public Schools into compliance on that. We will have another meeting on this at another time. We did pass. We also discussed the need to adopt policy EBCFA face coverings and voted unanimously to send this to the full committee with a recommendation to approve the face coverings policy was sent to us from the NASC, our association. and we did not approve the one in the summer, we just didn't get to it, but they have now sent us a new one. I do have a note that Member McLaughlin was going to work with the Director of People's Services to come up with a statement to insert somewhere related to IEPs, and if she has not had a chance to do that yet, we can certainly amend that at a later date.
[Paul Ruseau]: questions on the policy? Are there any questions on the policy?
[Paul Ruseau]: We did, I know that there's a motion to table the policy to the next meeting, and it's not something we can discuss, so I, Guess I'll have to wait for the vote on that before I can comment.
[Paul Ruseau]: I see Nurse Ray is on, and I just want to be clear. Medford Public Schools has no policy on face coverings at this time, which means Well, it means what it means. There is no policy. There is no consideration of what happens if people refuse to use a mask.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So yeah, so we met last week and discussed those four items. We, let's see, we voted unanimously to send these to the full committee for recommend these changes. The first are related to agendas. So the motion that we approved was to append the student representative. Motion is to append the student representatives to the attendance roll call. However, the attendance or absence of the student representative will not be included in the announcement of the number present or absent at the meeting to prevent confusion, such as if they were. Six members present, one absent, plus a student representative. If you said seven present and one absent, it's not clear like, wait, are there seven members present? So the language is in the minutes. And I won't read my very long explanation of that unless there is anybody who wants to discuss this in detail. Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Number two, we moved to move the approval of minutes of regular school committee meetings, as well as the warrants, bills, et cetera, to the end of the agenda prior to the condolences. And we voted unanimously to make this change.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion is approved. Thank you. The next one is actually related to those minutes and warrants and bills. And we made a motion to change the approval of those items to be what's called a consent agenda, which means there will be a single vote. Members are free to request that those be split if you actually want to have a conversation about them. Consent agendas are common, are used in many, many communities to speed things up for items that are not typically That typically have no conversation at all. So the way it would work is that the mayor would, there would be a consent agenda, and she would, it would just list the items, and she would simply say their emotion to approve the consent agenda, and presumably everybody would be okay with it, and then she would move on so there would only be one vote on those items. and any member is free, of course, to request that they be split up for individual votes and conversations.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And number four, although there are still the two policy Number four is that we moved to remove the report of the secretary to be immediately prior to public participation item on the agenda. And amusingly that we had that little thing earlier where member Van Der Kloet thought she was the secretary still. And that's exactly part of it is that the report of the secretary is typically the emails that have come in. So it makes more sense there. So that was the motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. I would motion to table this item and just to table this, because I think that the right question is whether we should really be having one at all, which we can bring up in the rules, policy and equity subcommittee meeting as we're continuing to work on the agenda itself, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, thank you all. So the next item is the policy on harassment, which our attorney had He has sent us a number of policies that we either didn't have or were outdated, needed to be updated. So the policy ACAB on harassment, which is in our packets. I don't know if there, we motioned unanimously to approve this as written. So if there's any questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: The public does have it from, I believe.
[Paul Ruseau]: It is, yeah, it's six pages long.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not sure I can summarize it. It's full of lots of legalese and there's no extra stuff in there. I mean, I sort of look at this as every single sentence is very important. That's why it's in here. I mean, the policy, yeah, I can read the first paragraph. I think that might give you a good sense of what it is. It's a harassment of students by other students, employees, vendors, and other third parties will not be tolerated at the Medford Public Schools. The alleged harassment must involve conduct that occurred within the school's own program or activity, such as whether the harassment occurred at a location or under circumstances where the school owned where the school-owned or substantially controlled the premises, exercise oversight, supervision, or discipline over the location or participants, or funded, sponsored, promoted, or endorsed the event where the alleged harassment occurred against a person in the United States, the policies in effect while students are on school grounds, school district property, or property within the jurisdiction of the school district, school buses attending or engaging in school-sponsored activities. It is backed up by Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, and by one, two, three, four different Massachusetts general laws. It's a very, excuse me, sorry. It's a very substantial policy. And I do not believe we actually had this on file at all. This was sent to our, by our attorney as like urgently. get this done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor? Sorry, there was one more, the staff conduct one. I know, this goes on all night. This is the last policy. So this was staff policy GBEB, This is a longstanding policy of our association. Medford had never adopted it, but it was recommended by our attorney. And it's a remarkably brief policy, just requiring that staff familiarizes themselves with state laws and regulations. Really, there's nothing new in here other than the fact that it is an official policy. Any questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. I'm just really happy that we can feel confident we're going to have our wonderful superintendent for, I believe, honestly, I forgot some of the details of the contract, even though we just did them, four more years. And I'm looking forward to what those four years will look like, especially after this year. It's definitely gonna be a brighter future, right? Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Listening to that, I realized I have a question I hadn't even thought of. So when students, and this is really only elementary level, when students' families, when students travel over April vacation with their families, they are part of the not full remote cohorts. I don't know if we've decided to just collapse the cohorts and call them, they're in-person students. Do we have a new name for that? I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So for students that are coming in whose family, and again, this is really only an issue for elementary, their families have chosen to travel outside of the state. When they return on the 26th, where will those students Who would those students' teachers be? They're not allowed to come back to school, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: And since this is the week before school vacation week, will we be blasting communications to parents about what the expectations are, are we just relying on hoping that they remember, or frankly, the state's guidance have changed many times. Until I was listening to Ms. Ray, I actually had not realized like, wait, if we go away, there's a set of steps to, I just worry about people who in good faith go away and come back and, don't realize that they've violated things. And I know we can't police it, but we also don't wanna shut down a whole building on the week after school vacation, the week after we returned, because there were three or four kids that come back and give it to, these new variants are so much more contagious. So I wanna make sure that everybody knows, and this isn't the place for that, because most people aren't here on this meeting, that everybody knows, especially the elementary kids, because the options just don't exist, that if they go away, that they must have a test, and that's their expectation, even if we can't enforce it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, as always. an awful lot of questions that I had. But of course, the presentation can't be three hours long. So I did find some questions I still have. When the rules, policy and equity subcommittee met two, three weeks ago, there was a brief conversation about who is in our honors and AP math and other courses as well. And I was just wondering about, you know, the accelerated math and whether or not, so there's this whole concept of tracking, which all the educators here know very well, and it's also not, you know, for as positive as it can be, it is not a very good, it's not a force for equity for sure. And I'm just wondering if the accelerated math course is really a, just a tracking with a different name. That's one question.
[Paul Ruseau]: It does. It leads me to my second question, which I think will be my last question, because you've answered so many of my other ones already. So, um, you know, I believe this committee has asked, and I don't lose track of which year was and whether it was even Dr Edouard-Vincent for demographics on students that are in accelerated math. and as well as honors and AP courses across the district, the students, you know, when we, at that subcommittee meeting a few weeks ago, the students, and these are students that are there now, we're not talking about people who remember when they went to Medford High, we're talking about people who are literally still there, are very clear that the demographics, if you go to these courses, you do not see what you think of when you think of Medford. And, I listening to your you know the the advice that is given about whether students are appropriate for the particular course or not, I certainly think that's important. You know, but I also recognize that there's a human quality to that that I mean the evidence is quite clear when. And, you know, it's not about intent. So I never want anybody to think that, but teachers are people too. And, you know, the exact same set of characteristics presented in two different students, whether it's, you know, whether it's race or, you know, socioeconomics or disability or a number of other factors, the same, qualifying characteristics of a student for accelerated coursework doesn't end up with the same results when people of good intent look at them and decide which ones should be moved up. And, you know, I know that I talked about, you know, this issue around girls in math, which is obviously a very specific and very important issue and I know important to you as well. But I do, I just want to know that there's an active open conversation going on about how you are selecting students or recommending students for accelerated coursework and trying to purposefully work against the realities of being a human. And And I just want to hear you say that you are, or that you think there's more work to do there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate that we got this presentation ahead of time. I don't think I could have digested it all right now. I first would like to acknowledge that our director still needs to actually have a title of director. Everybody wants to refer to her as the director and she should be the director. So I look forward to that being corrected, hopefully in this budget. I think one thing that's missing here is the impact of failure to meet this need. Our tuition, our charter school tuition this year is $8.7 million. And the frequency with which I hear parents, well, I mean, they don't end up in our school system, but you see it on Facebook, you see it in the parent group. And they're like, well, I went there because I could get guaranteed after school. And, and I understand the dynamics of not having unions in the charter schools, and they can do things we really can't do. But one of the things they also do is is take up a many, many millions of dollars a year. And I think that You know, the word affordability is a reference to the families, but I think we also need to acknowledge there's an affordability to the district to not having every single person who wants to use this program have a seat. It's $13,000 a year for 13 years that we send money out of the district. And it's always these kindergarten parents who are like, first kids can't get a seat. They have two or three or four kids. And once the first kid goes off to the charter school, they don't, kid number two, they're not putting into the lottery. So instead of it being 144 or whatever the number is, thousands of dollars, it's times the number of kids they have. We are talking about literally flushing vast sums of money down the toilet every year. And I think that worrying about whether it's $29 an hour or $35, I mean, The number, the amount of money we're losing to this dwarfs the entire budget of the whole program. So I think that that, and I know that's like, it's like imaginary money that we don't have and it isn't like we can't, we don't have a ledger. And I understand like it's harder to talk about because it is sort of like the money that's not in front of us. It's not in our budget and it's not gonna be. I think of this very much like we're looking here and the problem is just so much bigger. So that sort of was a really important point that I don't see in the presentation. I also don't know how it would fit. So I'm not criticizing. I would just add, I am 100% opposed to privatization of any sort. The word privatization in public education those two things being discussed at the same time feels almost like as a very strange thing. It's very much similar to the whole point that Mr. Murphy made about talking about wait lists and public education. They don't go together for a reason and privatization and public education in my mind don't belong together either. I would couch that slightly and that if you told me we could privatize this all the employees would be paid at wages that we agreed to, and they all got health insurance and retirement benefits and a private company. But that's not what happens when you privatize. Everybody gets the least imaginable amount of money possible to make the business work.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. So, um, I don't wanna be the only one to speak, but I just wanna quickly ask a couple more questions. We have a few words that we actually don't define in here. And again, it's a presentation, it's not a paper. Affordability isn't defined. And I think it's important to acknowledge that the goal of affordability is really about affordability for people who are resource constrained. We are not talking about affordability for people with $250,000 in household income. When I looked at the survey results for the superintendent search, just not related to this, the number one responding in their income category, and obviously this was not a scientific sampling of Medford, But of the people that responded to the demographics, the most common answer to their household income was over $250,000. We are not living in the middle ages. There are lots of people in Medford who would think that these numbers that we're talking about, those aren't affordable, they're laughable. They're kind of like, that's it? Well, sure, whatever. Like they don't go and look in their budget to see if they can afford it. They look at these numbers and they're like, Jesus, why would anybody not take this service? So I think we have to nail down a bit on what we mean by affordability, because by focusing on just the fact that we wanna keep it affordable for those that are resource constrained, we're missing a huge opportunity, frankly. That's how I view this. And I recognize that we don't have the systems in place this year to start doing things around, you know, a sliding scale or income base. And those technical requirements are not something you can snap your fingers and accomplish. But when I heard the, well, I heard $540 a month, although I realized it's not that number. I thought, well, is that a week? I thought it was a week. And I mean, has anybody here hired a nanny? I haven't. If you tell me you can get a nanny for $540 a week, I'd be surprised. So, you know, I think we have to, we're not valuing the convenience of in-place transfer for your child from their classroom to their afterschool program. We're not valuing that. We're comparing it to a kid that would have to be picked up and transferred to GraceWorks or six acres or wherever, like those are not comparable, no matter if they were doing exactly the same programming, they are not comparable. And where are we adding the value and figure out how much this is worth around the fact that your kid just goes either from the second floor to the first floor, or maybe even they're in the same classroom. There's a huge value there. And I'm not saying we check the rates up for everybody, but for people that have the resources, these numbers make absolutely no sense. that we're charging. And I am not a fan of 3% increases in the future. I certainly will vote for that tonight, but that, you know, and maybe we get to a whole new structure and then we go 3% going forward. But like, once we switch or can get to an income-based, I do not expect you to get, like a presentation says we're gonna charge them 10% more, like that's, that's not thinking outside the box or valuing the service that is being provided, in my opinion. The staff turnover, I think that was well covered, is a major issue. And I was super happy when I saw the slide with the increases in the wages. It was much bigger than I anticipated, honestly, and that made me feel very confident that we're working towards really dealing with this. There is a word equitable accesses in here two or three times, and I'm just wishing we had a definition and maybe there is one, but we do need to define that because there is no, it's not like math. There is no answer. It's a value judgment that we as a community make to decide what equitable means. And I expect that that changes year to year, you know, as Medford changes and as the committee changes, And then that was all I had for the moment. I appreciate this. This is, I think, excellent. And when we get through lots of questions, I'd be happy to make some motions. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is this a table to a date specific or just table?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Are we missing number three?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think we just have the count is wrong, that's all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Wait, is Jenny on this or is Melanie on this? Melanie's on it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. Just suddenly, I'm like, wait, who else is on my subcommittee? So who's the third? It's Jenny, isn't it? It is Jenny, yes. Sorry, I had the agenda right in front of me. I could have just looked there. All right, I just pinged her. Hello, everyone. I believe we have everybody we require. So I'm going to get this meeting started. Good evening, it's April 7th, Wednesday, April 7th, 4.03 PM, and I'm calling to order the Rules Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting. Please be advised that on Wednesday, April 7th, 2021, from 4 to 5 PM, there will be a Rules Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place, this meeting of the Medford School Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information and the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the City of Medford website. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive recording of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Camcast channel 22 and Verizon channel 43. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call in by using the following link or call in number. The Zoom link, which some of us here are already on is https://mps02155-org. at dash org.zoom.us slash j slash 98554767654. The meeting ID, if you'd like to call in, the phone number is 1-310-715-8592 and the meeting ID is 985-5476-7654. Additionally, comments or questions can be submitted during the meeting by emailing me at PRUSEAU at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment. The agenda for tonight has four items and I first will take attendance. And I believe member Van der Kloot, you'll be filling in for member McLaughlin this evening?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. So member Van der Kloot? Present. And member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: And member Rousseau, present, three present. We have a quorum. Excellent. So we have four items on the agenda. We'll just get going. The first item on the agenda is to discuss possible updates to the format of our agenda for the regular meetings of the school committee. at probably several meetings actually in the last couple of years, this has been suggested. We had a, not a round table, but a sort of a professional development for the school committee with our representative from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. We saw a number of other school committee agendas and how they're formatted. And we all seem to think lots of those other ideas were excellent. And in talking to a couple of members, one of the approach that I'm gonna suggest we take is that we actually take a more evolutionary approach rather than a full-blown revolution by modifying the agenda in pieces and over time, rather than here's a whole new agenda format out of the gate. And the reason that I personally think that that makes more sense is that Um, changing the format of the meetings will be, uh, even small changes to the format of the meeting is going to require, you know, uh, adjustment. And I'm just quite concerned with the, well, we always have a ton of work, but that a full blown reset, here's a new format from scratch will be highly confusing to the members, to the superintendent, uh, certainly the public. So. do anybody have any thoughts on taking that approach? Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, Member Radcliffe, did you have anything you wanted to add? No, thank you. Okay, thank you. So, you know, the format of our agendas, which I'm realizing I don't have one of them in front of me. My apologies. There are many documents here. Let's see, we go to the last school committee agenda. Well, I don't need the whole thing in front of me. So one of the things that I was thinking would be a nice addition, this meeting, last time we met this subcommittee, we met with the student representatives to the school committee. And that was in response to some difficulties going on in Boston with their student representatives. And we had, I thought, a very good conversation. And I think there'll be a lot more coming related to that. But some of the things that I thought of as low-hanging fruit was that when the attendance is taking at the beginning of the meeting, that we also asked for the student representative and we record it as attending. I had written this up. One second, where did I put that? Apologies. So in my mind, so we have two student representatives most of the time. And so that can be a little clunky. It's like, imagine if we were just all not named individuals on the school committee and we didn't know who was going to be at the meeting that would flow in a very weird way. So what I had suggested or thought was that we should, when taking the role, we should take the members first and then simply, if the person taking the role, the secretary, knows who the student representative for that night is, then they can simply say the name. If they don't, they can simply say, you know, the student representative, and then just record it that way during the attendance. And of course, as Member Graham mentioned, this can be iterative, you know, if this doesn't flow and doesn't work, or it's just, not working well, we can just change it. But any thoughts on that particular idea?
[Paul Ruseau]: I do like that. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, thank you. I certainly don't, I don't, I'm certainly not, I would put it on the agenda if I had proposals that I thought were I think of as substantial, I think like including them in the role, I didn't consider it to be substantial or controversial or there are a whole host of other issues that we discussed in the last meeting, which I don't think can make it into this meeting, there isn't time. And I think that there will be a lot of interest. So I would, when that is part of perhaps the next one of these meetings, I plan to iterate what those things are so that people can, truly know what it is we're discussing. The only thing I would ask about the attendance, while I certainly agree that like having it separate is, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, except that we would then have another item on the agenda. I want it to be part of the agenda so that it doesn't just get forgotten. And so, I mean, are you proposing that after the attendance, the next item on there is the student representative attendance or how would you word that perhaps?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, Mr. Murphy, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, I think I feel like this is a slightly off topic from the agenda. And certainly, you know, the student outreach coordinator, which is actually indicated in a lot is something that, I plan to have a conversation with, cause again, we don't have to vote on it. It's literally a lot that we're supposed to be doing. So, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I can just call, you know, Peter presumably, cause he oversees secondary and that we'll get going. But just from an agenda perspective, you know, when I look at the list of notes from that meeting last time, you know, some of these things are in fact controversial, like whether or not students should be voting on substantive items, and if so, which items and which items should they not be? Like, I think that's a real conversation that frankly, we'll end up at the main school committee meeting as a very serious conversation. But just knowing, you know, as member Graham, and I think member Van der Kloot pointed out, like frequently, we don't know who is there. And I know both the current student representatives faces like, you know, immediately. and I've had communications with them. So it's not like I don't know who they are, but I still don't know if they're there. So I think getting them to, I've received an email and I'm like, I received an email from one of them today thinking he should be here. And I'm like, wait, there's no reason for you to be here today because I didn't think we were talking about the student representative so much, but they're very much like, on top of it. And I do think member Vanderhoof's point about like that every year student representatives are individuals and have their own lives. And that's a very important consideration. Although I think the student outreach coordinator is probably the solution to years when there is not sufficient participation or maybe the students just didn't know what their role was. You know, and I think that that is some of the student outreach coordinator will be able to nail down like nobody's going to want to put this themselves in to be in this role, knowing what it means. If they didn't take it upon themselves to know what it means like by looking at the previous year. So, sticking, we should get back to the agenda because time is not our friend. including who, so I feel like there's a little bit of disagreement about whether or not to just add them to the roll call. When I was looking at our rules for the school committee, as I'm working on sort of creating a new draft, what I had sort of iterated was that the members are called, the student representative by name, if known already, and the student representatives you know, if we tell them, if you're the student representative of record today, then just email the secretary. It's not hard. They can handle an email. And then the secretary knows what name to call. And if they're absent, the secretary, you know, if the secretary received an email and says, I can't make it today, sorry, they don't have to even call the name and make it a point that the student representative is absent. I certainly think we don't wanna like, if a member just stopped showing up to meetings, that's something that the public notices and we all notice. And I don't think we should have that same level of noticing that student reps can't make it to a meeting. So it seemed procedurally rather easy to just have the members called, the student rep if present called, and then the announcement of number present and number absent should not include the student representative at all. I think that that And I feel a bit like that's where I remember Van der Kloot was like, you know, there's the official body. We can't have confusion. It can't be seven, six present and two absent. Well, was one of the absent the student rep or, you know, in my opinion, we go through them all. And then the announcement of those present and absent is just does not include the student representative. So that it's seven, zero or whatever, like it has always been. That's, I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, we can keep talking about this if we send it to the full committee too. You're muted.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're muted. Paulette, you're muted.
[Paul Ruseau]: Ms. Weiss, raise your hand up. It's the year of beauty.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just the roll call to start the meeting. Sorry, we keep saying roll call, but I do mean attendance. The other voting stuff around matters is just far beyond what we have time for tonight. And I think we perhaps even need to include Howard in that conversation. look to see have other communities done it, that kind of thing. But this is just for attendance. And in my mind, it would not be for adjournment either, because our meetings go too late and student reps hopefully are bailing at some point, honestly. Thank you. You're welcome. So what other, did member Graham or member VanDerKlood or others, frankly, did you have any other low-hanging fruit changes to the agenda that you think we should include? I have others, but I just want to hear from you. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't know that moving those items to a consent agenda item is, based on my memory of our last meeting with Ms. Presser from MASC, I didn't see anybody up in arms or thinking that was a weird thing. I think the only thing, if we were to do that, we'd have to introduce it and explain what it is. I mean, the language of a consent agenda doesn't even, like, what the heck does that even mean? But I personally would support moving those items as a consent agenda item and to the end, which I never even thought of, but like, honestly. Member Van der Kloot, you have thoughts on this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I certainly, would not argue against removing the item of report of secretary. I would say, I mean, this is only my fourth year, but the vast majority of times, and even before that in the year that I watched school committee, there was just, there was no report. And what member Kreatz did, I sometimes did find it interesting and maybe some of the public did as well. I'm just wondering if there are other ways to accomplish that in the context of a school committee that meets longer than, frankly, almost any other school committee. You know, when I go to MASC and memorandum, you probably have a much better feel for this, but I go to the conference and I talk about meetings, we do have perhaps the longest school committee meeting of anybody I've talked to on a regular.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'm fine with moving to remove the secretary's report and then, you know, we can add it back if it turns out it was useful.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I see what you're saying.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. You just said something about community participation and that's on my short list of things I think is really important is that I think, well, I can't remember if we call it community participation or public participation, but I would prefer that the mayor at that item always announces our policy. It's not long. And I've noticed in other school committees meetings that I've watched from other places that the chair, you know, sort of begins the public participation with this is how it works and this is how it will work. Instead of what I feel like happens sometimes with us is we get into it and suddenly somebody has been talking for 10 minutes and we're like, wait, what was the rule again? And if three or four people have already talked for a long time, it feels very unfair that suddenly we wanna enforce our rules after not having enforced our rules for the last three or four people have spoken. So that's why I think that just read the policy prior to public participation. And frankly, it might sound like it's more work, but it'll definitely save time in my opinion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, if, if the members are okay, um, I would, uh, suggest that the language that will end up on the agenda here, I think I can draft something and send it to the next RPE meeting. I don't think you could approve something that I haven't even drafted to show up on the agenda to go to the full committee. So if that sounds reasonable, I'll draft that and put it on the next agenda. Great. Just to keep us moving along, I have to have something to report out. Is there a motion to remove the secretary's report from the agenda?
[Paul Ruseau]: So just before it, like the item before it, or like community participation is the agenda item and then secretary's report is like the first bullet.
[Paul Ruseau]: you. Excellent And, uh Susie, do you have that? Great Yes. Thank you. Uh, member Van der Kloot. Yes. Remember Graham? Yes. Remember? So yes, three in the affirmative. And um, that's good. We have something to I'm very, you didn't speak on your thoughts on the consent agenda concept. You've approved more minutes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So I can't remember the exact wording that would appear on the agenda, our regular agenda. It would perhaps say like consent, and then it would list the minutes, the bills, the payrolls, and there would be one vote to approve them all, and that's it. And any member could simply ask for a, I'm short of words today, sorry, whatever that is to break them out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so if somebody could motion to move all of those options, those items that are allowed, to be part of the consent agenda, and I'll investigate what that is after the meeting. And whatever those end up being is what we'll include. So somebody can motion to combine those items. Thank you. And do we also want to move it to the end of the meeting? I think it's fine. We can talk about it at the regular meeting. I personally think it's fine. It's probably, I certainly get the warmup part. And when I think about a brand new member, their first meeting, but I'm not sure there's really warming up for a brand new member in the first meeting. It's terribly stressful. I'm sure I remember it being so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. So why don't we... Member Graham, what are you looking at?
[Paul Ruseau]: So on the motion to combine all items that we are allowed to into a consent agenda item to be moved to the end of the agenda prior to the condolences.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham, are you going to second that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Van der Kloot. Yes. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Three in the affirmative. Excellent. The attendance, do we want to, you know, I don't really know that typically subcommittees don't send things up not with a recommendation. So, I mean, I know that I would like to send a recommendation up that the attendance be performed in sort of the format I described earlier. that the student reps are added to the attendance item. And then, Member Van Der Koolen, I think we can talk about it. I suspect this will be a conversation point in the regular meeting. So would you be okay with moving that forward?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, and is there a second?
[Paul Ruseau]: I wonder who it could be. Member Van der Kloot?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, yes. Three in the affirmative. The addition of the student representatives will be added to the attendance of the regular school committee, or at least that's what we're gonna suggest. I don't think we should do more stuff right now. We have these other policies, unless there was something else important. that the two of you thought we needed to really work on tonight around the agenda?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Have a good night, bye-bye. Okay, so, So we have three policies. I think we can do it. So the policy on harassment, ACAB, I believe it is... I wanna share it once I find it.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. I'm not a lawyer, but when I read that, I totally understand where you're going, Member Graham. I think what's different here is that, well, I think Mr. Murphy sort of pointed this out, like the general laws that we're all subjected to aren't all iterated throughout all of our policies, but these are really very specific to the setting. So anyways, I mean, do we even have employee to employee harassment listed at all? I don't see it at all. And that of course is a real thing as well. I'm sure happens. And so I guess that sort of gets to the point of when we start including more what we're excluding, it's sort of like everybody's always trying to interpret Supreme Court justices and what they thought or what the Congress thought when they passed the law and what they do say and what they don't say. matters greatly. But anyways, so I'm gonna just share, if you don't mind, actually, I'm gonna skip to the easy, quick policy, the student conduct, the staff conduct policy. I don't mean that it's easy, I just mean it's short. Who can share? Why am I getting settings? Sorry. Let's see. I have many screens. There it is. All right, so this is the recommended policy and I, assuming anybody that, Ms. Weiss, was this included in the, for the public to be able to see this in the posting?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great, thank you. So I'm not, this particular policy will, it'll be in the regular school committee files when that gets posted. So, you know, if anybody in the public joined and wanted to talk about this, this would be the first time they're seeing it. But is there any particular comments or concerns about how this is worded?
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. And now I have to admit a complete lack of ignorance on how to approve the motion to approve. Robert's rules handles to members and seconding. But it's very motion to approve motion to approve. And I guess I'll second that, um, member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, and member. Uh band recruit is absent. So, uh, to in the affirmative. This will be sent up to the full committee for approval. Maybe on Stop share. There we go. All right, so let me switch to the other item. So let me share the harassment policy. So I believe member Graham, there was a sentence you wanted to include in the section above. Was it this one?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Cushing, did you have... I'll wait, I'll wait. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we can call it anything we want. This is an MASC policy that, you know, recommended policy, but of course we can change anything we want. Harassment involving students.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham, you're, you broke up there.
[Paul Ruseau]: You are breaking up quite a lot, but I think we got what you were saying about the intent. And I would hope, I would like to hear perhaps from administrators know this policy since I am new to this policy. Dr. Cushing, do you happen to have familiarity with it?
[Paul Ruseau]: She was asking, but yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I did just check the MASC policy service to see other harassment policies. And in fact, there is no, there's a bullying prevention policy, of course, that has the word reference, references the word harassment. There is nothing else in there actually, which I do find interesting and would make me want to seek guidance from our attorney to find out, you know, is the absence of anything related to employees, is there a good reason that we don't have something? You know, I just think about like employee to employee to me may in fact incur conversations with the unions or, you know, why is it that even our association has nothing?
[Paul Ruseau]: So Mr. Cushing, your point about the first and second reading. So I am drafting a new set of rules for the school committee kind of cobbling together bits I can find from all over the place of our current rules. And the addition of second readings of policies is something that I have in there, but that is not currently part of our policies. I don't think there is any reason we couldn't bring it to the school committee and then discuss and then one of us could motion to table it to the next meeting, effectively creating a second reading, but that is not currently part of the rules of the school committee. So, and I, yeah, this is such a consequential policy that just like surprise, here you go. And then it's over within five minutes. I could see that upsetting people.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. So we'll do that at the regular meeting, the table.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Were there any other comments on the language that's in here? I only read it through once and, you know, nothing got me very, too excited or interested with problems or anything. So on the motion to move this to the full committee, member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes to in the affirmative. We will send this policy as amended It's wise, I did add the language to the Google Doc, the change that we just discussed, and I'm not sure if you're using my version or document management, it's a whole different conversation for another day. Thank you, and then we have four minutes, what's left? So this last one, which is number three on the agenda, Review the Grievance Procedure for Complaints of Sexual Harassment under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. And I've got to stop sharing so I can grab that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I do remember when this change came out, it was quite the news story for quite a while, frankly. And I remember going like, holy crap, I hope we don't have to do that here. But of course, that was my ignorance, because we don't have a choice. So this is the update to get us in compliance with the policy change that occurred in the former administration. So I we probably should have invited Howard to this meeting. So failure to update the policy to comply with the new Title IX, is that a law or a regulation, whatever it is, doesn't in any way, shape or form change what Title IX is. So we can decide to follow a different procedure that's not legal. and we would just lose if that gets brought up. So I guess my point is it's like, so we're gonna make, it sounds like staff is already going through training to get in compliance with this new stuff that I personally think is just awful. And then we will approve all this stuff. And then title nine, these things will all get changed again, hopefully very soon. Will you have to go through, we'll have to change the policy yet again, which is fine, but will you all have to go through yet again more training or is the hope that you'll just go back to doing things the way you had been doing them?
[Paul Ruseau]: I would like that. And I would also just ask, can we get the current grievance procedure. I don't, when I searched in our policy manual, I didn't see it, but that doesn't belong in the policy manual. So of course I didn't see it. But I would like to know that the current procedure we have that this will replace, was that one like super outdated and not really what we were doing anyways. So going, even if we were just like to roll back what this brings forward, what we've rolled back to, would that have been where we should be going? Um, so I think it would be good to have that, um, if somebody could find, you have to execute on this procedure, uh, the current one as well as this new one. Um, so you must have it somewhere, but I don't think I have seen it. So, um, is there a motion to move this to the next agenda meeting and invite, uh, Mr. Greenspan or, um, if he indicates that this is not his wheelhouse, I know that, you know, lawyers do specialize, um, So if he cannot speak to this topic specifically, if we could invite somebody, I don't know who we use, Merrick.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, and I'll second it, I guess. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Ruseau, yes. Thank you. So two in the affirmative. this new procedure is moved to the next RPE meeting, those policy and equity meeting. Thank you, everybody, for coming tonight. I do appreciate it. We're doing good on keeping these meetings almost on time. I've never been known for that. So is there a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. And I'll second that. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Members, no yes. Two in the affirmative.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'll go next then, I guess, right? Is that what you were saying? Yes. Thank you. So we had a great conversation, of course. We had a few things that I'm gonna touch on. There was a serious discussion around whether the mission and the vision statements deserve to be split, that there's an actual different use case for the two different statements. And there were a number of people seem to be in agreement with that. Some of the ACEs do not seem to actually, they seem to be completely absent from the current statement. There's only four aces, so it feels like we should be able to get all four of them in some way into the mission or the vision or both. We, a number of us, we had interesting conversation around 21st century education, and there seemed to be a consensus, I would say, that spelling out what we mean by that is important. Again, we don't need a 700 word mission statement, but that that, that phraseology doesn't really mean anything to anybody who isn't an educator and hasn't spent any time looking it up. And then we had three words in the current statement, which I think it was just three, that need more conversation. One was the word contributors. Another one was reached, which felt very kind of like you're finished. It's very like end of life, not early in life where our students are. And then the word fostering in the ACEs feels very unmeasurable and vague. So I have a lot of other notes, but I'll, I probably used my three minutes. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: There was not a better word. It felt, I brought this thing up, but it was, we could say we offered something, but that doesn't mean it's really available to everybody. So fostering, at the end of the day, literally nobody could take advantage of something. And if we fostered that, the goal isn't to say we as the professionals made something available, it's that it actually was delivered or received. And so I don't think we had a better word. I don't remember a better word coming up, but that word fostering felt a very kind of, it didn't feel like we were taking responsibility for delivering on the goal.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, I think we have everybody here we need for sure to be here. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to call to order the Rules, Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting of the Medford School Committee. Let me read the very long posting, which I'm sure somebody wrote this thing back last March. Nobody realized we'd have to read it 1,000 times. Please be advised that on Wednesday, March 24th, 2021, from four to 5 p.m., there will be a rules, policy, and equity subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and the Governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place, this meeting of the Medford School Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. specific information, and the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the City of Medford website. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so despite best efforts, we will post on the city of Medford or Medford community media websites and audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed through Medford community media on Comcast channel 22 and Verizon channel 43 at four o'clock. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log on or call in by using the following link or call in number. The, excuse me, the URL for this meeting is https://mps02155-org.zoom.us slash j slash 938-675-93539. To call in, you would call 1-919-205-6099 and the meeting ID is 938-675-93539. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing me at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment. The agenda for, well, we'll get to the agenda in a moment. First, I'd like to take a roll call. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And a member or so here, three present. We have a quorum. So we have two items on our agenda tonight. The first item we'll just get right into. So in light of recent events in Boston regarding the participation of the student representative to the school committee, conversation with the current representatives, Colin Bailey and David, David, how do you say your last name? May or my?
[Paul Ruseau]: May, thank you. Will take place to understand how they are experiencing participation as our student representatives, as well as what changes may be necessary to better integrate their voices and perspective and respect their participation as critical members of the school committee. So I first wanna welcome Colin and David, and thank you for joining us. Member Graham, I think has to say something. member of Mr. McLaughlin, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I hadn't really thought too much about how we would do this. The nice thing about subcommittees and small committees versus the giant meetings where there's 180 people watching is we can actually have a regular conversation. And frankly, I would wish this was just sitting around a table together because it would be way better. So I think that if it's OK with you too, I would certainly welcome either one of you commenting or providing any feedback you have before the members before we start pontificating, which I'm certainly prepared to do.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So I did not read all the articles and there were more than, there was a few. So the representative, and I don't believe this was the only representative, I believe this has happened more than once, to the school committee resigned in protest to being dismissed and having their voices not valued and their opinions valued. And I did not watch any of the recordings to see what that looked like. I certainly had no trouble just accepting that the experience of the students was the experience of the student representatives. That sort of is a baseline for me. So I don't know if either Colin or David want to provide more details, but, and I don't know, can you?
[Paul Ruseau]: So ideally, yeah, go. Can I just ask for a clarification on that? So this president, vice president from each of the classes, this was a thing that's, I mean, this whole year is sort of, when I say usually, always have to sort of caveat that this year doesn't really count, but so this was a, this is a thing that's already existed that where these people are meeting, these students are meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Melanie? Member McLaughlin, excuse me.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: member McLaughlin, then superintendent.
[Paul Ruseau]: And before the superintendent speaks, I just wanted to jump in here real quick. So I do have the Mass General Law that dictates all of this. On principle, I actually think having voting members of the school committee being members of the actual people we're overseeing is sort of almost natural and obvious and like, duh, I mean, seriously. Unfortunately, the current law is quite explicit. Now, what David just iterated on how we actually select the student representative is actually what the law says it should be. getting us to the point where there's a student-based election to select the person to be the advisory committee, to be the representative, that shouldn't be too hard since that's technically the law. And operationally, I'm sure there's some work to do to make that happen going forward, but I think that should be an easy win because that's what has to happen. But it's a pretty small section on the law, but it also is very clear that you cannot be voting members. You can't be compensated, which I personally, as somebody who believes all work should be valued and paid, find that particularly crazy, offensive, sorry, that's the wrong word, crazy. But no matter how many hours you spend sitting there doing your duty, we cannot compensate you. And then the other part about this that is a little concerning is that it says there can only be one. We have always had two. And as far as I know, I mean, this is my fourth year. And my understanding why we had two was it's a huge burden. I mean, our meetings are not half an hour long. Our trivia game name was the all-nighters for a reason. So, you know, I think I will, one of the takeaways I will take from this is to find out, you know, this section of the law, what parts of it are restrictive and what parts are sort of like the minimum, you know, can we have two without any problem? If we have, you know, not if, but, you know, it's pretty clear about that there should be an election of the student body to discern who it is. But if the student body picks two people or four people or whatever, is that okay? I think it's something we can get an answer to. Sometimes things are really like, this is the minimum you can do, the most you can do, and sometimes the minimum you must do. And it's not a lot of language, but some of it seems to definitely be going back and forth between those two things. But being a voting member would require the state legislature to change that, because it's explicit there. But I just wanted to get that out there. And I will send you all a link to this particular section. It's actually short, which is nice, because usually these things are pages long. Dr. Edward Benson, you wanted to say something?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Before we go on to Memogram, I just wanna, We have one other agenda item that I expect will take less than 10 minutes. So I just wanna keep our time in sync. And I also want to make sure we leave with some action items. I think that the law, which you may not have all had a chance to just read, sort of lays out three things for which we are doing none of them. So it seems like those would be good things to be considered action items. And then, I have some other thoughts on things we might be able to do as well. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor Graham. Just a moment, Mayor McLaughlin. I did write down all of those suggestions, half of which I had, but found some other ones for me to put on my list. The agenda items one is a particularly interesting one. I feel like we don't even have to ask because the public can submit items for presentation in general. So I feel like we would probably wanna nail that down a little bit more precisely because these are not just the public, these are the student representatives. But at the same time, I can't imagine that they could not. And then the liaison part, I have that written down. It does say that we as a committee will designate a student liaison or excuse me, an outreach coordinator for the purposes of working with the student advisory committee. So that doesn't have to be one of us. I think it does not say it has to be one of us, because I agree with member McLaughlin We all might be clamoring for that when in fact it might be better to assign somebody an administration or a teacher or somebody who's interested in that work. Instead of piling it on. And to to those of us that may have it where it gets lost in the mix. And then. The voting, my other question for Colin and David around the voting, whether you go first or last, if we are allowed to add you as a person who votes on things, even though it's not going to be counted, there's the first and the last, it's very, very important. And as Member Graham pointed out, for the fun stuff, it really just doesn't matter. For the scary stuff where Member Graham's the first person to vote on everything, And sometimes being the first person out of the gate to say something can be no fun. But I would also ask you to consider whether or not you would be okay voting, because you're representing a group of students, you don't have time to go back and say, okay, here's a motion that just got cobbled together by one of us in the committee, and you've not had a chance to talk to anybody. about this. It's sort of, you know, it's life as a person who gets to vote. I don't get to go off and ask constituents, how should I vote? But it is certainly something I think you should think about when you contemplate this question. And then member Graham, member McLaughlin, excuse me. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I want to let Mr. Murphy speak, and then I do want to make sure that the last people talking on this are Colin and David. So think of something to say if you don't have something right on the tip of your tongue.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I would welcome David or Colin to speak before we wrap this item up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate this conversation. It was like, how's this going to go? This was way better than I really expected. I also don't feel like this is the end of this conversation. I feel like, you know, we should work up some black and white written down, you know, next steps and maybe we will have another one of these to kind of go over those. This particular subcommittee would of course be recommending any new rules or if necessary policy changes. So they would certainly come back here and I will be certain to invite you when those come up. It probably won't be at the next meeting because we have a substantial list of backlog things, but I'm hoping we can have something going before the end of the school year so that we can start the next school year on a good foot with some changes. And if there are no other last member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly I expect a good number of things actually to happen before the end of the school year. Looking at the language of the law, there is an expectation that the student body will actually hold their election for their new representative or hopefully representatives if we can have more than one. So that has to happen, it says, prior to the first day of June each year. So that the problem mentioned earlier of we don't really see them until November. That's because we haven't been doing that. So prior to June, which is incredibly soon, there should be an election to identify who this person or hopefully more than one person will be. And that would come to the school committee, presumably just as a report. I don't think the school committee votes on whether to accept that, but that would be the first week of June, presumably. I also don't have a clue how elections are being handled current situation with COVID, but there's still class officers now, and I'm sure that is a process that can continue. And then the other items, I will write those up this week and distribute them and just see if there's any of them that are just not controversial in any way. They're not complicated or not controversial and not complicated if we have to do something that's gonna take substantial time and resources in the middle of the pandemic, that may be a challenge. But the three items that are in the law, we really are not complying with any of those. So to me, we should just get those done and that shouldn't be a conversation. And that would be a huge step up and the creation of the student advisory committee, which may actually exist, but not if there's no liaison and there's no passing of our agenda to that group so that they can develop a response so that representatives can come to a committee prepared. I mean, yeah, I think we can get a lot done before the school year is over and David and Colin are not our representatives. I wanna say thank you to everybody. We do have to get this other policy done by five o'clock. So if you want to stay or leave, that's up to you, but thank you very much. I greatly appreciate this meeting. So, agenda item number two. Where's my agenda item number two? There it is. So the next item is a policy on face coverings. The members all received the policy. It is part of the agenda. So the public that would have seen the agenda to know we even are here would actually have also been able to read it. So I won't read the whole policy. The policy was sent to us from the mass Association of school committees and nursery did you want to speak on anything in particular about this I know you made a couple tiny updates.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Uh, member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, member McLaughlin, I mean, we can change language to anything we want as a school committee. The legal references below at the bottom of the policy explain what MASC used to write the language. And this is their suggestion. This is the starter kit. I'm quite sure there are districts that have probably made substantial changes to this, you know, after I got the new policy from MASC, I read it and Nurse Ray also had a chance to review it and that's why I sent it here without substantial editing. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I just, you know, I mean, being on an IEP is, you know, you could not be in an IEP and definitely qualify with a physician now and vice versa. So I do feel a bit like the IEP part of the language would say muddle it, but it's, it's, it's not, requirement or not a requirement to really have this exception. And I mean, certainly plenty of people with physical disabilities may not have an IEP at all. And, you know, I think there's lots of students and adults with anxiety disorders for which, you know, that's just between them and their physician. So I certainly And fine with kind of pulling that out and making that explicit. I'm just worried about how do we do it? And we have like 90 seconds. So my ask was, would you take it on to look in other policies or find some language to suggest at the regular school committee to amend it then rather than us trying to amend it here? Because I feel like time-wise, we're kind of lacking that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I did also want to just highlight, There's a review frequency as part of our policy information. I've set that to five months so that at either our very first meeting in September that we review this again, because we really don't have a clue what things will look like come September. And I would hate for us to have a policy mandating this if everybody's vaccinated and nobody needs to wear a mask. Do either student representatives since you're here, do you have anything you wanna say about this? You don't have to say anything, by the way. That's sort of, politicians take a while to learn that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. All right. Are there any other comments or anything on this? So is there a motion to send this up as it's presently written, knowing full well we will be looking for an amendment?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, just a motion to approve the new policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I don't know that we can do exactly that way, because, um, we because we have to say, Okay, that's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you. So member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember? So yes, three in the affirmative. The new policy is, um, passed out of subcommittee will be sent to the full school committee on April 12th. Um, and I appreciate everybody. We managed to only be three minutes over, which I personally.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, three in the affirmative. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to motion to table this. It was a very, very, very long set of minutes for a long meeting, and I need more time to digest the minutes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Last year, we did have a motion to require this as part of the budget, but it was new. Do we feel we need a motion or will it just be coming? I don't wanna get to one of these presentations that a department has worked hard on, And then there isn't this list, because I just don't want us to be in that situation. So I just want to hear somebody in central administration say you will get the list like you did last year or better. if that's something.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That was a good update. Excellent update. It was a lot of topics in that particular update. I thought you were done several times. I actually just have one question, and I feel like it's a question you may not actually be able to answer with certainty at this point. But we had a, you know, when we first went into the school year, we had a few classes that were frankly oversubscribed. And you know, that that was worked out. However, it needed to be worked out. But there was also a class that had some rather extensive turnover of teachers at one of the schools. And I just, I'm looking for a commitment that no remote students will be looking at a different teacher in the elementary level. Cause I don't think it's really an issue for the middle and high school level because the hybrid and the remote students have already been mixed together. But I just want to hear, and I think some families that are staying full remote want to know there is a 0% chance or you're committed to not changing their teachers, that they've finally figured out how to have a relationship with. And even if that means they have a really small class, the logistics, as you mentioned, are pretty mind boggling. But I feel like, as another member mentioned earlier, there's a general feeling that the remote kids, not by you, but just because they're remote. There's a lot of people who felt like they were an afterthought and to have any kind of turmoil or change in their schedules should just be an absolute no go. And I just want to hear you say that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just, you know, Senator Jalen, our state senator from Medford emailed, I think all of the school committee and asked us, you know, to respond really to the DESE guidance. Cause I think the legislature was considering whether or not they needed to sort of take emergency action. And my sense is that that is not going to happen. But I said something that I think is really important to just say, and that is that we are taking a moderately bad situation for everybody, and we're gonna make it better for some kids at the expense of other kids. And that's exactly what will happen to any kid whose teacher is changed at the elementary level. And I just think it's an unconscionable, frankly, if we can take fully remote kids and fit them in, we should. And I think the principals and teachers should prioritize them based on the individual children and the situations. But to take away a teacher from another student who's fully remote, it's unconscionable to me. And I recognize that we didn't vote on it. We don't get to vote on it. The commissioner is apparently literally with godlike powers at this point. But I just needed to say that it's really, it's disturbing is an understatement that we will take away something from kids to give them to other kids in the middle of a pandemic like this. It's just, I just can't, it's awful. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate it. And I'm glad you're doing it all again because I think it's one of those things you have to hear multiple times. In that last slide, is there a date yet for when, and I realize the mayor may not be ready for this yet, but is there a date when the number will be handed over on a napkin? What's the budget number?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And my other question is, you know, is sort of a, you know, considering the unknowns, and, you know, we had this problem last year, obviously, we were really getting into the pandemic. So in fact, it was not the same as this year. But, you know, there are communities in Massachusetts that develop a school budget, they don't know what the mayor's number is gonna, well, usually they're not committees where the mayor is on the committee. So it's a little more politically and operationally easier for a school committee to just come up with a budget, here's the number, send it off to the council and the mayor's like, we can't do this or whatever. But this happens in multiple communities around the state they send up an $80 million budget and they get 70 million. The world doesn't fall apart, they get 70 million. And then the superintendent and the school committee have to figure out, well, what are we gonna do with that $10 million difference afterwards, which is probably no fun. But we've always taken the approach where we all send up to the nickel, the amount we're gonna get. And if we're doing that in February, that's different than doing it in June. You know, I guess my question is why do we not just try this other approach? We develop the budget we think we need. We send it to city council and the mayor has a number on her budget. She sends the city council. They won't be the same. The world won't fall apart. The school system won't close. And then we deal with the amount we get. To me, it seems actually like the more rational approach. And I'm just wondering why we aren't taking that or even considering that approach. Cause it sounds to me like you all in your departments are gonna do a boatload of work, all work you will have finished before the number arrives. It's to me, if the mayor comes back and says, here's a number, it's bigger than you would even imagined. All the departments have finished doing all their work and figuring out what they need. I mean, you certainly are not gonna say no to the mayor who says, here's $5 million more than we thought we could imagine getting. But if we start from the approach of we aren't gonna get anything or we're gonna get level funded or whatever, we're sort of, we're behind the eight ball. If we end up with millions of surprise dollars that we definitely know based on last year's budget, we could easily spend to improve the educational outcomes of the students, which is supposed to be what the school committee's principal job is. So I guess my question is, why do we not actually just build a budget, not be worried about what the number is that we're gonna get, and then deal with the difference afterwards, which is happening in other communities and it's happened traditionally in other communities year after year?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, thank you. When I first got onto the school committee, a little under four years ago, I was kind of surprised by the maintenance budget, which is sort of the easy low hanging fruit of a conversation because it's just technically not complicated like education and curriculum and these other things. And since I've been on the school committee, we've actually cut the maintenance budget each year from a shockingly low number to a number that frankly, regular little businesses probably have in their budgets. You know, if you told me we had $4 million extra this year to spend on maintenance, I would be shocked if you didn't have $4 million worth of maintenance that we haven't done for the last 35 or 40 years that could be done this year. When a teacher who teaches in our school can't open windows, when he last opened a window was when he was a student at the school. Those windows don't open now either. we could blow $4 million or $10 million in maintenance in this district without even breaking a sweat. And we don't have a sex education teacher. We don't have reading teachers at the high school if you're not on an IEP and you can't read great, too bad. So the notion that, as far as I'm concerned, if you gave us an $80 million budget, I would call it a zero fluff budget. So when we get our $61.25 million budget this year and it does nothing for the kids, it gives them what they had last year minus inflation and contractual requirements. And Maurice and you all figure out who else are we gonna cut from the last three people that we haven't cut out of administration? We are the people, all of us on this meeting are the people that need to make sure that the public knows We are not underfunded by a few million dollars a year. We are 30 years since that, well, however many years is it? 25 years since the 1993 ed reform act. Actually, it's been 30 years or more since prop two and a half. We've been cutting budgets since 1986, every single year. Don't look at the number, it goes up. Guess what? A candy bar doesn't cost five cents anymore either. We should be talking about that at every meeting and not talking about how we're going to make it work because we haven't been making it work. All the kids graduating from our high school that don't get reading services, for them it's not working. And I just, I get tired of the conversation about how we're going to manage. We are going to manage. We're the adults. We're already, we have careers and jobs and families and houses if we're lucky. you know, we're gonna manage. It's the kids that aren't gonna manage. And, you know, I just feel like I'm a broken record and I'll just let somebody else talk.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to quickly, just briefly point out the main gist of this is we don't know what the starting point is. So any plans or goals and it's hard to get somewhere if you don't know where you are. And so that's the whole point of this, so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. You mentioned the temperature fluctuating in the high school, and I realized that Mr. Murphy, you're relatively new to the district. I just want you to know that that is not a new problem, it's an understatement. Kids that have to figure out where their class is and then figure out whether or not they need their mittens and coats in the winter in the high school is not new. When you say, of course, I'm hoping that with all the work that went on over the last year, when you talk about fluctuations, you're talking about it's a little too cold, it's a little too warm versus needing to get your snowmobile suit on in some classes and then get your swimsuit on in other classes. Is that what you're saying is going on now? Or are we still in a situation where parts of the high school are sort of ridiculously cold while other parts are sweltering?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so the modifications that we, thank you. The modification we've made really were focused on airflow, not temperature control of any sort, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Earlier today, I sent you a copy of our capital improvement plan from our committee of the whole on April 3rd of 2019. And I realized that you didn't create that. And I also realized we had a pandemic apparently going on here that might've put those plans that we made kind of into complete free fall and turmoil. One of the things in our regular meeting we have is the solar panel. approval that's coming up at our regular meeting. But I noticed that we also have in the old capital improvement plan from 2019 that we were going to spend a half a million dollars, pardon me, I'm wearing glasses, I can't read this, that we were going to redo the entire roof of the Andrews before we did the solar. Did that happen already?
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. I just wanted to, I mean, when we had that meeting, we were kind of like, we're not gonna put solar on a roof that's not good, right? So I'm glad to hear that. And then the other thing that's on this plan, and it's for fiscal year 2020, and I get it, but like, whatever we planned in April of 2019 sort of went out the window to a large extent, it had to. But I certainly see some, as we all do probably on Facebook, commentary about the asphalt for the entire Andrews McGlynn complex. We had indicated we were gonna spend $250,000 to redo the asphalt, essentially the entire complex. My understanding is people are still losing entire parts of their cars in some of the potholes. Is that on anybody's radar to spend that money deal with, I mean, this is my fourth year on school committee and I'm kind of growing tired of the, you can't drive that way. I mean, we should put some speed bumps in there, but that's a different conversation.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much. Great.
[Paul Ruseau]: I remember from our 2019 conversation around the Freedomway was that the roadway is not a roadway. It's just property on the school grounds. And that limited the ability for the city to use regular roadway funding. Has there been any progress on, I think there was some paper or something that had to be filed with somebody to convert that to an official roadway so that that could just move to the city, the DPW to deal with it like any other roadway. do you notice anything going on with that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, that's wonderful. I'm happy to hear that, thank you. That's all I have for the moment.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, if I may.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I did actually, I don't have it in front of me, but I did write it down so I remember it. We did replace them. They were actually, most of them were completely dead and were completely replaced. I think one or two of them, if my memory is correct, actually were serviceable. So, but they were all brought back up to, all the schools got all of them to be normal capacity. And I think it took a little longer than we thought, but that definitely did happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: I lost that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When I listen to what I'm hearing, I can't help but also think about the drumbeat of everybody's losing all this academic time. And I guess I'm just wondering, are teachers getting a message from administration? Because they're certainly not getting it from the governor and the Department of Ed. They're getting the message that you've got to get these kids back up to the whatever that bar was. That's what the public conversation is. And I just want to make sure that teachers are getting the, from administration are getting the message that that actually isn't the most important thing here that like the kids need something that you may not have normally had to focus on in such an intense way. Because if they don't get that message, then they have mixed signals. They have the, you know, your kids aren't getting through your class with the knowledge they need and teachers, you know, they're professionals who have to beat targets and all this other stuff too. So I'm just wondering if there is an active messaging to teachers to make sure that they understand that not hitting targets that are artificial and external is okay. I mean, it has to actually be said that it's okay. Because I know that, you know, and like, we aren't talking about AP classes right now, but I know that when school started, there were plenty of parents who were freaking out about that people were being taught in AP classes because the exam is the exam is the exam, like nothing matters other than getting your kid to the exam and passing it. And so, you know, that seemed like an unmovable situation. And I don't know much about AP. I know Dr. Cushing knows plenty about it, but I'm just wondering if the teachers are getting a consistent message that this is as important, and frankly, if not, in my opinion, more important than meeting MCAS targets and other academic goals.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you. Thank you for the question. I do know from the previous administration, I asked the question about the Columbus School because I thought that it, even before getting your email, that Crystal Campbell would be an excellent name for the park, which was when I read your letter, I thought that was sort of serendipitous. And my understanding is that it's actually a city-side only issue in that it is not a school or school committee related matter. So I don't believe we have the authority to make that change. And I doubt I doubt Mayor Langeau-Kern has had a chance to look into that necessarily. So, but I just wanted to confirm that I don't believe that based on the previous city solicitor, it is not within our authority.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Member Van der Kloot, for your resolution. It certainly helps to move us somewhere so that there's actual movement. I completely agree that E should be removed and the form should be severed, so that's, I think there's probably nobody who would disagree with that. I do think it's important to have a statement in there that, on the application form, that if somebody gets picked for the advisory committee, they don't get to show up with their names. that they think that, you know, that was sort of the logic I had was when you're applying, if you have some names you wanna do to suggest, you do it in line as you go. I just worry somebody will apply to the advisory committee thinking when they get picked, that they get to show up to the advisory committee and then start suggesting names, which is not at all what either of these resolutions puts forth. And so I just wanna be careful that we have some language in there to prevent somebody who went through the effort of applying got selected and shows up at the advisory committee and is devastated to find out their names aren't even on the list. And it's too late. By the time the advisory committee is meeting with the list, it's too late. So I am fine with removing E. As for whether we should work from one or the other, I'm not really sure. I mean, there's a lot of preamble stuff that's different. that I think we also have to kind of discuss. But the, sorry, go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I just respond? Member Ruseau, then Member Graham. Thank you. I do agree that that makes the most sense. I just want to be careful that we understand that we need to leave this room with the actual language and the approved resolution, not you know, we're gonna have another meeting after Susie reads these minutes and tries to cobble together from our conversation what we think that the resolution should look like. So then we're another two weeks away from now. I mean, the exact text that is the resolution that we'll vote on, I think needs to be actually written down in this meeting. And so I agree we should take them by the questions, but at the end, we're not gonna, I mean, I certainly feel weird about voting for a resolution that's like 35 amendments that nobody has actually seen the text of. Because one of the main reasons I wrote this was to prevent confusion, errors, and internal conflicts in the actual instructions that we're giving. To tell people to do something, and then in another place, make it so they can't do it, that's not a good look. So I agree we should do it in order like you suggested, but I wanna have the exact words before we vote on it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to comment on the demographics question. As with the superintendent search, and it's true that it's not actually set in the, it's not in the resolution, and that's a failure of my own because I, having done the superintendent search survey, that is exactly what we did. There was, you'd finish the whole survey, and at the end, there was a button that says, you know, there would be a demographics survey you could fill out. It was completely unrelated to your, actual application and we could not correlate or collate those things. So, and the reason was described by Ms. Andres about, you know, getting a sense for, so who in the community are we reaching most importantly, so we can figure out who we're not reaching is the purpose of that. It's certainly not to decide that we want to have a gay person on the committee and, you know, that's not the purpose of that at all. But it does read that way, so I totally own that. I would say about the cost, I don't have a clue what the cost is. I think there are probably many options around cost. And like the Columbus apparently right now, they need new envelopes for their letters, a new letterhead, like they need to order them because they are out. So there's no additional cost to order them with a new name. If they were throwing away 10 years worth of envelopes, then of course, That's totally a different conversation. And then I also wanted, Mayor, there's also a member of the public who has been trying to get attention, and now I don't see her. And I don't remember her name, because she's been there waving her hand. And it was David, I believe, was the first name, although there was a woman in the video. And I just wanted to make sure we could get I'm afraid I don't remember the name, but if they could come back on and I see them, I'll raise that again. But they've been waving for quite a long time and I think they're just getting this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to comment on the demographics. I know that it is sometimes a problem for some people. These lists of not only the options, but the actual categories within each of the options, but I may have these backwards, sorry, are from the federal government's list. This work to get this stuff together and what we are tracking as a district for participation in our surveys. was something we did for the superintendent search. So this isn't like I just made it up. This is from the federal government and the best practice that I believe member Graham mentioned. So I too would be opposed to removing any of these.
[Paul Ruseau]: So if there's any other questions, Member Ruseau? Thank you, Mayor. I also have a number, I'm trying to figure out if it's actually a different place in Member Van der Kloots about paper versions of the application form being available. It's number six on mine. Is that anywhere in Member Van der Kloots, and if not?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, I mean, I don't, I think it's for both the applications and for the, the names, so I don't care where it gets added, if it gets added twice or not, but it's just saying that there will be paper forms for those. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have been the 23rd. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you, Mayor. And I agree, Paula, that Member Van Der Kooten and I did approach this issue. Can you hear me OK? Yes. Yeah, okay, thank you. Approach this issue a little differently. I sort of see this as very, it's sort of like this three-pronged issue. If we just give all of the suggestions to the committee, I think 50 is, no offense to member Vanderbilt, but a bit naive. There will be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of submissions, if for no other reason to make it difficult to accomplish the work. That is what is going to happen. If we get hundreds and hundreds of submissions and we give all of those to the advisory committee, we have now sort of baked in a requirement that they can't possibly get their work done in any reasonable timeframe. Also, this is completely indirectly related to how many people are on the advisory committee. If an advisory committee has 10 people and we give them four choices, we can all imagine they can do a good job of figuring out what their suggestion is. if an advisory is 10 people and we give them 300 names, we need to give them two years to do the work. So I feel like these three pieces are directly related to each other, because if we do not in any way, shape or form, call the list in some fashion, whether we agree to do it sort of in some blanket way in this or or do it in the fashion that I had suggested in my resolution, which was again, just a first draft idea. But I do feel very much that we have an important decision to make, unless we wanna hear back from the advisory committee that they are only 30% of the way through the hundreds of submissions they got when they come to us and say, we just can't do it in this timeframe. So we can set ourselves up for failure on this, if we don't do this right, is my opinion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I'm happy to second that. I just think the next section ought to be interesting. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I just don't want to get into a back and forth, but The policy of the Medford School Committee for at least the last 30 years has mandated this process and it has not happened for 30 years. That is not a reflection of following our procedures. The fact that we have policies and procedures that are ignored by some folks is within their option. As a committee, we can sort of ignore our policies, but we also should follow them in my opinion, when they're literally in black and white. And this policy is in black and white. This lays out exactly that we as a committee design the advisory committee with graphic detail, frankly, what we should be doing. So I do recognize that we have not done this as a community perhaps for at least 30 years. And I look forward to this becoming a regular thing for advisory committees. We have to have a hunger, making Medford a hunger-free community advisory committee. We passed the motion to do that. So we will be going through all of this again. We also have another advisory committee for the vision committee for the high school. So those are both going to follow this same format as is the policy of the school committee as passed at least 25, 30 years ago. I'm not making this process up and nobody else here is either. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I think at this point, I guess it's time for me to answer some of these questions. We teach about the Holocaust. We don't name shit after it. Excuse my language. And you know what? It's really hard to come up with a curriculum for third grade girls to explain how they were sold into sex slavery. That's not a real curriculum. I would send my kids to Columbus Elementary School if that was what we were teaching them. And that is what we would have to teach them if we taught them the truth. We're not teaching them because there is no valid way to teach little kids the kind of truth that is involved. When we teach kids about the Holocaust in our education system, I don't think we actually teach our first graders about the ovens. I'm hoping that that's not what's happening in our first grade classrooms, but we do teach it. And we also don't name anything after those people. Okay, so that's that. And then, you know, I keep being accused of being the person that led all of these women on the committee to slaughter. It's so obviously sexism, it's beyond comprehension. Each one of these people voted their own way. They have the exact same capacity to decide and vote, just like I do. And so I appreciate that I've led them all to slaughter, but it's just an obscene level of sexism that is so disgusting, frankly. It is disgusting. Member Graham, Member Van Der Kloet, Every single one of these members made a decision to vote the way they did based on what they had heard from the community and what they had read and thought. So Ms. Coppola is shaking her head crazy like, yeah, no, they didn't. You're right. I have some blackmail on each one of them and that's why they voted. Or better yet, they don't have minds of their own because this is the 14th century and these are women who do whatever I tell them. You know what? I didn't tell any of them how to vote. And I would not tell them how to vote because I respect them as independent people that can decide this themselves. So I was one of three people that put this forward. I'm more than happy to keep taking all the crap for it because why share it, frankly. But the fact is that they decided this, a majority. I am one member with zero authority by law. Not one person here, not even the mayor in her role as chair has any authority None. We only have authority when four of us vote for something. So I get it. You don't know the law about school committee and what our authority is and isn't. And I understand that it's ridiculously complicated, but you know, some of this stuff is just so ridiculous. And I just feel like at this point you've worn me down. So now I'm going to answer your questions. Ready? I look forward to your Facebook posts.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not sure if you don't watch a lot of political activities in Medford, but I heard a lovely story about how the governor of Massachusetts used Medford City Council meetings as entertainment This is not a community where we are all polite in our political discourse, right on TV. And that has a history going back long before I was born. We also just had a president for four years that thought words I would never utter in front of polite company was front page news every day. So I use the word crap a couple of times and I'm not gonna apologize for it. It was, If you think that that was offensive language that you've never heard from a politician, then you haven't listened to a lot of city council meetings, because I have heard it many times much worse. So thank you for the admonishment, and I don't apologize.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay speaking, but I'd like to know their maiden name.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't know your maiden name, Mayor. If my maiden name is considered appropriate, then I would like to know this person's maiden name as well.
[Paul Ruseau]: Rousseau for 15 years, I don't understand the disrespect, but it's an unacceptable level of disrespect. I expect that she will either use my correct name or she will be asked to not speak.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, if anybody wants to directly address a member, I'm fairly certain that's against the violation of Robert's rules, and I think they should be ejected from the meeting. Is there a second from a member?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's no longer. This is a committee of the whole, as I understand it, and the public actually does not have a right to participate and speak. They have a right to watch. That is the law. And I think that if we can't maintain decorum, then I think we should consider ending all public participation.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Member Randall-Kluge, for summarizing yours. I actually don't think they're actually that far apart. one of the reasons that mine is the way it is, is that later in the process, we were going to be reducing the number of names and that their names that they were suggest name or names that they were going to come forth with as a Columbus community would just automatically make it to the list. And if a list was four, then it was going to become six names long, for instance. So I guess I since we've already decided that we're going to allow any and every name that comes forth to be in the pile. And all names will get the same amount of deliberation and consideration by the advisory committee. I mean, of course, they're gonna go through the list. So then I guess I'm confused. I think Columbus doing the work to come up with a couple of names or however many names they want to is good work that I think would be great. But at the end of the day, their names just get tossed on the pile on what will actually be a heap. So I think if they wanna do the work to come up with names and to provide a good defense of like, here's why we think this name should be the name. And I think that we may get a lot more at the starting point from the Columbus community because they won't have entered a couple of sentences on a submission form. They may have an actual like, document our presentation on the names that they've come up with. So that's still important and good work. But the number of members from the Columbus staff that will be on the advisory committee, I think I can go any which way you want. And I see Dr. Hay has her hand up. Two, three, six, I honestly feel that because we've already decided if there are a thousand names that show up on our table, they're gonna go through them. I'm a big fan of more people, divide and conquer that work to get it so that they can get through it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I've never sure if you can see me. So that's why I spoke apologies. We could just change language to up to four and then not have to keep revisiting it. And any of these things where we're concerned that there will not be enough where we are not actually doing the selecting I think solves the problem. I certainly don't want us to be in a situation where we have all agreed hardcore on a single detail. And then at the end of the day, we can't comply with it. And then we're all stuck wondering, well, what does that mean? So that's my recommendation. As for the student representatives, I certainly, for the CCSR, the exact same logic that I think member Van der Kloot used about, you know, there's a group, there's somebody to talk to and ask about, you know, we have to run a full-blown student government. election to accomplish this. I'm guessing that Mr. Skorka or whoever could, you know, email the whole group and probably have an answer to this in very short order. I do think alternates and people not being the person is problematic. Missing out on, you know, it'd be like as if there was school committee members who swapped in for each other. It would make the conversations very difficult to, to maintain continuity. So I would certainly be opposed to having alternates or having two people where one attends one meeting and one attends the other.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. You bring up a very important point that I also have concerns about. Our current policy, however, is explicit that we must select the members. The word is select is in the policy. So a lottery to me is a violation of our policy. Achieving a advisory committee that in fact is representative of the community, I think based on our current policy is only gonna happen if we actually select them. And, you know, it's not, I think we need to look to other communities and amend this policy and do some work to figure out how on earth do communities do exactly what I think we are all saying we want. But our current policy is explicit. We must, we, the members, must select the members of the advisory committee. A lottery is not a selection. I also have grave concerns about a lottery You know, I think that when we're looking through the applicants, I'm looking for people who are making it crystal clear, they want to do the work. A lottery could be anybody who just throws their name in. And I don't believe that we're only going to have applicants that are good actors, that are interested in doing the work and finding a new name. I think we have to build this to defend against disruption. Otherwise, this advisory committee is gonna either fall apart or at the end of the day, they're gonna come back to us and say, we couldn't do it, not possible, here's why. And I don't know if anybody here wants to continue doing this for a whole nother year, but I certainly don't. So I would literally vote against the entire resolution. And I also think it's a violation of our policy to have a lottery.
[Paul Ruseau]: I cannot go along with any lottery, but I mean, I don't, I'm not, you know, it's not a dictatorship. As I mentioned earlier in my moment of losing control, I don't have to be in the majority and I can lose the vote, but I think a lottery is setting ourselves up for failure. And I do think that's not a very nice thing to do to the people that are going to volunteer their time. Um, I think I see other hands up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: I actually, I'll walk back that I would not agree to this. I would just, if we could add language where the chair and, I think if we can add some kind of a language where somebody who has been selected by us or the lottery is not being a good faith actor in the effort, that they can be removed. I mean, it's just not fair to ask people to volunteer, come to a meeting and have somebody who spends the entire time trying to make sure that it can't happen. I mean, what kind of a, that's just horrible. I mean, that's sort of like running for office. you know, it just doesn't make sense. So if we could add something where there is an out, and I think we need to be careful, because I'm not interested in an out where people can be kicked off because they're just disagreeing. That's definitely not my goal here. But some language where the chair has the authority, maybe with consultation of, you know, a majority of the members, of the advisory committee can decide to remove somebody for bad faith effort. I don't know what language sounds good.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's a violation of our policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, the language in the policy is, I have it right here. Appointments to such committees will be made by the committee. So I said that the word select was in there and I was wrong. I brought it up after I said that. So, but it is by the committee. I mean, we also could go back by the way, and each of us could just do our own personal lottery of all of the names. So there isn't a chance if any member is totally uncomfortable with the notion of picking members, well then just, throw them up in the air and pick the first two that you grab. I mean, you know, there's other ways to accomplish that. But I think that putting it on the admin or has historically happened in Medford, putting it on the mayor or her office, those are not valid ways and they're a violation of our policy that I think, you know, if this was a rule, we could suspend the rules. This is not a rule, this is a policy. You can't just suspend the policy. So I don't wanna delay while we consider rewriting the policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, being an elected official is supposed to be hard, I thought. I'm not interested in putting this responsibility on somebody else. And yes, I'm not going to pick just anybody of the applications. I'm going to pick people whom I think, based on their reason they want to be on it, reflect what I imagine they may in fact decide on when they come to selecting a name. I'm not going to just randomly pick somebody. And by the way, with random, with a lottery, we could literally end up with 14 white women. That's totally possible. The lottery does not guarantee in any way, shape or form a distribution of anything, because it has everything to do with the applicant pool. So if we fail to reach out to anybody from a certain sub community, that we're interested in having representation to, if we don't get applications for them or we get one application from them, well, they're not gonna end up on this committee. I mean, the lottery in no way, shape or form provides actual representation. It did for the schools, for the middle school, because we had a set group to start with that we knew and that we knew where we wanted to go. So, but we will not know who the applicants are. So it's an impossible thing to use a lottery to accomplish any level of equity. And I think that that's really important. So, and I, again, I don't wanna beat the dead horse here, but our policy is very clear that we'd select it. It's explicit language here. Appointments to such committees will be made by the committee, not or their delegate or the superintendent or anybody else. So I don't believe we have an option to give it to somebody else.
[Paul Ruseau]: Fair. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who's spoken on this. It's obviously a difficult point and I kind of expected this to be the most difficult point of the whole thing. I do think that the word bias, it has to be unpacked. If I am insistent that I will only pick two members who are women, Well, that is absolutely biased, of course. And I would openly own that and be fine with that. I think bias does not imply that there's, you know, bias just means a selection based on anything, frankly, just not random is bias. And the vision committee, I think, you know, we know that the pool was not a big, it was not a good, was not a good pool to start with. I mean, the people that were in it were great, but we didn't have the right people. We didn't ask and get more people in it. So there was no chance for that random lottery, which is what I believe what the mayor used to some extent to work. But, you know, in that case, there was a lottery and we didn't get a good result of a representation that we were hoping for. So, but I think that the other point though of the that we need to own the dirty work. And I don't necessarily think this terribly dirty actually, but I do feel like it would be very uncomfortable if I submit 10 names, Kathy submits 10 names and then Dr. Edouard-Vincent says, here's the list and there's not one of Kathy's name on. One of her 10 is not on the list. How's Kathy gonna feel about that? I know I would be pretty shocked and uncomfortable and think what the heck happened. But if we're going to do that, then we are literally saying, here's the pile, you figure out what the right group is, and I would hope they're not going to be like, okay, well, this is member Rousseau's pile, and this is member Kreatz's pile, because that would be biased also. To me, we should do the hard part of selecting the committee. And absolutely, we should do the hard part of figuring out how to update this policy so that we can figure out a way to ensure that advisory committees going forward have a robust mechanism for this exact point. Because it does just say, we'll select them. We literally could all just say, Okay, you know, if we all had siblings in Medford, we could just all pick our siblings. And then boom, that's the advisory committee. And that'd be perfectly legal, following our policies. And hopefully we would all get screamed at for it. So I think that we have to live with the policy we have, even though I think there's nobody who seems to be happy with what we have. So that's a different set of work. But I think we should pick the names because I think we should own it. And, you know, I certainly am not going to take the pile and just like flip it and then stick my finger in and say, there's the person I'm picking. That's not, I'm going to read each applicant. It doesn't matter if they're, what their race is, their gender. I mean, I used women a moment ago, but it doesn't matter. I'm going to read everyone. Cause I want to read the statement that they write as to why they want to be on it. I want to hear the stories. I'm a fourth generation. You know, I, I went, you know, my grandmother went to Columbus or whatever. And I want to hear these stories and connect to the people that I think, you know, this person, they care a lot and they're going to really be able to take both the history and maybe they have an interest in, you know, and maybe they literally have a history degree or something, you know, and figuring out how to get people that I think will fit the goal. The goal is that nobody's going to show up with a name and say, here's our name and they just randomly selected a name from the list. That would be terrible. We want them to be able to, you know, proudly announce the name. And then also like all of us to be in awe, like, Oh my God, this is such a good name. And I do expect the advisory committee to wow us with their presentation about why is this the person or, well, we haven't done that part yet, but here's the three. So, I mean, I'm very excited, but I also think it's critically important that we recognize that right people have to get together to get the work done. We've all, many of us have worked on teams, and when the team isn't the right team, it's terribly challenging to get the work done. So it's not so much that I think having a random representation is a bad thing. I just think that it's not going to work here.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was going to say exactly that, that we don't have a process yet, so I don't know how to answer the question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I certainly did not say that. I certainly may have said something along the lines that I do not think that it is appropriate to limit the possible names to the Italian community. The school does not belong to the Italian community, it belongs to the Medford community. And while I recognize that there was an assertion that this was on tape, please do send in the link and the timestamp and we can all watch it together, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will admit I was not sad when the tooth fairy was discovered. It's hard to stay up late. I was just wondering, have we actually finalized the section on the selection? I didn't think we had, but I,
[Paul Ruseau]: The mayor will- Eric, can I make a motion?
[Paul Ruseau]: Nope, member Rousseau, on those three points. Number two, I would motion to change that to two per member.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, sorry. Just briefly, you know, part of the problem with my resolution was there wasn't background. Member van de Kloots was definitely better at providing sort of context. You know, while we are not telling the advisory committee how to operate when they get together, that doesn't mean I didn't imagine how they might do their work. And, you know, if there's even 30 or 40 names, I mean, I would imagine that they would divide themselves up to do a first pass through them and, you know, divide the work, divide, conquer. So that was the rationale behind such a large number. But since we've already landed there, I guess I'm just dragging the meeting out, sorry. I do, I just feel strongly about being able to pick two members. I think that, you know, We're going to read a lot of applications. And does anybody here think we're going to see only one person in that application pool? We're going to be like, I want that person. And you're going to look at the rest of them and not be like, no, I want that one too. I mean, I partially it's self-serving that I don't want to have to just pick one name out of what will surely be many qualified applicants. It seems like a self-limiting decision that will create I don't wanna spend a whole weekend trying to pick between my two finalists when we need this many applicants anyways. So I'm sticking to the two and hopefully.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. It's late. It's 23 plus an ex-officio.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, that's if we agree to number four. If I may, Mayor, So number four was about the mayor appointing the chair. I had an extensive conversation with member Van der Kloot about this. I guess I don't feel that the chair doesn't have to be a voting member. I think that all I care about for the chair is the chair must have experience with open meeting law and Roberts rules. This is a committee that's even much smaller than 23, And this committee has to follow open meeting law. So I don't want the person to be learning open meeting law on the fly, because what I worry about is at the end of the day, when the name or names come out, that anybody could take to court the operations of the advisory committee and say, you didn't comply with open meeting law, so your decision doesn't matter. And we all have to start over, because that to me sounds like a nightmare scenario. And I don't know who to pick. I don't know when the community we can pick to act as the chair and whether or not we would actually want to go through the applicants or if you may have somebody in mind. I don't have anybody in mind. And so I don't think we necessarily have to land on who that is yet, but if the applications are coming in and it doesn't look like anybody has this experience, Um, can I just pause on my thought and suggest that we put that on the application form to say, would you be interested in serving as the chair? And do you have experience in meeting law?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Senator Russo. You know, Member Radley, I think this is a, you know, there was a couple of spots. I think we both left it in where there was some squishiness of like, well, what happens if it's like, we'll figure it out if we get there. I feel like, you know, at 11 o'clock after six hours of meeting, I'm comfortable if the members are with saying, we will discuss it at that meeting of all the people who suggest, you know, we won't come to the meeting and see the names for the first time, but if the superintendent, when she provides the list says there were three people who applied to be the chair, you know, then we could have a conversation about that during the meeting and pick that person sort of separate from pipping the membership, although it is the membership. I mean, that's just my thought. I don't.
[Paul Ruseau]: That doesn't feel fair. I mean, I just, you know, it doesn't feel fair to take one of the mayor's regular appointments away because there may only be one or two people who say they would be the chair. So the mayor really loses the chance to even really pick, you know, if there's one person who's- The way you do it is that you have, you pick the committee members and they pick their own co-chairs.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I feel like we have the challenge of truly having an unknown here and that we don't know if there will be even any applicants who want to be the chair. So, but we, but member Van der Kloot's change date to end it earlier is good news because then we will know with an entire week in advance, whether or not there actually wasn't the applicants to be chair. If there weren't, then we can scramble, to find somebody who would be interested, you know, a city councilor or somebody from another, I mean, they don't necessarily have to be from our committee, community even, but it just feels hard without having any idea whether we will have any applicants.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's funny though. If I may, Mayor, do you, what are your thoughts?
[Paul Ruseau]: And could we add something after number three? A new number for, um, to just say that the, um By a majority vote of the advisory committee, a member can be removed to allow for the scenario for which a either somebody we pick or a randomly selected person is a disruptor.
[Paul Ruseau]: I feel like we're kind of vacillating a bit between it's our responsibility, but then we don't want the responsibility. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's a little bit vacillating between we want to have the responsibility to who we don't. If we put it in the community to pick three, then we aren't picking a name. If we get three and we pick a name, then we're picking a name. If the advisory committee just gives us the name, then we're not picking the name. I feel like we should decide whether we want to pick the name or not before we decide how that will happen. talking about the, I mean, there's probably a dozen other ways we could decide what the name will be, but we, the, for me, the bifurcating issue here is do we pick the name or not?
[Paul Ruseau]: with how that happens. Do people have a strong preference to, do you want the responsibility to pick the name as the statute requires? Or do you want to like punt and give it to somebody else so you can say, well, I wouldn't have picked that name after it's picked.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I guess I just wonder about the mechanics of kindergartners, pre-school graders voting.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, can you hear me now?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm apologizing for that. So I guess I'm just worried about the mechanics of a actual election at that grade level that I mean I would certainly trust Dr. She says she can pull that off. I just. You know, I mean, when when you were presented with multiple options as with any kind of election. You have to be told what those options are and you have to make a decision. And, you know, as with all regular elections, what you get for information sort of major deciding factor. you know, if there's a teacher who has a, you know, and I'm not suggesting this would happen, but if there's a teacher who has a clear preference, and the teacher is the person who gets to tell the students, oh, it's election day, and here's the three options, there's this terrible option over here, terrible option over here, and this great option over here, like, and I know the teachers wouldn't literally do that, but kids are very intuitive teachers will have preferences. And I just, I'm concerned about whether or not the students will be voting for what they want or whether they will be voting based on the preferences of the adults in their lives, whether that's their teachers or their parents. So I don't dislike the idea. I just have a lot of worry about the mechanics of getting it done. And I would like to hear Dr. K greatly.
[Paul Ruseau]: I actually don't have a problem with this, but I do think you need to put a constraint. I mean, if they come back and say we need until next January, that if they, you know, when they think about the work they have ahead of them, there will be members of the advisory committee who want to do PhD level work on every single advisor, every single suggestion. And there will be others who want to just go to Wikipedia for 10 minutes. And everybody in between. I feel like that's me on a daily basis with some things. So if we allow them to change the timeline to anything they want, then the voice of the person who wants to write a novel about every person might win, and then we're not gonna ever get this done. So I think I'm fine with them telling us we need a little more time or whatever, but I am also not fine with them having the option to tell us that they can't get it done before the school year ends.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. And the question is, why don't we just give them that much time?
[Paul Ruseau]: There are two items missing that I have in mind that I think are important. And maybe they're in there just like worded differently on mine I have a number 23 that says an advisory committee member that refuses to communicate about scheduling participation or participation can be removed.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well that's withdrawal.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, that's fine. And then the other one was the, Where's the one about? For my number 24, there's this consensus may is, I know that was in there somewhere. Okay, number 12 there. Mine doesn't say the same thing. Mine says, while consensus is always preferred, a simple majority of the total number of advisory committee members will be required to select the recommended new name. In the event that all members of the Advisory Committee are not present for the final vote to select the recommended new name, a majority vote of the total number of Advisory Committee members is still required, not a majority of Advisory Committee members that are present. So this is sort of, again, trying to prevent any kind of suggestions that things weren't on the up and up. If you get to schedule the meetings and you have a preference, so you make sure that just the people who are gonna vote the way you want can actually show up. This is saying that a majority of the members must be there to vote for the final one. Not the regular meeting, the regular quorum. If people can't make it, that's fine. But all members, yeah. I just have that a majority vote of the total number of advisory committee members is required.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Mia has her hand up.
[Paul Ruseau]: When you say take that out, you mean I would be fine with getting rid of the South Medford Elementary School suggestion if we remove the ability for them to ask for an extension. The original resolution, which my request continues to reference, is crystal clear. On July 1st, this school will not have that name. We can't have it both ways where we will adhere to that resolution and then not adhere to it. It also said on October 1st, the advisory committee would be working and they're not. So, I mean, the intent of that resolution is what we're working on. We obviously can't follow the letter of it, but, and that's why I think Member Mustone's suggestion is a good one because it makes us at least adhere to the fact that we are not going back, that this is not going to be the name on July 1st. Um, yeah, these new website goes up with the new data on July 1st for the year. It will say something other than the Columbus. So I I'm fine with getting rid of that South number 15 altogether, but that means I'm also fine. I would want to remove the ability for them to ask for an extension.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's all I'm asking. I don't understand, Mayor, I'm sorry. It is late, so I'm not following.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I can just, I see what you're saying, sorry. It is very late as you've highlighted. I do just worry that we're gonna have a meeting about what the temporary name is gonna be for five hours. And that's, I think, For people that will be concerned that the extension is really going to be extended again, that this temporary name will be the name for a school year. I just, I'm just worried that we're going to have, you know, 200 emails about what the temporary name should be.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, Kathy, member Gratz, apologies. I know that myself and I believe Member Graham have sent multiple emails over the last six months about when is this Committee of the Whole going to happen. It didn't matter is not true. I have been trying to get this scheduled over and over and over. And it has been brought up in our regular school committee meetings over and over and over. So to say that it didn't matter that we missed all the dates, every single week that we had meetings, I'm like, when are we having this meeting? It did matter a lot because I certainly agree they should have had more time and they didn't have more time. And I don't think it's because of the pandemic. I think it's because nobody wanted to deal with this. That's why. And And you know what, if we had stopped pressing, this meeting wouldn't have happened either. So, you know, I think if, you know, if we want to just delay it till after the election and we all get voted out and then we can be reversed before we chisel the Columbus off the name, then that's, just say it and just ask for that. But I'm not interested in that. And I won't vote for anything that says that we will have anything other than the Columbus, not the name, on July one per the actual motion that six members voted for.
[Paul Ruseau]: In theory, I don't have a problem with this August 15th, we'll pick a date thing, but you know, I mean, I play that out in my mind. We are going to come to the meeting with seven different names. That's what's gonna happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's what we will be doing.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we will get together as a group and do the very thing that both people who are pro and against changing the Columbus name do not want us to do. And every person who has spoken and emailed for and against the change does not want us just waking up one morning and picking a new name. They want all kinds of different things, whether it's to keep the old name or to have the students pick the name or the community. Every option that we have heard did not include the option we are saying we're going to do if the advisory committee is unable to complete their task. Let's just say, you know, August 1st to August 15th of this year, I'm going to send my family away to a cabin in the woods, if there is no actual name. Because I'm not going to feel terribly like I can even go to my day job. I mean, it's going to be horrible. If we are just going to on our own sit down and just pick a name out of the blue, it's like the opposite of everything everybody wants. I say we should have a, here's what happens. And it's explicit and it's not, what happens is a whole bunch more work and process that nobody likes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, I thought that's what we were doing was catching all the what ifs. This is the biggest what if because, you know, I just don't think this is actually as impossible to imagine as, I mean, I don't think that the advisory committee would purposefully do this at all, but we don't know if we will have 30 suggestions or 10,000 for crying out loud. Everybody and their brother from all over the world who thinks it should be Christopher Columbus could send in junk names. All of them have to be looked at by the advisory committee. I think that if they do their work honestly and I don't expect any less, they still may not actually finish by July 31st. So if we want them to do the work and they're saying, look, we're powering through 200 of these a week, we have another nine weeks to go and there's not enough time, what are we gonna call this damn school when the kids come back, when Dr. K needs to order more envelopes? She needs to know that. I mean, her staff and everybody else and all the others. I mean, we don't have to chisel the building, obviously, but it has to have a name for communication and all the other stuff that happens where that's actually on there.
[Paul Ruseau]: See you all in July. Yep.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, actually, I don't say that they're named after people and what it says is whereas all Medford public schools bear names with a connection to Medford and the committee wishes to retain that tradition. Do you have that in here?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I mean for the future name, this is not in the whereas, this is in the results. So this is what we're telling them to do. I mean, I. So could you read it again, Paul?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, mine's in the whereas, and it's simply saying that all Medford public schools are named bear names with a connection to Medford. and we wish to continue that tradition.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: It does, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Got an awful lot.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let me go back to the bullet three, though. The criteria will include but not limited to. I would rather the criteria may include.
[Paul Ruseau]: If they decide they don't like the criteria in that list, I think they should be free to
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, and I think it's great. And, you know, I mean, it's the reason the other reason for the may is that Yeah, that's fine. You know, representation of Medford community proud history. I mean, not all our history is proud, but some of it still does need to be should be considered for recognition. And then But the role model part, you know, mystic as a river isn't usually considered a role model, but perhaps the mystic people is, yeah. So, but with the word may there, they really essentially can do whatever they want. And that makes me comfortable with that. One of the whereas's, there's a bunch of whereas's, nevermind, they're fine. I can look at that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Next week.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's say she's a co-host.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I know that this decision is barely one business day old.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's my first question, and I'll ask my second once you answer that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's just really a statement which runs upon my second question, probably easier.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, you know, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I believe this is self-evident. It was just an error in the original policy we approved. So there's no conversation.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have a question. I'm happy to second it to actually member Ruseau. I'm I'm.
[Paul Ruseau]: Good second that.
[Paul Ruseau]: In light of the fact that the resolutions are actually on the agenda, I would motion to skip the reading, if there's interest in that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I will do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: work these two together in one resolution.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I thank you all for your effort to your work to be through it. I know it was like three or four pages long.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Um, I just have a few questions. Um, thank you, John, for the report as always. Um, when did the generator actually go out?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And who who said we had to replace it? You said it had to be you were told to replace?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. And you don't know if there's, you know, I think about when I buy a hot water heater for my house, I can choose the short, the cheaper one that will die sooner or the longer one that will last?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, I realize, of course, we have no idea how long we'll have the high school, but I wouldn't want to pay for a 50-year piece of equipment if there's a 20-year option. And then do you happen to... Honestly, I mean, you might've been in school at the point when it was purchased, but do you have any idea how old the one that died was? Is it the original one? When it was built? Yes, yes, it was the original equipment in the building. Thank you, that's all my questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mr. McLaughlin, you made a reference to something that I sort of interpret as a, you know, I don't want to say doomsday scenario, but if we lose power in the middle of a cold snap and we don't get it back for three days, all the pipes are bursting. We're looking at a massive expense if we can't get heat in that area, correct? That would be correct, yes. So I just think it's important to note that while we are going to have to struggle with priorities, I don't want us to put the city in a situation where we are going to come back and say, you know that $128,000 we needed? Well, now we need $2 million or whatever it is to make the place functional again. And I'd like to pretend nothing like that can happen. And maybe it has never happened in our school. you know, if there's anything we've learned in the last 12 months is everything we imagined couldn't happen has an awful lot of those things have happened. So I just think it's important to recognize that no matter, frankly, no matter what the cost is, having a way to prevent, frankly, a huge increased, a huge emergency cost has to be included in that. I also did just note we did, this is in our May 18th of 2020 budget book this particular item. And I see that we have made progress in identifying what it is we need to do. I just am a little concerned that 10 months, granted we've had a pandemic going on, but 10 months seems like a long time to not even have an RFP ready to go. And I'm just wondering what is the timeline? Because by the time this winter gets here, for this coming winter gets here, I don't wanna have a conversation about why we need to get a new generator. I want to know that it's there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't know if this just adds cost and expands the project, but universal design would perhaps make more sense. I'm pretty sure all the kids that can use the stairs could also use a ramp without it being too much of a challenge for them. That's a joke, not really funny, sorry. Um, but, um, you know, where we are, I'm just a little concerned about. You know, and I suppose even today, you know, like, Hey, if you need to use the ramp, you can, you can walk the half a mile extra. Um, and, um, and I suppose this is perhaps a vision committee conversation more than anything. Um, but you know, having a, taking a universal design perspective helps everybody. Um, and I, I don't believe that there are people that use stairs that. would struggle with a ramp. I don't think that's a real thing. But it probably does require much more of a whole front end thought rather than using essentially the configuration we already have. So I don't know why I'm talking. I'm just wanna drag the meeting out, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you. Mr. Murphy, I mean, I don't have my schedule in front of us, but I would just hope that before an RFP goes up for anything security related, we have in fact had that meeting. I hate to ask that we don't send RFPs out when we're actually ready to, but I just, the word security is a word that is used in a rather broad way. frankly, we could call literally anything security if we're any good at that. So I just want to make sure that I feel like I understand what we're doing, and I realize we can't talk about the details here, but I would just implore that the RFP not go out prior to the school committee knowing what it is we mean by security.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I add one more thing? Sorry. Yes, you can. Go ahead, Mr. Russo. Thank you. I do think also, you know, we need to think about a way to message on specifically on security cameras without causing any problems around security. Because I know I've heard from a number of people about like, Jesus, do we just keep buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of cameras every year? Like, can't we buy the good ones? And, you know, We all get those things in our Facebook feeds for the $19 cameras. And if you've ever bought one, they last for a long time. And I recognize they aren't wired up and they don't comply with all the other things that we have requirements for. But I think that the, I have heard it enough times from the public at least that this, that we just seem to be on an endless spending binge to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars on cameras. We're not Boston. you know, we don't have hundreds of buildings. And I think the, whether we do some kind of messaging around the costs and the, you know, what it is these pieces of equipment go through being outdoors and, you know, some kind of a messaging to help the public understand that we, in fact, are not just, that we're not buying rubbish, because I'm pretty sure that's not the case, and that there isn't actually some better, more expensive thing we could buy that would save us money in a couple of years. And I don't know how we message around this, but when the capital improvement plan was discussed last week, I believe that was discussed or brought up by somebody, maybe Member Graham brought it up. But I just worry that there's this appearance that we are either buying it, installing it wrong or whatever. I think maybe that's something for the communications group, or if you can look to see how other districts have messaged on this, and maybe we could copy that in some way. There's also some apprehension coming from people that bring this up. And the apprehension is, are you saying we don't have cameras at the doors? And of course, the answer is no, we have cameras at the doors. know, if we say no, all the doors are covered, and at the same time say we need to buy all a bunch of new cameras, it starts to be like, well, which is it? So just something I would like it if you all could think about in your dramatically improving communications capacity that if we could somehow include something like that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have a quick question, a process question. Thank you. I apologize for not knowing this, but there is, I believe there's a state system that the review is input by Mr. Murphy or somebody that is a compliance requirement like this. We don't just create this spreadsheet and then file it away. The state gets it. Um, and, um, I just wanna, um, understand, you know, that submission, um, what, you know, for the numbers that will be going over, I'm pretty clear that that's exactly what they'll be expecting. Um, but from the feedback perspective, um, I'm not really sure what the form is that, you know, if the feedback even gets put into the state system or not. And, um, I'm just curious if anybody does know that detail because I think feedback, at least for myself, was certainly a harder part of this, and where that's gonna go and how that's gonna go matters, I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. We will be doing this all over in 16 weeks. So one of the side effects of being so late is that we will actually gain practice in a shorter amount of time than normal. So I hope everybody, as I was writing my own comments and trying to do the review, it was challenging to realize that this is not for this year. And I think when people, if anybody in the public is looking at this, I think it's important to remember that this is for the year ending June 30, 2020, 30, 31, whatever the numbers are. So we will be at this again in very short order. And the only other, the only additional feedback from what's in here is that, you know, the superintendent, I don't believe lived through the previous protocol for doing a review, which was absolutely horrible. pages and pages of questions for which we didn't have answers. And this was a huge improvement that the state put through, DESE, I believe. And it's great, but it still does have some of the shortcomings that the old system had. And that is that we may be asked a question, I'm just looking at the current screen, you know, lesson development support. I mean, there's a paragraph somewhere that tells you what that means. And as with the old system, but in much, much less severity, individual members may not actually be able to answer the question. The problem is, is that we must answer the question. We must put a number for every item. There's not optionals. So I would just urge the superintendent and her team to think about each of these items and realize that the members really appreciate a lot, having had work product presented in some fashion, whether it's simply a report or in some partisan presentation, that will allow us to feel like we have a clue what that thing meant when we get to the review. And again, you know, this this is a dramatically better review process than the old one. And I feel like it's actually doable, like asking that question of the old system, would have been ridiculous. I mean, just the graphically detailed questions we had to answer before were impossible for anybody to truly give a good review on every item. So I'm excited that most of the things that I was putting a number for, I actually knew the answers to. And that made me feel really good and confident about my ratings, but there certainly were a couple of items and I can't name them off the top of my head where I kind of felt like, you know, I don't know. I mean, it's not that I don't know, because I don't think it's happening. It's because during the course of our work, and the pandemic obviously didn't help, during the course of our work, I didn't really feel like I had an understanding of how something was happening that we were actually supposed to review you on. The environment, operational systems. I'm very confident that the operational systems are being worked on very aggressively, but Do I have a, have I ever seen a document that explains what those are? No. So that's just the only feedback I have is sort of to help us in the next review, which will be remarkably soon. It would be good to also think about this list, which I don't believe will probably change for many years to come and think about how you can reveal that these items are happening to the school committee through the course of a year. So that's all I really had to say on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't know, actually, if this is usually something brought up, but the school committee doesn't review the other people on this call, the other administrators, and that's both a good and a bad thing. The bad thing is that we don't have an opportunity to say how great we think you are, and I think that a lot of my review ratings, especially the higher ones, frankly, were that that the superintendent has assembled a good team and in my comments, you'll see that it's like the execution of what's to come, the confidence in that execution is there. So we don't have an opportunity to review the assistant superintendents, but I hope that they take something from this review to reflect on them as well. I know that that is important to me. So thank you for your great work, all of you, frankly.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I think, do we have to motion to accept the review? I think.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, sorry. I just remember Andrew knows these things much better than me, but I, I believe we also have to put this on the agenda for Monday to vote this in the general meeting as well. Just want to make sure that that happens.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, now I get confused on that one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I think we have to take a roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much, mayor. On February 10th, the Rules, Policy and Equity Subcommittee met again with members McLaughlin and Graham as my co-members of the subcommittee. We powered through an awful lot and we covered the new annual reports and presentations, schedule policy, as well as six other policies. If it's okay with everybody, I would actually like to just go through each of the policies. I'm not gonna read the whole policy unless members want that, because we do need to approve each of those policies. But is there a motion to approve the, actually, I guess you do that, Mayor, I'm sorry, on the minutes.
[Paul Ruseau]: They do, I'm sorry, yes. Each of the individual policy, they're in a different order, I apologize, than the order that is on the agenda. Each of the minutes, each of the new policies or updated policies are separated down into here and all seven of them were approved by the subcommittee unanimously to be sent up to us.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep, just a lot of windows right now, one second. A lot of windows. Let's see, JB. Of course it's the last one. So Policy JB is the Equal Educational Opportunities Policy. This was the first time that Medford is adopting this policy. It comes from, the latest version of it comes from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, February, 2019 policy newsletter that they send. And this is a, all of these policies other than that schedule policy are actually required by the upcoming Education Stability Program Review, which is formerly known as the CPR. Medford is one of the first 60 districts that will be evaluated. So we needed to get these policies on our books because they are required for this review. So that first policy is probably the simplest of all policies in this pile. Sorry, too many windows here. This policy is pretty standard. It is the, that we won't discriminate based on all the things that we won't discriminate on. Are there any questions on this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you, Mayor. This is the Homeless Students Enrollment Rights and Services policy. I don't know if this one's a new one for Medford or an update. It says it's an update in the agenda. So I'll believe what I wrote before. So this is a set of policies on the rights of homeless students. It's several pages long and it is again, a copy of the policy that we received in the policy service that we subscribe to. We did not make any amendments or changes to that policy. So if there are any questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So this is a new policy for Medford, I believe, and is a, like the other policies we've discussed, is a required policy that we should have. We had some conversations on this particular policy about whether or not this should cover just K to 12, or whether it should include up to age 22, for students with disabilities that have rights up until that age. I'll tell you all what I experienced. I took on the task of attempting to get an answer to that question so that we could expand this up to age 22. I don't know if it's a reflection of the last administration at the federal government level, or if it's a longstanding challenge with the Department of Veterans Affairs or not, But their websites that they have set up for this matter are filled with links that go to no pages, chat features that do nothing and are broken. It was really quite two hours of clicking around in their multiple federal government webpages that were all dead, dead links. I just eventually gave up because, you know, The help pages and FAQs don't go anywhere. It's kind of hard to get the answer. So I do, I think we should stick a pin in it to expand this to age 22, if in fact we can figure out how to get the answer to the question about whether or not this, it is a federal law, the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunities for Military Children. getting the answer to whether or not that, when they say military children, do they need up to 22 or just K to 12? It was a difficult thing to get an answer to. Mayor, Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. This is a policy also required for our upcoming, I wanna say CPR, I forget what the new name is, our new audit, our upcoming audit. This of course is a policy related to the McKinney-Vento Act, as well as Title I and Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. and this just lays out the rights of students, as well as the definition of students that are in foster care. So if there are any questions. Motions to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So this is a policy that really is just a codification of the annual ethics training, frankly, that everybody who's a public employee has to take. There is nothing in here that is Medford specific. This is the law as laid out in a policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, Mayor, this is just for, this is only for employees.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So this is a policy that is also required, I believe, and is a codification of state ethics and conflict of interest rules. I would say that the specification of this policy online fundraising platforms like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Mutecaring, DonorsChoose. Those are examples, it's not an exhaustive list. I know that I believe in our last term, there were issues around one of the online fundraising platforms where one of our student groups, or maybe it was a sports or something like that, was using and they were taking, I think a 30% cut or some very large cut of the donations. And so that I believe is part of the motivation behind this is to make sure that folks are using platforms that are not gouging people making donations, but also to make sure that the superintendent is aware and importantly from the school committee perspective to make sure that we are aware We need to know when people feel the need to fundraise so that if those things really should be part of our budget, we get that insight and can make decisions on it. If everything is covered by fundraising and nobody ever tells us on the school committee that that's how it's actually being paid for, well, we won't know. So that's the motivation behind that. Are there any questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. So this was the actual work we had to do. The other policies were relatively easy because they were written for us. So the purpose of this is to create a schedule, not actual dates, but a schedule of annual reports and presentations, although some of them are in fact semi-annual, to provide clarity to school committee members who are coming in and who wanna know when something's gonna happen or find out whether or not something is gonna happen, as well as guidance for the administration to know, okay, this is the list of things we've committed to doing and when do they normally happen try to bring that institutional knowledge onto paper. So there is one amendment to this that I like to make on page two. There is a bolded to-do insert link to a definitions page. One does not exist, create one. That actually should be the MPS URL slash definitions. It's a page that will, be created very, very shortly. So I would offer that one amendment so that it is actually correct in the policy. And then the schedule is the thing at the end. And these are the, I won't read through the entire schedule, but it has the name of the actual report or presentation, what type of meeting we expect to have it at, whether it's statutory, so whether the law or regulation mandates it, and the frequency as well as if there are any special details on when we would expect it, like prior to budget, and then a description if necessary. Any questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: So if I may, Mayor. So, When we were meeting about this, we had that same kind of like, well, what about this? And there were many, many of those things. This was, I think if I'm, and the member McLaughlin and member Graham can correct me, but the way we ended up landing on what we mean by this is things that will be coming to us for presentation. And we decided that meetings that we must have, such as, you know, the annual, the first example that came up was the annual budget hearing, you know, that is by law must happen. That's not on here. Even though it will be a presentation, it's really that there's a, the meeting is what's required. So the superintendent goals, an evaluation. Actually, is that not in here somewhere?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, we didn't want this to be an actual calendar, but We also didn't want to add things that simply, for the most part, don't exist right now. And I'm not sure we have actually had meetings to do that, but would that be a report or presentation that we would get? Or will we get together and do something? Like when we do the superintendent's evaluation, we get together and we do something. And that's not a report that would end up on the agenda or a presentation on the agenda that we would receive a file that we would stick on the public website. So, I see your point that it is annual and that there is, in fact, a format to it, but it's not something we will receive. It's something we will do.
[Paul Ruseau]: So if I may, just writing some notes on this. So are you offering an amendment to add the superintendent self-evaluation for a regular meeting? Actually, it's statutory, I believe, annually.
[Paul Ruseau]: Any other questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the report. I appreciate it very much. I know, I don't know if you're supposed to have the week off last week, but I am grateful you managed to get through that guidance. I did have a question. I've seen a number of articles and about somewhat the unnecessary level of cleaning. I know that some early on in the pandemic people were isolating their mail for days and we certainly cleaning of our facilities was a major component of our work over the summer as to what the plan was going to be. And I certainly am understanding of how some things we do maybe just make us feel better. But my question is, are we doing cleaning that is unnecessary? Because I think there's two aspects to doing anything unnecessary around cleaning that concern me. One is the cost, obviously. And the other is something I talked about numerous times last year. And there wasn't a lot of feedback, but concern about whether or not these chemicals have truly, the chemical industry isn't exactly known as the most trustworthy industry who's concerned about all of our safety until you know, until they can go out of business after killing a bunch of people. So my concern is, do we need to be doing cleaning, all of the cleaning we're doing, and can we cut any cleaning out that is truly not necessary, even though it may make, and if we can, we should communicate that this is definitely no longer necessary. It's been proven to be not necessary.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I had a second question in this, around, I've heard, you know, I'm very happy to hear that there's a robust sounding protocols around sports participation. or unclear about why music is not happening yet. And anybody who's played an instrument and anybody who has participated in the support, I find it hard to believe that unless you're doing maybe a trombone or some of those instruments with excessive requirements, why are we not doing music?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, sorry to beat this horse a little bit, but we can all acknowledge that sports gets a very different level of attention and concern from our society in general. So my question is, so the studies about the amount of exhalation for these instruments, similar studies have said that doing all this physical activity in close quarters is in fact not producing the same amount of exhalation. I mean, I feel like I'm not terribly in shape. So I, maybe I just breathe an awful lot if I even start to work out, but I just think it's like, we have this robust scientific base standard for music, which is great. And then do we really have that same standard for sports?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Alicia. Ms. Nunley, excuse me. You said charter a couple of times. I just want to be clear that that's charter school reimbursement, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You also mentioned in one of the early slides that the additional funds were reprogrammed to the schools. We did not do a supplemental budget, so I don't know where that money went or who decided where it would go, but I noticed that in the last recession, that the school committee came together and did a supplemental budget when there was more money available than had been anticipated. We didn't do that. So I'm just confused how money can just be reprogrammed from city council unless that money was sent to facilities or something. Does anybody know where that million went?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So speaking of the budget though, so when we get to our next budget, Is the budget going to say that the last year's budget was 62,500,000 or 62,250,000? Or is it going to say that it was 63 million and change? I don't understand this, like we can just throw money onto the budget that wasn't in the budget. So when the next year comes along, what was last year's budget? Because year over year comparisons matter a lot.
[Paul Ruseau]: But we never approved that. So that cannot, how can that include that we did not approve that budget?
[Paul Ruseau]: So is the school committee actually not required to approve a budget? Because it can be any number we want. Let's approve a budget for $100,000. The city can allocate a whole bunch more and everybody's fine. It didn't matter whether we did it or not. Is that true?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I understand that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I actually, I paid all the attention during those times and I'm very happy the money came back and that the, you know, the promise was there. That is not at all my concern. at all. Everybody did everything they could here in this regard. And I'm very happy about that. I guess I don't know. And member Van der Kloot was here for the 2008 recession when there was supplemental budgets that were sent to the school committee for approval. If that is not legally required, then just somebody has to say that and I'm fine with it. But when we start comparing year-over-year budgets, which as a school committee member, I have done for the last decade or more of budgets, I need to know which document is the real document. So if money can just be tacked on willy-nilly, not willy-nilly, money we were promised and we were given and that's awesome. But what's the truth? What's the budget number? I thought the number we approved that we spend months in meetings to get to Like that last budget was not fun. The next one's going to be worse. Are we going to do it all? And then in the end of the day, whatever we approved was sort of like pointless. Like did we really not do all that work for a reason?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. One more question, I'll just get out of the way. So with the, is it the CRRTS? There was a lot of different letters in that one. I'm very happy to see the three buckets. But one of those buckets in particular to me is staff. So are we actually able to hire full-time employees, not contractors, not in money that will disappear tomorrow, actually add full-time employees from those grants?
[Paul Ruseau]: So we should not get excited that we're gonna be able to hire a bunch of counseling staff. It looks like a big number, but even if we could hire all of them, the day that the grant money runs out, we'd have to fire them all or find something else to cut in our school budget to make up for it. So we are at present, have no capacity to add mental health counseling. There's no money for that, really.
[Paul Ruseau]: I am about whether to have a actual supplemental budget or anything like that. I just want to also there's an optics thing going on here. I hope everybody is aware. You know, last year we had a lot of conversation about whether it was a level funded or whether it was a cut. I think most school committee members will tell you that a level fund is a cut. And You know, if you're in finance and you're talking dollars, well, $1 is $1, but our budget was cut by $3.5 million. And the optics around whether we're gonna have another cut coming up and whether that is a $1 million cut or a $5 million cut, we need to be able to all agree what the real number is. So if people flip open the budget from last year and it's 62.5 million, it doesn't look good for the mayor. if really it was 63.5 million, because if we go to 63.5 million, well, that looks like we added a million. This coming year will be 63.5, 63.5 million, not 62.5 million. So we really do need to, as a committee and as a city council and everybody, frankly, needs to agree on, well, what was the number? That number is absolutely going to be a major talking point very, very soon. And if we're all talking with different numbers about what last year's budget was, it's not going to get, it's going to be, we're all going to get to be right. We're all going to say we increased the budget. Others of us will be able to say we cut the budget. And it's a waste of time when we're actually supposed to be talking about what's in the budget and what's the effect of the budget, not whether the numbers really went up or down. I just, I think it's an important point. I don't care whether we get around to having a vote on an actual supplemental budget. The money came in, we knew it might come in. I'm super happy it came in and we can restore some staff. Nobody disagrees with any of that stuff if I can assert that. But what that number is, is critically important that we cannot be disagreeing on by the time we get to the next budget.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I respond, Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. We have a budget document that sits on the website. We can all figure and say what the budget is, the public, and frankly, I think most of us, flip open that document. And that's the number, not the number that's in the, not in Excel, not the number that is in the finance software. The number is the number in black and white on the official budget document. And we're comparing ourselves to other communities, which I know I do all the time, and the public does it, and I think most of us in this meeting do it. It's a painfully apples and orange comparison. Medford Public Schools, we take care of our own buildings. In Somerville, the custodial services, all buildings, all utilities are completely on the city side. So somebody would look at the Somerville Public Schools budget, looking at that same document like we have, and they would make a very wild conclusion about spending in their schools compared to ours. And that's just an unfortunate reality of the way Massachusetts does school funding. But my point is that the number that's on that document, that is the budget, not any number that you say, with all due respect, Ms. Nunley, The numbers that you named are numbers in accounting software. And unless we all in the public have the ability to just log in and look at them, those aren't the numbers. The numbers are the black and white numbers.
[Paul Ruseau]: But so can you send me the URL so I can access them?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I mean the URL to the general ledger.
[Paul Ruseau]: the public wants to know that number randomly in the middle of the night next week. Where do they go to get it? They don't.
[Paul Ruseau]: We have not received the report, so I don't know how we can receive it and place it on file.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have not seen the report other than the presentation that was displayed on screen.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may, I mean, there was a lot of numbers and a lot of slides that were excellent and I would dig into, and I would have spent hours digging into them before the meeting if I had them. So I mean, unless we want to have this presentation done again at the next meeting, I need to see this thing before I can vote to accept it. Well, you've made your motion, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, everybody. Paul Russo, Medford School Committee, and parent of these two who apparently don't know I'm in a meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just say that I'm not on the curriculum subcommittee. So I have popped on a couple of times and to fill in for other members that weren't able to make it, but I certainly agree the cross pollinization or whatever the right words are is definitely the way to go. I also think about process wise, you know, do we sort of package things up and send things between subcommittees for their particular take on issues. I think our subcommittee structure this year is dramatically improved, but I don't for a second think it can actually get better. So certainly that's something to think about when I know when we have a motion, it often feels like we just send everything to the rules and policies subcommittee, because the word policy is in there and not everything probably should start there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The issue of homework, I think many issues that have received various levels of attention and had years of, you know, parents and teachers and administrators and academics who do research and talk about best practices. You know, I feel like public education, K to 12, not just public education, has been slow to move on things that once things were even proven, frankly, beyond a reasonable doubt, I mean, sort of the American tradition, just like global warming and everything else. So I'm just wondering about, if the administration has been talking about any kinds of major shifts on any big things that, you know, where resistance might come from on any particular topic varies greatly. Equitable grading, you know, everybody is very clear that teachers will very strongly resist shifts in how we do grading. Homework is something that parents and some teachers will have strong opinions on, but I feel like we've sort of blown the whole thing up. And as we start putting it back together, do we just put it back together the way it was, or do we look at things like equitable grading, you know, major topics that have sort of swirled around, but been too big for us to consider as a district, and not just Medford, of course, You know, the homework one in particular, you know, my son, until a doctor told us that is actually insane for a second grader to be spending several hours on homework. Like, how would we have known? He was our first, he was our eldest, and we were just doing what we were supposed to do, right? So I'm just wondering if the administration, Ms. Bowen, not it's not really to me it's not a special ed specific thing but um it sometimes it feels like things can take a higher the heat can be raised significantly none of my son's teachers in second grade thought they had him sitting at the table for hours every night none of them and so it's not that the teachers were doing anything wrong uh but you know the system was designed around you know the What does the teacher think? How much time should homework should take? No relationship to reality. Some people might take five minutes and others might take an hour. So I'm wondering if the administration does have any major topics that they're looking at for when we put this back together or is the goal to put it back together the way it was?
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you all for making it. I'm going to begin. It's 4.02 on February 10th. This is a call to order the Rules Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting. Please be advised that on Wednesday, February 10th, from 4 to 5 p.m., there will be a Rules Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom, pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law under Governor's March 15th, 2020 order, imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Medford School Committee, Subcommittee on Rules, Policy and Equity will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information in the guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the city of Bedford website. For this meeting members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained in herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access and the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so despite our best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of the proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed on Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 22. Actually, I don't know if that's true. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call into the following link. The Zoom meeting, which you're probably here, but if you're on Facebook or YouTube, is https://mps02155-org.zoom.us slash j slash 99779331597. Meeting ID is 99779331597. You may call into this by on your phone by calling 1-301-715-8592. And again, the meeting ID is 99779331597. Additionally, questions or comments may be submitted during the meeting by emailing pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us, submitting questions via email must include the following information, your first and last name, your Bedford Street address, and your question or comment. I guess I should take the agenda. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau, present, three present. We have a quorum. The agenda, I probably should have done the attendance first, my apologies. the agenda for tonight. We have quite a few things on the agenda, and I'm going to take them in order, unless we find that item number one is going to take too much time, because item number two are policies that we need to get adopted right away for compliance. Item number one is the finalization of the annual reports and presentation schedule. I am going to share my screen so that Anybody who doesn't have the document isn't wondering what we're talking about. It's the big green button. All right. I can no longer so there everybody is. So first item on the agenda. The school committee has been working on a subcommittee has been working on a schedule of annual reports and presentations that we receive. This is the I drafted a policy that that the schedule would live in inside of. This is similar to what we did with the the calendar of observed days. So there's a title, a purpose, which explains what's the purpose of this policy, sort of a, why are we here? Then there's the policy. And let's see, should I read all these? I'll read these, because I'm not sure if everybody's had a chance to read all of this stuff yet. The purpose is this annual reports and presentation schedule aims to provide clarity for school committee members and all other constituents when the superintendent or others will present to the school committee throughout the year. The hope is that by having this schedule, there can be, I'm gonna increase the size of this. The hope is that by having this schedule, there can be reduced duplication through requests that were already planned to happen, reduced inquiries about when a report or presentation will be scheduled, and simplification of scheduling for the central administration and other presenters as advance notice will be known. As advance notice will be known. I think I have to fix that sentence. Let me just put a little comment there. This policy does not provide for comprehensive calendar of events or activities of the district and is only meant to specify reports or presentations the school committee will receive. Policy. Some of this stuff may well make more sense than the purpose versus the policy. Sometimes these things are not always clear where they belong. The content of each report or presentation is not within the scope of this policy except as required in the description to make clear what the report or presentation is about. A report or presentation may be an information only item added to the documents provided to the school committee for a meeting, or it may be an item for discussion or even a presentation. This policy does not specify how a report or presentation is provided to the school committee. This policy does not specify, it's an awful lot about what it doesn't do. This policy does not specify the date when a report or presentation will be provided to the school committee, but rather specifies the bracketed time that it is expected, such as the quarter, the first meeting of a month, or simply that a report or presentation is expected by annually, annually, or semi-annually. The superintendent in compliance with any other policies, rules, or procedures of the school committee will schedule specific dates for delivery of reports or presentations. Ad hoc reports or presentations are, did everybody lose me? I see a trying to connect. You can still see? Okay. Ad hoc reports or presentations are not covered by this policy and should follow the ad hoc report request procedure of the school committee. The report or presentation may be added to this schedule through the normal policy amendment process. Newly mandated reports or presentations from state or federal governments or regulators will be sent through the normal policy amendment process to ensure the accuracy of the schedule herein. Definitions of the language used herein can be found at, and I don't know that we actually have a page on our website anywhere where we have a bunch of definitions. I know member McLaughlin has brought this up before that we need one. So at the moment it just says, There's a link, but I don't know that it exists yet. So we may have to change that if it doesn't exist, because, you know, cart before the horse kind of problem. The schedule below would be unreadable if all acronyms and other educational or financial language were clarified in line with the name or description of the report or presentation. Therefore, some of the language has been retained for brevity and clarity for the professional educators that will be using this schedule each year. Language has been simplified and made more accessible where possible without obscuring clarity for these stakeholders. So in our last meeting, I know we talked extensively about finding a way to make this frankly normal human readable rather than educator or finance speak. And that has been done to some extent, but I think it would become an unusable schedule if we were to really expand that out all the way. So I'm just gonna, and then there's a spot here for, oh, I'm sorry, section three is the actual schedule. Statutory refers to regulation or law and does not include a reference to reports or presentations ordered through the school committee. So for instance, we have a statutory report to get a CPAC presentation annually, I believe, maybe I'm wrong, but I think we do. So that statutory would be true, but any other kinds of reports or presentations that our school committee has decided are required are not considered statutory for the purposes of this. Monthly reports or presentations for July and August shall be held until the first meeting in September. I'm just gonna flip over to the actual document. So this is, pretty much the document we created last time, but a lot taken out of the description. And the reason was is that it got into what we wanted the report to actually look like. And each and every one of these, frankly, should probably have in its own attached document that says, you know, this is what the school committee expects an annual attendance report to look like. And if we don't wanna be doing this same policy four years from now, having never approved it, it seems like we need to kind of start high level and then go deeper as we can. I'm not sure how the other members feel about that, but that's just something when I took the minutes from the last meeting and how I went at it. So we have the name, the meeting type, whether it's statutory, frequency, any special details on when it's expected, such as before the budget is a good example. And then description. And I do think everything should have a description of some sort, but how much of a description sort of becomes the conversation. It would be nice if it would actually fit within a document that we're calling our policy. I have done some reformatting of the names. I bolded everything that I feel like we have to answer before we could consider sending this up to the school committee. There's an item on here, the budget legal notice. That one in particular made me wonder, is this, this is not a schedule of everything that needs to happen. And I don't think this budget legal notice is a report or presentation. It's a posting, a public posting. So that's why I bolded it as something to find out whether the members think we should remove from this list. Whew, I've done a lot of talking.
[Paul Ruseau]: the notice, though, is the thing we put up that says there is a meeting, and this is what it is. But the report of the presentation we're gonna get is the actual budget presentation. So I feel like the budget presentation, unless there is a very specific, it is statutory, it is annually. So prior to, Um. Sending City Council. Yes. Um and. And well, I don't have to say and your man did it because it's sort of in this other stuff. Okay, good. I'm glad I didn't just yank it out of there. Um there are some question marks that I don't think we have to answer before we send it up to the, um. Full school committee. I think that the Um, you know, the bullying prevent presentation. Um, we've had some laws changed relatively recently around this stuff. So there may be a statutory requirement for that. But I feel like all of these, whether they're statutory needs to be question mark can't be the answer and blank can't be the answer. Um, you know, I think when the superintendent and her staff pull out this thing every year, um, it shouldn't be a question about whether they can skip it or not because it's because they're busy. If it's, if it's statutory, it's statutory. And Why make you all go looking things up on the state's website? But I don't feel strongly we have to answer that question in this meeting, as long as we get those answers before we send it to the school committee, before the school committee receives it. What kind of a meeting though, I think is really just for us to decide. And some of these things are, Some of these things I think are much easier to say is to put them on a regular meeting and then others, I think are worthy of being their own meeting. The problem is, do we want to have 25 Committee of the Wholes already scheduled annually before we even begin any of our other work? So, you know, like the before and after school services and finances presentation, does anybody feel strongly whether that should be a regular or a special or committee of the whole?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, if I may, you know, under meeting type right now, there's essentially two, you know, regular committees at the hall. We, I just feel like, you know, maybe this, maybe we did another type, like the budget, like a hearing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I don't, we're not, I don't think we're tied to these being some kind of like actual legal definition of what kind of meeting. And so, you know, but I think, you know, we have in the details that this has to be prior to the actual budget meetings. And so, you know, okay, I think we could just leave that there for now. The bullying presentation, I think that needs to be a regular meeting for maximal, visibility, frankly. Superintendent, do you agree with that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The capital improvement plan has been a committee of the whole in the past. I felt I put that in there with a question mark because I wasn't 100% sure we want to keep it that way, but Does anybody have any feelings?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. I would just say, before you were, last year was a tough year to become a new member. I felt like the year before we had finally sort of gotten that worked out. And then last year, the idea of capital improvement seemed sort of, unreasonable, so we didn't have that committee of the whole, unfortunately. So if it did. Yeah, I was there. Oh, you were there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. I'm gonna skip down everything that doesn't have question marks in here. These are all from the old list that we looked at last time. changed the ordering of the language a bit so that, you know, the finance reports are kind of, you know, like in this prior year fiscal audit draft, prior year fiscal audit final, prior year fiscal report final, like there was some different language that would cause them to sort differently. So I've cleaned these all up. This one here, the grievance, Member McLaughlin, were you gonna?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, yeah, I don't know why I'm picking up so little. Yeah, of course. There, that better? So the grievances report, we have asked for that a couple of times. And I mean, my understanding of what we want is we wanna know How many grievances were there? How does that compare historically? How many were resolved in the different levels of grievance management and resolution? And I'm not, I actually don't think that is, it would be covered under executive session. We're not talking about a grievance. We're talking about, you know, like how many were there this year? So, I'm thinking we have to throw that into a regular meeting. Again, this can be just a report. It doesn't necessarily have to be a presentation unless, of course, we discover that grievances have gone through the roof and we want to understand why. Maybe we have a special meeting about that. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. That was, we've talked about several times. Good point. Thank you. All right, so moving on, I'm gonna try and get us to be at the halfway point and be halfway through the agenda. The health services report, I'm gonna skip down to only the ones that actually, so pre-budget. I felt like the thing we just had last, on Monday night was the pre-budget meeting. It was the presentation, the pre-budget presentation. Is that what everybody else thought that that was? I see a no. I don't know what this is exactly. So I find it hard to put it in here. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, thank you. That makes so much. more sense to me now. All right, let's see. What other ones were in here with question marks? There's a school open house schedule, which I completely agree should be a presentation or a report. I just wasn't sure. We have the kindergarten open houses, we have the middle school open houses, we also have high school for the incoming ninth graders. I don't know if this was supposed to mean all of them this globally. And if so, I'll just break it out into three because they would happen at different times of year, of course. And is that how everybody sort of understands that? Okay, good. So the short collaborative report or presentation, there was some good notes on that. And unfortunately, I have too many tabs open and that's not one of them. But my question was, should this actually be more of an out of district placement presentation rather than specific? Okay, great.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. Thank you. Um, so, um, you know, like anything, this is a starting point, not an end point. So, um, in order to get the ball rolling, is there a motion to approve this to send to the full committee with the updates that I have here and we'll finish prior to that actually getting there and all of these question marks getting filled in. Motion to approve. Second. Excellent. I guess I have to take the roll call on this. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes, three in the affirmative. The policy is approved to send to the full committee at our next meeting. Thank you, I appreciate the work on moving through this. I know it's a lot of detail.
[Paul Ruseau]: Helpful for all of us, so thank you. And I realize there are other people on this meeting. If anybody has any questions, don't hesitate to just, if you can unmute yourself, do that. I can't see the people very well since I have the sharing going on, but don't hesitate to wave your hands if one of us will probably notice, I hope. So next on the agenda were policies that will be considered. We have the policy JB, which is equal educational opportunities, not that one. So I don't have it on screen. The current policy that exists on our policy manual online has an outdated version of this. This is the latest version based on the recommendations from the school committee association. And unless anybody has any questions or concerns about the language here, Is there a motion? I'm not going to read all of these. But is there a motion to approve and send to the full school committee?
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. And excellent. So on the motion to approve policy JB, educational, equal educational opportunities. Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: member. So yes, three in the affirmative. This will be sent up to the school committee for their consideration. Member Glawson?
[Paul Ruseau]: Is that a differences?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't have any problem with that. Member Graham, do you have any problem with that? Excellent. Thank you. All right, great, thank you, and I will move on. So the next one is policy JFABD, policies and procedures, homeless student support services. So this is an update as well. This is actually, I believe this is actually a pretty substantial change over the old one we had. Um, and, um. This is one of the ones that are mandated for the upcoming, um. Audit or whatever they call those inspection inspections. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: How's that sound? Directed to assist in obtaining available records or accessing immunization services.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's me doing a really bad job of copying and pasting. At present, it's a link to the wrong thing. when I pasted, these are just an example of one here. They're actually footnotes. And when I copied and pasted, there's one right here. And when I copied and pasted, it actually converted it into the same thing that you're seeing here, where it has, bizarrely, it has a particular policy that is actually advisory committee policy. And I have a clue why it's doing that. So I will fix those. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thanks for noticing it. I did look for them, but apparently I missed those. Member McLaughlin, did you have any other comments?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. As amended once I finish that. Yeah. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Three in the affirmative. This will be fixed and sent up to the school committee for the next agenda. Thank you all. Let's see, the next one is J-F-A-B-E. There it is. Let's see, did I include any of those mistakes in that? I don't see them. So Susie, hi. Can you unmute?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, thank you. Yeah, I went into the folder today, and Google is not showing me any of those files, even though it I, anyways, we'll worry about Google drive later.
[Paul Ruseau]: Good question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually, when we go down to the legal references, that might actually answer the question. Interstate compact. So I can take this as the to-do. We do want to get this approved. So I would be happy to take this as a to-do to look at to find out what this even says, because I frankly don't know, and amend the text to include those adults if the interstate compact does include them. Or we can send it up as is and put it right back on the agenda to amend, but we do need to have at least this for the audit or whatever it's called. I can go either way. Remember, Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. And English as a second language is actually, we call it English learners. That's the preferred language now.
[Paul Ruseau]: 23, yes, 22. Is it 22? Thank you. And they are called the transitional, is that what they're?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, it's just the language of it, school-age children enrolled in pre-K through 12th grade. I could then put, you know, as well as,
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I will put that in parentheses or whatever, depending on what the law says. And Susie, do you have your hand up still? Because you just did not lower it. Or do you have another question? Okay, thank you. All right. So were there any other comments? Anybody else in the meeting have anything to say on it? Excellent. And so was there, I believe somebody made a motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So member Graham? Did you lose?
[Paul Ruseau]: And member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And member Rossell, yes, three in the affirmative. I will send this up to the full committee for hopefully for approval pending the updates, the outcome of what I find out on those. And next we have, listen, we have to do this in the correct order. GBEBD. So the reason we have to do this one in the correct order is this one is actually referenced by the other one. So this is a policy that somehow we don't have. And this is the policy on online fundraising, crowd funding and solicitations. This is from, I have not made any changes to this one. This is the text right out of the policy service we use. I don't think I've made any changes. No. And member Graham's hand's up. So, member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member Graham. Dr. Cushing, I think you handed up. There's two of you now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'm gonna try and squeeze in that last policy. Any other recommended changes? comments.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member and that that will include, um. And annual report to be performed and, um and, um. That the superintendent will create some kind of methodology. I'll add that sentence. We can always amend it when we get to the full committee. So if you think I bungled the
[Paul Ruseau]: And member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And member Rossell, yes. Three in the affirmative. The policy will be sent to the full school committee as amended. And then finally, okay, this is just a, oh, sorry. Here we go. Gifts to and solicitations by staff. This is, I don't believe, let me expand the size of this some. This is, I had to write an awful lot of policies and update a lot of policies this weekend. So forgive me for trying to get my head on about which one this is. Okay, so this is taken from another, I believe an MASC policy. Let's see. Yes, the December. This is actually one that we probably should have updated a very long time ago. Wait, is this new? Um, so I. Is there any questions or comments?
[Paul Ruseau]: Y'all really want to make me look good on time. Is there a second?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm scrolling all over the place for anybody who's actually just trying to read it on screen, my apologies. So this is, I mean, just for anybody that's interested, this is actually stuff coming right out of the law. So it's not like, I don't think we have much wiggle room on any of this stuff. And it's totally pulled right from our annual ethics course that we have to take.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Dr. Cushing. That definitely is how I understand it. And this is version one. So if we all feel like we need to make some additional changes. I'm happy to bring it back here, of course. So I heard a motion to approve and second. Member McLaughlin, did you have another comment? No, okay. Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. That's three in the affirmative. This will be sent up to the full school committee. Ms. Weiss. I see your hand up again, and I think you had a question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, let me just bring it up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Does it have a number, a policy ID?
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, yes. The F and the E probably confused me at some point. Um, Okay. Um, and let me just bring up to see if we already have one of any sort.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I'm sorry, when did you share it?
[Paul Ruseau]: I cannot see almost anything. Let me see chat. No. I can just, I can pull this up probably quicker than figuring out what Zoom is doing to me. Okay, so we don't even have this policy at all right now. That makes this a lot quicker and easier. So did the other members have a chance to look at this in the folder? I did not. So if the two of you have, that's two out of three and that's good enough for me. I will take this text and make it into a pretty Google Doc like the others. I believe this one is definitely urgently needed for that audit as well. So I'm comfortable with taking the version that MASC has. They would of course not reference like a particular school district. So that won't actually pose any editing challenges. this. Does anybody want to motion to accept this policy? As it is written. Motion to approve. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Member McLaughlin. And I also, your point about sort of orienting the public. I think that actually including a link in the agenda that references the old policy. You can click it and go right to it. And the new recommended policy, you can click and go right to it. Totally reasonable to do and include in our agendas going forward. It does sort of require that the work is done early enough to be able to do that. But certainly the existing policies are obviously going to be available before a posting. So I appreciate that feedback and I know I'll work to do that. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll have to let somebody else who knows answer.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would love that. Me too. All right, so on the motion to approve, member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Dr. Cushing, did you have your hand up? I'm sorry. OK, thank you. So that's three in the affirmative. We'll send this policy up once I put it into a format that I can stand. I really do dislike the plain text format of our policy service. And that concludes our meeting. I apologize for running over nine minutes. Is there a motion to adjourn? Second. Member Graham, motion to adjourn? Second. And now I'm asking if you... Oh, yes. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, yes, three in the affirmative. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Ruseau? Thank you for the report. I'm very happy with the pool testing. I did email I think all of you back after you sent the plan out to us. It was comprehensive and really closed a lot of the loopholes I think that we had expressed concerns about when you first presented that to us. With the pool testing, my understanding is more districts are joining in on pool testing. And do we have any affirmative promises that the capacity of the people that are actually taking the pool and doing the testing, that they can handle a ramping up of other districts joining in. I just would hate for us to have gotten this done real smooth and then two more districts get in and then suddenly we have to wait a whole extra day and all our plans fall apart.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mr. Murphy. I really appreciate it, especially the slides explaining where the funding comes from. I thought that was, I hope that's the start of every single fiscal, every single budget process each year should include those, because frankly, for us, it's nice to have that refresher, but I think the public in general really cannot comprehend how insanely complicated public school funding is. Frankly, it's offensively complicated and on purpose, but that's a different conversation. I do feel like the flow chart is missing a step zero. That flow chart implies that City Hall is not involved. And I find that part to be a bit dishonest, frankly, not you personally, but last year we went into our budget where we were told we were not given a number. And then several meetings later, it came out, of course we were given a number. We're always given a number from city hall long before school committee is involved. And that flowchart implies that school committee has some control over how much money we are going to spend. And that is patently not true. The number of emails I get and every member gets where we are talked to and add by the public that we should be able to figure out how to get more money. They're talking to the wrong people. The process is almost exactly correct in that flow chart, except for the part, there's a missing a step zero, which is where the executive branch of the city tells the school department what they will get. That is the process. We got exactly $0 more. The seven members of the school committee certainly had interest in spending more than $0, more than the number that arrived on the doorstep of the superintendent's office, I presume. I just feel like that that step is missing. The public continues to believe that the school committee decides on what our budget is. And that's just not true. And I think it's critical, you know, in step one, you had the departments getting together and talking and doing their work, and that's all happening. And I don't for a second, that's not true. You're all doing that based on something that you've been told already. And, you know, if special ed comes in and says, we need 12% more this year because of the pandemic, they can go and sit in their room and talk about the fact that they need 12% more, and that's never gonna show up at school committee because the mayor's office, and I don't mean that the mayor doesn't wanna give us more money, by the way, that is not what I'm saying, but the mayor's office and the finance department there has made it clear what we're getting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just think there needs to be a way in that flow chart to make it clear that before the school committee is even really doing our work, are we've already been nailed to the floor of what we're gonna get to spend. We went through months of process last year, we got exactly $0 more for hundreds of hours of labor that we all wanted to do and we all thought it was important, but we got $0 more. And I think that that needs to somehow be reflected in this flowchart that the public overwhelmingly is convinced the school committee decides on how big our budget is and that cannot stand as we're going to go into another year where we're not going to have enough money for our kids and we're going to get the phone calls and and yeah well it's i just would say that from a historical perspective i do think that's something that school committees have grappled with that as a non-revenue generating governmental entity it's true that you can't
[Paul Ruseau]: I just had a quick question on the technology stuff. Forgive me if you said that I was trying to show a sandwich on my throat, but I'm still hearing teachers and certainly students and their families comment on our internet capacity still. And is that in this technology spend? I mean, it seems kind of like Look, I'm a software engineer. I kind of get it. This stuff is never cheap. And, but we really, we have to fix the internet. It needs to be consistently amazing everywhere in the bill, every building, end of store, like there's, this is the only standard that should be considered acceptable.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Very briefly, just, you know, I just wanted to short circuit a flood of new requests and the complexities of a lot of these people who have scheduled these field trips is already hard enough on them. Obviously the list of students that may be participating and the process of getting the nursing approvals and all that stuff, that still all has to happen. But if we said the kids can take a field trip to New York City, then we've already said it and the pandemic shouldn't require us to all sit around and talk about it. some Monday morning and some other month. So that's the point of this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, you've been, Member Ruseau. Thank you. Mayor, if I may, maybe we should vote on this and then send the policy for field trips back to subcommittee to have it tweaked, because the current policy doesn't really say anything about the pandemic or any kind of specialized considerations. So, I mean, just following our policy, if we brought it up and we talked about it, I mean, we could as members decide we don't feel comfortable because of the pandemic, but that's not actually a consideration. Like all the dots, all the I's have been dotted and all the T's have been crossed. Saying no, we don't approve it seems kind of arbitrary. And I also feel like the nursing department, you know, If they say it's good to go, I mean, they still do kind of hold the veto power over things, as my understanding. So I don't expect any of our field trips to be getting on a cruise anytime soon. And those wouldn't be opened up and available at all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, but that's, if I may, I mean, I don't want them to have to come before us and be on the agenda like they do now. for ones we've already approved. So, I mean, if we get an email or a report or just a notice that this is planned and it's gonna happen, that's different than asking the person who's running the field trip to come and do another presentation before us. I just feel like, I don't feel like any of our field trips You know, the Italy field trip, nobody's rushing to get to Italy right now. I don't know that we could legally even get to Italy by the time it's opened. I mean, the parents and the students and the staff running it would be using their judgment.
[Paul Ruseau]: I like that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I just, because member McLaughlin is a new member, we have no standing approvals. Each and every field trip does come to us for approval for a specific field trip. I can see why my language might've sounded confusing there. And there is no list of standing approved field trips. These are people came before us, said we want this field trip. We said, yes, for the one time, for the one date. And this is only aimed at those field trips that people have already done all the work so that they don't have to come and do that before us again, just so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. I believe actually that there is a document in our packets to answer most of these questions. I do have one question after reviewing that, and that was related to whether or not, the number of parents who have opted out of MCAS this year was surprisingly low. I feel like I actually know more parents that are opting out than that number. So I guess my question was, is there a district-wide practice that the principals have all been instructed to follow and a documentation strategy so that they're all consistently doing it. I know some parents will send an email, if they know the principal well, they might just be like, hey, Suzanne, when you're a principal, don't give my kid the MCAS and be like, okay. And then other principals might wanna have a letter from a lawyer, just kidding. But my point is that without any single statement of how it has to be submitted and how it is tracked, I found that the three number was quite surprising.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? I would just urge that now that I have now received four different text messages from people who have confirmed they have opted out, two at the middle school and one at the high school, that maybe there needs to be some kind of a systematic approach principles are instructed they must use. I mean, my memories of opting my kids out have always been like, I sent an email and nobody said boo, and that worked. I just find it hard to believe that, okay, I've got another one, somebody else who opted out. So I'm not saying you didn't get numbers correctly from the people you talked to, I'm saying, there is not a system in place for how principals are tracking this so that when you ask, you get an answer. And it really shouldn't be a hard question to answer. And it seems really important when it comes time to the incredible efforts that they require of proctors and that whole shenanigans that the proctoring system requires. If they don't know who the kids are that have opted out, I mean, you're gonna end up with some pretty angry parents if they if you force their kid to sit in front of the computer after you've been instructed, we've been instructed, no. So I'm just worried about that, but I'm fully confident you all can fix this. I just wanna make sure, there's another email, sorry. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I would be willing to not read, forego the reading of this resolution if the members have actually read it. I don't, if there are questions and we're gonna get into it, then I would certainly be fine with reading it. Otherwise I would be happy to skip it and just summarize it. How does the membership feel? That'd be great. So this resolution was a resolution offered by some other school committees. It is urging the state delegation and federal delegation to prioritize teachers for COVID vaccination. There is a very interesting dashboard that shows the whole country and where teachers are. And in Massachusetts, like much of Massachusetts is rollout of the vaccine, we are not in a good place And teachers are not presently on the list of people that can be vaccinated. The amount of nonstop, what about the kids? What about the loss of learning time? What about all this stuff? And then to not prioritize teachers so that they can go to school and teach our kids is really just almost incomprehensible. So this resolution urges that. And I would ask that we also put this up on I'm not sure if it's up on the website in the packet of documents, but should the public want to read the entire resolution?
[Paul Ruseau]: My apologies. I was needed. It is one second. I have just accidentally closed my list of PDFs for today. Um, calls on the state legislature, the governor, item number three directs the superintendent to transmit official copies of this resolution to the commissioner of Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the governor of Massachusetts, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Edward Markey, Congresswoman Catherine Clark, State Senator Pat Jalen, State Representative Paul Donato, Sean Garbally, and Christine Barber, and also to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. Um, the number two on the list is to urge the M. A. S. C. To actually advocate for this. They are not presently. It's not a presently a campaign of theirs to try to get this to happen. Um So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you, Mayor. On January 13th, Is that the right date? I'm sorry, I just scrolled out of the way. Yes, on January 13, the Rules, Policy and Equity Subcommittee met to begin drafting a list of our reports that reports slash presentations that would be become part of our rules. for an annual list that would be provided that would give the superintendent and her staff the ability to plan ahead more easily and to make it obvious to the public and to new school committee members and existing ones when we actually do things. As a new member, when do we get the report on MCAS? For instance, there's just sort of an endless number of reports and presentations that we get each year. And so we worked on that list. I think we made an incredible good first draft at our next meeting, which I don't have the date in front of me. At our next meeting, we will finalize the, well, assuming that the subcommittee approves it, we will finalize the list and send it up to the full committee for approval. But at this time, we just have minutes from that meeting to approve. So if there's a motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually that is in the minutes that in the last meeting that exact motion was made and approved. So I would just like to ask that somebody take a special note to make sure that really happens. I'm sure it was just an oversight, but it was in the last meeting. We voted exactly to do that for tonight.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, sorry. I know so many little tiles, it's hard to see everybody. I just had a question about when we get our communication from the superintendent, which I believe goes up to the public as well, about the number of tests and the number of positives, this is wonderful information. This January, it's always been very, very good. But looking at the number of consented students in the cohorts that was just shown, it just dawned on me that when you say there's been a thousand tests and we've had four positives, for instance, that includes staff. And one of the things I cannot deduce in any way, shape or form is if cohort A is tested, some of them are tested with cohort B, some of them are tested with cohort C, correct? Some of them are Tuesday and some of them are Friday. So I don't know of a thousand tests. I'm not actually concerned that staff aren't getting tested, but if there were 980 students who should have been tested on Friday, were there 980 students that were tested on Friday? Or were there 600 students that were tested? This is a critical piece of information that is completely impossible to deduce from the information that I have at this point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, there's just one word, Mr. Murphy, that you used that I think we need to be careful around and available. If I'm a parent sending my kid to school and I have signed that consent form, that parent I am gonna go out on a limb is assuming with an incredibly high level of confidence that their student is getting tested every single time that they are supposed to get tested. And if I found out that, you know, my high school student is going to school and for scheduling and lines and whatever other reason, they've been going all for the last two weeks and have never actually gotten tested. I would, I would actually not send my kid to school the next day. So it can't be available. We need to know that a hundred percent of kids that parents have signed a consent, they've not signed a consent form, meaning like, if you can think about it and get around to it, maybe you should test my kid. They're saying, I'm consenting to this testing and I think it's okay to send my kid into the building. And part of my logic is it's safe for my student because I know that they're getting regular testing and so is everybody else. And so we need to tighten this up so that we have no kids slipping through the cracks. If the cohort A students are available on Tuesdays and Fridays for testing, we have to decide is it going to be that they get tested both days or they have to be tested on one of those days? Because otherwise we can't do any check that they actually got any test at all. And I mean, the idea that there could be students who've been going to school, who've gotten consents and have just never been tested. That is what I hear. It's possible that you have gone to school and consented and you've actually never gotten the test, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And my last thing here, I understand that there are limitations around, especially the high school population and certainly the population that has reached the age of 18. But I think that as a parent, I would want some transparency around that. There were a thousand tests. There were 12 students at the high school who didn't get tested this week. And next week, if three of those students didn't get tested last week, we should say there are 12 students this week who didn't get tested. Who could have gotten tested? Who went to school with your kids? And there were three who haven't been tested for the last two weeks. I mean, it seems like an insane amount of data and it may be challenging, but parents have made, many parents have made an incredibly difficult decision to choose between their education and the mental health consequences of going to school. And some of those people have made those decisions even though they have high risk people in their houses. And they have put themselves at an incredible risk because they think that the risk is mitigated by what we're doing. So we can't have gaps that we find out afterwards. And I realized that the ability to track in-school transmission does depend on a very high level affirmative and confirmative testing is actually happening for the students that are consented. So I appreciate that you recognize this area needs to be tightened up and we'll work on that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I greatly appreciate this new job description and the orientation towards not treating our students as if there's something wrong with them. And, you know, just the general approach of the district is definitely going in the right direction. And I'm very, very proud of that job posting. It says a lot, frankly, about where we are going. And so I motion for approval of the change.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham's excellent analysis of this. I've read this twice, and I didn't see any of those things, and I agree with them all. I think the criminal justice law enforcement piece of the credentials. I certainly see Mr. Murphy's point about making sure that we get a pool of people who, you know, the interviewers will, of course, be able to get in much greater detail about any of these, you know, somebody who has a social worker, psychology, counseling or education degree that doesn't make them the right candidate. And they could have those degrees and a law enforcement candidate. a law enforcement degree. I think that the part of the sentence that member Graham said was actually most compelling to me was the concern for window dressing. And it is not unreasonable to read these credentials and see that listed there and put it up against the rest of the job description. And when you read the rest of the job description, it actually does sort of feel like a bit of a surprise that somebody from law enforcement would be a right candidate. Now I understand as Mr. Murphy said that, you know, there are plenty of people in law enforcement who come from with a restorative justice approach and obviously we want them to apply and be part of the candidate pool. But I do feel like I would support removing that because Partially because of the feeling of, is this just window dressing? But more because up against the rest of the job description, it sort of feels out of place. At least from the general sense of, you know, what law enforcement means, which means different things to different people. But I think law enforcement to most people does not include what the job description lists. So that's why I would support removing that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. And I do agree with the other members that have spoken about the check. I actually had to say, wait, which year are we doing these for? It's awkward to talk about goals for a year that is more than half over. But so, you know, in the last goal setting that we had, which was before times, so I can't even remember when that was. You know, I had indicated that we, I thought while math was very important, I thought literacy should be the primary goal. I'm reminded, I keep a short list of 10 things to try to remember in my meetings. And one of them is Campbell's law, that what you measure is what will gain the focus of those being measured. We can say we have multiple number one priorities, but if we're only looking and measuring on one of them, then we really only have one. And so I would urge the superintendent to consider that when we do the goals for the 2021-2022 school year, I know I will be pushing as well for literacy and like anything, none of this is free. I'm assuming if we didn't need anything at all for the district, then we'd have 100% of the kids reading at grade level by third grade and we wouldn't be talking about it. when we are discussing the budget, I realize it's a bit of a weird thing. Like we haven't set the goals for the next year. So budgeting for goals that we may set, and you may agree to later on, it sounds a little precarious. And I'm not sure the people who set up the new goal system actually thought that through. you know, I think that if there are going to be substantial costs to measurable increases in literacy, that it's best to not lose an entire year where we set the goals for July one, and you don't have any of the resources you need to implement them until the following year, because that's not going to make it possible to meet your goals. So I would just urge you to, I don't know who would be doing this, but to actually think about some of that when doing the budget. And I'm not a literacy specialist, I have no idea what kinds of costs are involved with training and additional professional development and any materials and specialists and all that other stuff. But it is a concern I have that if we set any goal for literacy next year, that is it even going to be attainable if there's no money to do any of it? I also support taking this paper and moving it to the next meeting so we can digest it. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. This has actually been on my list long before the pandemic and suddenly is particularly relevant. You know, there are, you know, families who will have a parent going through chemotherapy. They send their kids to school. And again, this is pre-pandemic. The problem is, of course, much worse now. And, you know, the kids will go to school and, you know, they will be interacting with family, with students, and sometimes even staff that are clearly too ill to be in school. Obviously addressing the staff Difficulties around that is outside of really the purview of the school committee, I think that that's really too complicated, but I know I when I was growing up, there was incredible pride in perfect attendance and of course. I didn't think anything of it. I certainly wasn't one of those students with perfect attendance, but it really becomes very logical that rewarding perfect attendance means incenting people to come to school sick. And coming to school because you have the sniffles on the surface doesn't matter. And of course, I don't mean the sniffles, but coming to school ill may not seem terrible until you consider that you may be giving something to another student or a staff member who's gonna go home and cause a parent who has no immune system to die. So I think we need to make sure there is no rewards and no incenting perfect attendance in any way, shape or form throughout the district. So that's why I put this on here and that's that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't really have much interest in having another meeting to discuss whether or not we should do nothing. anything that's softer than this is to do nothing. So I think that the committee wants to vote it down, they should vote it down. I don't, the purpose of this is to protect the families and other students of our students from the incenting of students to go to school sick. Let's just call it what it is. Okay. I mean, I Don't know how many times in 2019, I had to talk to a parent multiple times because her husband had no immune system because he was on chemo and the students were going to our schools and there were teachers and there were other students who were clearly too ill. And all you educators, are you telling me you've not been to schools and classrooms where there are clearly sick kids who are just powering through whether it's because they don't want to be home because it's not safe or because they're hungry or they want a perfect attendance, whatever thousand reasons why kids go to school. I was one of those kids. I went to school under, I mean, I didn't have perfect attendance, but school was the only place I got to eat during the school year. So I went to school because I was hungry. And if I had been sick, I would have gone to school too. I don't remember whether I went to school sick or not. And I did that because what mattered was me. student. But the idea that we would add an incentive to pull in kids to school so they could get a piece of paper at the end of the year, even if that meant we might kill another kid's parent. And I saw the smile on her Dr. Edouard-Vincent. But, you know, every one of us knew a kid in school who was more proud of the fact that they had perfect attendance than if their parent had been a Nobel laureate. We all knew those kids and maybe some of us were those kids. But the pride in getting to school every day is, first of all, is often just a reflection of having a stable home. of having what you need or maybe not, maybe it's the only safe space, but let's talk about who's not getting to school. How many kids on IEPs, and maybe we should have a motion for that, how many kids on IEPs have perfect attendance in a school year? I would bet real money is close to 0%. So is this really about attendance or is this about rewarding those kids that are lucky already? And the impact of rewarding them is that they might get other people sick who then can't come to school themselves. I just don't see any value in this piece of paper. By the way, when we get out into the real world, Not a fricking employer in the world cares that you had perfect attendance in high school or in elementary or middle school. So I think it's kids loving school and wanting to go to school every day. That's a goal. And Dr. Edouard-Vincent spoke about the fact that she loved school. She didn't want to miss school. And that's beautiful. That's wonderful. And that's what we should, all the kids should have. But incenting somebody to come, if you were a senior in high school and had never missed a single day of school, And then you came down with the flu. You'd have dragged your ass to school and you know it. We all know that's what would have happened. So I think that we should just vote this down and say, I'm sorry to the parents who might get flu from their kid at school and just, just that's what it is. I don't wanna go to subcommittee to talk about whether we're not going to do something. Either we are going to agree that we think that this shouldn't be rewarded, this behavior that we are instilling, or we have lots of other work to do, we don't need to do this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I appreciate the conversation. I'd like to make an amendment to my motion to change the language where it says to review and update as needed to ensure that it prohibits awards or recognitions. I'd like to change that to review and update as needed award, just get rid of the to ensure that it prohibits to just say update as needed awards and recognitions. Yeah, within mother member public schools for perfect attendance. And then in addition, I would add the language that the superintendent will provide three years of data on perfect attendance for K to 12 and it will be disambiguated by the DESI special categories, not including this year. I don't think this year is particularly meaningful for attendance.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's okay. I just wanted to quickly give a very, very brief background on this. So that last sentence I think is particularly confusing as I read it. even though I wrote it and read it many times before I submitted it. For any field trip that did not include all eligible students, what I mean there is, if the third grade all left and went to the Royal House, they all went, then we don't need this report. But if the French club goes to France, every eligible student is every person who's enrolled the French club, and we would need this report. And I don't, this says the superintendent or her designee, and of course, my assumption is the superintendent will actually have a form and the people doing the field trip will fill it out. That will probably have to go to Ms. Miles, who will be able to pull out data that says, all right, here's the categories for the students that went, here's the categories for the students that could have gone, because we really need to get a much more clearer picture of what I think many of us sort of at a gut level understand and know who goes on field trips and who doesn't. But I think that the data is absolutely necessary to be able to have a conversation with the community about funding all of these things through the tax base rather than through just the lucky families that can afford all this stuff. So that's the, purpose of this. And I recognize that it is not a, you know, it's not a two minute activity and it is not super lightweight, but the students that are not receiving a free public education deserve to receive one. And I think this is how we can get us there. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I respond?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think we can dig into the graphic details in the meeting and the subcommittee, because this just sends it to the subcommittee. But I will just say that I certainly don't think it is just the big ones. I think the small ones matter very much too to the students that didn't get to go. And the students may not be going for simple matters of, we didn't translate a permission slip or something. I mean, but finding those situations and closing the gap affects those students directly. But as for whether, I would never expect a presentation. And frankly, I think that this would just go on the agenda as a report for your information. I don't expect this to become part of our agenda per se. But I think if we get a report one week and it shows that 12% of eligible students went and we look at the disaggregation and we go, whoa, something's totally wrong here. you know, we may want to make it a conversation at another meeting, but I don't, I don't envision that this is like, you know, there are lots of field trips in a normal year. I don't, I don't envision us having conversations on a regular basis. I would think once a year, we would want to sit down and really put the data together and figure out how to say to the community in a, in a, in a loud data-driven voice that says, no, we don't have the resources we need to give our kids a fair a free public education, and this is what it means. This is what it's actually meaning to the students. And I think having that data is the only way to say that other than sounding like I'm being hyperbolic or I'm being too radical or any other kind of thing that if we have hard data that is just numbers, I think that is incredibly important. And I hope, of course, that we don't have to do this for all eternity. The goal is that this becomes not an issue. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, then Member McLaughlin. Thank you. Yeah, I think we'll work that out in the subcommittee, member Kreatz, because I think that is very, very important and why I didn't just come forward with the resolution. I think that's why I sent it to the subcommittee, because we need to understand our data system capabilities. The recommendation that may come out of the subcommittee is that it's just impossible with our current data systems. And I do consider that a possibility. really hope it's not the answer, but I fully hold that as an actual possibility that we actually can't do it. I hope we can, but we will work those out and make sure we have all the right people in the subcommittee meeting to understand, you know, the workflow for, for field trips also needs to really, you know, there's not one workflow. We have workflows for out of state. We have workflows for in state. And then, you know, there may be workflows that are outside of the normal workflows. So yeah, we'll work that out. I don't envision this to be a 20 minute meeting for sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'll add that to my list. I don't think I had it on my list.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to congratulate Member McLaughlin on the fastest turnaround of a motion becoming actually implemented, since I think this is our first meeting where that's actually a feature now. I laughed when I saw that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Dr. Edward-Vincent. I appreciated this write-up. I realize that the pandemic sort of threw quite the wrench in the process of completing your goals. I thought the evaluation was fair, and I don't envy you having to try to write this up, considering what's been going on this last year. couple of things. First off, I did want to say that, you know, the goal of a focus on instruction, I felt like that's, you know, when I think back on the time that you've been here, if somebody was to just ask me, like, what's the biggest thing that's gone on since you've been here, and it's that focus on instruction has been, frankly, nonstop, and that I appreciate greatly, I'm sure. the students, the teachers and families do as well. I did want to just, there was one item on standard two management and operations. I see that the CCSR initiatives are in there. Actually they're in a couple of places and I think they belong there. I just want to make sure that the CCSR as I understand it at this moment in time is not in our budget for a single nickel. And I want to just or just to consider that at budget season that we consider CCSR important enough that it's evidence for your review in two places or more. And I think it's appropriate, but I also wanna just acknowledge that if the external funding source vanishes tomorrow, so does the CCSR unless we think it's important enough to budget. So I'm happy to see that in there. I just wanna urge you to consider seeing whether it needs to be in the budget this year, if that external source for funding will go away or not, which I realize it might be too soon to know that, but I do wonder about the Cummings Foundation and others who provide this funding, the impacts of the pandemic and the economy on them may impact their ability to provide those funds. And I also just, actually, that's all I have for the moment. I'll let other people ask questions. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I obviously have no problem whatsoever with the motion on the floor, but that won't help us with this evaluation, if I understand it correctly.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's a lot. I mean, I know it's a lot and I just feel like, I mean, I'll vote for it because I get the gist of what you're trying to say. I'm just not clear how to know when the subcommittee has actually done the work. The good news is, is you're on that subcommittee, so we don't have to really hash that out right now, I feel like, but thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was starting to have a flashback, I feel like it was in the movie The Matrix, as I did a search, I realized that I actually took and put the entire rubric into a template for the school committee in June 24th, 2019. And I just shared it in the chat. This is the rubric based on the current evaluation system, which was new for 2019, which is why I took the effort to do that. But we can pull this out and put it into a procedures, of course, when we get to that in the subcommittee, so that it's not just tucked away in my personal Google Docs. But I did share it with the members and actually anybody in the meeting. So if you want to use that for your own submission to member McLaughlin, that will save her the trouble of figuring out how we all decided to type it up, because this is taken directly from the language of the the new evaluation system. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that's from the, uh, Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. I think that's the law. I don't think that is I don't think it's the law. I think the law required the board to create this. This is a set, this rubric is not optional. The superintendent and MASC did not make this up. These are the expected things that we should be evaluating the superintendent on. And it may seem like a crazy list until you look at what was there before. And then you realize this is, Heaven sent, the one before was pages and pages of questions for which you could never know the answers. So yeah, this is, we don't have to create it because I don't think we have the option to create it, but incorporating it into a whole narrative of our procedures for the school committee, I think is key and definitely what we should talk about in the subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Sorry to cut back one slide. Yeah, sure. Actually, you don't really need to. Do we have, I realized that maybe this is an ongoing type of survey in the past. But do we have any context for whether, other than that one about, you know, compared to last year, which that's very useful. Do we have any sense as to whether these are, I mean, is 67% of students being behind on their homework, is that normal? I mean, I'm not a teacher.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I was just curious, did we ask students to identify what cohort they're in?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I'm sure you were about to go there. But just that the distinction between asynchronous and homework my own house, I can say I don't recognize any distinction. And I completely understand teachers would very much recognize a distinction. But I doubt very much students at any grade level truly recognize any difference. So that which cohort you're in won't truly answer that question, but I think that if we saw some very divergent information for cohort D, my kids are full remote students, I think we could tease that apart by simply saying, did cohort D come up with a very different number than the hybrid kids, when in fact, those groups of kids across cohorts should have, I mean, there should be no difference, frankly, in how much homework they had. So we could really kind of answer that question for sure. But just something for the next survey, because I think that that's a really important thing to understand is that because, you know, DESE has changed the rules around how much FaceTime kids are supposed to get. and I'm sure we're going to be changing things to increase the amount of face time and whether or not that will increase asynchronous homework or asynchronous work that will then be translated. I mean, if we do this survey again and we find out that the amount of homework has dramatically increased or decreased, I think we need to understand what that means. So I'm just kind of rambling, I apologize.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Do you wanna move that to your school committee account? That's actually, the spreadsheet is on your personal female account. I know I frequently make the mistake of putting them in one place or the other.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm fine with wait and see. I just, you know, I just, whenever it's got personal account information, that means it's yours. email addresses and phone numbers for people in the public. And I mean, if I was not on the school committee and everything about me was already known, I would be a little uncomfortable with not knowing what you were planning to do with that, or, you know, was it gonna end up in some other distribution list? Or was it gonna get emails about, I mean, I'm just, I'm swamped with literally many hundreds of emails a day, and I've become hypersensitive about giving my email address to anybody for any reason.
[Paul Ruseau]: I know, but I already spent hours a day on email. And so if you want my email for something, I better know you personally. Yeah. That's all. And so also, as I've mentioned in another meeting, none of us on the school committee can assume we will be here a year from now. Well, actually, as there is an election, that's actually true. And I just worry about anything we're doing just withering away on December 31st of this year when somebody else gets sworn into office, should we not?
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello everyone, we're just going to give one more minute to member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Alrighty, I think we're ready to go. It's 4.02 and I will read the notice for our meeting. Thank you everyone for coming to the Rules, Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting. Today is January 13th, it's 4.02. Please be advised that Today at 4 to 5pm there will be a rules policy and equity subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. Can you hear me okay? Good, thank you. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, and the governor's March 15th, 2020 order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Medford School Committee will be held, will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information and general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the city of Medford website. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media websites an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting could be viewed through I'm not sure if we actually are on metric community media on Comcast Channel 22, Verizon 43. I'm not sure if that actually is the case today, but since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call, log or call in by using the following link or call in number. The Zoom link is long, mpso02155-org.zoom.org. The call in number, if you want to call in, which you obviously would be able to do, because you can hear it. It's sort of this chicken and egg thing about this posting, but it's, where's the phone number? My apologies. 312-626-6799, meeting ID 97562725, 433. Let's see, if you have any additional questions or comments, you can submit them via email by sending them to me as the chair to pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Please include your first and last name, your Medford Street address and your question or comment. The agenda for tonight is that Wednesday, January 13th, we will be meeting to begin work on a periodic report schedule referred to committee on February 2nd, 2020 by the motion, given that several periodic reports are required by law and regulation, past practice and best practice, the rules, policy and equity subcommittee shall promulgate an annual schedule of such reports to provide the superintendent, the school committee and the public a transparent and concise understanding of when to expect these reports. I believe we should probably take attendance. Goodness. Member McLaughlin. I'm probably getting that one. And Member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau, present, three present. Excellent. So I sent an email earlier this week. Thank you everyone for coming, by the way. I sent an email earlier this week, all of the members asking that send me an email with any suggestions for reports that they know we already get, or reports that they think we should be getting. And I also reached out to school committees across the state through our distribution list to ask the same question and did get a couple of responses from other districts. And of course, the superintendent and her staff have their own schedule and calendar as well for when certain reports will be created. Part of the motivation for this, it was to, excuse me, was to, well, there was lots of motivations, but one of the motivations was that, you know, when new members come in, they might wanna know something, an entirely reasonable thing. And, you know, you come in and if you ask for that report, it might seem perfectly timely to do so right then and there, but if it's an already scheduled report with a time and date that it was going to arrive, adding more work to the superintendent's plate for a report that she will also have to give us that, you know, if it's a November report, asking for it in February doesn't make a lot of sense. So efficiency was certainly part of it. And so we have, I have a, spreadsheet that I can share, if that makes sense. I'll do a screen share. I just got a very interesting advanced options on my share button. Let me see. Okay, here we go. Okay. Can you all see my spreadsheet that I have up?
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. Yes. Let's see.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hold on one second. Now it's scrolled on the wrong way. Here we go. Um, is that look okay to you?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Um, so, um, this, this is sort of a draft and, um, many of our reports may not have official names, which is a challenge, I think, for, uh, you know, I call it one thing and you call it another. I think we do need to name our reports so that we can, um, accurately discuss them. Um, I received an email from, um, member Van der Kloot, our most senior member, of course, who has probably seen more reports than the rest of us will ever see in our lives. And I've added those to this list as well, the superintendent, and I believe, and certainly her executive assistant, and perhaps others have added a few things as well. I'm not really clear what people think on how we should approach this. I think that We should try to worry about getting a complete list before we get too into the weeds about the frequency. I think the frequency for many reports will not be very exciting. Sorry, the scrolling is. Did you just lose the sharing?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, the sharing. Try that again.
[Paul Ruseau]: One second. Zoom is not allowing me to even click around on the spreadsheet right now.
[Paul Ruseau]: There seems to be bouncing around going on and I'm not clicking. So we can talk.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, yes. So this is, at least as I intend it, is explicitly not including anything that's an ad hoc report. So anything like, you know, we've got some question that comes up in the meeting, and we want to get answers to it. That aren't things that we probably should have been asking every year, for instance. So a lot of those reports that were on that are on that list, I think are ad hoc reports, but some of them are not some of them are like, why isn't this just an annual report? So there isn't a, it's not a black and white, as to what this list is. I am not sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I would say that the ad hocs probably shouldn't be on here because similar to the effort we did in December with the holiday, you know, the holiday events, it's, you know, here's the list the superintendent annually will go through and play it forward. And we will know that there's two meetings in February and these two things have to happen in February and she's gonna put them on the agenda ahead of time. One of the things that became evident as I worked on this list today and as the superintendent and Susie added a bunch of other items is that this is a, well, frankly, it's a massive list. And one of the things that I just dawned on me is we don't have a column for whether or not it's actually just in our packets, or is it an actual conversation on the agenda? Because some of these things may well be things that are just like, here's this document that goes in your packet and is available to the public, but we don't necessarily have to have a presentation. Many of these things, of course, do need presentations. But if we quickly end up with far more reports that we all agree we need to get, then there are days in the week kind of thing. Then we'll have to either prioritize and take some off the list or identify them as being, you know, FYIs that are in our packet. And I believe there have been a couple that, you know, have just been in our packets. They're not on the agenda per se. They're not conversation points. And then we can, of course, make them conversation points if there's something about that particular one. Every year, we talk quite a bit about enrollment, attendance, which has often been sort of wrapped up in that conversation. And I've always found it very confusing that they're together, because to me, attendance and enrollment are not the same. Unless, of course, we're talking about doing the enrollment report, then attendance matters. But I would like to know things about, you know, our attendance throughout the year. And that's very different than enrollment. So whether or not we would have an attendance report at every meeting or every couple of months that is simply at the elementary level, attendance was at 96% or whatever, that seems to me like on the surface, like a report that would just be in our packets as an FYI.
[Paul Ruseau]: An ad hoc report is a report that's a one-off.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, yes. Yeah, the ad hoc report would follow the ad hoc report policy we passed, I think a year, I think a year back. And then these would not be conversation pieces in that when we approve the schedule, When this goes forward to the full school committee and we approve it, we're not gonna ask the superintendent to put a CPAC presentation on the agenda. Like if we say the CPAC agenda presentation will happen the first meeting of March, I'm just making that up, then we don't have to remember to ask her every year, every first meeting of March, she will put it on the agenda because this is our expectation. And I'm just making up those dates off the top of my head. So that's the difference is that this is the, here's what you're gonna get through the year, both as a new member and frankly as a not new member. Because sometimes I know I get questions from constituents that ask me a specific question and to be able to have a list of reports and go, oh, that answer would have been in the district improvement plan and that comes out.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think I muted myself. Melanie, were you still talking? I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, no, if it is periodic in any way, shape or form to me, it is definitely not ad hoc. Okay. It may not be yet that if we consider it periodic, but like if, if we designed an ad hoc report the first time and at the conclusion of the report, we're all like, yes, this was good. Yeah. We definitely should have had this information on a quarterly basis or annual basis. Then it to me no longer ad hoc reports should be. Every time you ask for the report, you go through the whole ad hoc report process, which I would never wanna do if it's a report we should get quarterly or annually even.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I would like to achieve getting the list as complete as possible. Now we, some of these things, like the wider results, I vaguely remember those being presented. Sorry about the scrolling. I do not know what the problem is. Let me try my other. Nope. And, So getting the list as complete as possible and the superintendent and Susie, and frankly, I think other administrators might want to weigh in on that. And then, you know, some of these will need names that are a little more understood. We have this, you know, some of these I've taken off of other school committees, websites, and some of the email responses I got today, like, you know, the prior year fiscal year, draft audit, and then the final, you know, on the shore collaborative where I'm the chairman, we actually do exactly those two things each year. And I'm assuming we do that here too, and I just don't remember, or we don't call it that. And, you know, the school committee seems like it should have to approve the annual audit, but I don't know, maybe that's, but I mean, this came from another school committee and they do this. Um, if it's not necessary and they just like to do more, then I'm okay with removing items here. Um, you know, we do have to acknowledge the bandwidth involved with a lot of this stuff. Um, and, uh, there were plenty of other items that were not, that are not on this list that I got from other school committees. And, um, when Cambridge has many other reports, well, Cambridge also has, um, you know, a different set of resources to really do anything any member probably asks. So I think that's part of it. So but getting this list as complete as possible, I'm gonna try to scroll over, see what happens.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. I'm going to stop my share and maybe that's the chat is maybe the chat is causing some of this.
[Paul Ruseau]: One moment, my apologies.
[Paul Ruseau]: again, I should say. Okay, great. So yeah, I think that makes sense to go through it. You know, the other columns in here, I, you know, I've been adding columns, frankly, as the day has gone on. Obviously, the report name, the report, the meeting type, I realized that when I added the MCAS results and accountability overview, we actually have a meeting every year on this, and it is a committee of the whole. And so I realized you know, and some of these other meetings may well make more sense to be committees of the whole than a regular meeting. The type, I just sort of made this up, but like finance, special education, HR, presented by, you know, I just added that, but, cause I thought, you know, the PTOs do the PTO report presentation. It's not anybody in the administration, whether they're statutory or not, I think it's something we, can get answers to. I don't really think we have to talk about it necessarily unless we have a disagreement. The frequency is obviously a conversation. For instance, the warrants and payrolls, all of our meetings right now do have it, but my understanding is that the law says we only need it actually once a month. So I'm gonna perhaps recommend we reduce that so that every meeting isn't sitting there going over these when we could just do it once every other meeting. hours of effort is a nod to, I think, understanding the hours of effort will be helpful should we need to cut anything out, or if the superintendent says, I like it all, there's literally, I need four more staff or something like, if that's what the superintendent says. When it's expected is sort of related to the frequency, but some things are due in the fall, some are due in the spring, And then the description that's, I think really gets to the heart of what member McLaughlin, what you were speaking to. And I think that that needs to be filled out dramatically on most things. I did add it for four reports here that, you know, I have a technology report, a health report, burn report, which is how much of our money have we spent so far this year in an HR report. You know, just like with our ad hoc report policy, I think it, you know, for some of these reports, it might be good to actually identify exactly what it is we wanna know. Because frankly, there's nothing worse than getting there to the meeting. Somebody has spent an obviously spent a lot of time preparing a report. And then the first thing we do is ask a question for which the report doesn't answer, especially when it's something that they probably actually already did know, but they didn't know we would want to know. and I think a lot of those things we as members can put it out ahead of time. And so do we really want to go through, I mean, I'm fine with we can go through each of these quickly and just make sure we understand what they are. That makes sense?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. It's only 427. I felt like it was later because it got dark suddenly. So the enrollment report is the, two reports that are done each year that are sent to DESE that say, how many students do we have? These are critical reports from a financial perspective where we, all of September, I think it's the building principals, work feverishly to identify every student that they actually have so that we can get that report right. And then I believe it's done again in March. Is that correct, Superintendent?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And you know, the, um, the April one, you know, may just be one of those things where we throw it in the packet, if it's not a really worthy of a conversation, but, um, the fall one is a very important thing. Attendance, again- Excuse me, I'm sorry. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely. key and part of, I believe that was part of the language and why we did this was, you know, we will publish this and the public should be able to read it, understand what it is. You know, the field that includes all the data elements, the public may, you know, their eyes may glass over on some of those, but, you know, the description of what the report is definitely needs to be easily understood. Um, warrants and payrolls are pretty obvious.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Can you repeat that? My phone was ringing in my ear.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I'll put that in the description, but warrants are a little different than the bills. Some school committees, the secretary will literally sign every check. And my understanding is the law changed some number of years ago to allow the secretary to sign a piece of paper that says what all the checks are and not have to sign every check by hand. Um, so that a warrant is different than signing the payment directly.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, payrolls are payrolls. Um, the. Open house schedule for the schools. Um. Which I know that's in one of the subcommittees. that. Um the CPAC annual CPAC presentation. Is there a better name for that, Mayor McLaughlin, that you're aware of?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, yep, I'll go through and do all that, um, for sure. Um, the final year update, uh, from the final update from the prior year fiscal year, um, that actually, uh, Mr. Murphy gave us that this year, and I thought it was excellent and crystal clear. I'm not sure if there was a name on it. I didn't take each of these and go through our last couple of years of packets, even though I have them, to find out whether there's a real name that is preferred. So this isn't to try and get us to a nice, happy name on everything. committee goals.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, it's not budget, but yes. All right, this one. This one was like, you know the accounts. What's what's in the money?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Yeah. Um, so this one I found actually a couple of different committees do this. And I know that from our, um, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I'm sorry. I can't see everybody. Oh, Jenny. Hi. Can you unmute yourself? You can't unmute. Let me see if I can make you a, um, I cannot make you. well, actually ask to unmute. Maybe that will give you the freedom to, there you are. I think you're unmuted now, Jenny.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, thank you. I do think that a lot of these reports, frankly, all of these reports should have sort of a background document similar to we did for the ad hoc report. In the ad hoc report policy, we ask the person submitting it to say, well, what do you wanna know? What are your questions that you're trying to get answers to? And, you know, There, you know, as a member, I know I care very much about the historical context around, you know, is our enrollment growing or shrinking, or is it kind of just fluctuating normal? You know, those are all really important questions. So rather than having a report that comes before us, we ask a pile of questions for which the answers aren't available because, you know, that person isn't sitting in front of an Excel spreadsheet. You know, what are, I think many of these reports Um, which obviously I think is a little outside of the scope of this particular listing that we're working on, but should be its own effort. Um, should include a list of what are the data elements we want to know, you know, and what are the questions we as members are trying to get at? Because I don't think there's anything particularly unique about, I say it out loud, everybody's always like Medford special and everybody's special. Um, but you know, the questions we want to ask about enrollment and all these other questions are the same questions that school committees across the country, frankly, probably ask. And so I think all of that can easily be listed, and then we can work on the format of each of these. And I mean, the superintendent is, I can't say she's new anymore, but she's still pretty new and she has new staff. And even in just the last year, they have really made changes to some of the reports we get. And I feel our significant improvements and look forward to more of those. So I agree that we need to include the historical data on many of these things, frankly, I mean, attendance. And I will go through and fix the titles of any of these acronyms that are here for the moment. Committee goals. My understanding is we're supposed to actually have committee goals. every year. And if you ask me what our committee goals are for the last couple of years, I'm not sure I can answer that question. And so I put this on here. These are committee of the whole actually. Well, I don't know if that one is. So seems like we should really be doing that, whether it's annually or biannually, I don't know, but let's see, that's annually. The district improvement plan, the school improvement plans, we get those. Those, I believe, are statutory. Is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Fiscal year draft. Wait, didn't I already cover the draft audits? Or was I just... I may have talked... No, that's not the audit. This is the... Okay, these are the audits.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. And I know for the shore, we have those. And they are statutory, actually. Well, the draft wouldn't be. But we have to find and approve one. The school calendar, I mean, whether it's statutory or not, we obviously have to have one. you know, this year we had a little trouble getting our school committee calendar actually set for this year until after the year had already begun. So I added that here as not as part of the school calendar per se, it's not in that policy and it's not in the work we just did in December, but you know, that the superintendent will say, here's my recommendation for when you all should meet in the next year prior to the actual year beginning, I think it's good to have on the list. school him. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I started to get very sort of spinning a bit. Well, what is a report? I mean, this calendar is a document that will be presented that we have to approve. Is it technically, I mean, I feel like it is a report. It's a report of what the superintendent, when she took the policy we passed in December, she played it forward and gave us a pile of dates. The physical manifestation, in whatever format it ends up being, doesn't look like a report, but it feels to me like a report. I know that when I was talking, I talked to the superintendent earlier today, when we looked at this with Ms. Presser from MASC last year, was it last year? I can't, it's all so long before times. A lot of this stuff is really about populating the annual calendar for the purposes of our agendas. So that's why I left it in here, even though it feels weird that it's and listed as a report, but it will be presented. Here's the recommendation from the superintendent and we would vote to approve the calendar unless we look through it and there's something about it we want to change. So it's not as crystal clear, I think, as it could be. Maybe report is part of the problem, the word report, but it's all I got for the moment. So the school handbook presentation, that's a thing, right? I'm not making that up, I remember that, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That'd be great. I know that that's why I actually included the word changes because, you know, the handbooks are substantial. The elementary ones are all look pretty much the same and the middle school ones are the same, but like as a total number of pages to read it, I think it would be great to be able to see a highlight of what did change year to year. So that's why I included that word. Community schools, we got this report, I believe last year, or we asked for it. Yes, not 100% sure where we are. Is that I just felt like we needed a name better than community schools.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely, good stuff. Professional development, I believe there's an annual report that's done for us of what professional development was done. Is that statutory or just?
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent, yes, and I think you hit upon a point though also that, one second, I accidentally used the back button and that took everything out. Did it take all of the things I just typed out? It did. But the issue of, you know, if we think things should be, if we want things to be mandatory, but we are not building enough time and spending enough money in our contracts to even make it possible, then that's how we can find out. You know, we can say that the committee thinks this is critically important. everybody should do it, but then there's not enough time to technically even do it. Well, we need that when we're talking about contract negotiations and at budgeted time. You gotta right this whole.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. Thank you. I'm trying to pay attention to the time. I put short collaborative on here. I am the chairman of the board there, and we receive a quarterly report that we can bring, sort of the goal is to just bring it back and give it to our committees and our packets, just as a heads up, this is what's going on. And I did that the last report that I got, I had not done that before, which is on me. Member McLaughlin, you're muted now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, can you unmute yourself, Loni?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just worked quickly. You know, we were almost out of time and I want to try and plow through these. So I think what we can, if it's okay with you, member McLaughlin, I'll just put here and put, you know, a question mark and other out of district I'm going to go ahead and move on to the out of district placement reports. See if we have them and can get them and I don't know that other, you know, do other, um, our district placements even have this kind of a thing. Do their boards put this together or not? But. Is that okay? Great bullying. We did just pass a new policy, which will be one of our next I believe bullying is an actual report, and I believe it is statutory. Maybe, well, we can confirm that. Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, but thank you. Discipline. Definitely want that, especially after the thing we did. Man. I'm sorry, I'm getting so many alerts for trying to run this meeting. So yeah, I'll add that. And both of those I believe are, the discipline I believe is a canned report from DESE that, I mean, obviously we don't have to make it look like they can report. And bullying I think is a similar thing. Before and after school, I think that's sort of along the same lines as community schools, the fee structure, enrollment,
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent, thank you. The student representative report, I saw this on, I think, two other school committee lists. Paul? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. Thank you. That's excellent background. And I'll look for an existing older report sort of to give a sort of some context there. Food service. I feel like this is obviously the financials. It's also gonna be participation rates.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great, yeah. there's definitely a lot of need for more looking into what's going on in food service and making sure we understand. The PTO reports, we've had those before. I think we can just leave that as is. The access testing report, is that the WIDA results?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'm gonna delete that because it's down there further and I'll put that in the access results.
[Paul Ruseau]: No.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes, I'll give that a much better name because I know I forgot it as well. Department reports, I have this generic thing because I think many of the departments give a report. Some of that is during the budget season. I'll just leave that for now. We are out of time and I just want to try and plow through these real quick. Technology report. We get something along the lines of this during the budget. And many of these reports may end up being part of the budget process. But I know that in the last budget process, we were very concerned about all the gory details about our technology and end of life and all that. So we can plan. A health report. This was a major topic last year. And I do believe that next year, You know, the issues around how many students have not been vaccinated once they can be and all that other business will become a new, it will become the new measles, mumps and rubella and conversation. So I figured we should get it on here. The burn report, which I know needs a better name, because sometimes even finance people are like, what's that? This is, I have an example from the shore. It says, you know, last month we spent this much money, the budget was this much. percentage of our year to date utilization. So we know early on if we are burning through money faster than we expected. And of course in public education, things are always wacky. So sometimes you might spend all your money in the first couple of months for the year or all of it at the end of the year. So it's not quite as simple as it would be for like a normal business, but EKL send out, I've never seen this in my life. Superintendent, what is EKL, do you know?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll take the EKL off.
[Paul Ruseau]: Safety report. get that I think every December and, you know, the content of that we'll have to work on. The grades 5-6 transition middle school lottery report and plan. I think it's a plan, frankly, but there is usually a report as well. Transportation. Boy, lots of money there. Chapter 74 updates. again, the wider, the pre-budget. There's probably gonna be a bunch of different things here for budget. I didn't get into those at all. And the budget legal notice is, I'm not even sure that is a report. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you. Mayor McLaughlin, did you have your hand up?
[Paul Ruseau]: Now, do we, the CPR, hi there, Ms. Bowen, I see your hand up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Of course, now I finally figured out what it's called.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry, I'm not following. Is this part of this report? You're giving me data elements?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay, that's fine. If you wanna just send those to me, we're over and I wanna let people run. I will share this document with the members here so we can have another meeting once we've really filled it all the way out. If we can fill it all the way out prior to our next meeting, I will make this just one of the items on the agenda. Member Graham, are you able to unmute? No, let me do that for you. Okay, now try.
[Paul Ruseau]: Several like two or twelve?
[Paul Ruseau]: Just go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent, I like those. Those are my three. Thank you. Does anybody else have any last moments, any last comments? You can certainly email me and I will share this with everybody here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there a second? Second. All right, member Graham. Yes. On the motion to adjourn. Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: members. So yes, three in the affirmative. Thank you, everyone for attending and getting this going. I think this is an excellent an excellent effort, and I think we're gonna Have, uh. The results are going to be very helpful, I think to everybody. So have a good evening and this meeting before you disconnect.
[Paul Ruseau]: Try. Thank you everyone. See you soon.
[Paul Ruseau]: Her audio isn't working.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Paulette Van der Kloot.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to, um. Member McLaughlin probably does not have a pad for the vote pre printed pad with our names, but you can write what it is and then do the votes on that. Um, so I just, um, want to make sure that one that Susie or Lisa or somebody is taking the votes down and not relying on those pads.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, we have one. This is an email from Sarah Florence of Marion Street in Medford. I hope this. Hello everyone I hope this message finds you well in these strange times. I wrote last spring in support of the resolution to change the name of the Columbus Elementary School I was surprised by the length of the debate, but the solution ultimately passed. I understand that this issue is not the name change. It's not anyone's top priority at the moment, but I also feel that you made a commitment to the community to make this change. I have missed multiple deadlines. I would appreciate an update. Whether still be a committee to choose the new name. Can we still expect the name change this summer? Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, actually, I apologize. I'm too early for what I wanted to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. A couple of questions and then there's also several emails, but I'll let those come after everybody else has spoken. I know that you're still working out the logistics around the reflex testing when somebody in a pool is positive. I'm just wanna be, what I'm hearing that has been worked out is that we are depending on families on a Wednesday or over the weekend to go get their kid tested. And I don't, you know, It's concerning because some families may not do that or be able to do that. But my question is, let's say there are 10 people in the pool test, one of them is positive. Are we allowing those 10 people back before they have all, if one of those families does not go get a reflex test, are they allowed back in our building?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, I have, uh, if there, uh, did other members have questions just cause I have a couple of emails. I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is an email from Jane Hamill on Maynard Street in Medford. As we all watch with horror at our increasing infections, I have been so grateful about the testing program at the schools. Thank you for making that happen. Is it possible to get information about participation rate and number of positives? I'm specifically interested in seeing the percent of students per cohort per school who have submitted their paperwork and percentage of students who actually participate any given week at the high school, since it is up to them to remember to go rather than the middle school where they are actually get called to do it. And the number of positive cases identified per cohort. possible to get the information before school starts on the 14th and the 20th, and after that on an ongoing basis, such as every two weeks, it would help ease my family's concerns about heading back in during this surge. I will forward the specifics of that email since that was probably a lot to digest.
[Paul Ruseau]: That'd be great. Thank you. I do know that the committee has, I mean, in numerous meetings, we haven't made a motion per se, but we have asked, you know, for the percentage of students. I thought we had asked by grade level and school that had submitted their paperwork because I, Ms. Ray will know this number much quicker than I could do a Google search, but 80% is not a number that is considered acceptable to... My understanding before we began all this was it was 90, 92% or something. That was really the number we needed to be safe. And 80%, that's not anywhere near that, frankly.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have another email, Mayor, but I think Member McLaughlin's hands up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I actually just had a quick thought question of my own, actually not related to the emails. We are sending out the communications to seek parents to sign this. Are we also, are we receiving, affirmations that we will not be getting tested? Are we getting a positive declines? And are we collecting those? And if so, what do those look like? Because I'm worried about, you know, when my son was in elementary school, we got all of his notices once a year when we emptied his locker. And, you know, I just worry that, you know, do we have families who are still completely oblivious because we just are communicating with them in a way? And if we get a positive no, we can take them off the list and work the list of those that haven't responded directly. But if it's hundreds of people, then it's much harder to work that list. So that's my question.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have just one more email, I'll get that done. Hello, my name is Leticia Rocha at Mystic Valley Parkway. I have the following questions regarding the public health updates provided. How often will students and staff have access to testing? Medford is at the high risk level with 394 cases in just one week. School transmission occurred with Brooks teachers. I am aware that there are multiple measures being looked at, but what are the levels of these metrics that would trigger remote only learning within a school district or just within a school or district wide? And how many weeks do we need to be in the red before action is taken by administrators or guides?
[Paul Ruseau]: I hope nobody's recruiting you because I will take action. You're not leaving us ever. Thank you so much. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you for the report. I just want to get, you know, down to the details a bit, which I realized putting the carpet before the horse here, but I just want to be sure that when we, I'm assuming equity audits do not cost, you know, $80 and that you can be sure to include that in our budget. I think the committee's commitment to this requires us to prioritize this. And, you know, with so many dollars that, with only so many dollars, that means this, if we decide is more important than something else, we need to have the opportunity to make that statement and support this work. I just, you know, to expect that you just will magically find the money somewhere in some hidden closet, which doesn't exist. I don't want to put that on you. I think it's really important that you let the committee support you and the work that this task force is doing. So I just want to urge you to think about the timeline around the budget and make sure that if something is going to be needed for next year, that it's actually spec'd out to the dollars so that it can be included. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: There is a person with his hand up, Adam. I don't know who that is.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't know if we have negotiations. I just wanna ask a question about when we will begin contract negotiations for contracts that are up this year. And if that's what we're gonna talk about tonight, then that's fine. But it seems like the teachers, the MTA contract is up and we have not begun any negotiations of any sort and I'm quite concerned.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just want to be clear that when I first came into office, I was brand new and I just hit the rubber stamp button like most new members do. Even though I thought there were things that we should have done different, it was just too late. So I kept notes of the things I thought we should have done differently. And I hope we don't get expected to hit the rubber stamp button just because it's a COVID year. Because I'm not really interested in that myself, but thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: We have, let's see. We have one email dated The 16th, there were a couple I think that came in after our last meeting. This is from Maureen Ronin of Winter Street. According to the last available MCAS results, only 35% of third grade students are meeting or exceeding in English language arts at the Columbus Elementary School. With the exception of the Brooks, the other school's scores are not much better. Students should be taught to read in school with evidence-based reading instruction. private and experienced Orton-Gillingham tutors charge between $100 and $230 per hour. Diagnostic testing is between $3,000 and $7,500 and it should be done frequently. This is not affordable for many families. Literacy should not be reserved for students that have families with resources. Literacy is a right. I am asking you to make literacy a priority for Metropolitan School students. I am requesting that the superintendent have a literacy outcome goal on her evaluation. Evidence-based reading instruction harms no one and is mandatory for some. Megan McLiman, not clear on her address. She actually submitted the same language, so I won't repeat it. but she did start her message with, as a parent of a second grader with a learning disability, I am quite disappointed with the poor support my child has received from the Columbus School. I have been forced to resort to outside tutoring at my own expense. The challenges of COVID have put new financial stress on my family and I fear I can no longer afford this critical tutoring. She deserves every opportunity to learn to read. The school is not educating her in the ways she needs. I fear she will fall further behind. And that is all I have. Let me just check messages before I say that. That is all I have tonight. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you very much, Mayor. This is from Leticia Rocha of Mystic Valley Parkway. I had the following questions and a comment. In a recent communication, the superintendent mentioned They were forced to transition the Brooks School building to full remote mode due to circumstances that were specific and unique to that building. What exactly are those circumstances that led to the Brooks School to go full remote? It is important that the community at large is aware as cases continue to rise in the city. There actually are four questions. I don't know if I should just take the questions and get the answers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Question number two is, in the state as a whole, a total of 591 students learning in-person or in a hybrid plan tested positive in less than a week, from December 10th through the 16th, as did 418 school district staffers. This is the second week in a row where these numbers rise dramatically. Science has proven across various studies that community transmission rates influence school transmission rates. Since the city of Medford has had 571 cases and counting in the last two weeks, how will the district keep up with these rates when rates that we all know will only rise as the winter continues?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, Mayor, shall I continue? Okay. There's just two more questions. Thank you, sorry. The superintendent spoke about all students coming back in January, which is an incorrect framing that does not reflect the families who have chosen fully remote education. This framing sends a clear message to families that are already apprehensive about the quality of remote education decreasing once all grades are in the building. Remote students are simply not the administration's priority. And I'll just add the last part of the email real quick. Sorry, I follow up with regards to the Brooks after Ms. Ray's statement that the seven staff members at the Brooks who tested positive over a 12-day period could be school transmission. Can she clarify whether it was school transmission or not? Also, how is is specific to the Brooks building, is this not something that can occur in other district buildings as well? And that's the end.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is always exciting to get money, and I appreciate that Cassett has and, um. The Italian consulate has has been able to help us out, especially since the ending of the funding earlier in the year was a bit of a I just feel it's necessary to ask, are there any stipulations other than that this is spent on AP, there's no year two expectations or any reporting requirements? It's a lot of money and I just want to understand that it truly is, there's no strings at all.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's wonderful. Thank you so much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, absolutely.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi, thank you for the presentation. I have to admit confusion. It seemed that I wasn't on the agenda, so I was a little confused by that, but so that all seems like really important information for the vision committee to consider when they do their work. And I'm glad that we have actually put it all together on a list. I think that that'll be helpful for them. Just wondering, so are we moving on to the policy to fill out the required six items that we have to hand off to the vision committee?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was there and my memory is that it was, let's do a vision committee. And that was as far as we really got on what we meant. I think this committee can decide what we mean and what was bent then is sort of not relevant. It certainly would be good if it was, if there was a clear statement, I'd be all for like, let's dig it out. But my memory was there wasn't a clear statement. And so now it's time for us to do it. And twice in the last, Earlier today, as well as in February, I sent a clear statement of what I thought as a sort of a starting point for what that item B, which is the assignment the school committee wishes the committee to fulfill and the extent and limitations of its responsibilities, which is in our policy. This is the essentially the scope and charter, what is it we want them to do. And, you know, I just drafted something since I felt it was important to that we could have something to respond to if you obviously if there are other Other ideas, that's fine too, but mine is pretty short. It says that the Medford High School Vision Advisory Committee shall work to understand and state clearly the possible options for providing Medford with a high school that can suit our educational and other needs for the next 50 years. The options may only include those that will be carbon neutral or better. The advisory committee shall provide quarterly reports to the school committee with a presentation at the conclusion of service. other than the part about carbon neutrality and the setting of a, you know, what's the window of time we're talking about here? 50 years from now, I'm guessing building technology will be so remarkably different than today that it seemed like a good timeframe, 50 years, that we've gotten 50 years out of this high school. So, you know, that was just something that I put together and it was purposefully only really two points that are important to me is that we are not thinking in five and 10 year increments. We're thinking 50 years and that we're not building something that will continue to destroy the earth as we just built a police station way up on the air. Why? Because it's gonna be flooding by the time this high school, if it was for 50 years, by the time this high school finishes its service. So I get a little nervous about going any more specific because as member Graham said, I don't have any of the technical skills to know whether or not renovating and all that other stuff are necessary. But I also feel very strongly that we shouldn't be deciding ahead of time based on what we think the financial situation of the city will be in two, three, four, five, 10 years from now, when if there was a new high school, for instance, construction doesn't start a year from now. I mean, we could be the richest community in the state. We couldn't begin from now and have a groundbreaking a year from now. So I think the financial part should be, here's what it would look like cost-wise. And then we get those back and we in the community look at them and decide, okay, well, I mean, we can or can't afford this or what option do we want? But I don't know what those options would look like. So that's for me is where I feel like we need to start.
[Paul Ruseau]: It was a direct response to countless complaints about bathrooms that don't function. I mean, we didn't even get into the fact that barely anything of that building is ADA compliant. I mean, You know, my son is just there this year, so obviously he isn't really there, but there's not many people in the community that don't think that the physical structure is in need of a lot. It was not in response to the education that's provided in any way, shape or form is my memory.
[Paul Ruseau]: I didn't see him. Member Ruseau. Thank you. Um, yeah, I'm just going through the approved policy on this advisory committees to the school committee. So I mean, I just want to be clear. I have no intention or interest in providing what the vision is. That was sort of the point is the community will decide what the vision is. The community comes together and says, knock it all down and put a bunch of trailers in. That's what Medford really wants, which I can't imagine, but let's pretend. Then that's what the community wants. I'm on for two year terms, just like everybody else here. This vision needs to be something that the community has agreed to. I mean, certainly the spark was about physical plants. I completely agree with Member McLaughlin and Paul and Chad and everybody else who's spoken that that's, you know, the physical plant is, you know, a building is a lot more than the physical structure and how it integrates into the community and what do we include and what do we not include. You know, MSBA, you can't build a pool with MSBA. So, you know, those are really hard questions that we have to answer. We can't build a building that is bigger than MSBA will allow us. MSBA is the Massachusetts School Building Authority. They fund school buildings. We can't actually build a building as big as that one that we have now. So we would have really important and hard conversations around the Medford Family Network and preschool and all these other things that are in our physical plant now that absolutely there's no way that the new building could be funded through the normal structures and include those. So those are really important things, but I think the community should decide that. I mean, the school committee, obviously we have a role here, but I don't have any interest in providing my vision because my vision is pretty much straightforward and simple, knock the whole thing down, pretend there's a limitless amount of money, call Mr. Bloomberg and he'll just write us a couple billion dollar check and we'll be all happy. Unfortunately, that's not reality, but, But that's why I think that, first of all, it does need to have a lot of people on it, and I don't know how many. I want to also be clear that I firmly and very strongly believe it cannot be majority employees of the city or of the school system. It must be majority, not us, because this is not the principal's vision. This is not the school committee's vision. This needs to be the city of Medford's vision. Because if we end up with a vision where the only thing they come back and say is, we've got three options. They all involve knocking the building down and doing an override or whatever that thing is called when you get a loan like that. They're the ones who are gonna have to sell it to the community. I mean, they have to vote for it. You know, we're seven votes or however many of us live in Medford, we can't accomplish that. So the community needs to be 100% behind whatever the heck that vision is, because they're going to have to pay for it. Actually, no matter what the options are, they're going to have to pay for it. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information. Point of information. Point of information, member Rousseau, then Mr. DeLeva. Thank you. Part of the policy, I just wanted to provide this, I realize not everybody's necessarily read the policy, but Part of this is that the, when you say the committee, Mr. Fallon, I just wanna be clear, the committee being the advisory committee, we have to give the advisory committee a certain set of authority to request reports from you and whomever else, buildings and grounds, and not have us be in the middle. We can't be in the middle of every time the advisory committee says, well, what's our heating bill? It can't come to school committee and get on the agenda, because this will be a 10 year project. So I agree with you completely. I just, when you said the committee, it's the advisory committee, not us. I mean, that should be making these requests and getting what they need. Sorry, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanna be quick. That is, I don't, That is certainly a way to do it. And I don't think it's a terrible way, but I would say that by providing what that statement is first, I know if I was looking to volunteer, I'd wanna know what am I volunteering for? And I think if I was being told I was volunteering to participate in a vision, figuring out what our high school would look like. And all I cared about as a community member was how to make sure we actually even have a planet a century from now. And if you told me that the vision included that we will only consider options, and again, I put that on there, that we only are considering carbon neutral or better options, that would excite me as somebody who was like, all right, I can participate in this because I know that's what I'm going to be doing. If you ask me to be involved and you don't tell me what it is exactly, well, I mean, there's just a lot of other things, especially for volunteers to participate in. And I think that if we, for instance, ended up with a statement that says it needs to be carbon neutral and we don't end up with anybody who has, you know, has a education in that background or does that for a living, then it's going to be just endless, like finding consultants. And my opinion is this and Google searches when we could really make that much quicker if there's an environmental engineer, whatever the proper titles are. So, I mean, my preference is definitely to put that forward first so that those people who are volunteering can say, oh, I do care about that. That's just my preference. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes. You know, unfortunately, open meeting law is, this is an example of where open meeting law is truly a bit of a pain. You know, ideally we'd all have a Google doc open and we'd do a bunch of editing and we'd all come up with something we liked as a first draft and we'd come to the meeting and we could talk about it. And that would be against the law, so we can't do that. So, you know, how to accomplish drafting language as a committee, It's, it's awful. I mean, so, you know, I think that you know that that is part of why I had drafted something because I couldn't envision how to do this. But I think that if know, if the superintendent reaches out to individual members, the sort of the weird exception here is the superintendent's not an elected official, she can reach out to all of us and try to understand what each of us wants and in a vision, in a in a charge statement and try to come up with something she thinks will work for all of us, as long as she's not like, well, Paul said this and Nia said that, you know, that wouldn't work. And I personally feel like she could definitely do this work if she's okay with it or wants to assign it to someone. And that would be my preference, because honestly, if we just try to do it in a meeting like this on Zoom, I just feel like we're gonna have seven more meetings.
[Paul Ruseau]: I feel like we have a lot of options. Um, and, um, I guess, you know, for me, it's like the, the strategy group, it seems really relevant. Uh, the equity group that, you know, the equity subcommittee that I have seems relevant, the buildings. I feel like they all end up having a piece of it. And, and, um, I think a really good charge statement can't be four pages long. Uh, you know, when we ask for applicants, one page is good. And that's going to include everything you're going to fill in. So I mean, anything more than a paragraph is probably too much. And I mean, I don't have any evidence that that's the right amount. But so I just feel that if we send it off to the various subcommittees, they're either gonna all add their spin, you know, the strategy group is gonna think all about strategy, buildings and grounds are gonna think all about physical plant, the equity, the subcommittee that I have will add several sentences about the importance of equity and understanding how we get different people in the community involved. And then this charge statement will be so long that people won't even apply because they won't have time to finish reading what it is we're gonna ask them to do. I mean, so I just, I feel strongly like it needs, I mean, I feel strongly it needs to be as short as possible and as, I don't want to say vague, that's not really the right word, but not as non-prescriptive as possible. And, you know, sending it to subcommittee means the subcommittee will have to meet. And just like the full committee, not even two of those members of the subcommittee can open a Google Doc and work together. They have to, maybe the chair does it before the meeting, and then they can talk about it in the meeting, because the open meeting law does apply. I hate that, but I did ask Howard about that last year, because I was very confused how we could work as a subcommittee with open meeting law. So I just feel like it'll just make it so that the subcommittee will meet, then they will have to send it to the full committee. And then we will all have something to say, and then it will go either back to the subcommittee, to a different subcommittee. I just think we'll be in March before we even come close to a statement. So that's just my opinion on sending it off to a subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I might, mayor. Yeah, I mean, the policy statement, our policy says that the assignment the school committee wishes the committee to fulfill and the extent and limitations of its responsibility. So yeah, I mean, that's why I think that it's probably not actually as hard as we're thinking it will be, because, you know, we will probably have to debate things like, you know, Paul's all about this, whatever the options are have to be carbon neutral. And if everybody else, if not a majority of us agree, then that comes out. But, you know, things like keep it under $150 million, like those aren't gonna be in the vision statement probably because that's really just so perspective.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. And I'll paste it into the chat. Is chat open? It is. Let me just paste it in first so I can find the text. The Medford High School Vision Advisory Committee shall work to understand and state clearly the possible options to provide Medford with a high school that can suit our educational and other needs for the next 50 years. The options may only include those that will be carbon neutral or better. The advisory committee shall provide quarterly reports to the school committee with a presentation at the conclusion of the service. And it's worth noting that there are six sections that we have to fill in. One of them is, The first one is like, how long are we asking them? And my suggestion was we just say a year with a possibility of an extension of six months. And then section C asks for the resources that we shall provide to the advisory committee. And in my suggestion, I said the superintendent shall provide reports as requested by a majority vote of the advisory committee, unless the superintendent believes the report request is burdensome. Should a report request be considered burdensome the advisory committee may request that the request may request that the request be placed on the next school committee agenda for discussion and consideration. resource request shall be considered on a case by case basis and made to the school committee at the next scheduled meeting. So in that I was envisioning, you know, if the advisory committee once fully constituted recognizes that, you know, we need, we really, let's pretend they need to have a site survey done by a company that'll cost $20,000. and that they, without that, they don't feel they can move forward. I'm just making that up. They would obviously have to come to us and say, we need this, can you pay for it? And then there was a section E, which was about, section E is one of the most weird sentences. I won't read the whole thing, cause it's quite long, but I essentially think what it's trying to say is, you know, it's around conflicts of interest and making sure that we don't just have a vision committee consisting of all of the staff of the buildings and grounds department, or, you know, that wouldn't be a conflict of interest. And the last one is section F, which is responsibility for release of information to the press. And my suggestion was the chair of the advisory committee shall be responsible for press contact just so that you know, with any kind of a committee, everybody will not agree all the time. And to keep things nice, it would make sense if one person is the press contact. So that's what I had.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're on. I must object. I must object. I can't.
[Paul Ruseau]: You're muted, Jenny.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I did. Thank you. There's an awful lot to digest here. And without getting into the issues around the pandemic, I was curious about the placement of computer science and computer programming in the list. I know that there are some courses that are in the math department, some that aren't. And I was also curious about how young are we going to go with actual computer science curriculum? There's plenty of evidence, I think, Kindergarten's fine. We can start in kindergarten. And if we wait until high school or late middle school, then what we have is the people who know how to program taking classes so they can get their easy A's. And that's not really the goal of any of this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So getting back to the issue of the falling behind that the pandemic is causing, I feel like there's different situations in the elementary school, kids that are staying in elementary school, I feel like, I mean, you could tell me I'm wrong, but I feel like the opportunity to get them where they are and move them forward to try and catch them up or at least keep them progressing is one thing. But if you're finishing Algebra 1 and you're taking Algebra 2, the Algebra 2 teacher isn't teaching algebra one. So I feel like there's these cutoffs and this progression in the later years that are just seem more challenging to figure out. Do you expect the geometry teacher to teach whatever the typical course before that is? And so are you having conversations in your department about what you're gonna do there? And do you feel like the staff you know, I don't know how many teachers there are. I don't, I don't know if the geometry teacher is only a geometry teacher and doesn't know how to teach algebra, but you know, are you having those conversations and what are your thoughts? Because I just was reading the news today. It's not a good scene. It looks like next fall, we are definitely going to have no kids that are going to be vaccinated. And that's just terrifying to imagine that we're going to enter the next school year, either in hybrid or whatever. And I'm just a bit concerned about what are the options? Do you need something from us to try and help the teachers?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That makes me very happy and I'm not surprised. I just really needed to hear you say all that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to add, I'm really excited by this curriculum roadmap or whatever it will be called or is called because I think that You know, one of the things that none of us, of the school committee, and obviously the educators don't want it either, is to, you know, wait for a parent to knock on our door or send an email saying, hey, we're teaching kids from a 1987 psychology textbook, what the hell? You know, and, you know, once we have everything on a map, then the school committee can actually pass a policy saying, we're gonna take things in order, not based on who's making the loudest noise at that moment in time. And we can put this to bed as an actual problem to solve. I mean, there will always be situations where, you know, a curriculum has to change out of order because of the state's frameworks or because somebody releases something truly, you know, innovative that everybody wants to get on. And we don't want to wait five years from now, but being able to have everything on a map that all the stones have been turned over and we can say, you know what, this is the policy of the school committee that, you know, when a textbook is expired or that that's the one that will get renewed next year, I think is really important. But as Fiza, Ms. Khan mentioned, you know, sometimes the textbooks can get very old and still be the best option, which is, we could always hope for that to be the case for a lot of things. That's the cheapest option. Thank you all for this. This is really an excellent conversation. I appreciate it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, well, we can wait a minute. What should be done soon? Do you know? I mean, she's playing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Not sure. I sent her the document yesterday, so I don't imagine that'd be that much to really talk about today. Hopefully. Good, how are you? You didn't put a tie on for us, I hope. Because I didn't even get my suit jacket out.
[Paul Ruseau]: That is exciting. All right. I guess we should get started, just because I believe there's another METPR community media access that starts right after our meeting, so we want to make sure to be done on time. So I guess I should move the agenda. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm going to call to order the Rules, Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting for today, which is December 9th, 2020. Please be advised that on Wednesday, November 9th, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., there will be a rules policy and equity subcommittee meeting held for remote participation via Zoom. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and the Governor's March 15th order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place, this meeting of the Medford School Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. specific information, the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the City of Medford website. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on channel, contact channel 22 and Verizon Channel 43 at 4 p.m. I'm not actually sure if those things are true, those last two bits. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or call-in number to join via Zoom, https://zoom.us.j.91471710270, or you may call Let's see, 301-715-8592. The meeting ID is 914-717-1024. Additionally, your comments or questions may be submitted during the meeting by emailing PRUSEAU at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment. The agenda for tonight is one item. Our meeting objective is to continue to work on the school calendar 2021-2022 with specific attention paid to observations of holidays. I guess I will take the attendance. Member Graham. Present. Member McLaughlin. Yeah. and a member or so present, three present. We have quorum. So I did send out a link to, I took the existing policy and I wordsmithed it into a more modern format. I suspect the old one was not, Google Docs probably didn't exist when it was written. And I'm gonna just share it since not everybody necessarily has that. If that sounds okay with the members.
[Paul Ruseau]: share screen. Is this too big on everybody's screen? Or does zoom make magic? see it okay good so um this just follows this is the uh proposed new policy um it is we have an existing policy um which i will include in our packets um which is the icica policy um I actually forget how they give IDs. So that is the existing policy. This is an update using the format that we have started using the last couple of years. The name of the policy is the school year, school calendar policy. I didn't actually make that up. So the purpose aims to provide as much planning time for our students, families, and staff, and to ensure compliance with legally mandated structured learning time. This section here, unless anybody wants me to, it is pretty much the same text. It is the same text as the old policy, except for the inclusion of that. We will do it in November, which we actually previously approved at the school committee meeting, if memory serves me. We just made that, somebody made that motion or I made that motion and we approved it. It started in November, but it's actually part of a specific policy. And that's this language here. I actually don't necessarily agree with it, but it comes from the state. So it doesn't matter what I think. It's pretty, the biggest thing I disagree with is that recess does not count as time and learning from a social emotional perspective. That's pretty hard to stomach, So the big addition here is the observance list. And after our last meeting, we did have some conversation around naming of things. And I think that's very difficult. And there's no perfect words. So right now, it's called the observance list. It identifies important dates as variable or static, meaning they have the same date every year or they vary. have to be looked up. Static observances occur on the same day each year. Variable observances occur on dates which vary from year to year and must be looked up each year prior to the publication of the observance list and creation of the school calendar. Further observances are optionally categorized as no school, excused absence, or blocked. Blocked observances are dates when exams cannot be scheduled, major projects cannot be due or assigned, and events associated with Medford Public Schools should not be scheduled when possible. I did want to briefly mention this when possible because we had I felt like after the last meeting, we were pretty serious that blocked meant blocked. One of the challenges I realized is that there are many sports, for instance, that might have a Friday night sports event. And if an observance that we consider blocked is a variable date observance, it may end up being on a Friday. And we can't say a football team isn't going to show up to a game. because the way those are scheduled, they're scheduled, in my understanding, in three-year blocks, or out for at least a year, I think three years. So I added that language. I wonder if anybody has any comments on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that's a really, You know, without going through all of the events that happen in a year, which is probably 200 or 300 of them or more, I feel like it's hard to know the answer to that question. You know, it's like, you know, the clubs might schedule events, you know, the student clubs.
[Paul Ruseau]: And, you know, I think that it, It's a good question. I don't know. I don't really know how to handle that or answer that question. I think that if we start with when possible, we sort of give a little latitude here. And then in future years, if we find out that some club is like, I don't care about these holidays, and they just keep scheduling events that are always landing on very important days that we said are blocked. You know, maybe we do come back and even add another category, like instead of just blocked, we have like really blocked or soft blocked and hard blocked.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think with the when possible, it'll give us a chance for that to play out. I think just publishing the list every year will give club leaders and anybody who's scheduling any event, at least they'll be able to go to the list, look and go, all right, look, that is the first day of Passover. And I'm not Jewish and I would never have known that. So why don't we pick a different date?
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct, yes. They would be sorted by the actual dates. Initially, I had this all based on the 2021 calendar, and then I realized this date will move above that one, and this will move below that one, and so the order became impossible. I don't love this, but I found it, I thought it was better than creating a situation where, you know, the superintendent's office goes through, adjusts all the variable dates, and then we have things out of order because nobody was thinking about it. At least this way, there's not going to be any question that you've got to actually do the re-sorting every year. And then evacuation day should be a no school day. Did you just add the end, Jenny?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. We'll get rid of it. Thank you. Elections and primary days. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, so maybe I should just add a sentence here. You know, this list does not include elections and election days and schools. Yeah, I think, you know, each year there's a different number of primaries or not. It's putting it on here would be a challenge. I mean, how many would I put here? It could be, you know, in a worst case scenario, we could have one primary per year, every year. And then the election.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Thank you. That's great, Maurice. I appreciate that. there's a sorry apparently I had some background noise I know exactly what it is
[Paul Ruseau]: That's nice. That's cuter than mine. Mine's playing a video game. Anyways, so let's see. So, you know, I've sort of written a little thing that I'm gonna read as well about like, you know, this isn't perfect. There are two categories of omissions I feel like I've come up with. There's no Sikh holidays and they do have lots of holidays and there's no native people, indigenous peoples. dates of observances in this list. And so what I'll do is I'll just sort of like, when I introduce this to the floor, assuming we approve it, I will actually say, this is a beginning and urge the public to identify omissions and frankly, any errors that we may have in here. Yes, Melanie.
[Paul Ruseau]: And- Do you know if that one's always April 2nd or is it- Yeah, it's static.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. You said April 2nd?
[Paul Ruseau]: What was the other one?
[Paul Ruseau]: Down with an S, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's one of those, it's a whole bunch of things where it's like, is there an S or not?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And what was the date?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's good. That's smart. All right. So, yes, so. All right, so are there any other questions, comments, suggestions? Melanie?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. Well, I don't want to make this the shortest subcommittee meeting that's ever happened.
[Paul Ruseau]: Lisa hi.
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe there is one. I just kind of ran out of, can't go really just knocking on the door and walk in.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, Reverend Wendy certainly was looping in everybody she could. She did include the, they have a group email list, I guess, because every time I reply, I reply all and I wasn't able to send to it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will send her another email just to ask her and then, you know, whatever we approve tonight, if I do get response back, I will just amend it at the meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: And does that mean state employees?
[Paul Ruseau]: And, you know, certainly, you know, in years where we have horrific snow and the snow day situation gets, I think after surviving that snow again a couple of years back, I think we hopefully won't have any problems like that again. But, all right, thank you. That's a good catch. And, you know, all the members will have a chance to go over it in their packets as well.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes. Did I share this with you, Susie?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. So are there any other comments or conversations to have? Is there a motion to approve this?
[Paul Ruseau]: Second. second all right i'll take the roll call on that member graham yes member mclaughlin yes member so yes three in the affirmative uh the uh policy recommendation will be sent to the school next school committee meeting i thank you everyone this is i think melanie has another motion though 27. Let's get it under 30. But this will get to the next school committee meeting. Thank you all for your work. Is there a motion to adjourn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau? Yes. Three in the affirmative. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you all. Have a lovely evening.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: We do, thank you, Mayor. We have a request from Joanne McKay of Court Street in Medford who would like to speak or would like to make a statement on behalf of the Roberts Elementary School.
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe she is on.
[Paul Ruseau]: find her, Peter?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, Mayor. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. We do have an email that came in, and it's, I think, fine. It makes sense to read it after the superintendent's comments. It's from Campbell Tacey at Lawler Road in Medford, who I believe is a student. Hello, I just wanted to make a comment and commend the school committee and the administration on finally giving high school seniors a return date for school. Despite what other citizens have shared today on the call, offering hybrid as an option has been proven safe by the data. As someone with a passion for science, I appreciate an administration that is willing to listen to science and the data and get kids back in school. Thank you so much for your months of work. And on behalf of my fellow seniors, we are so incredibly excited to be able to attend school on Thursday. Thank you for all you've done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, there's another email, and it feels appropriate right now. It's from Irina Shumway, Walgreens Street, and she is asking, can we please get an update for return to school for other grades at the high school, if that's available?
[Paul Ruseau]: For the other grades.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you for the report. Ms. Wray, how many close contacts, are we keeping track of how many close contacts we have identified for each positive?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That would be excellent to have. And I guess my sort of corollary question there is, are any of our positives ever having a close contact count of zero?
[Paul Ruseau]: That they've been into a building and we're saying that the close contacts is zero?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When you do get those numbers, could you get them by grade level? I'm just having a hard time imagining, you know, a kindergartener, a first grade teacher having zero close contacts, unless kindergartners and first graders are different than when I was that young. So, I mean, it would just be helpful to not just have like how many, of our how many close contacts, but for the ones that have zero close contacts in particular, I'd like to know more. I mean, I feel like that requires a level of adherence that sounds more like a surgical suite than it does in elementary school. So I'm a little surprised that there's zero for anybody. So if you can provide that, that would be great. And then my other question is, so cohort A students that are, sorry. Did you want to? No, no, go ahead. Sorry. That's okay. The cohort A students are, of course, mixing with the cohort B and the cohort C students, because that's the way it works. So when a cohort A student is positive, are we contact tracing to both cohort B and C?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then that makes sense. I was just confirming. And then my other question was around our protocols on cleaning. I don't remember every graphic detail, unfortunately, of our plans. Um, you know, we were going to clean between classes coming into a room. And so I'm just thinking, like, if a third grade goes to the art room. And then they go back to their room and then The next period arrives and that third grade another third grade class has to go to that same art room, I mean I think it's three or four or five minutes between. classes, how is the classroom getting cleaned. Between groups of students.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, we have several emails if everybody else has done.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to respond briefly to miss Lucy's point. I think there's like an elephant in the room and that is trust. and it is not about whether I trust you all or the rest of the committee trusts you all. It's about whether or not the individual families have any reason to trust us. And the reason I'm so interested in close contact counts is that we trusted the state, well, we tried to, and then they just moved the goalposts. Well, listen, we can move the goalposts on contact tracing too. We can go from 10 people on average contact traced and being considered close contacts. And this make it, if over time it becomes we only get one or two or zero is the normal. for the number of close contacts, that's moving the goalposts. So I think families and myself, I have kids and a family, I wanna know that these metrics are consistent. I mean, if in September or October, the number of close contacts on average was six, and then in December it's four, and then in February it's two, I'm gonna say trust isn't really appropriate. So the elephant in the room is trust. All of this is based on trust because families can't go to school, we don't have cameras so we can all watch what's going on. And I know I want evidence that makes me think that the trust is deserved. It isn't about whether anybody here is a good person or doing their job. I think there is data that can be used to make giving trust a rational thing, because the state and the federal government, they certainly had fallen flat on any reason to believe government should be trusted. And we are government. School systems, every employee of a school system is part of the government. So I think it behooves us to care about trust explicitly. And this, in my mind, is one way to make that happen. So that's why I just wanted to point that out.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have three emails I forgot to read and they're related to this so I should read them now I think. There is actually one that I'll just read it it's short it's from Sharon Hayes of Ripley Road Can you please clarify when the parent survey that was discussed earlier is due? I believe the superintendent said it's due tomorrow. If so, can you please extend the time to respond? Many parents at the Roberts School have not yet received the survey.
[Paul Ruseau]: The next one is from Jamie Taylor of Burnside Street. Good evening. Question. Parents do not need to get their child tested. They can simply have them quarantine at home. Therefore, no contact tracing of the student happens, correct? As an example, I test positive. I pull my daughter from school, but I don't have her tested. Who is to say I didn't get it from her? What about her teachers or friends at school? Please correct me if I am wrong. Also, we are going by the honor system, and we can clearly see that this isn't working. We had children come to school Monday after Thanksgiving, after coming from out of state, and after attending large family gatherings. Teachers are all are doing all that we can inside the building. We need the community support once those kids leave the building. Schools are a part of the community. So to say it's not in schools when we aren't testing 100% of the students seems hard to swallow. If anybody wants to respond to that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have one more email. We were done with that one, I think, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. And the next one is from Leticia Rocha at Mystic Valley Parkway. A few questions. As Ms. Douglas and Ms. Kay mentioned, in the last seven days, MedBird has had 295 new COVID cases. What exactly is the city's capacity for contact tracing and how will this apply to schools? And I'll just do them one at a time rather than trying to expect everybody to remember them all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. What is the current Medford positivity rate without the Tufts tests? I don't know if we have that available right here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. According to DESE records, a total of 527 new cases of COVID-19 were reported among students and staff in Massachusetts public schools over the past week. Framingham Public Schools, for example, have now gone fully remote because they found school transmission occurring in their buildings, given the high rates of community transmission occurring broadly within the city. With Medford reaching 295 new cases in a week, what is stopping school transmission from occurring as it did in Framingham? And this is especially important to consider as seniors enter in-person learning, seeing as they are effectively adults in their ability to spread the virus and have higher freedom interacting with the community. A recent study has found that the case rate among high school students nationally is nearly three times that of elementary school age children. And I have not heard this addressed at all from the school administration side, aside from offering testing that is not mandatory.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I will get to the last two questions. We received notification today. Did I unmute? Sorry, yes. We received notification today that the MCAS for 11th grade students was postponed instead of occurring in January. What is the reason for this postponement?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And the last question is, when does the school administration intend to design a plan for school closures to avoid a sudden shutdown like what happened in March?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, sorry. When does the school administration intend to design a plan for school closures to avoid a sudden shutdown like what happened in March?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's the end of the emails for now.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is exciting. I just have a quick question about, I think it was slide two, and you don't have to bring the slides up, about referring a positive or a presumptive positive or whatever the right word was, forgive me, to the pediatrician. Why would we not just simply take advantage of the in-school testing that we're already gonna do instead sending them out. I mean, pediatricians' offices in general don't seem to be terribly interested in having lots of kids coming in if we're gonna literally be testing them anyways.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, and but if they get a positive in the rapid, we will then do the PCR?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so they'll get the same contact tracing even if they don't go home and get a PCR?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I'd like to make a motion to approve this and to send this to the Race, Policy and Equity Subcommittee meeting for review and additional recommendations.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I know I have received numerous queries from the public and teachers and parents about what are we going to do with snow days because the Department of Ed has sort of given us the freedom to do whatever we want with them this year. And certain districts are taking the approach of doing away with them and turning them all into remote, full remote days if the superintendent determines that it's not safe to come to school or And then I've also heard from parents that are interested in, well, if it's a really bad day, do we want the kids to have to just sit on the computers all day or do we want them to actually go out and go sledding or dig out the snow if they should have that option? But yeah, so I think that it's clear that there's an expectation that we have a new policy or a policy decision on this. MASC, the Mass Association of School Committees did, tell us that we should make a determination what we'll do. I don't feel particularly strongly in any direction on this. And in fact, there may be a middle ground somewhere. And I was hoping that the superintendent could really lay down her thoughts so that we can hopefully all just agree to it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly think it makes it, for me, it's clear that you'll call a snow day if it should be a snow day. In some districts, they're literally saying there will be no snow days. We can have the blizzard for 76 and teachers will be expected to just teach their kids at home remotely. no matter what cohort they were in. And that, I think, is concerning, because as somebody did recently mention, kids have lost enough. Why can't they just have a snow day and go sledding? And I think that's a pretty fair statement. I mean, hopefully, we do not have what we had, the Snowmageddon or whatever it was called a few years back, where it's just the whole month of February is no school, which was a different problem. But thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, thanks for remembering that email, Kathy, because you said I sent it, and I was like, did I? And I went to the Summer Institute last summer, two summers ago, I guess, when we could actually go anywhere. MASC had a session on the new evaluation method even though it wasn't yet released and it was in fact such a dramatic change from the way they had been done before. That was part of why I emailed like we got to get on this because how we've done in the past is sort of not actually terribly useful anymore because they've changed the whole system. And to be clear uh the old one there was like pages of these questions that we were supposed to answer as members and you know and and the feedback in the sessions that I the session I went to was many of the questions were things for which we didn't have any way to answer so the new system is dramatically better but it is in fact a whole new system so um it will take a little effort I'm just glad we won't have to fill out that pages long set of questions for which we looked at them and we're like, how do we have an answer to these questions? That was awful. So do we need a second on this or?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi, Mayor, thank you. I did have a brief conversation with the superintendent about this, and I know that it is not as simple a task as it might sound. And, you know, the funding is, all over the place and some of it's in the city side. But I think that, so I had a date in there initially. I don't, the date isn't critical. It certainly is critical to know this before we start that budget process. So if there's no questions, I would hope we could just approve this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, it's accurate, although I don't think the superintendent is the finance person, so I would hope she's not doing it herself.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did use the ad hoc report policy and form. It was just, it was compiled into this, format on the agenda. So I did follow the full policy, Kathy, that you and I worked on, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just, you know, I feel like, you know, when I submitted the ad hoc report request, we have, when we worked out the policy for this, or the rule, its procedure, you know, the background was really important. And, you know, for me, the background here, I think you all should know, is, you know, as dark as it sounds, we cannot be confident that we will not be dealing with COVID come next September. Nobody's even begun vaccination trials for children. They take much, much longer. So if we need to plan for next September, looking at anything like it did this September, we need to plan when we do the budget, not in August when we discover that, oh, it looks like, you know, so and so is not going to have a new vaccine to us. So, you know, some of these things like this feel like they're very early, but I don't know about anybody else, but I really don't want to have the budget mess we had last year where it was like the 11th hour where we had to pass it or else to send it to city council who had the 11th hour to pass it or else. Cause that wasn't any good. It wasn't good for any of us, the city or anybody. And I feel like come the spring when we go doing our budget, the number of unknowns, they're not gonna be terribly different than they were last budget cycle. So I say, let's just suffer early. so we can make corrections rather than suffering at the very last second, which is what we did last time, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: There we go, thank you, I couldn't unmute. Thank you for the presentation, I appreciate it. I just wanted to disagree slightly with something that was just said that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is being more conservative. When I read the CDC guidelines in bold, they say that their indicators are dependent upon the implementation of school and community mitigation strategies. DESE does not have that dependency. All measures make no sense at all without, according to CDC, if you don't have a quality implementation of the school and community mitigation strategies, then the other measures are sort of unimportant. DESE just seems to be okay with just numbers. So I think that the CDC guidance is definitely far more conservative in that regard. So that's sort of where I want to go in our conversation. I won't just do all the talking, but I need to understand better our contact tracing. There's three pieces to this. There's the testing, there's the contact tracing, and then, of course, the isolation. And I feel like the testing is sort of a moot point. None of us can control. I know the mayor is working to get more testing and to get students tested and that'll be good. But all of that is simply a proxy for the assumption that we have a random surveillance testing of our community and that doesn't exist. But contact tracing to me seems like the big elephant in the room. I don't have metrics that tell me how good ours is, how fast it is, if we have enough staff, how much contact tracing could our staff do before we run out of hours in the day. So You know, the CDC is clear, metrics are dependent, meaning literally everything above that must be based on a implementation of school and community mitigation strategies. So I feel that that's the necessary part that we need to understand. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't want to let the other members have questions, but so I just had a set of questions. I'll just start to do a few and then let other people speak. How many contact tracers do we have for the school system and the city adjusted for FTEs? Because I know the nurses are not full-time contact tracers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. What's the software we're using to track contacts?
[Paul Ruseau]: So our nurses are all accessing MAVEN. They're entering individual contacts, indicating whether they've followed up with them, the whole nine yards.
[Paul Ruseau]: So how does the nurse, within a building do contact tracing for a student that is not in the school building?
[Paul Ruseau]: So my kids are both full remote. If one of them becomes positive, how does the nurse at their school do contact tracing?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll ask one more and then let other people talk. So how many cases can you contact trace before you're out of capacity?
[Paul Ruseau]: I can't put the other one with questions, but I have more. I can just keep going.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So Ms. O'Connor, on the CDC website, there's a whole page called Evaluating Case Investigation and Contact Tracing Success that recommends a long list of canned reports to evaluate how the number and percentage of contacts that are being interviewed within 24 hours, the number of cases that are closed in a period. I won't go through the list because it's a substantial list. Are we doing, are we actually creating those reports? And I don't know if those would come out of MAVEN or if MAVEN is even designed to handle this stuff, but the, you know, I read through every one of the, I don't know, 30, 40, recommended reports for evaluating our success. And I couldn't find any that didn't seem really important. I suppose that's why they're on the CDC website.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know. MAVEN probably wasn't designed to answer this very large set of questions. So I'm not surprised.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I had a question for the superintendent. How do you know that contact tracing is happening 100% of the time for the students?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. One of the slides we have, which I don't, there's that one. One of the slides in the slide deck Excuse me. Oh, I'm sorry, not that one. Too many slides, not that many really. The COVID-19 positive case count that you showed, I guess one of the things that was confusing to me was that all hybrid kids are also remote kids. And so I felt like this should actually be adjusted for days of in-school versus days not in school. I mean, we have hybrid kids when we send whole classrooms or cohorts home because of an infection, they don't suddenly show up on the remote group. They're still hybrid kids. So I just find these, you know, nine total for hybrid, nine out of how many kids? And out of how many days in school? Because every hybrid kid is also a remote kid. So, I mean, these numbers are, certainly important, but they don't provide any context or scale. I mean, if we had 18 remote kids in all, and all the rest of the kids were hybrid, then, I mean, DCF would probably be involved if literally every remote kid was positive. But we don't, these numbers imply that twice as many kids who are remote are becoming infected, but that doesn't tell you that twice, what percentage of the kids are actually remote versus hybrid. And the hybrid kids, we have the hybrid kids that are not in yet, they're in cohort that is considered hybrid.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I guess my question was, the eighth graders were the last group in, well, Let's just take the eighth grades, for instance, who just one of the last middle school, one of the last groups to come in. They have been in cohort B or C since school started. So if I'm an eighth grader and I tested positive in the middle of September, I am a hybrid kid who tested positive. I was nowhere near a building because I wasn't starting for weeks and weeks. So I just wanna know that the nine truly only means kids that have actually gone to the school building, or are we just simply dividing by cohorts, in which case this doesn't actually, this doesn't help us understand, does going to school have any impact?
[Paul Ruseau]: I every meeting, we are continuously the school committee members, all of us are being attacked, frankly, that we don't want schools open, that we don't trust the administration, that we don't trust the Board of Health. And literally, if you want to go watch all those videos again, none of us are saying that. It is offensive, and it's got to stop. Either it's not a school committee member, and there's probably in this entire nation that doesn't want kids back in school. And it's a drum that is being beat endlessly, and it is offensive.
[Paul Ruseau]: Points of personal privilege are not to be responded to. I just wanted to reiterate that as part of Robert's rules.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I'm sorry, there's five questions from the public as well in email.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure, thank you very much. This is an email from Megan Bayer, I'm sorry, there's a long email here, sorry. All right, here we go. Sorry, there was a few responses that got mixed in, one second, okay. Hello, I am ready to provide my public comment for the November 24 school committee meeting. I may not be able to attend the meeting due to conflict. As you meet to take another look at the metrics, that are used to determine whether to continue the hybrid model and if and when to move to full remote, I continue to urge you to prioritize in-person school. At work today, I had the benefit of listening to public health experts from Harvard University and Boston University. Their message was clear. Even in light of the current COVID-19 cases in the state, students should be in school in person. These experts shared that more of the kids who are testing positive now are in full remote school. then are in school in person. They share that the science supports that with the safety measures our schools have in place, schools prevent transmission. Even without the access to these experts that I have, I was afforded through my job. One does not have to look far to see that this is an issue. that that is an opinion shared by public health experts. Many recent articles have included interviews with or opinions from public health experts and children's health experts who have shared the opinion that students should be in school in person. For example, in The Globe on November 12th, the chief of infectious disease at several local hospitals wrote in support of in-person school. These expert opinions are consistent with the latest guidance from the governor and from DESE. Accordingly, the metrics that Medford schools use to determine whether to have students in person or whether to switch all or any cohorts to full remote should take into account the expert opinions that students school should be school be in school in person, and it is spread within school, if any, that should drive decision-making rather than community spread. In addition to looking at the metrics that guide whether school is remote or in-person, it is important to have protocols for responding to any COVID-19 cases or suspected cases within a school, which I believe Medford Schools has in place. DESE released revised protocols today. DESE's protocols include protocols for potential school closure, partial or full, or district closure. DESE's protocols for school closures require that the school administration consult with a local board of health in making these decisions. In some situations, school administration shall consult DESE. Medford schools should look to DESE's protocols as a model for its protocols and its metrics that guide school decision-making. Additionally, DESE's instruction to school districts to consult local boards of health highlights the importance of relying on the experts in making these decisions. I encourage the school committee to rely on, to look to and rely on the city's director of Board of Health, the school department supervisor of school nurses and the school administration. The school committee is a body, hired superintendent Edouard-Vincent, and now the school committee must trust and reliance on superintendent Edouard-Vincent. On that note, I know that not everyone may agree on what the next step should be in light of the rising COVID-19 case numbers in the community, but I do know that everyone cares deeply about our students and wants what is best for the students. I commend the work of the school committee, the school administration, the administration, the city administration, the teachers, the school staff, and our community. Some communities around us still have not even gotten kids back in school in person at all, including high needs students, and Medford schools have grades K to eight in some tech programs back in the buildings. Medford teachers all started the school year remote, and then many had to adjust to their grades transitioning to hybrid. And that clearly required a lot of work to the teachers, but the teachers did it and continued to be there for their students. Medford schools have gone back and looked at the full remote cohort and looked at what changes can be made to make that option work better. Recently, I have heard fellow parents speak favorably about their kids full remote school. Medford schools have been offering testing to teachers since August and are going to be offering weekly surveillance testing to students, which seems like a very valuable tool to keep everyone safe. This late summer and into the fall, many communities around Medford had increases in the numbers that sent them into the red, but from mid-August until November, Medford's numbers stayed in the designated yellow range, despite fears of the school committee back in August. Medford community members have given of their time and resources to help Medford students by conducting school supply drives, making masks for students and teachers, and recently conducting food drives to help those in need. The community has done a lot for our children during a difficult time, and I hope that we can continue forward on this path and not have to take the step backwards of having the schools go full remote. That option would be a step backwards and would disadvantage many students, and at this time, based on expert opinions, is not a necessary step. Okay, the next email is from Jim Donovan of Boston Avenue. School committee members, I know that the subject of tonight's meeting is the matrix the MPS will work under going forward. I implore upon the school committee to make in-person learning its number one priority and adopt a matrix that allows the MPS administration the flexibility to decide on school closures. As Governor Baker has said on numerous occasions, the only data on spread in schools is that schools are not COVID spreading events, that children are actually safer in a monitored school environment, and in-person learning should be our main priority. To my knowledge, we have not quarantined any cohorts in the MPS. The only recent incident I'm aware of is four teachers quarantined after having lunch together in the staff lunchroom. This information was provided by the Mass Teachers Association website. we should prioritize our successes and continue to move forward, move towards getting all our children in schools. Please keep in mind the success our surrounding private schools have had with full attendance with arguably inferior school structures and ventilation. Next one is from Leticia Rocha of Mystic Valley Parkway. Will the positivity rate without cuffs be utilized for decision-making? You also used data that was not from the last two weeks. Therefore, the 1.11 positivity rate is not reflective of the current situation. This should continue to be publicly updated as part of your dashboard. It was announced that all MPS students will have access to COVID-19 testing. Is this for any student or only students that have entered the school buildings and exhibit COVID symptoms? How will asymptomatic transmission be addressed? And administrators have not made clear what is meant when they state that there is no school transmission. How is school transmission defined? I don't know if anybody wants to answer any of those from Leticia.
[Paul Ruseau]: Two more. This one is from, thank you, this is from Mike Burgholzer of Lewis Street. Could you touch on the Tufts data again? According to the Tufts website, the Medford-Somerville campus tested 7,196 times last week. If we were to double that to represent two weeks of testing, we are around 14,000. Do 2,500 of those 14,000-ish really only live in Medford? Also, according to the state, Medford had 16,428 tests the last 14 days, while Malden has only tested 7,994 times. I hope we are testing twice as much as neighboring communities, but that seems like an outlier statistically.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's one more, but it looks like Allison wants to actually respond. I don't know. I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I have one more question. One more email, excuse me. Let me just hope that's true. Yes. This is from Gary Klein of Sagamore Avenue. I wanna thank the mayor, the members of the committee and the administration for all your hard work. I also particularly appreciate the teachers who are working so hard under the difficult circumstances to teach children effectively and creatively. I have the following questions and comment questions. Has there been testing of students who are attending school in person? Is there a plan for such testing? Isn't it possible that a lot more than nine students have had COVID in the schools? Absent a meaningful testing program, do we really have evidence of any kind whether the virus is spreading in the school? And I can read his comment first, unless somebody wants to answer that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. All right, and then the comment is, in light of exponentially increasing numbers of cases in Medford this month and the expectation that the numbers will continue to increase, it's fair to extrapolate a situation where schools will need to close, either by an order from the governor or because the school system itself decides to close. We need a plan that anticipates that eventuality so that parents get enough notice to arrange for childcare and to plan for managing their children's remote learning experience. If schools close, we don't want to have a situation like Boston or New York City in which parents get little or no prior notice. We also need a plan that does more than we did in March to transition kids, including kids with special needs, to the best possible remote learning plan. Are those plans in process? I understand the importance of in-person learning, especially for students who are already present in the schools. Does it really make sense over the next few weeks of surge to continue to bring more kids back into the schools? Thank you for considering my views. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not sure what we're voting on either. I mean, somebody has to write it into the minutes. Does the person who has to write it into the minutes know what they're writing?
[Paul Ruseau]: She may not be able to unmute.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Stacey?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Are you saying that there's a certain number of hours every year that already are happening for every teacher?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, so do we have teachers that have never taken anything related to mental health that we've offered?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, good. Because the word offered gets me uncomfortable. Sort of like looking optional, that will address racial equity, which is a different topic. But it can't be optional. We can't have teachers that are just deciding that, like, that's not my issue. I teach math.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I guess going to mandatory gets complicated because mandatory every year for every teacher. If you're the first or second or third year in the district or as a teacher that perhaps isn't too much, but 15 years of the same mandatory training probably would be not a good use of anybody's time. So I just, I feel like there's gotta be something between mandatory and optional. I don't know what that's called.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's a quorum. We can do whatever we want, but me again.
[Paul Ruseau]: You got a second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will always lose, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm here, hello.
[Paul Ruseau]: Paulette?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, thank you. I just wanted to make sure that we do pay special attention to funding. I just want to make sure we don't slide back into thinking PTOs are an actual way to fund anything. They are not. They're a source of dramatic inequality. And any ideas of relying on the PTOs to fund anything should be rejected outright. If we're not going to put it in the budget, then we are not supporting it. period, end of sentence. So I obviously very much wanna do all this, but I wanna make sure when we say we wanna do this, that we're not just relying on parents that can afford to make donations to their school's PTO, which is not all parents and not all schools. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I completely agree and understand that sharing has happened and that's wonderful. But I will say that the school committee really can't pass a policy to do something that will depend on donations happening or not happening. Therefore, we really aren't supporting it if we aren't backing it up with a line item in the budget. We can say we're supporting it, we can campaign on supporting it. We are absolutely black and white not supporting it if it's not actually something we budget for.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. Sorry, there are a lot of documents. We are doing the November 2nd, 6 p.m. meeting, did you say?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just had, let's, I just took some notes on a few things. What was that? All my notes and none of them are actually corrections. So I have nothing to add, I'm sorry. No problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you. I got the wrong glasses on. That's why I can't see. So we met again on November 4th. It was a continuation of our previous meeting the month before discussing the calendar. And we did not finish creating our list. We will have one more meeting to actually put that forward to the full committee. We did make one recommendation that came out of the committee, and that was to move the, we have a current policy, which is that the committee, that the superintendent will put forward by May 30, May 31st, the new calendar for us to approve. And after discussion in the meeting, the subcommittee voted to move to the full committee to change that policy to have that occur in our first November meeting for the following academic year so that families can plan ahead. I'm sure that many of the members have received the same questions through the years of, hey, when does school start? When does school end? By people who are better planners than I know I am. So I'm always like, why are you thinking about next year already? So we did approve that. And so if there's a motion to accept that change to the policy, is there a motion?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, we have a list that we aren't really settled on that, whether it's an observance list or whatever way we're gonna end up calling it, which will list all of the dates that will be published each year. And there'll be a separate column that instructs the superintendent how to interpret that particular holiday. whether it has to be a day off from school or whether it should be, you know, the teachers and special events should not be scheduled on those dates. So it sort of lays all that out. And then this list can be used by the superintendent each November to go through the list, look up and, you know, a lot of these are, a lot of these religious holidays are based on a lunar calendar or other calendars. And so, you know, they're not like, you know, not like Thanksgiving, where there's a third Thursday of November, they change quite dramatically through the years. So there will be an effort, but it will be an effort of going through the entire list, looking for the ones where we've said no school, figuring out what the date is, and just using that as an input to the calendar. But that is not quite complete. So that will be the next thing that comes back to the committee. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Motion to approve the minutes, maybe?
[Paul Ruseau]: Roll call, please. Mayor, could I, I'm sorry. Yes, Member Ruseau. I just also wanted to, I don't have the recording for this meeting. There is on page two in the bottom, parts of the minutes, it says, Paul Rousseau, there's a sentence in here that I don't believe that's what I said. And if I did say it, I certainly didn't mean it the way it's written. So I'd like to just amend that to be whatever was actually in the recording. So right now it says, I believe in separation of church and state, but have come a long way towards respecting the faith of our community. I didn't have to go anywhere to respect the face of our community. I've come a long way to value recognizing each of these holidays and that that's an educational opportunity. But this sort of sounds like I came from not respecting the faiths of the community to finally respecting them and that is definitely not the case. So wherever that recording is, if somebody could update the minutes to what I actually said, I would appreciate that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Um, you know, I kind of would just emphasize a point that member Graham made about our intent to be involved in this playground resurfacing. Um, you know, on the surface, that was not intentional on the surface of playground resurfacing should not really cause much of a much conversation, frankly, from a school committee that's supposed to be working at the policy level. But, you know, I wrote this post on my personal page a couple days ago, because I was surprised to see the resurfacing was done. And what I said was, my children have finally been able to enjoy a part of the playground at their elementary school that has been broken longer than they have been going to school. I'm thankful to the residents of Medford for the CPA funds that accomplished this maintenance work that was out of reach for so many years. However, I ask that we as residents think deeply about our priorities, such that our schools have so little money that the playground is finally functional for my son now at the age of 14, and he's five foot nine, rather than when he needed it at the age of five years of age. I want to celebrate this work, but it is really hard. It is the unacceptable level of funding that leads us to a place where we celebrate basic maintenance instead of real progress for our children and their education. We have much to do in Medford, but it won't be free. And I hope we all will vote with our wallet. So our kids have the basics because the truth is they do not have the basics and they have not for more than a generation. So when we are concerned about resurfacing a playground, we're concerned about resurfacing a playground that there's no reason to believe that this resurfacing isn't a 20 year resurfacing. There's no reason in our financials. And frankly, with a pandemic in progress, doesn't look like it's going to get better. This is a resurfacing that happened at these schools that is going to be a generation before it gets looked at again. So I think it's really unfortunate that we have to care that much about fixing a playground and doing basic maintenance. And it's not why I ran for school committee. I ran to actually improve the education. And I think that's true of literally every other member, but you know, this Medford is not stepping up and has not stepped up for a generation. So we have to care and spend 45 minutes or whatever talking about fixing broken playground equipment. I just think it's unfortunate that's where we're at, but that's where we're at. And that's why I care a lot about the fact that we didn't stop and make sure it was right, because I do not see any reason to believe that within the next 20 years, we'll have so much educational funding that it will be just part of the annual budget to fix the playgrounds, whatever they need, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: We do, we have two. I will start in the order I received them. Thank you. This is from James Donovan of Boston Avenue. Here's school committee members. I submitted this email at the last meeting and I have not received an answer. I don't believe that most of these questions require research. I was hoping I could get a response tonight in a public forum. I've highlighted my original email below. It is my understanding that the MPS has purchased new Apple laptops for every teacher while many of the district students navigate remote learning with inferior Chromebooks. I have been told by a committee member that they were purchased with funds from the state for the sole purpose of enhancing remote learning. I was hoping to get the following questions answered at tonight's meeting in a public forum. One, and I will stop for a moment between the questions in case somebody wants to jump in with an answer. Number one was, what was the exact cost of the laptops and accessories?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, I'll just read the other questions and some of them don't require an exact dollar amount. So number two is, were they purchased with grant money? And if so, what was the total amount of the state grant and which grant was the purchase made under?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Number three is if the funding source was FY 2021 Remote Learning Technology Essentials Grant, how was the MPS able to circumvent the focus areas required by the grant, that being the internet access for students or devices for students?
[Paul Ruseau]: Could the funds have been used to improve the Wi-Fi at our schools, especially Medford High School?
[Paul Ruseau]: Number five, could the funds have been used to improve the remote learning academy?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, that was the end of that email. And I have one more email.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, my name is Latisha Rocha from Mystic Valley Parkway. I have the following question regarding the next steps in the hybrid plan for school committee members or administrators who know the answer. Vocational students are starting in-person classes and other high school students are meant to follow. What has been done to address transportation needs for high school students? A lot of low income students rely on the MBTA to get to school. The MBTA cannot enforce mask wearing or social distancing measures. So how is that this glaring safety threat being addressed by the school administration, especially as community transmission in Medford and beyond increases exponentially? Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That was a lot, as it always is. It's a lot to cover. The number of meals being served, those numbers were, well, frankly, quite depressing. I mean, are we even talking 1% or a 10th of a percent of meals typically served?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think that would be great to hear. We have on our later on in our agenda, we are certainly gonna be talking about hunger and the snap gaps. So those numbers were kind of hard to hear, frankly. 15, it's a tiny little number. 15 is probably served in like the first three minutes of school every day in a normal school year. My other question was around, actually we have an update coming up on the, public health stuff. So I'll wait on my other question. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The minus two days, thank you for your report. I know you're working round the clock, literally seven days a week. So I do greatly appreciate how exhausting this is for everyone in your profession. The minus two days though, confuses me. If I contract COVID today, and I get a, let's say two days from now, I go get a test and I'm positive. Minus two days makes sense. If I wait 10 days and go get a test, minus two days no longer makes any sense. So where does the minus two days come from?
[Paul Ruseau]: It just fails basic logic. So regardless of who says it, it fails basic logic. So, I mean, I will accept that that's the current recommendations. And if that's the current recommendations, that's what they are. And I recognize that when there's a huge number of unknowns, you have to set up something to work with. But it also is hard to not acknowledge that it is illogical. It is 100% illogical for an asymptomatic person who test positive, if they took a test every day, then maybe you could come to some kind of like two days make sense, but nobody takes a test every day. So, you know, this working back two days and then if somebody was interacting with that person three days ago, they don't get contact traced. I just find that to be a pretty massive gaping hole you could drive a truck through. especially for asymptomatic people when frankly there's so little known about them even today. So I just, I don't even know where to go on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I went to the CDC website. There was nothing that mentioned this two days backwards. And as much as I want to trust our state, frankly, I don't. They've given us plenty of evidence that trust of them right now is pretty weak. Giving trust to them requires evidence and they've given us the opposite of that. So, you know, the CDC, while I realize it's presently politically slanted right now, there's nothing I could find on this two days back thing. And so, you know, in my emails I did say, Can I get a reference? You know, I work in a healthcare organization. When somebody publishes something, there's a laundry list of references to the studies, or even, you know, when there aren't studies yet, but you have to make an action, there's an explanation. The two days back, I don't know where that's coming from, and I would like to know other than somebody told me.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I did find that. And the CDC seems to be completely mum on the topic of asymptomatic patients. Just searching for the words asymptomatic was pretty hard to find anything interesting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Yes, I actually used to stop the spread site and, uh, don't go on Sundays. Most of them are closed, except a couple on Sunday. And when people want to go on a Sunday, they go on a Sunday. The lines were shocking. But the site was free and quick. But I had a question about policy. I'm wondering if we need to have an emergency meeting. We have an approved policy that is on our website that says that when the metrics are eight cases are over in Medford per 100,000 residents, that we will be full remote for all students. I don't believe that is what we want based on the latest information, but it is in fact the current policy and I don't wanna be a bit of a jerk, but in a previous meeting was kind of thrown in my face. We don't want policy that the superintendent violates. That's a bad scene, a bad setup. And we at present have a policy approved by this committee that everybody should be full remote right now. So either we go full remote tomorrow or we have a meeting to fix this, because I don't think operating under a violation of the policy is the goal of our reopening dashboard. So I make a motion that we have a meeting within the next week to adjust these metrics to take into account the governor's newfangled definition of what he personally thinks is important so that we can at least not be in violation of our own policy.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I honestly cannot imagine that there are not a significant number of parents. I would be shocked if the unions were not interested in the fact that we were gonna go to a situation where we had no metrics for operating our schools in a pandemic. I did not actually agree with the metrics, but I think going to a no metrics seems a bit extreme, frankly. And I can't imagine we will not have our flooded inboxes and some angry union presidents who are like, we've been operating under these metrics that you published and said, and we were okay with that. So I just think going to no metrics right now seems pretty risky. That's just my opinion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Remember Graham actually asked a question that I thank you. Cause I had not fully contemplated the impact of Tufts on our, our positivity rate. So, you know, unfortunately Tufts is not publishing. They have their Medford slash Somerville data. So we don't know, is it 50% Medford, 50% Somerville? But if we just took 50% of the students and said they were Medford, that is 3,000 tests a week at a positivity rate of only 0.26, which is a, I don't know how many tests are happening in Medford, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and bet the majority of tests that are happening in Medford are happening at Tufts. you know, is this dramatically waiting and bringing our positivity rate down to the point where it doesn't mean a thing? I mean, could we, if we subtracted Tufts, are we at 4%? We can answer that question. What I mean is the Board of Health with actual numbers and like individuals can do the subtraction and get that answer. But I feel like it's a bit unfair to say we're at 0.97 when the bulk of the tests that are probably happening in Medford each week are happening to a cohort of people that are getting very low positivity rates. I mean, 0.26% is, I mean, we could really be happy with that. So what is our positivity rate? And I mean, the DPH site doesn't tell us because it includes this institution that's doing a great thing by testing a lot. but it's created this weird situation where I have no reason to trust that positivity rate unless they truly are subtracting all those. And 0.97 is non-student residents, which honestly, the amount of work and the fact that they had to delay release of that data now after Thursdays, I can't imagine they're doing that level of detail. So I'm uncomfortable with just rolling it back to do what the state says. I think we need real conversation with real data And I want to know what is our positivity rate minus the flooded Tufts number?
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information.
[Paul Ruseau]: you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Maurice, if that pardon me, Superintendent, if that is true, I will say that I can't find it. And the only place I can find anything is a reference to the October 15th one, which says that it will happen every week, but I cannot find that. So if that's true, it would be great if you could tell us where it's published.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, that's- Point of information, point of information.
[Paul Ruseau]: Nobody else in that class has it. Unless you tested everybody in that class, how do we make a statement like that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, member McLaughlin has the floor. You're right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I personally know of a case in one of our elementary schools for which the source of that child being positive is completely unknown. So stating that we know that every one of the positives in the school has been from a known source outside of the school is not true. And I take great offense that that is actually the statement being offered up. It is not true.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, the parents have been clear that they don't have any idea where the child got it. And the parents have been clear that nobody else in the family is positive. So the child was in school. This seems like an exact example of the opposite of what is being stated as 100%. And I'm sorry, but that's, the community needs to know that that is a pretty interesting interpretation of what I think are pretty simple facts.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have communicated that.
[Paul Ruseau]: No my motion was to have a meeting to develop a set of metrics that. I feel like I'm a bit conservative in this approach. And even I agree that metrics we have, we don't want to keep.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I would just keep it short to say to update our metrics to meet the current guidance. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, I don't really have a more specific, I didn't come to this meeting prepared to say, here's some new metrics, let's use these. That I felt should be a whole meeting with some time for us to get our heads in order and figure it out.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Member Ruseau. Thank you. I also did want to confirm that this is not about trust. This is about policy. And if we don't do this, then the schools have to go full remote tomorrow, according to our policy. It's not an opinion, it's not the mayor has any more authority here. Nobody in this room has authority to just keep the schools open in violation of our policy. So I think we should get our policy in order so that the superintendent doesn't have to walk this very weird situation.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi, thank you. Any better by folks? Just a technical question about the last sentence on the first page of the report that we received. I'm sort of embarrassed I don't know this, but are we not still in a declared state of emergency? I think you would know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, we are. Okay, good. I just because this, uh, you know this sentence unless we just unless we have a declared state of emergency, and we definitely already have one. So I just wanted to be clear that that was already the case. Um, I didn't have any other questions. This was excellent. Thank you very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I actually just have emails from the public, so I'll wait until the end.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, actually, I see Member McLaughlin's hands up. Do you want me to read those now or wait till the end? Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This question is from Amanda, excuse me, Angela Moore on Bynestream. Dear school committee members at MPS Central Administration, first and foremost, I want to thank you all for devoting so much time to our school district as we discuss remote learning and the Remote Learning Academy. That did not materialize for our middle and high school students. I can't help but feel a sense that the fully remote cohort, remote students, whatever label they now go by, are no longer a priority to the administration. I am in no way stating that teachers are not doing their very best to engage and teach all students, remote and hybrid. Teachers are shifting and pivoting their teaching as quickly as they can and attempting to make it go smoothly for all students. It's no secret Medford was way behind other districts when it came to being able to implement return to an in-person learning. As parents, we have made, excuse me, we made decisions with little to no information about what in-person learning would look like or how the buildings would be safe. The focus clearly became getting the students that chose hybrid back into the building, and rightly so. I'd just like to remind you all that the remote students are still out there. They are still doing their very best to stay on track, find a way to feel like they are part of school. They have made a social sacrifice, and from my perspective in doing so, they are hyper aware of the need to maintain safety protocols. These students want to be back in school as well, and they are the ones that are acutely aware of the repercussions of not wearing a mask and not social distancing. Given the confusion in our district regarding our own metrics and the new state metrics that seem to indicate remote should only be an option if our dumpster fire moves up a creek without a paddle, changing my students' learning model at this time seems uninformed. I am not alone as a remote parent feeling the pressure from not only MPS administration, but also from state officials to send their children back. Our concerns are still valid. Our choices are still made based on what we feel is best for our students and family. I ask that you recognize the value in our decisions and work to make sure the remote learning is adequately supported and remains robust and able to evolve. Sincerely, Angela Moore.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Farah. I have another email. Yes. This one is, good evening. This is from Kristen Gleona, Norwich Circle. Good evening. Would you please provide the current number of teachers granted permission to reverse remote teach as of today?
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I guess I was even gonna go up a little higher level. You know, if the call comes in from Marianne or the governor has a press conference at 11am, I want, I mean, this isn't even for any specific student population, I want to see a document that says, this is the exact order, who's going to do what, what are the You know, I don't mean the actual contents of the communications, a line item that says the shutting the schools down email will be sent, the shutting the schools robocall will be sent and Peter will do it. I mean, a plan is something you execute. So there are probably going to be 100, 200, 300 things that the superintendent and her staff need to figure out how to handle if there is a sudden shutdown. And all those items need to be in a list and they have to be, who's going to do them, what's the order, what's the priority, and you know, We can't have teachers reaching out to figure out how to adjust services for a student who's going to be full remote before they even found out that they're going to be full remote. So like the order of things really does matter. So I mean, I want to know that it's not like, oh, I forgot to do that, or I should have somebody do that. We can figure all those things out ahead of time so that the execution is as smooth as it can be. I don't have any delusions that the dozens or hundreds of activities that have to occur in very little time are going to be done perfectly. That's not the goal. But having them laid out so that the staff just kind of goes on full-blown remote control, like automatic. This is what we have to do because the governor just called a press conference and shocks Maurice into like, oh my God, I guess that's that. So I just, that's for me, that's what I need to see to feel confident that if, or perhaps when that happens, it is not like in the spring, which did take us all kind of by surprise. So we needed a few days to do this. And then the first week was kind of a what's up. I feel like it shouldn't take more than a half of a day to execute that plan. but it certainly is gonna take more than a half a day if we're not sure who's gonna do which part and when and what's the order. So that's why I seconded that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, thank you for the presentation. I think I know the answer to the question, because I think I asked it once before, but the 311 students, I mean, that number is really, with my own history around hunger, that's really kind of hard to comprehend that there's literally food that these students could use these cards for, and they're not. I think it's interesting that, sure, some of them have possibly moved, but I'm sure that the vast majority of them have not, and they're just not using their benefits. Am I correct that the identities cannot be shared with the school, and it's one of those awful snap different agencies problem where you can't tell us so that we can perhaps reach out? Or can the school district actually get the list and perhaps do some of that outreach?
[Paul Ruseau]: I was just going to say thank you. I'll certainly reach out to you about if there's anything we can get moving along on that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: is to review the resolution on the disciplinary practices of suspension pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020, excuse me, order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and the Governor's March 15, 2020, order imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Medford School Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. specific information and the general guidelines from remote participation by members of the public and or parties with a right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the City of Medford website. For this meeting members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link and contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite our best efforts, we will post on the city of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 22 and Verizon Channel 43 from 6 to 7 PM. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log on. or call in by using the following link or call in number. This is an awfully long introduction. And I will read just one of the Zoom. There's two different Zoom links to get here. HTTPS colon backslash backslash tinyurl.com slash YXZ64CY7. The meeting ID is 970-8865-8077. The passcode is 579751. And to find one of the phone numbers, you only need one, is 1312-626-6799. and then you would enter the meeting ID after that. The meeting ID again is 970-886-58077. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing My email address PRUSEAU at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting questions must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, and your question or comment. The agenda for tonight is the purpose. There's only one thing on the agenda. The purpose of the Rules, Policy, and Equity Subcommittee is to review the resolution on the disciplinary practice of suspension. I will read the resolution, which is going to be the shortest thing I've read so far. The resolution was sent to the subcommittee by the full committee. last Thursday, I believe, or I don't remember when our meeting was. Resolution on the Disciplinary Practice of Suspension, whereas Mayor Lungo-Koehn and the Medford City Council have declared racism a public health emergency, whereas Black, Latinx, and disabled students are disproportionately suspended, whereas suspensions harm students that are not suspended. Whereas dropout rates are higher among students that are suspended, whereas out-of-school suspensions increase the likelihood of juvenile arrest, whereas suspended students are more likely to repeat a grade level, whereas students that are suspended are not being educated, whereas school attendance is a critical requirement to receive an education, whereas receiving an education is a requirement of academic achievement, And whereas student achievement is the highest goal of all school committees. Now, therefore be it resolved that the Medford Public Schools, one, ends the use of out-of-school suspensions effective the first day of the school year 2021, two, provides for the continuation of a learning environment for every in-school suspension, ensures that two, three, ensures that in-school suspensions will not occur in isolation without instruction or rehabilitative counseling, Four, select alternative tools for use in disciplines such as restorative justice. And five, incorporates any funding requirements to ensure the implementation of the selected alternatives with fidelity in the next budget cycle. At this time, I will open the floor to anybody who has questions. Any members want to speak?
[Paul Ruseau]: If you all could raise your hands, just so I can figure out who to call on.
[Paul Ruseau]: Either one is fine because there's not 450 people in this meeting. Mr. DeLava.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Anybody else? Somebody else must want to speak. They all came. Ms. McLaughlin? Member McLaughlin?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I'm sorry. I guess it's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Apparently, okay, can I share just one thing? I have a lot of things open on my screen, one second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Everybody see that okay? So one of the questions I had after listening to Mr. DeLeva was, actually, it might have been Mr. Downs that mentioned that suspensions are, you know, in-school suspensions are treated the same because there's not an education being provided. I think the state is still definitely reporting them separately as distinct things, Mr. Downs.
[Paul Ruseau]: So are you saying nobody is tracking the difference between taking them out of the classroom and sending them to guidance and sending them home for a week? Paul, Mr. Delato.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Zoom. One second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Good. Thank you. I mean, my understanding is they're really, I mean, I understand that the law might say that they're the same thing, but unless somebody is telling me we never send a kid home and that they're always still on the premises, then there is a difference regardless of what the law says.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm happy to share their screen. I have it right here in front of me. It is definitely not zeros across the board. For in-school? They have student discipline days missed reported. So there's no, I can't know whether or not discipline days missed means, if you're saying we don't have an in-school suspension program, then these are all days that kids were not in the building. And then we're not reported at all when we take them out of class for two periods. Because that's not accurate.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm looking at Medford.
[Paul Ruseau]: In favor of in-school suspension or better yet, getting to the root of the cause because, my apologies. Correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you know where my phone is?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, go ahead. That's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I would, if I may, if we were equitably providing suspensions, I would be more than willing to have a conversation around how we can solve the problems that cause suspensions, but we are not. 62% of suspensions adjusted for race were not white people, and 38% were white people, white students. So that tells me, unless we are comfortable having a conversation around the suggestion that the black kids are worse than the white kids, which I am not comfortable with, and I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that's an accurate view, that we have two problems. We have the problem of how do we address kids that might actually need a suspension? which is what I hear you talking about. But I don't hear you talking about the fact that the primarily white staff notices the black kids doing the same things the white kids are doing, and they're the ones that get suspended. I mean, it's like, it's almost tiring that that needs to be repeated. And I hope that nobody's offended. And I also hope that if you are offended, you understand that you are not understanding the problem. But, You know, this, this problem is not the issue. First of all, your example of a knife. I mean, you know, I grew up in rural New Hampshire and I would have been shocked if any of the kids didn't in high school didn't have a knife in their pocket. That would be weird. And there wasn't a time, you know, long ago, perhaps even in my lifetime, when in some parts of this country, people brought guns to school and that wasn't actually call the police scenario. So, you know, what I think of as like suspendable behavior and what you think of and what everybody thinks of isn't the same. And it isn't the same for every child either. Which child is considered performing a suspendable behavior isn't the same child to child. So, I mean, My biggest concern right now is not whether or not a kid comes to school with a pocket knife. I mean, I'm not talking about a big Bowie knife that is intended to behead a deer. I'm talking about a pocket knife. If that kid's getting suspended, I would say that's already a problem. And I mean, I think if there's intent or any reason to believe that that knife is there for a violent purpose, That's a different conversation. But just the presence of a pocket knife, I mean, I think would be a pretty shocking reason to suspend, in my opinion. And again, everybody has an opinion, and everybody's opinion is different. That's another problem. So I mean, this resolution was intended to solve the problem that has not been solved with all of the good work of all of the good people in the school. And I do believe it's good work. This is not an attack on anybody, but it is still not getting better. And so I think that a new, looking at this in a different light of, okay, we aren't gonna solve the racial disparities in how kids are seen. simply by wishing it away. And, you know, we can all take anti-bias training till we're blue in the face, but unless you grew up under a rock, you're still going to see the black kids as the kids that are threatening. And so it's, I feel like it's my job on the school committee to figure out how to make sure that they're not getting suspended because these out of school suspensions are not just times where they're missing their education. I mean, they're dramatically increased rates of dropping out, which we need to rephrase that all together, but also the opportunities to be involved with the police are dramatically increased when kids are not in school. So I'll let other people talk. Sorry, Ms. McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's my understanding, my intent.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just a quick point. The Department of Ed data that we reported to them indicated that 81% of our out-of-school suspensions, students disciplined with out-of-school suspensions, 81% of those were non-drug, non-violent, non-criminal related offenses. So I would suggest if the feeling is that there's a threat involved, we need to take a hard look at how we're coding this stuff. because the story I'm hearing is that we're really concerned about the safety. Well, the safety of what? Somebody vandalizes the wall? That doesn't seem like a safety offense to me. So I would just ask that we, you know, as a note, realize we need to be really caring about how we report all of this data, because this is why we're here. If the data reported said that, you know, we were doing all these suspensions because people were trying to kill other kids. I wouldn't we wouldn't have this resolution and we wouldn't be having this meeting. But instead, it says 81 percent of the suspensions at the high school, at least, were for non-drug, non-violent, non-criminal related behaviors. That to me is chewing gum, swearing at a teacher, writing on a wall. I mean, I don't know what other other things fall in that category, but the vast majority are for things that don't sound like what you're all concerned about. And that concerns me. The other one thing I did want to quickly mention, and now I forgot it, but I'll come back to it. But I do want to let Ms. Moretti, who's been waiting a long time with her hand up, I apologize, speak. Can you unmute yourself? Great, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thanks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Superintendent, you would like to speak, I believe.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, I'll have, um, may go next then, uh, member Graham. Where did they go? Did she, he or she lower their hand?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to say one quick thing. When I was writing the resolution, I didn't just sit down and pop it out in a half an hour and call it a day. I mean, I did, I would say, many hours of research and read plenty of articles about how just banning it and calling it a day creates full-blown chaos and it's a nightmare for districts. And there are plenty of districts that have done that in California, for instance, where no resources and no planning and no alternatives were even considered. It was just the school boards over there, just like it might've been in the legislature, just said no out-of-school suspensions and chaos ensued. And often that stuff was even reversed so bad. want to be clear that this resolution was not an attempt to just, you know, stick it to you all. That wasn't the goal. The goal was to, as Member Graham pointed out, you know, if we pass this, it is inclusive of the requirement that we provide the resources, which I heard earlier from Mr. Peleba and Ms. Schulman that, you know, there was a program, it wasn't necessarily the best one, but then the resources just went away. So, you know, The committee has to be as committed to making this happen long after, if we pass this, long after this passes. Because we can't just forget at budget time that the restorative justice or whatever other program, that it's not free. Aside from the staff, literally there's a lot of costs. And I went to every single session on restorative justice at school committee conferences, on how to do it right. And most importantly, I was looking at what not to do, because every district seemed to have a story about how they screwed that up. And the theme among all of those districts that the biggest takeaways for how to not do it right was to not put any resources into it, to just think your staff is going to wake up in the morning and know what restorative justice is, or do it in one grade level and just hope it kind of just flows up. So this is not an attempt to just flip a switch, call it a day, and put a check mark next to our names that we cared. So I think Mr. Assistant Superintendent Murphy would like to speak.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Dave, Mr. Barker. I just would use the words implied disproportionality, I believe you said. Let's be crystal clear. There is no implication here. It is absolutely no question that it is disproportionate. And any argument against that, I would just love to hear.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. Thank you. Looking at the amendments on the screen, and then I will call on Ms. Rodriguez. You know, across the nation, I don't really mind that part. It does sound a bit defensive. It's like, let's be clear, it's not just a Medford problem, but I think what just happened to me. I lost that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. Maryse, was that yours?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, OK. Why don't we let Ms. Rodriguez speak now, since she
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Is there another, Mr. Downs?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think this is a really, really important point that Mr. Downs just brought up. You know, and I could never for a second defend, you know, suggest that we not defend victims. But I also want to remind everybody that I don't believe there's any spot in the law that says we can just permanently take a student and never educate them because they have become a perpetrator against the victim. They still have to get an education too. We're not talking about adults who can be just sent off to the prison and never seen again. We're talking about a kid who did something wrong to another kid. And looking at the data, there's been no sexual assaults reported. I find that hard to imagine. I'm guessing it's, again, more of we're not reporting it the way it really happens. And I find that really problematic. But when a kid does something to another kid, no matter how egregious, that other kid is coming back to school, whether it's tomorrow, a week from now, the victim doesn't suddenly become whole and happy and like it never happened. So if the approach is to use punitive measures against the perpetrator, and that's the end of the story, we're not helping the victims at all. Because first of all, the perpetrators are likely to be doing it again. So I mean, the short term problem of dealing with an incident can't be the whole plan. How do we make it so that these two kids who are in the same AP bio class are going to be able to be in the same AP bio class for the rest of the semester? Suspending one of them isn't going to make it easy on the other person, the other student, at all. I mean, they might feel better for a minute, like, yay, Johnny got suspended for doing what he did to me. that doesn't make it any more comfortable for the victims. And so I just think that focusing on, and that's the whole point of restorative justice. And that is just in the resolution, it is such as restorative justice. This is not prescriptive as to what the school system will do. I would leave it to the professionals to figure out what the right choice is. Restorative justice is one of several programs that are available and I have not evaluated them. And that's why it's not prescriptive as to what one gets to use. It's just the only, it's the one I've heard of the most. So, but, you know, the whole scenario that we have to be able to take the kid out that did something terrible, we're not talking about murder here. Like, and we're not, according to the statistics that we keep reporting, we're not talking about sexual assaults and rapes. We're talking about, according to this, the vast majority of these are non-violent, non-drug, criminal offenses. So that's not Johnny punched somebody in the face. That's not a rape. The vast majority of these kids who are losing their education and are having increased probability of ending up in prison are kids that are doing things that I'm betting everybody on this call has done all of those things, many of those things. So I just think We need to be careful with false equivalencies and drawing generalities. And I also think that even for those severe things, unless there's some kind of loophole I know of where we can just say, Johnny, you don't ever come back to Medford Public Schools. Good luck. That kid's coming back. And that kid's going to make the victim uncomfortable. So let's worry about that. I'm worried about that. My son's a ninth grader. Is he going to do anything wrong in his whole four years in high school? I'm sure. And I hope that we have a plan more than just punishing him. What about the person that got hurt? So who else wants to talk? Ms.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Murphy?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mr. Murphy. So I guess my question, and I apologize for not knowing this, but if we pass this, and of course you are suspending as required or allowed under statutory authority, and looking at the current Department of Ed dashboard, which is terrible, if anybody's not looked at it, you're lucky, is it a breach of any privacy rules for you to tell us explicitly what those suspensions were as related to how they were covered by the law?
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. I think if I'm not, speaking for Michael that just spoke, you know, I mean, having this opening, which is there whether we put that in there or not, is fine as long as we can have a, you know, trust but verify that the stuff you put into that category is in fact, we can verify that you truly put the right things in that category. You know, I don't believe that the reporting on the Department of Ed's website is actually, unfortunately, and I don't, I mean, it's such a terrible website that I'm not surprised, but they really should just have a, you know, a section for required by that statute 222 or whatever it was. a whole dropdown that just simply lists that. So those would be the ones that you have to report that way and that you don't have a choice on suspension or something. Unfortunately, they don't do that. So I, you know, I just, you know, it can't be that today the report shows that 81% of the suspensions are for non-violence, non-drug and non-criminal related offenses. And then we do this and two years from now, It turns out that we're at 80% of our suspensions are for violence, as if suddenly the whole population became violent overnight. So I think we're all on the same page there, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think we can agree on the last part of that, not on the first part. I mean, if the student has not been imprisoned, they still have a right to an education. I agree with that part of it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, I don't know whose hand was up next. I think it was miss member grams.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to let everybody know we are a little over time, so I will let a couple of, if you could be brief, Member McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: I will bring that up right at the end, because it's not that it's not relevant. It's, I believe, an entire meeting unto itself. Mr. DeLava?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mr. Murphy, did you want to speak real quick? Thank you. Thank you. And in the chat early on, there was a comment from Lisa and Michael about the issue of removing from the academic setting, which is sort of at the root of suspension from the academic, providing an education perspective, in that during our pandemic, What does that look like? I mean, if somebody is excluded from a class, my son, he had changed his name briefly in the Google Meet or Zoom session in the spring. And as a result, the teacher kicked him out, which was fine. But the teacher at the moment didn't know that, in fact, there was no way to add him back. And so he was without that class for a while until we noticed that he wasn't actually participating. And that was not an intentional type of situation that happened there. But the issue of excluding from the academic setting while we're in a remote educational situation, really, I mean, we would need several more hours tonight to go over that. That is an important topic, I think, that hopefully the administration and principals are talking to their staff about. What does that mean to mute students, to remove them from classrooms? These are issues that, from a purely academic perspective, they're the same as suspension. I mean, we probably would, nobody would ever call it that, but that's probably a fairly accurate analogy. And I'm going to bet we won't ever report that kind of stuff. How on earth could we? So I just think it's an important thing to make sure that is being talked about. it's, it's, it's, we're way over time. So I don't know that I can really, Superintendent have, have you all had conversations about this particular topic yet? Sorry to put you on the spot.
[Paul Ruseau]: And when I think about this particular scenario, it reminds me of the impact over intent is an important consideration here. I mean, I've been muted on a meeting and I didn't take it personally, but that doesn't mean somebody else being muted didn't take it personally. And when we're talking about young children, they don't necessarily just take it personally. It might really be a severe impact to them. And certainly, obviously, would impact their ability to participate. So I appreciate that you'll bring that up with your staff. Is there anybody who wants to say anything finally? Oh, we have to. So I don't have really a copy of the amended version. But if the members are comfortable with the amendments we've discussed, we can we can cobble those together in a document, send it in the packet, and then if we get it wrong, we simply can amend it during the meeting. So is there a motion to approve this as amended with the superintendent's changes and the reporting changes that member Gramp offered? And forgive me if there are other amendments that I'm not thinking of.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there a second?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. And member McLaughlin, I believe you have to do a roll call because.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Three in the affirmative. So the resolution as amended will be sent to the school committee for our meeting following the next, I believe is the 28th of September. And as with anything that we send up, the school committee is more than welcome to amend it at that time as well. So this does not necessarily make it set in stone. Is there any other comments? Is there a motion? Ms. Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. And Member McLaughlin, if you could take a roll call for. OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you very much, everybody, and have a nice evening. And good luck tomorrow. My kids are very excited.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Paul Rousseau, 22 Orchard Street, Massachusetts. I'm on the Medford School Committee. I'd first like to speak as a father. I don't appreciate the dismissive tone, the threats that I and other school committee members have received over the last 10 days, not to mention the threat to the Columbus School itself. The level of vitriol from some members of our community border on inciting violence, and that includes some comments from people that are on this Zoom meeting right now. Words matter. They are the weapons of a civilized society. And I suggest we keep them to words and not actually requiring the police to be visiting my home several times a day, which they do now, as they do to all the homes of the school committee members. Finally, as a father, I don't appreciate that these threats have forced me to have to have some uncomfortable conversations with my children and my husband. I also, as a Medford resident for 15 years, not that it matters, I agree. I've never really even locked my front door. Now my doors are locked at all times. And I just want to say that is the Medford that I think I actually live in, not the one that I thought I lived in. So now I'm going to speak quickly as a school committee member. And I have a few thoughts about what I've heard here tonight. I find it, first of all, I just want to find it amusing that anybody thinks a three and a half hour meeting is even remotely long. School committee meetings are eight hours on a regular basis. So I just kind of giggle at that. So I'm kind of light. But anyways, when I took office, I had heard from several members of the council, The school committee shouldn't be in the city council's pool and we shouldn't be in yours. And I fully support that. I agree both bodies have enough work to do without also trying to be involved in each other's work. If you look at the budgets for the last decade, you'll see an org chart. The mayor, the city council and the school committee are all on the same level. We don't report to each other. So why am I speaking then at a city council meeting? because I've heard several times tonight about the school committee meeting from Councilors either directly or indirectly. So here's what I have to say on some of those comments. The school committee does not have taxation authority or the ability to decide how much money we are given. That is the job of the city council and the mayor. So when you talk about the layoffs in the school department, I take offense- For your information, Mr. President.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, so I won't respond to that. Because there is none, Paul.
[Paul Ruseau]: I take offense and disagree that we are laying anyone off. The city is laying staff off. Literally every school committee member, and I would suggest everyone that's ever served, would add dozens of personnel every year. So pinning this on the school committee is unacceptable, in my opinion. Next, I would like to discuss the renaming of the Columbus School directly and the assertion that this has divided this community. I greatly appreciate the quote. Any time anyone says, we've never been more divided about a country that was legally segregated within many of its current citizens' lifetimes, I guess at least They're making it clear who their we is. Medford was redlining not very long ago. The boundaries of neighborhoods were carefully drawn to make sure as few black kids as possible would go to school with white kids. And that is not before I was born. Medford has not been united, never has been. And I think that using that Medford as this united thing, it's just, it's crap, frankly, pardon my language. I also want to say that I look forward to responding to any open meeting law violations that are filed against me. I have attended open meeting law trainings three years in a row as a school committee member during the school committee associations trainings. And I'm pretty confident on my interpretation. If you ask my colleagues on the school committee, they will all tell you that I'm obsessed with the open meeting law and following the process. I've received a call today from a senior member asking me a question about open meeting law. to have this body say anything about transparency when it was normal, if not on every meeting, if it was normal, if not on every meeting for up to 75 years, according to one of the members during their debate on this, that they would just add items to the agenda when they showed up. both in violation of the open meeting law and the opposite of transparency and access that I've heard a few things about tonight. So you just show up, add stuff to the agenda, talk about it, and the public hasn't got a clue. After I filed my open meeting law violation, this body had a meeting to discuss the fact that the city solicitor had agreed that you all cannot do that. And finally, apparently after 75 years, you don't just add stuff to the agenda when you walk in the room or show up to your meetings. I recommend that folks go back and look at that meeting. It was earlier this year. There were some members that were shocked, utterly shocked, and had intense disagreement that this opinion from the city solicitor was accurate. So I will not accept any critiques on transparency, access, or process from this body. Thank you. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have a question. Thank you for doing this, Christine. One second, I have to open my comments about this. One, two, three. And the fourth whereas, there is an asterisk in front of the word payments. Does that mean something or is that just an asterisk that got left in there?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm in the COVID-19 agreement schoolbustransportation.pdf. I know, there's so many documents.
[Paul Ruseau]: says, where is the Department of Development, DESE, and the Mass Department Division of Labor Services encourage districts to make asterisk payments?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, great. And then my other question was, Under section three, considerations G, my question was, and I don't necessarily think it's a huge deal, but is there any way for us to know that, sorry, my notes keep moving, that they have received any grants or loans, and whether or not they've had to be repaid or not, are we just gonna trust them, which I'm not saying that's not okay,
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. And then my last question is, when I hate the word when right now. I feel like the answer to when right now is the most ridiculous question. But when do you think we might know if we were going to be getting any revenues back? Considering we may be looking at some rough times ahead, every little bit of potential revenue coming in might become very important.
[Paul Ruseau]: For credits related to anything that they've received that's forgiven, any grants or loans that are forgiven.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. And do you know, would that likely come to the schools or to the city?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think, oh, and then just at the very end, obviously, it accidentally says Brookline instead of us at the very end of that document.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think I'm looking at the wrong report. I don't have a question on this. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I did find my question. In the documents required, there's an early childhood survey. Is that a survey that's like a standard or we write it right around the survey?
[Paul Ruseau]: Can we edit that survey if we want?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I wanted to see if we could add a question to it around whether a parent or older sibling has a diagnosis of dyslexia since 50% of kids who have a parent or child with a diagnosis of dyslexia absolutely will end up with that diagnosis themselves. And I just thought, as we address dyslexia in the fall, you know, capacity might be an issue, but if we have a set of kids that we, you know, should we be prioritizing some kids that have this known diagnosis in their family ahead of time? It seems like the right time to ask them that question, but maybe there's another appropriate place too. I don't know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, if there's another spot that it belongs or there's a kindergarten, you know, I understand. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much. I'm very happy to see this report. It's so important. I guess my question was, what does engaged mean? When I first read the report, I was completely confused how we could have more students not engaged than not contacted. I think engagement means something very different than contact.
[Paul Ruseau]: I hope that helps. That does help, except I feel like the numbers here are implying that there are no general ed students, i.e. students that are not getting special ed services, students that are not Yale students, that every one of those other students is engaged.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I'm trying to understand, so is there 106 other students that are not engaged, or is there 228 additional students not engaged, not including the special ed and the EL students?
[Paul Ruseau]: So is 228 the total population of students that we're considering not engaged right now?
[Paul Ruseau]: 350. Okay. I'm sorry. Yes. 228 plus 58 plus 64 is 350. Got it. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. After the last meeting we had, I had sent a few emails about getting some Wi-Fi hotspots purchased, whether through the school or the city, so that we could provide them to students that we've identified don't have Wi-Fi at home. I think that the ask that they get Wi-Fi, even if it's free for a few months, is really not very considerate of what it's like to actually be living on a shoestring. So I was wondering if there's any progress on looking at purchasing some of those. I mean, I'm completely unaware whether the companies that provide them actually would be sold out or not. But, you know, we could purchase them, which includes the actual internet service, and then distribute them as needed, and then collect them at the end. Leasing would probably be better, because we doubtfully will need a lot of those. long term. Has anybody made any progress on that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much. It was, you know, reading the comments and, you know, it was 53 pages, so it was a lot, but it was, you know, highlighting the stuff that jumped out at me. There was a couple of important perspectives that I thought I needed to call out. One was somebody actually had some – you know, I hadn't even considered that the pre-K staff would have really been included here as people doing – I don't really know how special ed works around pre-K, although I had it at my own home. My husband dealt with that, so I sort of didn't understand it. But the pre-K staff apparently is reaching out and doing stuff as well, which is fabulous and makes me really happy. And there was one other perspective that I thought, you know, one of the comments was about working from, you know, 8 in the morning till 5 at night, and, you know, my own experience with a child with with an IEP is that, you know, that was an early challenge we experienced where the 20 minutes of homework that came home was two and a half hours until we got on the same page with the teachers and the staff. But I want to make sure that, you know, there's at least some kind of a pushback, like nobody should be working that many hours, like no adult should even be working that many hours right now, let alone our students. And I realized that the survey was anonymous, so we can't really reach right out to that person, but we need to make sure that we don't have any kids, any kids at General Ed or anybody else working. eight or nine hour days in front of a laptop. That's just not okay. The emotional needs of all of us are too high for anybody to be putting that in. And that kind of made me pretty upset. And I had lots of other comments that were interesting, but I won't go on all night. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. And I know there's been some conversations around funding things for various ways of recognizing our senior class. If we are not going to be using the money for renting the Tufts facility, I really think it's important to repurpose those funds rather than relying on the community to make donations, because we don't know how long this is going to go on. The community to make donations implies that that's a never-ending thing we can rely on. The community may be called upon to make donations to feed each other. And the school system cannot repurpose our $18,000 for graduation to feed the community. So I think we should really look at repurposing the money we've already budgeted for the purposes of taking care of our seniors to do that, rather than relying on the community because it We don't know when this ends, and I don't want the community getting worn out early in our ability to give. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have a question from a member of the community. Susan Brosnahan, 9 Laird Road asks, so what is the final day for seniors?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't have a question, thank you. Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually, one of the documents we had in our packets was the calendar. And I think, I'm assuming there's just a typo. It says that the highlighted dates it says are the school days, when I think it's actually those are the no school days. So I don't know if we published this somewhere, but we want to correct that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll message her.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: That would be me. Thank you. So I can barely remember it, but on March 3rd, the rules policy and equity subcommittee met. There were three recommendations that were all approved by the subcommittee. We already took up one of those in the last meeting. regular school committee meeting, we tabled two items. I'm going to leave one of those items tabled for now, which is the policy review policy. But the one I'm going to bring up now is the, sorry, too many documents to switch between. It is the, where is it? There it is. The ad hoc report request procedure. It's a pretty technical document, but I'll just read the purpose statement. The purpose of this procedure is to provide member of public school committee members, especially new members, with the knowledge of how to request an ad hoc report. created. Ad hoc reports can require substantial work by the district staff that will create the report. This procedure is in place to ensure that when the school committee agrees to the creation of such a report that we are able to understand the following. One, how much work is required to create the report. Two, the questions and the purpose the report is aiming to answer. Three, any specific information that is required in the report. And four, determine if there is an existing report, ad hoc or periodic, that provides the answers to the questions being asked. It is the responsibility of all school committee members to understand this procedure and members should help each other to ensure compliance. On February 3rd, 2020, the school committee approved the following motion, which has led to the creation of this rule. Given that creation of ad hoc reports at the behest of the school committee can require substantial effort on the part of the office of the superintendent and district staff, and that the school committee often depends on ad hoc reports to assist in deliberations, the rules policy and equity subcommittee shall generate a new rule for the school committee to guide how ad hoc reports requests are generated. I won't read the rest of this, but are there any members who have any specific questions or thoughts?
[Paul Ruseau]: There was a question that came in earlier today, but I answered it based on our earlier conversations about how we would do this. If the answer was already known and decided, I would just reply rather than putting it through the meeting. There was a question about whether or not the New York trip was going to be canceled. Of course, I replied that it had been canceled. But I can't remember the detail on The processing for reimbursements will take, I said, will take quite some time because City Hall has to do it and everything's not really operating normally. Is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: And do you think that that will take not until we get back to school kind of thing?
[Paul Ruseau]: This is where there's eight people all on the internet at once.
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to point out a clarification. Member Ruseau? On page eight, it has gender identity. We explicitly talked about that in our subcommittee meeting, and that is not appropriate to wait till eighth grade. It's really appropriate in third and fourth grade, to be honest. So I would not be okay with that amendment.
[Paul Ruseau]: Could I just ask that, because this is now so long ago, even though I'm sure I knew what it was then, if you could just send me an email, Mr. McLaughlin.
[Paul Ruseau]: In general, I agree, but I think that for at least certainly the outstanding reports, well, what I'm trying to say is that I have talked to the superintendent about when a subcommittee doesn't really actually need any administrative people there that we should – that they should get comfortable with that. If we're going to go through the existing outstanding reports, for instance, I mean, the school committee voted to have these reports. We can look at them again and decide whether we really want them or not without anybody from central office. I mean, that might not be the best example, but I think having our meetings anyways and then trying to be a little more cautious and careful about how much time they're going to have to put in is a better option than just not doing them, in my opinion.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I suggest that really the point of having this at the meeting is so we could all physically sign it, which isn't really an option right now. So perhaps we should leave it tabled. I think that we've already discussed the content. So that's just my thought.
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe that was. I offered that with member Graham and member Stone. So I just, I talked to the superintendent and I was just thinking that this didn't feel like the right time for us to all be getting together and traveling to the school and inspecting it. It just felt like that this particular committee really needed to be in the building. And so I had suggested that maybe we move it to the spring Superintendent felt we should start it in the fall. And so that's why I put this out there. So we could just kind of reset in the fall after we've had a chance to get through this.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just would add that, you know, in the fall, you know, the people that we have already identified, we may need to reopen it a little bit because some of those people might not be available, life circumstances for some of, who knows how many of us could have changed dramatically by the fall. So I just think, you know, we may need to do more recruitment in the fall in addition to trying to find a more representative group of people.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mostly was interested in the policy that indicates that the slate of people that we choose for the advisory committee has to come to the school committee for approval. The policy has a set of steps that we're supposed to follow that honestly, until January, I didn't even know existed. And I just thought, There's nothing wrong with the people we've already recruited, but we should be including them in section six of the policy. We're supposed to tell them how long they have to be on this advisory committee, what is the language that the school committee is saying is their charge. I know we actually had talked about in our last regular meeting about having a committee of the whole to sit down and talk about what is their charge. Of course, all of that is out the window because we aren't having that meeting. So that beginning of just meeting will make sure all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed and that we have officially approved charge of this vision committee. because I feel like I've heard and seen, like I've seen a city council meeting where it was described and I've described it myself numerous times in email and in school committee meetings. And I feel like every time somebody describes it, we all put our own little spin on what it is we think that this committee is going to do. And I think that the explicit language of what they're supposed to do should be approved by the school committee. And then that's the, you know, I think that is the end of the conversation about what it is we have asked them to do.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I guess I'm a little, so the wishlist was supposed to be things nobody thinks they're going to get. everything above the wish list I thought was going to be in the budget. So am I going to have to sit down, pick the budget, then go in and create my own budget, including the things that were asked for, not including the wish list, to know what the budget's request is? Because I thought we weren't working from some number. So I don't know why. you know, why the two FTEs for PE are not in that budget, and why is it that a bunch of this stuff that's on this media and library stuff, it's not in the wish list category. Why is it not already baked into the budget? Because I don't know how much work I'm supposed to do when I get the documents to then create what the real documents are supposed to be.
[Paul Ruseau]: That makes perfect sense. But then where and when will we sit down and actually do that add? I don't see that in the schedule of meetings.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is not what the city council has been clear on. They want us to send them a budget for what we need. We need a librarian at every school. The June 1st budget is not going to include that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not talking about the wish list items. Now I'm talking about the stuff above the wish list line.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I think the media lab one is a little more complicated, and I know we have to keep moving, but the two FTEs for the PE Health Department, those are not nice to have, those are not wish lists. They should be on this budget. And then at the end of the day, if the budget is too big and city council says no, then we go back to the drawing board and figure out what to cut. But as it is now, as I see how we're gonna do this, we're gonna send them a budget that is the, small percentage increase that will include nothing that the departments are asking for. And it's just going to be, I mean, ignoring the current crisis, which is how we're sort of operating at this moment in time. But, you know, just year over year, there's no reason to think that five years from now, we will ever have somebody in the health education who can help our students with disabilities. There will be nobody in there five years from now who will actually teach our middle schoolers what sex is. I mean, this is the repeated process. This is my third budget where we don't ever add any of these people in. And city council is supposed to be the folks that we send the budget we want, not the budget we think they'll accept.
[Paul Ruseau]: But I just want to clarify something. We had in our meeting about how we're going to run the budgets, but there was no target. And everybody in the room went around and said, there is no target. We're building this from scratch. And now we're talking like there was a target, which I think half of us honestly believe there was always a target. We were never going to say it out loud. So there can't be a target of 5% if there's not a target.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor. Member Ruseau. Thank you. I completely understand that there's only so many hours in the day and there's only so many people in the office. Well, there's nobody in the office, but the decisions, for instance, whether or not these programs are offering services or charging fees at a rate that the school committee thinks is appropriate is a school committee decision, but we never get to make the decision. Should we be doing the same cost for families who have a half a million dollars in income versus families that are living on $10,000 a year in income. We don't make that decision. So, you know, there's a lot of decisions the school committee should be making that are very much related to these programs. And then also, you know, the program does, if the particular account does not have enough funds, we transfer our money from our general budget into it or from another one of those accounts. So we're making a decision There's just so much that we have no idea what's going on, but then at the end of the day, we're expected to just hand some money over or, you know, I have had emails, numerous emails over the last couple of years, like, why do I pay so little for before or after school? From some families that are like living large by Medford standards, who are like, I can't believe I pay so little. Well, as a school committee member, I should be deciding on whether, we should be deciding whether or not to adjust the rates for those programs so that we can support families that are living below the poverty level. We don't do any of that, but also, you know, we had that big issue with the foreign afterschool or Israeli afterschool recently. And that was, a lot of that has to do with the fact that, you know, there's this view that afterschool is collecting all this money And then we're just using it like it's a piggy bank. And the lack of transparency on the fact that those employees have benefits, they have all the other stuff that isn't coming out of that account. We need to open the books on this stuff. We need to be able to say, after school brings in this amount of money and after we have paid all of the employees and the city has paid for their benefits, for their retirement. And I realize some of that will be kind of squishy, but right now we don't say anything about it. So is it $600,000 in profit we're pulling out of afterschool people and then complaining because we don't want to pay them more? I mean, that's what it looks like to the public. And that's not an unreasonable view, because that's the view I feel like I have often as a school committee member. And I get that we don't have enough time to do yet more reports this budget season, but I just feel like This lack of transparency here is a problem.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's from Paul, too. You didn't ask me, Paulette. Oh, sorry. That's OK. Remember, so I marked you off, Paul. OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. So if you have a question you'd like us to be asked, sort of similar to community participation, the email address is medfordsc at medford.k12.ma.us. I ask that you include your name, first name and last name, and your address, and then the question. I will be asking those questions if I can, and what I mean by that is we are – open meeting law is not completely gone. We can't discuss any topic we want. We have an agenda. So if the topic is not on the agenda or can't be kind of seen that way, at least, I will respond and tell you that it's not on the agenda and we will bring it up at the next meeting. So that's the goal.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. If we're done with that, I would like to make a motion to take some of the items out of order, but I don't want to get ahead of us. I don't know if we are done with that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I am.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's see, to take what? To take number four, then number five, and then number three.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'll start with my question before I get to the one from the public. Actually, never mind. I'm going to start with the one from the public because it leads right into my question. forgive me if I said her name wrong, of Sharon Street, wants to know if there are any savings because there's no busing. And before you answer the question, I know that busing was just discussed. And I guess my own opinion is paying the bus company is okay or not okay, depending on what the bus company is doing with the money. If they are paying all of their employees, I think that's a conversation we can have about whether we should do that anymore. If they are not paying their employees and they've sent them all home on unemployment, then us paying them is offensive in every imaginable way. So I'm just trying to understand what's going on with the busing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Thank you. That was the very long answer to my question. I appreciate the detail. I guess my – and I realize that this is still early days. So I just, like, as a taxpayer but also as a member of the school committee, I don't want to find out through a news story, if there's any media left in the world, that We have continued to pay the contract as I think we should, and they let go of all the employees and they put them on unemployment. because, I mean, I'm not saying we have the ability necessarily to prevent that or to even know, but I do think that there's little chance we're gonna be interested in that contract again with that company if they go and just cash a big check and don't pass it on to their employees.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I actually had a question for Christine again. Okay, go ahead. Ms. Patterson, are we continuing to pay? I think I know the answer based on your answer related to busing, but I'm concerned about the collaboratives and the private out-of-district placements where we pay them monthly based on the number of days the students actually are at the schools. If they're not going to the schools, short collaborative shutdown, for instance, On the surface, it's like, if they're not providing services, why would we pay them? On the other hand, the day after we all start this big engine back up, they won't be in business anymore. So I'm very concerned about, what is the principle about, do we just pay people even if they're not providing services? Because when this is all over, we're gonna need them to still be there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have a few questions. So this question comes from Michael Bernstein. I will not read the addresses and stuff since I have that in the emails, but there seems, I see in this document that Zoom is not preferred, but it seems that some teachers are under the impression that they're not allowed to use it. Can we just get clarification that they are allowed to use it if they want?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then the next questions is actually three questions from Kelly Catalo at 46. Anyways, what grade point average will be reported to colleges for juniors?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Ruseau. Thank you. The next question is, so Google Classroom is pretty good at communicating with the students, but the parents have an unusual need to be communicated with. I mean, as a parent of a student with special needs, I'm very accustomed to being part of the communication chain. But for a lot, my daughter, for instance, we don't really have much communication with the teachers, and that's fine under normal circumstances. But now parents, I think, for the most part, feel that they need to be part of these communication chains with no matter where their kids are and what grade levels. So is there any plan for how we're going to weave parent communication in when it wasn't necessarily part of the methodology in the past?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I will hold my question until other people have had a chance. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, and the TV and the other, the medfortv.org are both delayed. So it doesn't work to watch those.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This is a question from Jamie Taylor. What will happen with the students who do not have technology and also for the 50% of students that teachers have yet to hear from?
[Paul Ruseau]: This is in general. I apologize for being out of order.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do want to clarify, it's the students that the teachers have not heard from. Oh, OK. Teachers are reaching out. My own family was one of them. We got the call. The emails are going into the Google account. The students aren't replying or apparently even logging in. I don't really know how many students we're talking about, but apparently it's a lot of students that are not responding to teachers.
[Paul Ruseau]: And just to follow up on that, so, you know, I think that one of the challenges, you know, even before this, during the summer institute at the MASC, we talked about having connectivity at home and how a remarkable number of children have connectivity at home, meaning they have an iPhone. they can get on the internet. It is not a device or connection that is going to function for performing your real schoolwork. And I know that it might be too soon to get the results from Dr. Cushing on the survey that was done, but Is it putting the cart before the horse to actually say, well, what are we going to do about kids whose only connection at home is their parent iPhone? And that's not going to work. Are we going to actually be calling up Verizon and having internet installed in their homes? Sorry. Mr. McLaughlin, I'm trying to unmute you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. I have a question from a special education teacher, and I will just actually say what I would hope would happen, is can we, can someone make it a priority to create either a Google Doc or some kind of a format for teachers to begin keeping track of their purchases of student materials, mailing of envelopes, you know, the cost of stamps. I don't, hopefully we don't need to have an actual motion to say we're going to reimburse teachers for all of this stuff. But I'm more than happy to make that motion if if somebody isn't going to just say we'll take care of it because I mean I'm not suggesting teachers be out, you know, ordering. everything off of Amazon they can find, and that's not, I think, the question. The question is, is if they are providing materials and mailing it to students' homes, we should be reimbursing them without any question. So it'd be better to start ahead of time with, here's the format of the document that you all should be filling, the teacher should be filling out, so that we don't later on say, oh, well, you didn't keep track of this detail. Dr. Edouard, Vincent, do you have anything to add?
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually, I was just going to, if we're done with this item, are we ready for the last item on the agenda?
[Paul Ruseau]: I really had nothing to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not really clear what you mean by information. I mean, I've received the Michigan model. It is a binder that would take most of us, if we're fast readers, more than two weeks to read, so I don't know what the request for information is. So two weeks from now, if you get the documents we got in our meeting, is that going to be good enough is really my concern. I also want to point out that this is a vote that is purely for the purposes of providing cover to our staff. We are explicitly forbidden in the law from approving curriculum. It's explicit in the 1993 Ed Reform Act. So I'm willing to vote for this, no matter what it is that we're going to be teaching, because it isn't about the content. It's about the fact that we're not teaching sex ed at all to our middle schoolers right now. And we are so far off of the national standards that I'm just not interested in a conversation about whether or not masturbation, menstruation, whether showing how to put a condom onto a replica penis, those are things that are going to happen. And in my mind, they're going to happen whether we approve this or not. So the law requires opt-out for parents. A form will be sent home, and parents are more than welcome to keep their kids from knowing the facts of life or whatever it is you want to call that. But I don't have the amount of work that is going to be involved with getting this done. Two weeks is just two weeks, but the school year is only 180 days long. We are talking about almost 10% of the time between now and the next time we meet. So I am not comfortable with waiting so that we can all know what the content is. The meeting?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So on March 3rd, we had a meeting that started at 3.31 PM. I won't read the entire set of minutes. We were discussing two new rules. Is it two? excuse me, the agenda's not here, two new rules for the committee itself. And these are procedural rules and then a new policy. I will just quickly go over each of them. The first was a rule on how to add an item to the agenda of the school committee. It is a very common experience for new members and even for those of us that have been around to wonder how do we get something on the agenda. I could not find any existing rules, so we have composed a specific procedure. It doesn't have a rule number yet because we have to find the current rules to know what to give it. And I won't read the full rule, assuming that you have all read these since you received them in your packets. I do want to make one minor amendment to it on page, it doesn't have page numbers, excuse me, under the why section. The last sentence is, this procedure aims to put an end to that question. Really, it should say, this procedure aims to provide an answer to that question. So I entertain a motion to accept this rule as amended.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. The motion that I would like to have is to approve this as a rule of the school committee going forward with the slight change on the second page where it says the why, and the last sentence is to be changed slightly, where it says this procedure, well the entire section Y says, this procedure is needed to ensure transparency. One of the first questions a new member is often, how do I get something on the agenda? This procedure aims, and it should say, to provide an answer to that question. So that's the one amendment that I'd like to include. So since not everybody has this, this just provides a list of steps for members when we want to add something to the agenda, how do we do it, what we would send, who we would send it to, when we would send it, we would use email, why we even need this procedure, and then also outline some important some important situations that have happened but are unusual, such as what if there's an objection to adding something to an agenda? For instance, we can ask for anything we want on the agenda, but if we ask for something that we couldn't legally actually get an answer to, that objection would actually follow a process as well. And I think there's some questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just point out that switching to nine days, because there's a five-day window before the meeting by which you would have to have submitted this, that would mean it would be impossible to put something on the next agenda. The when says that you cannot request something beyond the agenda closer than five school days before that meeting. So if we wanted something on the next agenda, we must have it in by this Friday. Two days before that is this Wednesday for the very next meeting. So that's my concern. We put that big five-day window out there. Because you've got to put the posting, you've got to whatever documentation, whatever the thing is that is going to be on the agenda, it takes time. And right now, we sometimes have members, and I'm guilty as charged, who submit things on Wednesday afternoon for a Monday meeting, or Thursday afternoon for a Monday meeting. And they get on the agenda. And I'm always happy when I shove something in at the last second and it gets on the agenda. But there is no time for planning, there's no time for saying, well, the meeting is now going to be six hours long, as happened last time. So I mean, the five days is already a huge change, in my opinion, to when the last time you can hit your Send button to add something to an agenda. So that's sort of my response to that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd also just like to respond to the two day thing. I actually completely agree that two days, like I have plenty of unread email that's more than two days old. However, if I send something that I want on the agenda, I might be asking parents to come or, you know, engaging the community on a topic. I send this email and days just go by, and I don't know if it's going to be on the agenda. That's a real problem, for me at least, when I've had that experience. Two days is already, in my mind, is a long time. Two full work days to simply say, yes, it'll be on the agenda. You can just respond and say, I'm too busy right now. Give me a couple extra days or something. It doesn't have to be. definitive, but getting a response of some sort is really part of the goal of that. So, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I might respond.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: One more time? There we go. For those that weren't in the meeting, I forget that you didn't hear this part of the conversation. But all of these procedures, especially the new ones, I fully expect these are not perfect. And that if three meetings from now we're like, this isn't working, We just send it back to the subcommittee for changes. These are our working rules. If they're not working, then we can change them, because we change them for ourselves. So that's how I look at all of these procedures and policies, that achieving a perfect outcome on the first run is, I think, a heavy lift. And if two days, or five days, or if the whole procedure just doesn't work, any one of us can just speak up at the next meeting and say, this doesn't work and here's why, and send it to subcommittee for changes. But having something written down so members know which ends up, I think is really important.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is not the only way things get on the agenda. The superintendent and the chair are more than, they add things to the agenda all the time that we have nothing to do with. So, I mean, we're all welcome to send an email saying, can you put coronavirus update on the agenda? We also can just not do that because I think it'd be weird if that wasn't on the agenda. So, I mean, the adding emergency things doesn't require us to do that. It's not an emergency for me.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may. So this is for this particular procedure. is only for members who want to add something to the agenda. There is another issue in this subcommittee that hasn't been scheduled yet, which is looking to redesign our entire agenda, how it works, and all that. So in my mind, that is very much a part of that conversation. The agenda is getting changed and built out, and how do we all know what's on the agenda coming up in two weeks before it gets posted? But that seems very separate, in my mind, to the procedure of, I want to talk about XYZ on April 9th. And so this is what I would do under that circumstance. But emergencies, I mean, this isn't really intended for emergency situations.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's a new ad hoc report request procedure if if members would like another We'd like to table this to our next meeting to read it through and really get your thoughts on it. It is complicated and is a very big divergence from our current procedure for asking for ad hoc reports. So if anybody would like to make a motion to table that particular rule to the next meeting so that we can move along.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second that.
[Paul Ruseau]: And the last is the policy review policy. And I have four edits that I'd like to make. So in the interest of time and the fact that we have people here, I will also request that perhaps we table this to the next meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you. My questions actually weren't specifically for them. So I just wanted to add, you know, we I'm concerned that we need to make sure that by the time we have our next meeting that anything that requires the school committee to take a vote to implement plans that you prioritize anything where we need to be involved. If we close the schools for two weeks and pay the teachers for two weeks, and then we need to tack on two extra weeks of school, we have to pay the teachers for two weeks of school. That is not budgeted for today. So we're not going to close the schools for two weeks and say, good luck, teachers, and not pay them. That doesn't seem reasonable or rational. So if we're going to run into situations where we have to close a school for two or three or four weeks, and ignoring the issue of the kids getting an education, just the financial impact of that is something that this committee needs to be involved in. So I just want to make sure that we need to front load those concerns so that we don't have to have emergency meetings unnecessarily. So I just want to make sure that those, when you're looking at the plans and there's lots and lots of details, somebody needs to be paying very close attention to, does the school community need to vote on this? And get that to us as soon as possible. And I also was wondering if we've heard anything from our state or federal delegation about perhaps providing some money for this. I mean, I know there was like $8 billion to the CDC. I haven't heard a peep about money for anything else. You know, I know some parents would like us to be doing a full-blown disinfectant of the entire building, all eight of our buildings every day, practically. You know, that would be millions of dollars after a couple of weeks. And I've heard nothing from anybody in any higher levels of government to provide us some money. And I think that that, I'm just wondering if there is anything. Mayor, have you heard anything from anybody?
[Paul Ruseau]: And then the last thing I would like to say is I was listening to NPR or WBUR or whatever it was today, and I screamed in my car. not really, but I wanted to scream into my car, into the radio about everybody is talking about the inconvenience if we close our schools. And I just want to be clear, it's going to be an inconvenience to me because I'm going to have to wear headphones because my kids are going to be obnoxious about how bored they are. But it is not an inconvenience to families who depend on going to work at an hourly rate, and don't get insurance if they don't go, and don't have food if they don't go, and now they can't go because their kids don't have any place to be. This is not about an inconvenience. And when people think about how we're weighing the importance of whether to close the schools or not, for me, in my house, whether the schools are closed is like a yawn. It's not that big a deal for my family. But there are a lot of families in our community where closing the schools will devastate them. for many months or even years financially and so we need to really be following only the guidelines coming out of CDC and the recommendations from the feds and whoever else is giving us those and not ever responding to how many emails we got about why we haven't closed the schools because That should not be driving this, because the impact is so severe for so many people. So I just wanted to hope that we can stop using the word inconvenience. It would be really appreciated. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Certainly we would pay them during a closure, but because of the 180 day minimums, we may have to have school past our current end date, even after the contractual end date. And if we need them to work more days than we have a contract for, we're going to have to find the money to pay them because they're not going to just show up for free. We wouldn't want them to either. So that was my concern.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Understanding that the families are getting $1,000 back, I mean, I just think it's fascinating that the insurance costs 10% of the potential. I mean, wow, we should just self-insure and forget about this in the future. I mean, $100 to possibly get $1,000 back, I'll personally take that game. That's really kind of an insane, I mean, the reason we all probably thought it made so much sense is that it was, oh, it's $100. $100 doesn't sound so bad. But I'm just a bit shocked at the cost of the insurance for what it is you can actually get back. And I don't remember the name of the speaker here, but I mean.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh. And now a parent. Okay. I mean, to his point though, each student is covered for $100,000 worth of evacuation and repatriation services. if we decide to not cancel them, to send them. I'm not suggesting we send them, but $100,000 of their money times, what is it, 28 people. That's some pretty bad math on their side. So, I mean, the thing is that I don't know, is there any other game in town? you know, can we truly threaten them and be like, this is kind of ridiculous. Next year we're not going to use your services anymore if you can't do any better. I mean, I don't think there's any reason we shouldn't say that to them because I mean, if they're not the only game in town, this is not a great, this looks bad.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, and it's worth noting that I discussed this particular policy with member I remember Graham earlier today, and I just noticed that the 60 to 31 day window, and a 20 to 15, and a 14, there's no 31 to 20 day window. The policy just doesn't exist if you cancel during that time. It's a pretty bad, poorly written policy. I certainly agree. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to not You don't need to stand up here for this, but I just wanted to really point out that this doesn't impact all families equally, and that if we had a no-fee school system where what we considered part of our education was actually covered by the taxpayers, that this whole situation would be a very different situation. We would all be mourning the loss of the experience, and that would be the end of the conversation. Instead, we are in a situation where some families are probably very unhappy to have lost a couple thousand dollars. Other families may well have worked an extra job, given up weekends for a year to find this money. So it is not impacting all families equally. And I think it's important to really call that out. I'm assuming that not everybody that is going has a $300,000 household income. And I'm not saying if you do, this is no big deal either. I just think it's important to note we make a lot of stuff that we consider part of our education fall into families. And when stuff like this happens, it is even more, it's like pouring salt into the wound of some families. So I just want to be clear that I don't, that families that this is really hurting from a financial perspective, that you are not unseen.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? I have a lot of thoughts. One, the Student Opportunity Act provides no opportunity for extensions. It also provides no consequences for failure to submit your form on time either. DESE has a long history of things that if you just don't do it, It's sort of like many of our laws in this state. Do it or nothing happens. So I don't really honestly care whether we submit this on time. From a purely practical perspective, we cannot develop a family engagement plan and figure out how to reach out to our marginalized communities in particular, which we've never been able to successfully do in this city. And I don't just mean the school system. We cannot develop that muscle in 10 days or even in a year. We have to spend money, whether it's creating an office of community and family engagement or whatever it is, and spend a lot of time, money, and people on the ground to develop that. It does not happen because we want it to happen. It happens because we take actions to make it happen. And I honestly don't think that because we're going to get $380,000 or $370,000 less from the Department of Ed next year that we're going to use that, which is the real, you know, the total number is going to be less next year, not more. And figuring out how we're going to spend $138,000 when we're really going to have $307,000 less. It's just a mind game. I mean, I'm not interested in how we're going to spend the $138,000. I'm interested in what we're going to cut to make up the $300-something thousand, which is what I think we should all be talking about. We aren't going to do better family engagement, and we aren't going to close any achievement gaps with $300-something less thousand dollars, which is what's going to happen. So I just feel like this administration, our central administration is, you know, they can only work, there's only 24 hours in a day. And we definitely have to improve family and community engagement, but I don't think 10 days is the time to get it done. I think we do a, you know, I'm terrible with analogies, but you know, one of those, we just give it a, the best try. And clearly, since DESE has set up this short form and said, don't fill it with lots of stuff, they get it, that $30 per student, which is really not what we're getting because we're losing so much more money, isn't enough to do anything. And they don't expect us to do anything. So I'm just not, you know, we should be very concerned about parent and family engagement. But that has nothing to do with Student Opportunity Act in my mind.
[Paul Ruseau]: Whether we submit this or not has nothing to do with getting this money. This is just our new chapter 70 formula. Yeah. This is the amount of the increase that will happen in the formula and it is not related to whether we submit this plan. I just wanted to be clear on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: The Chapter 70 formula is the Chapter 70 formula. It has nothing to do with anything else.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. I apologize, this is new business. Correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: I apologize. I actually have to wait because we didn't approve the ad hoc report procedure tonight. So at the next meeting, I will actually suggest that each of these gets kind of wrapped up into the procedure that we have if we adopt it so we can get this list into something we can actually wrap our hands around.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: I gotta update it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, I, I, when I read the list of the, uh, the titles of the pieces, I'm always like,
[Paul Ruseau]: Why don't I have a copy? Can we get a copy of the pieces, please? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, on page two, it's not actually anything that needs to be changed, but there is the motion to, we did vote to create an advisory committee. I'm happy to work with the superintendent to do that, unless the superintendent is, I don't, we don't really have a lot of, I don't have a lot of experience with us creating these things, so I don't know who was really supposed to take the lead in actually finding people.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, exactly, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, this does require that there's at least one teacher, administrative and nursing representative, adjustment Councilor. I mean, this could certainly be part of that, but I just feel like the recommendations within the school system will be so, I don't want to say, it'll be more focused. More focused on the schools?
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't really have a strong preference, but I do think that if we're pulling in these people through the schools, then they're probably going to want to meet during school time at the schools, which wouldn't work well.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, within the minutes of that meeting, are we talking about the, I'm sorry, the Committee of the Whole we had on February 3rd? Yes. Yes, thank you. On page six, there's a mention that we have, there's pothole funding, I just hate that it's called pothole funding, because it's not for potholes, coming in for charter reimbursements, and I was just curious if the city had received that funding already or not. It doesn't really come to us in the schools, It's on the third paragraph of page six.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's all. Motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. The sudden loss of funding from Casset, do we get an annual check or are we like literally like suddenly we have a hole?
[Paul Ruseau]: I abstain.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. I'm just noticing now that both of these field trips are not using our field trip form. We worked very we worked a lot on, and in fact were used last year for this field trip. We have an approved format with a set of questions that must be answered for us to approve these. And I don't know whether or not all the questions are answered, but I know for a fact that you guys actually used those forms last year. So it's only been less than a year, so we should dust off those forms and use those because they had a very specific set of questions with the signatures and when they had to happen by nursing, et cetera. So I mean, I'm certainly fine with approving this with the caveat that if all the questions that were on that form are not answered, then the approval doesn't seem valid. So I don't know where the form is. I'm sure it's in the Google Drive. L, that is Google. But those should be completed, I think, and sent to us, even just as informational.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. I don't know if this is off topic or not, but I noticed in the ELA budget that we have no reading specialist for tier two at the high school. Correct. And so for all the kids that none of this is going to help, I'm just wondering, so if they're tier three and they're in special ed, there are reading specialists at the high school?
[Paul Ruseau]: And so I guess I'm just, I guess one of the things that surprised me the most about this was that we don't have anybody at the high school for tier two. Is there really just, there's nobody for tier two?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Excuse me. Thank you. Just reviewing the letter, we will have to be cautious because, well, you will have to work very closely with Nurse Ray, because we did approve last year a research project that is ongoing that very much involves a lot of this stuff, and we want to not damage their project. their research that has already begun. I know my son was screened through that research recently. But I know you can handle all that. So I'd like to make a motion to approve.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just thank you for the report. The letter that you put in the front, there was a point about that they're not required by law to provide this information. And that is, of course, true. But they are required per the policy of the member public schools to provide this information. And while that is not legally binding, the remedy if they decide they don't want to provide this information is that we can say they can't use our facilities or the school's names. they are really required to provide this information. And I don't know if there's anybody who's not doing it, but that sounded a bit like, if you feel like doing it, do it. When in fact, we were much more clear that this is not optional for anybody that's associated with our schools. The list should really probably be three times as long. And we have not gotten to the point where we've kind of you know, thrown down the gauntlet on getting people to do this. But if you're raising money and you're using our school's names or our facilities, you need to be on this list. And that's not an ask.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, first I just wanted to not forget to say that I do appreciate all the hard work that these groups are doing. I sounded very negative earlier and like there's like a bunch of creepy groups going off and using our names to earn money or something. That's not at all what I think is happening. So I just wanted to make sure that was on record. Um, I appreciate all of the work and it's a lot of work. Um, and, and you know, to the issue of training while it's, 100% true that, in fact, it seems almost inappropriate for us to be offering a training for non-profits. The reality is that when there's problems in these groups, they don't side of our organization. They eat up a huge amount of time for the administration. So, you know, just as a practical matter, even if we shouldn't be doing trainings, it may be a lot less work than dealing with the fallout when there's problems in these organizations because they're made up of parents that are obviously part of our district. As for a training going to that subcommittee, my memory of the last conversation around the training was that it would be on demand, meaning if somebody needs it, they could schedule a meeting with the assistant superintendent, who seemed to be the right person, at least at the moment, to assist them as needed, versus we were going to actually create a training, because there was really a big question, is anybody going to take us up on it in the first place? And without having a cadre of people who would take it, designing a training with no idea who the users are, what they're going to want to know, is a really big challenge. So, I mean, I personally don't feel like we have the bandwidth to design a training. Certainly the subcommittee I don't think has any of the, none of the members have the skill set that I'm aware of to design any kind of financial training. And, you know, if people are needing this, I think it's best to start from the request rather than, if we had unlimited resources, then I would be like, let's go send it to our training department. The one that doesn't exist. But I just don't see how we're going to have the bandwidth for it. So that's my take.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, no, nothing.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you for the report. It says the motion passed 3 to 1. You can't have four members. Is it 3 to 0?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. I just think that's an important correction just because it would be an open meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: You don't want to talk for 20 minutes right now?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's no record, John. That's no record. Right. I got these new Post-it notes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll second the motion. And I also wanted to add that I look forward to the advisory committee. I've been pretty vocal on this proclamation that as much as the proclamation feels good, the proclamation won't help anybody. with their food insecurity. So it's important that we have actions coming out of this, and I look forward to hopefully being part of this advisory committee to figure out what we can do in our schools, understanding what it would cost, and really making sure that we are closing the gap as needed here. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just would like to quickly point out, though, that when we have our committee of the whole, the only moment we will be talking in executive session is when we are discussing something that is allowed, and we will not also talk about other stuff. That's a really important point. We can't go into executive session to discuss employees that perhaps are under a contract and then also talk about employees that are not under a contract. we have to literally divide our conversation very clearly, so there won't be any like, you come into the room, we're talking, we're gonna go to executive session, and we come out and we've talked about you or what this topic. So it's really important to note that executive session has very strict rules that we have to always kind of enforce with each other, like, no, you can't talk about that. We really do that, because the law is very explicit about what we can and cannot talk about in those meetings. So I do think the committee of the whole, obviously, I would make a motion to approve this. But if we do have executive session portion, which we may have to have, because if there's an effect on employees with a contract, we can't discuss that in the public. it won't be most of the meeting. You definitely want to stick around.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you for that report. I really do appreciate it. If somebody's identified as needing quarantine, I presume, or self-quarantine, is Medford notified that this is a resident?
[Paul Ruseau]: No.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, does the town, wherever the person lives, they get off the plane and they are identified as somebody who does need to be self-quarantined? Maybe I don't understand self-quarantine then.
[Paul Ruseau]: And so, but when somebody is quarantined because they're symptomatic.
[Paul Ruseau]: They don't get to go home.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is amazing. I'm looking at this stuff thinking, like, can we get that in our school? I'm sure we need more than one, though, for our school.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's what I was going to imagine. So I would certainly motion to approve this.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. I have three questions, since one of them has already been covered. How many hours did it take to create this report? I mean, a ballpark?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. On page two, one of the positions is just listed as the title being school. About seven or eight up from the bottom.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, I see. OK. That makes sense, because they could be anywhere. Correct. And then on the very last page of the new hires, The first column says non-unit ISS. What's the ISS?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, I also have received these and again, it's not my experience with the principals either. I think that, you know, the day of, I've seen enough of what a principal has to do to know that it's a, remarkable job that I wouldn't do for all the money in the world. And, you know, there's fires starting up every day in every building, not literal fires, you know, emergencies and crises that you have to deal with. And I do dislike very much that we have to have the conversation that not prioritizing these incoming kindergarten parents or potential kindergarten parents who are being very actively recruited is going to cost us $12,700 a year for 13 years. None of us are going to have an easier job in any of our buildings if we keep losing more and more kids. And I just hate the idea that we have to say, you know, the message needs to be crystal clear from the administration down to the principals that these people need to be prioritized like, you know, like the governor's at your front door. It's like, because it's so much money. And they're making their choices on their first kid, and they have four kids, all four are gonna go there, and it's just, we can't get them back. It's just so much money. And I know it's, in your day-to-day lives as principals, it's, There's kids here now, and there's real problems you have to deal with, and worrying about a kid that may or may not show up in September seems hard to prioritize, but we are losing so much money to the charter schools, so I just wanna urge everybody to sort of repeat this over and over again, that we have to have an incredibly robust and very, very strict protocol around, kindergarten parent is interested, we need to respond in a very, very like excessive way almost, in my opinion. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. I believe we know exactly how many students for each grade level, because while we're not actually cutting a check, we know because we didn't get the check from the state. So we know exactly that information. I believe it's even reported on the DESE website, although I'm not sure it's broken down by grade level. Ms. Patterson may actually know that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, we will, what you are on the subcommittee, but we will get together and we will draft a new rule, not a policy, that will tell all of us how we shall request ad hoc reports. Of course, once we have that recommendation, we bring it back here to vote on it, and you can all say that. Hopefully, you'll agree with that rule. And then that will be the rule. The intention of this is that nobody will be here saying, I'd like a report and just start rattling off what you want. And we can get in the subcommittee. We can go into the gory details of what's so horrible about that. Simple reports might actually require 40 hours of labor, just so you can ask a simple question. And that might be OK. I don't think when we approve those reports, we all realize what we're doing to the superintendent's office, and I might not be so willing to approve a report request if I thought, if knew, for instance, that answering your question requires an obscene amount of work. So that's sort of the whole genesis of this, because we have a long list of ad hoc reports. And no idea, because they haven't probably even been started, I'm assuming. But we don't know. Are these reports that are simple, and like somebody clicks a button in some software program, or are these reports that take weeks of staff's effort to answer questions? By the way, our reports right now, they don't even know what the question is they're trying to answer. So I mean, I think it's important we have a simple form. What do you want to know? why do you want to know it so we're not playing gotcha with the administration, digging up lots of data so we can try and find something somebody did wrong or something, and then get an estimate from the administration, what does it really take to do this report so that we can, I'm sort of just telling you what I want to do with this subcommittee, but that's the genesis of this, is that it's just too easy to rattle off a report and think that we have like 40 people sitting around in central administration running off to do our work for us, and that they don't exist, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm glad you're on the subcommittee, because... I'm glad I'm on it, too.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I think these existing reports, for the most part, especially the older ones, I don't think any of us are going to be able to answer those questions, and we can just vote to take them off the list. Or keep them on the list if we can imagine why the report is here. I mean, get a list of out-of-district student enrollment in Medford Public Schools, I'm guessing that is like how many? We aren't going to get a list of the actual students.
[Paul Ruseau]: This will just be to generate a rule that we will then follow as a committee if we approve the rule.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would like to amend this to fix the After resolve it says an action relative to, it should be an act relative to healthy youth. But I've actually, sorry. And I have actually offered this last year and it was passed as well. The House continues to not actually take it up for a vote even though the Senate passes it. I believe even unanimously in their last vote, or close to unanimously. I'm sure there were a couple of holdouts. So this is not a controversial piece of legislation, unless of course you control what we actually vote on in the legislature. All this would do is require that public schools that do offer sexual health education actually do it. an accurate and correct job. If communities opt to not teach any sex ed at all, they can continue to pretend that life doesn't include this stuff. So I urge us to approve this and send this off to these folks to remind them that we actually do want this to pass.
[Paul Ruseau]: Second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for this report. You can't get away without hearing from me. At the Brooks, I think you've reported this once before in the last two years about students that visit more than 300 times in a year. And it's worth noting students aren't in school for 365. It's 180 days. And it led me to this thought or question about like literally every item on this report is something that's amazing. And I'm just wondering, does your department come together to share? best practices and replicate these. I mean, there's only so much time in a day for every nurse. I get that. But as certain elements of this report are determined to be more successful perhaps than others, how do those get replicated out to the rest of the school? Or is it really up to every nurse to be like, oh, hey, you're doing that. That's interesting.
[Paul Ruseau]: So for instance, at the Brooks, where there are students, I mean, I don't know how many, but have more than 300 visits to the nurse's office per school year. Do you track that for all of the schools and have any idea, is the Brooks unusual?
[Paul Ruseau]: We've talked about that. And you know, I mean, because I'm not, Having more than 300 visits per school year, I mean, there may be children that, in fact, this is perfectly reasonable. They have to visit the nurse more than twice a day for medication. Boom, you're over 300.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. Aside from the scores, which for the most part looked fine, and even the ones that were declined, we did meet targets. So I think that's an important point. We don't set our targets, the state does. But I was most thrilled, and I would say not surprised because of the work that I've seen you do in the last couple of years, to see that the program redesign is actually being considered as the blueprint for the state. And I just wanted to say how impressive that was. And thank you for your hard work and all the staff that are involved, because I know you don't actually do all of it yourself. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just would like to sort of reiterate that community participation is, because the item is not on the agenda, we are not supposed to be discussing the item. It is on the agenda as something else later. So we can discuss it then. Good.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. I had a question about how students and staff can quickly report things. well-known process that if you ask students and staff, they would have an answer.
[Paul Ruseau]: And how often are custodians actually checking each bathroom throughout the day?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Vice Chair Rousseau. So thank you for this report. I would just suggest, so that we don't have to listen to me for 20 minutes, that maybe we could do it page by page, if that makes sense to everybody else. So I have a number of questions, which I think will be easy and quick to answer. But on page one, under the finance, the technology tech spec line, the expenditures were a lot more than planned. What is that expenditure?
[Paul Ruseau]: And do you predict that to be something that we, in the next cycle, you'll put in at a quarter of a million, or is it just this was a weird year?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great. And further down under, Oh, actually, that was the last thing on that page. So I guess if anybody else has something on page one, I could also just keep going to page two. I have something on page one.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's good. Thank you. Oh, I canceled all my questions on page two for some reason. So I don't have anything on page two. Sorry. Anybody?
[Paul Ruseau]: Do we have any permanent substitutes in the other schools?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Page three. The kindergarten aids for the elementary schools, I'm looking at the appropriation. And I can't remember this stuff from last year, unfortunately. Those salaries, I mean, how many people is that? Not like 50,000 at the Brooks. How many people is that?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's my next question. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Page four. I feel like I know your answer to this one, but I'm going to ask it anyways. Under special ed, there's all these teacher salaries. Is this one of those things where you moved it between? They're budgeted for zero, but we spent, I'm guessing, a couple million dollars there.
[Paul Ruseau]: And the LD, does that mean learning disability? What is the LD in that description? Lead.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was trying to figure that out. So these are. A lot of staff. I mean, I'm like 10 or more people. A lot. And we, every year, we go into the year, we don't have any money for them, because we know we're going to find the money elsewhere. All right.
[Paul Ruseau]: So when the community says we shouldn't be renting out the high school, what they're also saying is we shouldn't be having special ed teachers at the McGlynn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, page five, I'm assuming the adjustment Councilors is the same situation?
[Paul Ruseau]: The psychologists at the elementary schools, for instance, at the Brooks, is that a part-time position? Or is that a full-time? You may not have every single person in your head. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: But those are full-time?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great. I don't know why I put a question mark on that, so I won't ask. The out-of-district special ed tuition was I mean, 127,000 is a lot less. That's good news. Well, I mean, from a numbers perspective.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, that makes more sense. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I thought I'd seen a much bigger number at some point. Although, does the pupil transportation, does anybody give us anything for that? Or is that totally up to us?
[Paul Ruseau]: But the circuit breaker, they don't kick in for that or anything?
[Paul Ruseau]: Tuition only. Anybody else?
[Paul Ruseau]: On page 6. There's a guidance, under guidance, there's a PSAT subsidy. We pay for the PSAT for all of our students. I believe, and I don't know if this was the 2020 budget or the previous budget, but we also, I think, put money in for SAT and AP fees. Would those be somewhere else, or is this just all in that clump together?
[Paul Ruseau]: And then on the page 7 under social studies there's field trips and this is for social studies field trips for the entire district right?
[Paul Ruseau]: And I'm just like kind of amazed that $4,000 We have a lot of students. I'm just wondering what you can even do.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. On page 8 under the arts, there's art music teacher CW. I don't know what CW means. At first I was like, is that the Curtis Tufts? But then I don't know what CW could possibly mean.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then under the phys ed health, the salaries, wages permanent is much smaller than appropriated. I'm just wondering.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you and then I noticed that for the Columbus and the Roberts I Is this one of those things where the teachers moved from one school to the next? Because the Columbus spent twice what we had planned and then the Roberts was half what we planned.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then this section is the library media. And this looks like there's just a bunch of that additional like movement stuff. So actually, I don't have any other questions on page eight. Page nine. Is this a COLA issue where the nurses was like almost $50,000 more than we planned? I mean, it doesn't seem, we couldn't have gotten a nurse for $50,000.
[Paul Ruseau]: That makes sense. And then, The other one that was kind of surprising to me was to have stipends that we didn't know were going to have to happen under the same.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I knew you were going to get to these quick. And then, since I don't have this for previous years, is the athletics being over 7.5% over budget, is that pretty in line with what we expect?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The last page, security, contracted services, what are those?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was happy to see some of these other buildings, OSP, what does OSP mean again? Operational, the last category. Buildings and grounds, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: I thought we had made some major changes to our telephone expenses that brought this way down. Or is this actually the way down number?
[Paul Ruseau]: Gosh, $140,000 is the way down number. All right. And then that was my last question. Thank you. I appreciate that.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just want to, I don't know, you don't want to make this, I want to make this statement. Because I feel like I talk to the community on an almost weekly basis about why are we spending our before and after school programming, extra funds, our MEAP programming, extra funds, and something other than those programs? And the answer is, we have a huge number of people in special ed that don't have jobs if we don't do that. We have a huge number of people in, we get rid of all of the adjustment Councilors if we don't do that. So it's not that we're taking that money and just being like, hey, let's have fun with it. It's like critical elements of our education don't happen at all if we don't do that. So it isn't a choice between whether we give the before and after school programs better digs or better salaries, which is a different conversation. We definitely have to do that. But this extra revenue isn't extra revenue. This is revenue plugging the hole because we don't get it somewhere else. And I feel like I think this is just an important time to point that out because I just hear it a lot, this conversation. It's very divorced in the budget process and the line items. They're just so divorced from each other. But they are not divorced if you want adjustment Councilors and this 10 or 20 people in special ed to be doing what they're doing. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Vice Chair Rousseau. Yes. Thank you to Member Graham for that. Because I've only been through two budgets, but I know I've had conversations with other members where it feels like we come in, we do the budgets, It's an already agreed upon, like, we pretty much have everything we need, but we wouldn't mind another 3 or 4%. But I feel like if we got everybody in a room or one-on-one, the number would be we need another 30%. If we never have the conversation that we really need another 30% in our budget, then how does anybody ever know? I mean, Somerville spends $586,000 on computer replacement in their school system every year, year after year. And that's every year. And they're not that much bigger than us. They're like, I think, 1,000 students more. Their students don't have different computer needs than us. and our teachers don't either. Our increase year over year isn't even that amount of money. I mean, once you take away the salary portion. So, I mean, if we're not telling the community that, in fact, our budget is painfully anemic, and this is how it's anemic, then at some point in the future when we ask the community to step up and say, okay, I guess we do want our kids to have computers that turn on within 20 minutes. Um, because an eight year old computer running windows 10, nobody's going to turn it on cause nobody's going to sit there that long. Um, so We have to have a budget that says, you know, the city thinks they can give us, I don't know, whatever the number will be, 60 million maybe, or whatever the, I don't remember. But we also have to have the conversation in the public that says, but if we could get 80, this is what we could do for Medford's public schools. We won't get 80, but if we never even tell anybody that what we really need is 80, then when we say to the residents, you know what, this is why we want more money from you from your taxes, you can't just start there. You have to start with what is it that's such a huge deficit? And our budget, I think we had $10,000 in the line item for 2020 for computers.
[Paul Ruseau]: But there is no conversation where under Prop 2.5 we ever get to a half a million dollars in computer replacement before I'm so old that I don't even remember how to use a computer. Like, that future is decades away at 2.5%. And we're not telling anybody that. So that's why I just wanted to agree with Member Graham that 20% sounds great, but it's a fantasy right now. And it's going to remain a fantasy unless we can get a redistricting to Assembly Row and to Medford.
[Paul Ruseau]: On the report of committee on the rules, it said that in the notes it says that we do not think it necessary to reprint the handbooks every year. I think they actually are reprinted every year. It's just that they don't need to be reprinted mid-year. So if we could make that amendment.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I really want to thank you for all the hard work. I know this was not just a little send an email off and call it a day. This was a ton of work for you and for the food service staff and for the principals. I know that that and the teachers. I mean, everybody really had to come together to make this work. And I'm looking forward to, you know, the year three or year two, I should say, when we can look at all these numbers and see them go up even more. I was especially Surprised, actually, by the Andrews. I mean, just wouldn't have been the school that I would have picked to expect to see such a massive increase, but that is very exciting. So I'm looking forward to next year, and thank you for all your very hard work.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor Burke. Mr. Russo, sorry. Thank you. I'd like to thank you for your leadership as our mayor and chair of this school committee. You've shown incredible poise, and I have learned so much from you in my first term, my first two years in office. When I began my run for school committee, you announced me at my kickoff event, which touched me deeply, because we weren't really friends yet. And your excitement at my first election is something I will cherish. Your ability to chair this meeting when there are six or seven strong-minded people who would probably take this committee in a thousand directions at every moment is really impressive. And you keep us focused on what's best for our community, our students, our teachers, staff, and everybody else who's involved. And that focus is a reminder that we're not here for our own agendas. We're here for the people of Medford. And you set an amazing example. And that example will live on for a very long time. I appreciate that. I'd like to thank you for your years of service, but mostly for your friendship.
[Paul Ruseau]: I believe it was actually held at Medford City Hall.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry, motion to amend.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr.. Russo Thank you for that report. I just had a quick Question about two questions one the South Street closure Do we have a how long that's gonna last?
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's not a week.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then I just wanted for clarification, since I know this, but I just wanted to make sure everybody else did. When you were talking about the technology at the high school, you were specifically talking about the internet connections. Exactly, yes. You didn't mention the word internet, and I just wanted to make sure that got included. Yes, yes, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: just wanted to echo what Mayor Burke had said because we have often after these meetings remarked that, no disrespect to any of the excellent people that work for us, but often the commentary from the students was some of the most important part of the discussion. So it may be hard to recognize that at first, but please don't hold back.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you very much. I did talk to Assistant Superintendent Patterson, and I just wanted to, in case anybody watching is checking out the Safer Schools and Community Initiatives website. One of the categories for which the money can be spent is for active shooter training, but I have received confirmation that that is not what we're using it for. And if anybody's afterwards looking and going, wait a minute, there's no concern that that's what this is for.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I really appreciate this, without having to even ask for it, because you know I was going to. One of the things about the wait lists, though, that I've heard And I was just trying to brainstorm around how we can, um, so when, when people find out there's a big wait list, for instance, at the Brooks, um, it's fairly well accepted that you can fill out this paperwork, but you're never getting a spot. Um, and that may or may not be actual true, but that seems to be the, um, the belief. And so, you know, one of my problems with the wait list numbers is people who don't fill out the paperwork to join a wait list that you'll never get through, that doesn't give us any sense of the real need. And so, I mean, we can do this in subcommittee, of course, but I mean, I think there are ways to, you know, keep how big the wait lists are secret, making people fill out these forms, so we can get a real sense as a committee Is the wait list 70, understanding the dynamic you just explained, or is it really 350? Because we can't ever budget and plan long term without knowing. I mean, because planning for an additional 70 is really a very different activity than planning for the need to build a building to house that many more people. So I think it would be good to try and find a way to shut down this. I'm not going to fill all that paperwork just to find, because I know I'm not going to get a spot. Because without that paperwork, we're never going to be able to understand the size of the problem. A question about your before school. You said when possible students are given a choice between quiet play or gym time. What does that mean.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to clarify that I certainly don't want to keep the program secret. I just think that to incentivize people to actually fill out the paperwork. it is absolutely necessary that they not be told that you can fill out the paperwork, you'll be number 92 on the list. There's no rational person filling out paperwork if they're told that. The person who is standing in front of the person filling it out needs to be ignorant of the size of the wait list, because we are all capable of saying, you know, I know you look kind of like a busy person. Can't tell you what the list is, but you can communicate it anyways. But that was just a point of clarification. I just wanted to quickly bring up the lottery. I had heard the word equity come up a couple times. I will certainly agree that there is no perfect and equitable solution. There are, however, less equitable solutions. And the current solution is absolutely about as unequitable as we could have it. It benefits people who are free to take the day off, like me. And anybody who has a job that doesn't work well for the time when it comes time to sign up, too bad. And who is that going to be? It is going to be people that need the services more than anybody else. So I agree that finding a perfect solution is probably outside of the realm of possibility. But I would say that the current solution of who first come first serve is the worst option. I see you mentioned your strategic plan and I'm not sure if we would have a time, like should we have a subcommittee?
[Paul Ruseau]: start from the perspective of what we can and can't afford, because I think short-circuiting strategic plans and visions based on, you know, the box we're living in keeps us in our box. So, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just, I certainly absolutely would support this universal after school. I just would say that that analysis, I imagine, would take six to nine months at least. And what Paulette's asking for, I think we could have at the next meeting. So I just think that From a scope perspective, I'm a little concerned about the change in that motion, because I was looking forward to that versus... It can be an A and a B motion, separate motions.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I did. Thank you. I definitely appreciate this. I was at the school committee conference all of last week after the election, and I talked with numerous people about superintendent goals because of the new superintendent evaluation system, which is a vast improvement. And one of the things that sort of struck me was that it felt like our goals were kind you decided on what the goals were and I know we met last year about them and I don't think it didn't, I think it worked fine last year because it felt like we didn't really have a set of goals to hand you. But what I heard from a lot of other people at the school committee conference was really that The goals were not the superintendents picked their goals and we just agree that those are the goals. It was that there are goals that we give you in sort of that employee boss relationship. The employee doesn't get to decide. Here's what I think my goals are and the boss just says, two thumbs up. And so, you know, I certainly understand that we agreed to this last year, and this was something we were very new about, new to us, or at least new to me. But I feel like I just want to make it clear that, like, in the spring of this coming year, I expect that the school committee will be getting together to tell you Working with you. It's not like we're just gonna like sit in a room and then let you know What the new Stern student learning goal will be for 2020? 2021 and that it's not necessarily going to be the same thing and I I don't want it to be that You know in in the spring as we get ready for the end of the school year, you just tell us this is what you think the new goal should be because I certainly have pretty strong opinions on what I think the new goal should be in the next school year. And I'm fine with this one even though I didn't agree with the whole committee last year about what it is. I just sort of wanted to get that out there that in the spring, we need to do this before the end of the school year because you can't start working on a goal in the fall. if you don't even know what it is. So I don't know the right timing for that, but I do think we want to make sure to keep this on the radar, because this is the two-year goals, and the two years is coming up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, and this is certainly, I'm not suggesting this was a surprise to me or anything like that. It's just that, you know. The process of deciding on what the very small set of goals will be going forward hopefully will be more collaborative. I mean you were new and we didn't have goals from the previous superintendent so it wasn't like we had anything to go on but just going forward. I don't want us to be next fall. not having a set of goals that we've agreed and approved, because my biggest concern about goals is, this is how we are supposed to, with the new superintendent evaluation system, this is how we actually are going to be reviewing you, evaluating you. The old system, which was absolutely horrific, and I only got to experience once so far, was honestly was a joke. I mean, this one is simple and clear and you will, actually be able to be evaluated on very simple things that are written down here. So, I want to make sure we can evaluate you honestly and fairly. So, that's all. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's make a few motions, mostly to send things to subcommittees. If that's OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: In new business. Is this not the new business section?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. Is that a Medford School Committee policy? No.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I don't want to object to your ruling.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: When I was at the school committee conference, I went to a double session on parliamentary procedures and that was explicitly explained as that under new business, it only had to be things that the chair was aware of being on there, which did kind of, wasn't a front to open meeting law in my mind as well. But I'm a little, just bear with me for a moment. You know, the three things I was thinking I wanted to send to subcommittee, having people show up where the whole discussion is, I'd like to send something to subcommittee, there's no discussion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Discussions in the subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I can do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's an option too. We don't have to send it from the floor.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry. Well, you'll have to wait until you see the agenda. Now you're all going to be busy with these. All right, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Whenever we have a teacher that is not certified in the particular discipline, that's reported to DESE, correct? That shows up on the report card and all that stuff?
[Paul Ruseau]: course. Thank you. And then this is, you know, this is really down into the weeds, but, um, apparently at the McGlynn today there was no French toast sticks available. They, they were served at all the other schools and they were ran out or whatever. Um, and that's not really why I wanted to talk about. Um, but, um, I've heard from a couple of parents whose kids are allergic to dairy and they went to school today and they were very excited because it's French toast sticks day and they could eat the lunch. And then they got there and they were replaced with mozzarella sticks because they were out. And none of that actually particularly bothers me. What bothers me is that are we really not providing everyday alternatives to fairly common allergies at lunch?
[Paul Ruseau]: I would completely agree. My question was really around like.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is lunch. And I guess my question is like, if you are allergic to dairy, does that mean only certain days of the week you can eat lunch? Or can you eat lunch every day? No. And I don't know, because I'm not allergic to dairy.
[Paul Ruseau]: I wasn't with the kids, so obviously I don't know that. OK. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, sorry. It's been a while. Do any of these assessments have specific computer technology requirements?
[Paul Ruseau]: And are those technology requirements consistent with what we already have, or?
[Paul Ruseau]: So nobody's going to demand that we have 5,000 new iPads. Nope.
[Paul Ruseau]: Excellent. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I don't know how to ask this delicately. Do the employees of Compass receive wages and benefits even remotely similar to our custodial staff?
[Paul Ruseau]: So in our RFP, We have nothing in there that says they should make minimum wage. I mean, obviously, they make minimum wage. But they can have no health care benefits and make minimum wage. And that's perfectly allowed in the RFP.
[Paul Ruseau]: It was measured. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I don't want to beat this dead horse too much, sorry. But, you know, why not? Part of what Ms. Mustone is saying also is like, you know, I mean, I don't know this company, and I have no reason to think they're anything but the most trustworthy company, but in a $1.4 million contract, what I'm trying to make sure is that it's not a million dollars for the owner, and then everybody else is like at the food pantry, and we don't.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. I appreciate it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm seeing the unclassified rink expenses for National Grid, and I'm a little embarrassed to ask this question. So the rinks are actually part of the school system?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Will there be in this process an evaluation of the performance of the officers in the schools, whether it's feedback from the teachers or maybe occasionally somebody like just going in and monitoring how it goes?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So, I know, like, Transportation's always an issue. Too much of your time, I'm sure. But this morning, the Andrews bus got in, I believe, at 810, which is long after breakfast would have been done. Does the kitchen staff, is there a process where the kitchen staff knows, OK, now you can
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, sir. My pleasure. The see something, say something app, do all the reports end up in one giant pile for you?
[Paul Ruseau]: After it's up, even for just 30 days, can we, I don't need a gory detailed report or anything, but just like Did you get six reports or did you get 5,000? Sure. Oh, yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have a question about, so, you know, the weekend traffic situation, which, I mean, this is only my second year here, but I think we talk about it every other meeting. At one point last year, we talked about the issue of, you know, when we were talking about bringing Leslie in as a partner, there were some concerns around parking. And one of the things that we talked about was whether or not events are being scheduled, you know, right up to 12, and then the next event scheduled at 12, which means you need twice as much parking than either event themselves need. And so my question is, and I think we had talked about it when we went really into the weeds around the various scheduling apps that the school system has, are we still scheduling something that goes until 12 and then something else starts at 12? Or are we giving half-hour breaks between every event?
[Paul Ruseau]: Because a 10-minute break isn't enough for a basketball game to get out, everybody to get... For the fields, I'm not talking inside.
[Paul Ruseau]: And everybody coming in at 12, they're there at 20 of. And this is not just an issue of like, we can take down the fells and build parking if we want. No, we can't.
[Paul Ruseau]: My point is just like, we can solve this in a way other than just adding more parking spots. And yeah, it does require that we take away a small number of minutes a day when the facilities are used. But it just seems like an easy fix. I mean, granted, I realize that sports are scheduled out like a year or two in advance, so it's an easy fix that might take a year or two to happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, so I mean, I just feel like this is something we could do to bring this down. Because honestly, I can't believe the fire and police don't say anything to us about what it's like there on a Saturday. They're just not.
[Paul Ruseau]: They do. They might go through, but you can't drive through.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much for that. I want to start at the end a bit. Is there any national conversation around hate rallies that students are leaving school for? Because this is completely new to me and sounds a bit like backing into a decision that was made. Like, I've not heard of any of these hate rallies coming up anywhere in our country. Do you think they would make the news?
[Paul Ruseau]: If you call in sick on a Friday, does Medford Public Schools have a policy that tells you what you can and cannot do on Saturday and Sunday?
[Paul Ruseau]: No I'm talking about anybody who works for our district. I know for my own job if I call in because I need a mental health day or I'm just, you know, for whatever reason I decide not to go to work, my employer has no rules about what I'm allowed to do on the weekend after that Friday. So I just wanted to be clear. I think there was some confusion with some people I've talked to. I actually have no issue with whether this is an excused or unexcused. I believe the administration should make that decision. I do believe it should be the policy of the Medford Public Schools that we do not take and then provide punitive measures that extend outside of the school hours. to our students. There is not some huge problem based on our absences that we have reported to DESE. We are perfectly fine. We are in the regular range of nine and a half. And we do not have a problem of kids skipping school who are then wanting to go, like the band kids are all going to school. And so are the football kids. And the natural, when I was an elementary school parent, there was this huge emphasis on natural consequences. The natural consequence, if you don't go to work, you don't get paid or you use your sick time. The natural consequence, if you don't go to school and it's unexcused, if the teacher doesn't let you make up the test, then you don't get a grade. But it's an unnatural consequence to then penalize those students that participate in extracurriculars, whether it's football or band, to then take away those things from all of their teammates. To me, it is actually abusive to have the pressure that these students were put on on Friday morning and told, you're going to ruin this band performance for all of Medford. Now, I don't think that the person who put that message out did anything wrong. The wrong thing was that they actually would be penalized for that. And if I may, I have a letter from a parent that couldn't make it. May I read it? Certainly. So this is from Jen Lewis. And unfortunately, I don't have her address right here, but I'll get that. Dear School Committee, I am deeply disappointed at MPS's decision to maintain last Friday as an unexcused absence. My daughter, Laura Lewis, 10th grade MHS, is a Color Guard member, and while she cares deeply about climate change and would have liked to go to the march on Friday, she chose to attend school since to get an unexcused absence would have kept her from being part of the annual home show this weekend. As some of you may be aware, it is their largest event of the year, and the kids were strongly admonished not to let the ban down. MPS could easily have paved the way for more students to attend by keeping them from having to choose between speaking out with hundreds of thousands of people around the world versus abandoning your team when you have all worked hard for a big event since June. Many of our surrounding districts chose to allow students to protest at this event without punitive measures, and MPS could have done the same. Instead, knowing the effect it would have on students who were part of weekend activities, You chose to allow a state data point to take precedence over encouraging civic participation and free thought among our student body. Climate change continues to worsen because our government refuses to take action to change it. Maintaining the status quo, not rocking the boat, has gotten us where we are. We must speak out, we must protest, and we must encourage and support our children to do the same. Your choice did the exact opposite. Attending a big protest engenders a sense of camaraderie and hope that simply cannot be easily replicated. I am proud of my daughter for the choice she made, ashamed of the school that forced her to do so, and saddened that she missed the opportunity to be there. I implore you in the future to find ways that the school can encourage students in activism and civic engagement not to, not be another barrier supporting the status quo. And that was signed by Jen Lewis. So I mean, I just feel like there was a middle ground here. And the assertion that, I mean, let's be clear. The statement I just heard implies that Cambridge, Boston, Somerville, Arlington, and many other towns did not take into account the student safety. That is a statement that is a direct, can be followed directly from the statement that this was about their safety, which is in the letter that we received. I don't believe that those superintendents and those districts truly don't care about the safety of their students and decided to do something they felt was going to risk their students' safety. But as I said before, I'm not opposed to just leaving This to me is not about whether it's excused or not. It's about whether the punitive measures are appropriate. I'll let somebody else talk for a little bit.
[Paul Ruseau]: I won't make all night.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. This was a conversation I've had several times over the last week, even before the strike, about the idea that this is civil disobedience. It certainly is civil disobedience. But here's my issue with giving children the same consequences that the rest of us in this room would have, they do not have the same rights as us. They don't. The Supreme Court's crystal clear. So why should they suffer the same consequences as us when they take an action such as civil disobedience? I just think that those, I kind of have trouble getting from the, you do civil disobedience, you get the consequences, whatever they are. That's fine, I'm a grown up and I can, make that decision. But when I don't have all the same, if somebody doesn't have all the same rights, I just don't think that is a fair proposition. And that is, I think, everything I wanted to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So on Friday, I had a conference call with Jim McDonald, Jack McCarthy, and Diane Sullivan of the MSBA, Massachusetts School Building Authority. I had sent them a long list of questions, and they felt it was better to actually just have a conference call with me. And it was a very enlightening call, to say the least, and there's a couple of important things I felt the need to share. First of all, our building, all school buildings are inspected and are given a rating from one to four, one being sound, I guess, to four being like, why is anybody in there? And we are rated at a one. So we should not have any delusions that they're gonna come in and say, this place has to be demolished. That's not gonna happen. Another important information, our reimbursement rate for Medford is 52.3%, so we are looking at paying for almost half of whatever we decide to do there. I think that's a really, really important piece of information. We've got 90% for the elementary and middle schools. We're not going to have that kind of thing in the future, no matter what. And then there was something else I asked about that I almost forgot to ask that turned out to be, for me, the most important piece here. Our high school is built for 5,000 students. And the MSBA only has authority on things from K to 12. So any kind of major renovation to the school can only be for the size of our population, 1,400, 1,500 kids. There is no option where they would demolish the building and give us a new building. Well, they would, but it'd be tiny compared to what we have now. We would lose all other programming that is not part of the K-12 that we have housed there. So to me, that is a really important point. We have a lot of other non-K-12 stuff going on there, and all of that stuff would just be completely orphaned if we were to get a grant for a new high school from them, ignoring how we all pay for it. So I thought those were really, really interesting and important points. And the other one I wanted, and just one note for the minutes, I have heard this numerous times lately that there's only five people in DPW or six people in DPW. The mayor has confirmed, I think it's like 50 people actually work there. I think that's an important thing for people to know, that no, there is not some tiny skeleton crew of people. Six people running around the city. And I see that twice in the minutes and wanted to correct that. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Well, number of divinadettos sort of took a bit of a half, just about everything I had to say, but that's all right. Around the accelerated, what percent of the seventh graders go on to take algebra one in eighth grade?
[Paul Ruseau]: There's not a big drop off. No. OK. That's helpful. So I'm looking at the wrong notes. Sorry. Do we know. Have we looked at the kids that are testing into the accelerated math to determine what elementary schools they went to.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would certainly like that piece of information. I don't know if we need it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I know that's not that simple in school brains. I get that.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I have a lot of reservations around the accelerated math. I mean, I think you and I have spoken about this whole idea that these kids are really being taught how to just get things done quickly and not have a deep understanding. And this is probably too hard of a question, but are these kids really sticking with math is really my issue and point. Are these kids in accelerated math just as likely as the kids who are not in accelerated math to take calculus? I mean, these are questions that I feel like you probably have a better sense of than I do.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I didn't pay you for that, just so we're clear. My concern is around the well-documented drop-off in girls and math. And aside from what schools these kids are coming from, and I realize 72 is not a big number. So you can only draw so many conclusions from that. But understanding the demographics of those 72 students, and also the trajectory. I mean, are all the girls taking middle school accelerated math, and then they get to high school, and all the girls are not in the math courses that they would that we would hope them to remain in. I mean, I'm not making that up that girls are not interested in math after middle school as a general statement. There are plenty of girls, I'm sure, that are. But it's just depressing. Something's happening. And it isn't that girls are suddenly not mathematically inclined when they get to high school. And I just think if there's anything we're doing that is feeding into that, we should really take a hard look at that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for this. This report was actually I shouldn't be surprised, but it was excellent. I really appreciated that where there were deficits in the individual screeners, you're all, you're filling and covering for all of those. That made me so very happy. One question I had was, I see that the map product is available in Spanish, and I just realized I have no idea how we handle have in the past or how we are planning to handle students who are not, English isn't their primary language.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I had any idea what I was going to ask. My question was actually around the playground at the Columbus. Other than the resurfacing, which I understand is in the CPA pipeline, much of the playground equipment itself is not there anymore because it wasn't safe anymore and it's been removed. Do we even have actually putting a playground back in the Columbus in the plan?
[Paul Ruseau]: But I'm just concerned about all the equipment that's actually been removed. Absolutely. It's not there, it's not broken.
[Paul Ruseau]: Because new families showing up to the Columbus would be unaware of a number of pieces of equipment that used to be there. Right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is it possible, I realize that on a day-to-day basis it is not possible, but is it possible once we do our DESE submission on October 1st that Can we get breakdowns of charter school enrollment by grade to add to this?
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, when I look at a number of different sites that try to talk about the student population, I know ClearGov includes literally every child of educated age broken out by where they're going. And I know that I have a chart that shows our population of students has remained virtually flat since 1995. But that doesn't mean the number of students in our public schools has. And I think that'd be helpful, because when I look at the grade 10 from last year, that was 302, and now they're in 11th grade, most of them, and there's a 15 student drop, which on the surface isn't a big number, but if you look at the other grades, we're going up or down five students. So I'm just curious, are we losing, are all these ninth graders that are 10 or 15 of them, are they bailing for charter schools? I mean, 10 or 15 students is a boatload of money. Some went up, though. Yeah, they went up by five. Which I mean, it's hard to know like, you know people just moving in or what I knew or right Yeah, but that would be helpful sure you may not have access but if you do it I can look into that for you sure miss Patterson has been doing quite a bit of work on our charter school population.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we could work it out, but we would just be picking an old June date. Correct. At least wouldn't it let us know what we're talking about? Is everybody in kindergarten going to charter schools, or is it where in this?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just not sure what an MCAS issue means.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is amazing. Thank you. Well, this system, I believe it was in the spring I had a communication with you about reports that I get on the Shore Educational Collaborative, where I'm the Medford representative. We get a report each time we meet that has a list of people who are out on leave, why they're out on leave, as much as we're allowed to know, terminations, retirements, et cetera. And I just assumed that was a report that we got there because they decided to do it. And then when I asked the representatives from the other six or seven or eight school committees that were there, literally everyone said, no, we all get this report. You're supposed to get this report. So will that system, this new system, actually be able to generate that report? Because I know when we talked, doing it by hand was not going to be it.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, I'd like to not. I'm gonna need a backup.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I?
[Paul Ruseau]: So that is a reference only to the There's an item on the agenda and you want to say something. This isn't the regular community participation. You can come to each item if you want to speak on. five of the items on the agenda. You'd be able to come up five times, yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo? Yes. So this is actually, other than the date, this is current policy. And because it also earlier states we're following Robert's rules newly revised, if that happens, and it's happened to me as well, then that can be at the next regularly scheduled meeting. Then a member can simply ask that it be put on the agenda anyways for the following meeting. And then if as long as four members say, yes, we want that on the agenda, then the chair loses the right to say no effectively. So the chair does have the right to not put it on. but we can override at the next official meeting. So, I mean, that's sort of the way it's been. I'm not sure we've ever done that.
[Paul Ruseau]: If I may? I mean, our charter says Robert's Rules newly revised, and that gives the chair that authority. I don't think we can do a policy that overrides the charter. That's, I mean, we can write anything we want here, but that doesn't mean it's enforceable, and that's sort of my issue.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just think the word emergency I just can't foresee the chairperson not putting it on the agenda if there's an actual emergency. Nor could I. But we do have that authority as a body. The emergency can't be every person gets to decide what's an emergency, and that I'm a little concerned about. Just because I think it's important and we need to talk about it doesn't make it an emergency.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, so I know when this was presented, we were considering going to middle school as well. I'm curious why we're not including middle schoolers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Actually, I just first want to ask Ms. Ray if she has any reservations or any reason. Okay, well then I would like to amend this to include the middle school.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It's nice that you're not delivering bad news or that we have to argue about this. I would just like to make a, well, let me back up a second. So I think that the committee should have to vote for the opt out to take place. It should not be an administrative decision.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. I can accept that. But the McGlynn Elementary has about a 22% participation. They have free breakfast now. And the Columbus has a 93% participation. And it's my understanding of revision to the name of the game here is participation. And the only reason that there's a 71% difference in participation is because at Columbus it's after the bell. So I'm not really even comfortable wasting three months of time if we're not making it after the bell at the elementary schools. Because there's no reason to believe that the McGlynn students are suddenly going to start eating when they've been able to. So I mean. I know it's a lot of work to go to After the Bell breakfast, but we're not doing this just to feel good like we checked a box.
[Paul Ruseau]: But if I may, free breakfast that requires that you're actually there before school starts, which is what we're talking about, right? I mean, you can go to any elementary school and watch the kids being dropped off one minute before the bell. Not two kids, dozens of them. And also, what about when the bus just shows up just at the last minute? None of these scenarios will enable a kid to eat. if they're not after the bell.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just have one more question. So if we, at the end of the three months, opt out because it is fiscally totally impossible, does this opt out prevent us from next year saying we're going to do after the ballot and we're going to try again? We can do it all over again next year if it doesn't work.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, so I guess My issue is with a pilot, and I understand the need to stay in the black, but the idea that one day we're serving all of the kids free breakfast, and then the next day, which I realize will happen over a break, but the next day kids will come to school who will not have heard that starting on January 3rd or whatever, you no longer get breakfast for free. That doesn't even sound like something that we could implement short of doing exactly the lunch shaming policy that we adopted. No, you can't have that, because you don't have any money. I mean, so I just worry that doing a pilot, I get it, why we want to do this. But if there's a chance that we would actually turn it off, I can't wrap my head around that, frankly. So I really do think the committee should have to approve turning it off. And if you come to us and say we need to turn it off because we're running a deficit of $10,000 a week or whatever, I think the committee should be the folks to say we can't afford it. We aren't going to make up the money from somewhere else or whatever. I just don't think it should be an administrative decision that suddenly kids that were getting free breakfast and we're going to advertise the heck out of it so everybody knows. And then suddenly they come to school and they don't get free breakfast. That's just, you know, I grew up without breakfast every single day in my childhood. And the entire idea of that, I mean, I can't even imagine what that would be like. And sure, many kids are going to eat free breakfast, have breakfast at home too, but not all of them. So I'm not okay with approving this if we don't approve the termination of the
[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to take a paper out of order, ma'am.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the Support Services Subcommittee has met a few times over the last, well, it's been almost a year, to update our medication administration policy. And there's been a substantial number of changes that I really can't get into because I don't have the old policy in front of me. But this new policy, is better organized, and I think better reflects what we have actually been doing here in Medford, and closes a couple of concerns that there might have been around parental notification. So if there aren't any questions, I'd like to move the motion.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. a bit of an effort to compile this. I think it's a useful thing for the district to have. And as you probably can imagine, this was just a first step in what I was going to be seeking. You know, we see the district report card, we see the MCAS results. It's not a secret that I think of them as relatively useless pieces of data. Within this set of assessments, though, I think is where the educators actually live and learn about their students. And so my hope is that some of these, not all of them, because we couldn't possibly sit through a meeting that long, even this committee couldn't probably last that long, that some of these things could be pulled out into sort of an annual state of the system report to help us understand, you know, Some of these assessments could tell us really very useful information that I don't think we get out of MCAS. And so I'm not requesting a report or specifying a date when that would happen. I think that you probably are doing this already. But figuring out what in here you think we should be presented with that gives us an understanding of what's really going on. Because MCAS- In the community. In the community, obviously, yes. Because I don't feel like I really have a sense of what's going on from MCAS scores.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I'm very happy that clearly you understand what I'm looking for. You know, some of these assessments are offered multiple times per year, and I think that is, for me, you know, these AWIN assessments and literacy, for instance, four times a year, knowing that at the beginning of the year, this is where third grade at Columbus is at, and this is where they are at the end of the year, and identifying that that's not, that's great, that's what we were hoping for, or there's something missing and we need to improve that. you know, that's really, that's going to be good. So, I'm thinking like a year from now, assuming I'm still sitting here, you know, if that's not on the schedule, I would certainly want to propose that. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rousseau. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did have one more question about the addition to the, that included the MCAS testing times. You know, it says in here that for grades three to eight, the ELA test, there's two sessions. the recommended testing time is two to two and a half hours per session. But these are untimed. And so what I understand that to mean is that even though it's two to two and a half hours, it's a whole school day without any instruction.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. But so from the perspective of counting up all the time that our students are in school and actually not learning, this two-hour session from a six-hour school day is really six hours that they are not learning, because they're not being... It technically can't be six.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not going to plan anything for that whole day, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you for that presentation. I was wondering if we might consider amending this to include all single-use plastics in our entire school system.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. At our last meeting of the Medford School Committee, I made offensive comments about the teachers of our district, specifically the elementary teachers. I made comments that were both disrespectful and factually incorrect, as well as hurtful. My comments do not reflect my true feelings about the teachers of our district, including those my children have had through the years. I was upset by the presentation that was just given to us, in particular the information about the percentage of children with dyslexia that, if treated early enough with systemic instruction, could overcome their diagnosis altogether and become fluent readers. This was news to me. I strongly believe that our district needs to put the necessary resources into early identification and remediation before children have had a chance to fail. I do not blame teachers for the situation we are in, but rather this sits squarely on the shoulders of the school committee and our budgetary responsibility for professional development and funding appropriate curriculum. I want to be clear that I have long held and continue to hold that the teachers of my children have been, without exception, incredible, talented, and caring professionals. And I have no reason to not believe all of the teachers in Medford are similarly exceptional. I sincerely apologize for casting such inappropriate comments upon the very people that have invested their careers in caring for and teaching my children and all of the children of Medford. I am especially sorry for the hurt I have caused to my children's teachers. As I reflected on each of these amazing teachers that have played such an important role in my family's life, my comments became even more upsetting, and an apology seems inadequate. I can only say that I will do my best to do better in the future. I will do better by being more deliberate, but also by looking at root causes of why I have certain feelings and thoughts before using the position of a school committee member to speak. I think the parent perspective is an important one to have on the school committee. but clearly I have room to grow in separating my roles whilst participating in official activities. Again, I sincerely apologize for making these comments and hope that I can work with the teachers of Medford in the future to collaboratively improve our education system and do whatever I can to remove barriers and give teachers the space to teach.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I mean, I'm only in my second year, my first term, but I'm already bored talking about whether after-the-bell breakfast is the best option or not. So I'd like to make a motion that we will implement provision two by October 1st of this year.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, there isn't. My motion stands.
[Paul Ruseau]: May I respond?
[Paul Ruseau]: What's not a sound decision is that we don't have after the bell breakfast at three of the four elementary schools. It is not an undoable thing. The Columbus is not some special school. It is not done at the other schools for reasons that are not acceptable reasons. And their participation rates are pathetic. So I think 93% of the kids getting to eat at Columbus is enough reason to make it that we just do it anyways. Unless you think that we should go another couple of years and not feed the kids. I would want to get the numbers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yep, exactly. If this were going to be on the agenda for the 17th, and we would be voting for it or not, depending on what we hear, I would be OK with that. So you withdraw. That would be another report where we can take a decision when we're deciding. It would be information to make a decision. I didn't just teach kids who were hungry. I was one of those kids who didn't eat breakfast ever. And when I went to school, there wasn't a breakfast program. And so I hear a lot about how hard it's going to be, maybe how much it's going to cost or not cost. And I don't hear anything about these kids. And that's actually the only reason I ran for office. It's not about that part. It's going to be the other way around. So I'm not okay with going into another September where only 11% of the kids at the Roberts are eating breakfast. And if you think that they're not the Brooks, they're much more like Columbus with 93%. So let's say, what is that? It's like 85%, 82% of these kids are not eating breakfast. That would. To me, it's not a, if we have to move mountains, then we move mountains. I would be fine with changing the motion till the 17th, we'll be able to decide whether to do it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Mr. Rizzo. Yes, I'd just like to second Mayor Ruggiero's comment. I actually explicitly oppose to explicit consent. If it's considered good enough for the community, then if it is, then we should vote to do it. If it's not, we shouldn't be doing it. And so I'm very much opposed to requiring active consent to even screen. But I know I'm pretty extreme in that regard.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. I'd like to make a motion to approve this entire.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Motion to approve, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you. Thank you for this work. And I know it's a lot of work. I do want to say that the word proactive is becoming a bit offensive. As a parent of a seventh grader who can barely read, it's not proactive. We're decades behind. And so we're proactive because we have the law coming down. We are not proactive to all these kids that can't read in our district. While there's lots of new evidence, the evidence has, for the most part, been very clear for decades. And we refuse to teach phonics because it's boring and teachers don't want to be bored. The reading wars were lost, and the teachers just decided to rebrand it, rather than teaching phonics. That's the truth. So my question is, after doing all this, these teachers are going to have to teach phonics. What are we going to do with the teachers that refuse? Because there are going to be teachers refusing to teach it, because it's boring. I know it's boring.
[Paul Ruseau]: But it's not up to the teachers to decide that it's boring, and they're going to do it for two days a year and call that phonics. So what are we going to do as a district when the teachers won't do it? Because it's been, what, was it 1993 or 4 when this was decided by Congress because the teachers just couldn't work it out?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's not going to be an option. I'm not talking about the screener.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I didn't need the screeners to know that my four-year-old wasn't going to be able to read when he got to kindergarten. I didn't need that. He could remember the book. That's why he could read. But he could never actually read. And his kindergarten teacher sort of made the inappropriate, not following the rules, said, you should get a neuropsych. We don't typically do it until first or second grade. But whispered in my ear that it should be done. I'm glad she did, but the school's first time deciding he should get a neuropsych was second grade, I think, second or third. My point is just figuring out which kids need services is one thing, but if the staff is incapable or disinterested or not up to par to do it, Because what I've heard about phonics is it is so damn boring. My son complains when he comes home because he has phonics and he loves his phonics teacher. But he's like, oh, it's so boring. And I wouldn't want to teach it day in and day out to a classroom full of kids who are bored. I get it. But it needs to not be a choice.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, and I just want to say, I also respect that my understanding is virtually no teaching schools actually teach this to the teachers anymore. So, like, for the teachers, like, they need to be really taught how to do it from scratch, it sounds like, for a lot of teachers. So, I mean, I don't mean to suggest that it's, like, just some simple thing they don't want to do and let those kids fail, but... They need to be supported as well.
[Paul Ruseau]: Ongoing, really.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, right, of course. Yeah, I understand.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, so I realize we are going to wait until we get a better cost analysis. But regardless of which screener we end up going with, the interventions are no different. And those are the actually really expensive thing. So, I mean, $7 per student sounds like a lot more than $1 per student, but there's 300 kindergartners. It's not, I mean, not that much money, although I realize professional development may make that number look tiny. But these numbers per student, per year or per time they're assessed? Because I know a lot of tests are done.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's not like we sink the money and we could use it forever. It's every year. One shot. All right. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Van der Kloot. So, I mean, thinking back to when we passed the policy around the registration of organizations, one of the things that I think is part of what Member DiVenedetto was trying to get at is, you know, we lack a single scheduling system for the district's properties. And so, therefore, we don't know if some group is using a room, are they paying market rate that we have set, or are they getting a, my buddy let me register the room because I know them, or are they actually a club at the school and we're not going to charge them. So, you know, like all of our properties, every single one of the rooms and spaces that are being used by somebody clubs, 501C3s, community schools, any sports teams that's not on any of these lists. It should all be on the up and up exactly. Who's renting it? Who's the contact? What are they paying, if anything? Where is the money going that they're paying, if they are paying? And I just don't feel like that is clear, because there is no one scheduling system. My last count, there were five scheduling systems for our school system. So I can go right now to the Columbus Elementary School, and it will show that not one part of that school is being used this week. And I can tell you that's not true. And there's no one master schedule. We have all the different sports things. Mr. Maloney has to do a year ahead of time for the sports, which I totally respect and understand. But that scheduling goes into one thing and not into the other systems. It's just a complete mess. that doesn't seem like anybody has used their authority to simply say, okay, we're going to normalize on a single system, whether you like it or not, and if there's duplicative data entry, then that's somebody's job. But right now, there is nothing, and that's really what we have.
[Paul Ruseau]: But if there's transparency, then anybody at home right now should be able to go to a single calendar off of a website from Medford Public Schools and look up any single space that can be reserved, and they will see who's in it, when, how much they paid, where the money went. And right now, there are whole buildings that if I went to one calendar, They seem to be completely available and free. And then you go to another calendar, and maybe there is scheduling information there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Like Miss Kay at the Columbus wants to say, yes, the PTO can have a meeting in the library tonight.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's fine. It doesn't make sense that then she has to contact Rachel Perry, who will then put it on her calendar, that that's going to happen. It makes sense that Miss Kay goes into the calendar, because she's the master of her calendar.
[Paul Ruseau]: And puts it in. And there's one calendar that says both. Right now, I went on the calendar. It says Greater Boston League of something, something. I'm like, that was the sports calendar. There are multiple calendars still. that will list all of the properties, but the building people will be using one, the sports folks are using another, and so there's no calendar that shows you what's going on in our district, and that's, if you think there is, I would like to know where it is, because I looked.
[Paul Ruseau]: And in the fall when we met, there were five calendar systems, and that was this past fall still. So unless somebody has decommissioned the other four, there are still five. That's that. I mean, that's not really... We can work on that. That'd be good. get it down to one.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Composted in the carbon pollution offset. I mean, you have to calculate that and give it to them. So I'm like, how do you do that?
[Paul Ruseau]: So the people that pick it up give you a report?
[Paul Ruseau]: So there's nobody out there like dealing with the compost, trying to like weigh it and all this like... No, no.
[Paul Ruseau]: Resort. Let's revert instead. Reverse.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. I just wanted to quickly bring up an issue around MCAS. MCAS testing is ongoing, or has been ongoing forever. from the community that there was some concern about whether MCAS testing results were at all involved in your academic placement. And I just wanted to hear the superintendent confirm that no matter what you score on an MCAS, that has nothing to do with your placement when you go to the next grade or high school.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you. So without detailing where the money gets spent for this project, Is this in any of the budget proposals we are going to be hearing? And if not, why not? And I'm not sure where it would actually fit. It's kind of a strange thing, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I noticed the word policies was used a few times about things you plan to update, and I'm just wondering if there's going to be a bolus of new policies that we need to approve, or do you mean policies that aren't school committee policies?
[Paul Ruseau]: And I'm not sure where this would fit into the budget, but one of the things I hear from parents who happen to teach in other districts a lot, I've heard it too many times, is that in some districts it seems that there's a data person in every building, which I don't know if that's an exaggeration or there's one there two days a week or what. My understanding is we're incredibly light on the data people in our district, and I'm wondering if that's going, not that the people we have aren't great, but there aren't enough of them. And I'm wondering if that's going to be worth coming in the budget. We're not done, so I don't know where it would be.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great. I have one more question. This is something that I know at the middle schools, the schedule every day is different for every kid. And while I recognize the value in your ability to have your specials for classes that are only for part of the year and all that other stuff that makes it possible to have a teacher in one building and go to another building. You can fit more in. But for some kids, especially kids with executive functioning issues and other students with other disabilities, this schedule is an absolute nightmare. Every time I go to my son's pediatrician, she just like rolls her eyes like this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. It's not like you can write that into an IEP, that my student won't have a variable schedule day-to-day. That's not an option. And so the result is, is that progress reports come out and it's inconsistent performance every single class. That's because in the morning everything's great, and in the afternoon everything isn't. And we can't build supports to make the afternoon classes better because some days it's the math class, some days it's the English class. It's not just my own, you know, my own experience. This is not an uncommon thing. And I'm just wondering if there's any discussion around ending this variable schedule thing. I mean, is it, everybody does it? I don't understand this.
[Paul Ruseau]: The $400 to Eastern Bus three different times for Brooks, what is that for? So these are not like PTO events?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. From their separate accounts. Also on page five, universal screening is under athletic services.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you for that. Could we get a report that presumably would have to be given an executive session on the incident and what went well with our procedures and what improvements we would need to.
[Paul Ruseau]: The school's handling, but also how we interfaced with the police, if there's any improvements we need to make to procedure.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think it was just notification.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'm just not really clear what our procedures are for how we're supposed to actually handle it. Not that the staff doesn't know, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. You're welcome. You gave me plenty of opportunity for questions, but I don't want to keep us here all night. So when I look at these variations between 2017 and 2018, I don't know whether or not there's any statistical significance to the differences. And I don't think the state's website provides that information as I've looked at it endlessly. And they don't tell you anything about whether it means anything. That's right. Do you have the details to be able to know does a change from 6% to 7%? It's easy to get excited when we go up 2% and then get all depressed when we go down 2%. But they could be completely meaningless and have nothing to do with anything other than it's a different set of kids who took the test. That is true. And so that's where I struggle with all this information, is that what's actually important is the state doesn't seem to really be interested in that. But do you have more details that help to understand that?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm on page 4, the first table. Yes. So looking at third grade, exceeding expectations, we went from 6% to 8%, which sounds good. The state went from 7% to 10%.
[Paul Ruseau]: And if you didn't know anything about math, you'd say, well, we didn't increase as well as we should have. That's right. how many kids actually took the test, and it's a different set of kids.
[Paul Ruseau]: So we shouldn't get too excited by up and down a few percent is how I take that data. Going up a couple percent doesn't mean we necessarily started doing something better. Just like going down a couple percent doesn't mean we started doing something worse. Okay. And this is referenced in a couple of places. There'll be quarterly Envisioned Benchmark Assessments. That's right. Are those assessments something we – have we been doing them at less frequency, or is it all new that we're going to start doing them?
[Paul Ruseau]: And are these tests the tests that the teachers are using to assess grades?
[Paul Ruseau]: Are these the same tests that a teacher would use to assess the grade?
[Paul Ruseau]: So, I mean, one thing that I worry about is that we spend all of our time testing the kids and not teaching them. And between MCAS prep tests or whatever the proper terminology is, and these tests, these are all in addition to unit tests teachers are doing. That's right. And so I'd like to make a motion that a report be provided to the committee by April 8, detailing all tests, including practice tests given to students K through 8th grade, broken down by grade level and school, exempting tests teachers give to assess grades, so those unit tests are not included. And I'd like this report to include frequency and duration of the tests, and practice tests need to be clearly demarcated.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean not actual duration, just expected duration. And I have it printed so you don't have to... Oh, okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do have a follow-up. I forgot to ask this one question. On page nine for future steps, I was a little surprised to see the idea of kindergartners through fifth graders doing 70 minutes of uninterrupted mathematics instruction. I mean, when I was in college, we took a break in 70-minute classes. Can you explain that? Because I don't think it means exactly what I think it means.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. We, when we get the item number, we get item number, we don't actually get what the question was, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: You know, I mean, there are several computers in my house, and we haven't had a mouse in my house in a very long time.
[Paul Ruseau]: The one attached to a computer.
[Paul Ruseau]: And you know, one of the things that's really interesting, you can go to YouTube and watch videos of people who've never used a mouse, try to use a mouse. It's like trying to drive, just no instruction. Yes. And so, you know, I guess I'm just really concerned about third graders being expected to use this technology, but all the way up, if, I mean, my daughter gets her first computer and my son gets their first computer, they're not getting one with a mouse, they're getting one with a trackpad.
[Paul Ruseau]: And it's a completely different eye-hand coordination effort, and I guess I'm just complaining.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I'd like to suspend the rules. Take a few items out of order.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor Burke.
[Paul Ruseau]: My question is really one I wish Howard was here, our attorney, because I seem to remember that non-subcommittee members attending was perfectly legal. under open meeting law. But I seem to also remember the Attorney General's advice is that we should sit quietly and not be participants. If anybody in this room believes that any of us who are not on the subcommittee are not going to participate, I got a bridge to sell. I mean, like, it's not going to happen. So, I think it would be useful to at least get the advice of Howard to say, if we all show up and we all can't keep our mouths closed because that's not going to happen, We're not gonna get to vote on anything or deliberate but I Just want him to be saying this is okay Because I'm not gonna come to the meetings to sit and listen and hope that Paulette asks the right questions That seems really important to me
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I want to be clear, I actually support this, even if I'm not allowed at these meetings, which is kind of crazy because I'm a details person and I have a thousand and one questions. And last year during our budget process, I had a thousand and one questions, all of which went unanswered because that was not a setting for that. My understanding also is that a finance subcommittee does this in virtually every other school committee in the state of Massachusetts. We are the weirdos here. We're the ones who think that Mr. Zigny standing up there and reading from a one-page document for 20 minutes in some meeting every year gives us any input on the budget. I want to know, so we have this many fine arts teachers at the high school. Questions I want to ask are hard questions. Well, how many should we have? How many are there at other schools? Let's get into that detail. Our regular school committee meetings would go to 3 a.m. if we got into the detail we need to get into, and I would give up the option of digging in, since I'm not on the subcommittee, which I'll want to be on next time around, over what I felt last year was the waving of the wand and saying, we knew what the budget was, because we got this monstrous thing printed. So what? That's the fine arts budget. What should it be? Those are the questions we're supposed to ask. And you can't go line by line through a gigantic document and interrogate the speaker who came with a presentation, a one-page presentation about the budget as to what's next year look like, what did last year look like. I mean, those meetings would go on forever. And I want to get into that level of detail. And I don't think the regular school committee meeting is the right place for that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Obviously, I'm going to attend every one of these meetings, no matter what the dates are, because I prioritize the school committee above all other commitments. So I will be at any date that you put down. And that would have been the case even if I had to sit silently. I am fine with the Committee of the Whole if the scheduling is done in a rational way rather than reaching out to all seven of us. Can you do this date? I'm waiting for seven people to reply to a doodle poll and four days later nobody's replied or half of you have replied. We're not going to start these meetings until next year if we do scheduling like we schedule subcommittee meetings. So, I mean, I would vote for Committee of the Whole if Well, it would be the mayor, since she will say what the schedule is, and we'll make it, or we won't make it. And we're not going to argue about the dates. I mean, I'm fine with that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Last Monday, was it last Monday? Yes. I believe it was. We met to just to send the policy to the full subcommittee. And we agreed to do that. I will be scheduling another subcommittee meeting to discuss the issues raised by some of the members. That's it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you. So how are classrooms selected? Are they selected ahead of time or are all classrooms actually observed?
[Paul Ruseau]: My question really was, is every classroom being observed?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to make sure that we're not, you know, the principals or whomever's selecting which of those classrooms to select to observe aren't choosing their classrooms where they expect the best outcomes?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mary Bird. Mr. Russo. a piece of new, I just would like to request a policy be sent to a subcommittee, the technology use policy. Could that be sent to the rules subcommittee? And do we need a vote for that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Technology use policy be sent to the rules subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to also refresh our memories of last week when we found that 60 of the eighth graders at the McGlynn are going on the trip. and 128 from the Andrews are going on the same trip with almost the same enrollment. So it's segregation in every way that that word can be used. And in my mind, it's completely unacceptable, even if the public isn't happy about it. So I fully support this. And in fact, I emailed the superintendent probably making her think I was in her office with her or something, saying, when are we going to do this? Because we should do this, what she's proposing. And I couldn't support it more. So thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm so proud. That was excellent. I have less to say.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. The issue of all meaning all, I think, is very, very important and why I do think that the 5678, my colleague had suggested a motion to consider that, although I think a few years is perhaps a little bit of a long term. I think it would be nice to understand what our options really are about getting all the kids together as early as possible. I mean, when I spoke to the director of EL, and I believe the director of special education, a 4, 5, 6, sorry, a 5, 6, 7, 8 model It, at least for EL, solved a lot of problems. And certainly, all the kids would be in one place. So the services issue, I think, would automatically resolve itself. Whether or not we physically have the physical plant to handle that, I think we really should look at that in depth. So I'd like to make a motion that
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm seconding Erin's, and she'll let me change it from a few years out, too.
[Paul Ruseau]: And how many kids are at the McGlynn Elementary?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, if we're going to take the principle of all equals all, to do something with the facilities to really get to all is all, or is it better to double the special education budget, which is a totally impossible thing I recognize. Some kids having the lottery and some not having the lottery isn't fair, period. I mean, there's nobody who thinks that's fair, right? So I think it would be good to have a number. for what it would look like to resolve that, so that really all the children have the lottery. What's the dollar? Are we talking $70 million more a year? Are we talking $700,000 more a year? I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. But we need a number so we can decide.
[Paul Ruseau]: Or EL in both places, and special ed. You know what? Let's pretend you had two kids in middle school on the autism spectrum. I know that's not real. Instead of putting them all in the same school, you've somehow managed to do it in both schools. I mean, there's got to be a number that we can, we have to be able to decide what that number is so we can decide that all is just too expensive for Medford right now. Or is, which is what we've decided right now without knowing what the number is. So, I mean, I guess, what are our options and what would it cost the EL department to have all of those services in both schools? I had two other quick questions. One, the open houses, I presume, will still happen. Yes? Yes. And my other question was, we should be able to do the lottery much, much earlier. than previously because, well, than last year, obviously, because we aren't going to be worried that there's going to be like a whole bunch more kids at one school or the other. And then, you know, as kids come and go from registration, we can just, oh, this school needs the next kid, this school needs the next kid. So we should be able to do this much earlier, perhaps even before open houses, which would make the experience sort of what it was when we had this regular choice. The kids who go to the Andrews are the kids that are going to the Andrews for open house. And based on my experiences last year, parents who knew they were going to select the Andrews went to the Andrews. And they didn't go to the McLean open house and vice versa. So I also know that neither one of those schools can handle all of the families the entire district in one night.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's no way to do it. So if we can get the lottery before the open houses, I think that would be an excellent thing to do. That's not a motion. I mean, you have to figure out whether you can do it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right, right.
[Paul Ruseau]: I fully support this. But the economically disadvantaged students that we're trying to level out so that all of the students get to experience each other, which is really, really important. They also all need to experience kids on the autism spectrum. And they all need to experience all kinds of kids, kids who don't speak English. And they're not. So I'm not sure that I would, I just think that that, that point is important is that there's not something special about the kids who are economically disadvantaged or advantaged and how they need to mix compared to how all of those kids also need to mix with kids with disabilities and who don't speak English as a first language. So to me, it's exactly the same thing. It's just a different, just because it's expensive.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, of course.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just not sure. Isn't this the committee that you are suggesting? Or is it? I'm not sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I had another question. Thank you for clarifying that I obviously misunderstood So I noticed in the recommendations there wasn't one for something that you found to be quite a surprise and that was that Some gen ed students really needed a plan as well and Is there thinking on how to really I mean you can't start from the IEP or the special ed staff so
[Paul Ruseau]: So the Support Services Subcommittee met in August of last year, which I recommend in the future. It was very, very hot. Very hot. Sorry about this. And we met to update the medication administration policy for the district. It had needed a lot of updates. And the Support Services Subcommittee met just before this meeting. Most approved the policy to come before the full committee. There were some clarifications around busing, situations when nursing was not available, and self-administration changes were made to the policy. And that is about it.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just have a question about this policy. And unlike other policies, we don't just approve the policy. The school physician actually has to approve it as well.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. So I mean, that's why I think that moving it to subcommittee also makes sense. OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much, and thanks for hitting a lot of the questions I had before I got to them. So how many students potentially could go with the McGlynn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Right now, we have- Can you not make me look that up, or do you know it?
[Paul Ruseau]: And the Andrews?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I guess I'm just, the Andrews numbers are pretty amazing, and I'm glad that we have been able to find money for kids that need it so they can go, but I'm sure everybody can recognize those ratios are not anywhere
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Just for the school committee's information, Is it possible to survey the students that are not going with a simple two or three or four options as to why they're not going? So we can know, is it really that the school committee needs to find money to fix this? Or is it that kids just don't want to go, which I leave that out as an option, although I was a kid once.
[Paul Ruseau]: Or their parents don't. Right. There can be lots of reasons, but I'd like to know that it's not money. And I struggle when I see the difference between the two schools. And I know the SES status of each of the schools to not conclude that the McGlynn is sending fewer kids because they can't afford it. I don't want to say that without evidence, but I'm pretty comfortable saying it anyways.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did have one other quick question around... Oh, my gosh. I did have a question. It's gone. Anyways, thank you. I'll probably email one of you later. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have a question more for the committee than anybody. Do we require that the transportation our students use on field trips, that the transportation has seat belts?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Well, if it's not our policy right now, I guess it's not time to bring it up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Was this at the Andrews or the McGlynn?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, sorry. I was hearing you say Andrews, and I'm like, OK, sorry. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. My concerns were slightly different, although those made a lot of sense to me. The other area, or 503C, 501C3, that I'm concerned about is Big Club International, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Kiwanis, you name it, names that do not have Medford in them and that are truly much bigger than Medford, that do things in Medford for Medford kids, spend their money on Medford public schools, We don't know how much they spent on us, and we don't know how much they collected in our name. I mean, their money comes from somewhere, fundraising drives. And it's sort of like all the cancer organizations that always have pediatrics. It's always raising money for kids, even though most of the money doesn't go to kids. I want to know that these organizations aren't collecting $100,000 a year in Medford from Medford people. and then spending $5,000 a year.
[Paul Ruseau]: But those organizations are going to come forward and make a donation to our school. We shouldn't allow a donation to our school from any organization, from an individual's different, from any organization. that just miraculously finds money to give us, they got it from somewhere and they probably raised it using Medford's name.
[Paul Ruseau]: As long as they're not fundraising in our name. And then giving back a smaller portion than what they've raised. I don't know how to know that.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I say, no, that's $4 million every single year we're not getting that we should have gotten.
[Paul Ruseau]: So when we look at heating at the high school or whatever other facility issue that we have, $4 million every single year that we should have been getting adds up, just in a decade, to $1.5 million. our entire MSPA loan that we wanted. So this $4 million will quickly make a difference if we can start getting it. And the reality is the state owes us and every other city since 2001 when they stopped increasing and started decreasing. So we're owed a lot in arrears, but if we could just get Go forward. Go forward would be a nice start.
[Paul Ruseau]: I also would like to add, it impacts all of the Medford taxpayers because you have to decide when we're doing our budget How much does the school get, which is our biggest spending? And how much does the rest of the city get? And it ends up being that you have to give the schools more than perhaps is fair to the rest of the citizens. So our streets suffer because of that $4 million every year. It really is everybody that's impacted.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. not disagree that we have a fiduciary responsibility here, but that responsibility does not mean that I'm supposed to know that each individual in this list works here and is actually pulling a salary, because they should. That's beyond imagination that that could happen. That's not my responsibility to know every person here, every time we get one of these, actually works here. My responsibility, as I see it, is to make sure that there's a process in place And there are staff that are making sure that that's happening. And I think that is, we can all agree, what we want to know for sure. But I can't attest that these people work here and that they should get a salary. That's craziness to think that we would go through a list with hundreds and hundreds of people. And each week, I'm going to go know that they actually still get work here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for this. Without making this first page into a seven-page document, I do note that the McGlynn is referenced and the Brooks is referenced, and it would not be illogical to conclude that this is a notice about these two elementary schools and that maybe there'll be another one coming later.
[Paul Ruseau]: The very first page.
[Paul Ruseau]: There's Building Bridges to Kindergarten at the McGlynn. There's one at the Brooks.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just think it needs to be explicit that no matter where you're, like if your kid is zoned for the Columbus because you live across the street, you might read this and decide, oh well this isn't, this is the McGlynn one. I'll wait for the
[Paul Ruseau]: But what's on the website, you know, if it says at the McGlynn Elementary is where this is taking place, it needs to be explicit that it's for all kindergartners regardless of where they're zoned. And maybe it already says that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: I thought this was actually a pilot training, so you wouldn't want to record the pilot training, in which case the trainers don't really know what they're doing and people are asking questions off topic. Isn't this a pilot training?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the heat. It was lovely on Thursday and Saturday night. Were you in the theater? I was. I sat at the very top because it was sold out practically, or it was sold out, and it was so hot. I was thinking about one year prior for the inauguration. It was so cold. I was joking with people that I can't complain about the heat in here right now. We've got to let it be warm for a while before we complain.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm busily eating three-year-old gummies. They're not very good. Will there be any additional staff for this person? I mean, the secretary?
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just wanted to be sure that, you know, you mentioned the active shooter training that the other parts of the city, but we have not approved active shooter Alice training. No, no, no, no, no.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's great.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, good. Yes. Didn't want that to slip under the covers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you. My question is actually around, is there any evidence that punishment actually has any effect on use? No.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. I mean, I don't know. I sort of asked the question. There's a lot of shaking heads out there. Yeah. So I mean, I asked the question earlier around kids who don't get to go to college because they got arrested for something that shouldn't prevent you from getting an education. And I just worry about a focus on detention or punishment Because if the goal is to have any impact on this, and that doesn't have an impact on it, then it's a heck of a lot of feeling good like we did something and we didn't do anything. And there's two groups of kids to worry about, the ones that are already using and the ones that aren't. And everything we've heard tonight from Dr. Schuster is also that, If we educate both groups of kids on the effects, that seems like an effective approach without detentions and getting things on your record so that you have trouble when you apply for college or getting into school brains. And then the state changes their minds on what they're going to do with the data. And then the feds are deciding they want the data, because we know that happens. So I just have a strong dislike for the disciplinary approach to things.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm assuming that you were working with the Board of Health and the communities all around us so that we're not just doing something and you just walk two minutes away to Somerville and it's totally different.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Have you had any conversations around going down to fifth grade, since it sounds like it's unfortunately not something necessarily starts in sixth grade?
[Paul Ruseau]: But does the Michigan model that we've purchased include anything for fifth grade on vaping that we just aren't using yet?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I was really happy to see the technology money for the equipment. I know that that's equipment that's there, but you actually can't use it. It's more frustrating than no equipment at all. And I had one other comment of which my own. So I think you told us this already in the transportation and the summary. Because the encumbrances are known already is why it's already at 95%, right? Correct. But the other things we don't really necessarily know, so we don't have them written in.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Will the response to the sanitary materials and bathrooms, which I don't think that's actually on the agenda, is it? So maybe we should discuss it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. This is a lot of progress. I really do appreciate that. Is Miss Ray here now? She is not. She says that we cannot. But in New York State, they have a law that went into effect on July 1, mandating that from sixth through 12th grade, every single bathroom have both pads and tampons for free in every public school in their state. So we're a long way from that. And I'm hopeful that my work with the legislature to make this the law in Massachusetts soon will happen. I'm just wondering if we do some of what we're planning and then the legislature says we have to do effectively the same thing, will we be able to reuse what we've already done or will we have to start over?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I mean, so is there a change to the It says it's outside the assistant principal's office.
[Paul Ruseau]: It looked like it was in the hall.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm like, this is not making sense. And how long does it take from the furthest point on building on 1, 2, or 3? What is the furthest distance to walk to one of these within the school?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, let's say you need one of these urgently. You're probably not running.
[Paul Ruseau]: Because I still get lost at the high school. So to me, it's like a 25-minute walk to try and figure it out. OK, good. That's good. A couple minutes. It's just a couple minutes. All right, that's important. All right. So I guess I would really like to hear a follow-up as to why tampons cannot... I mean, the dispensers themselves may not be capable of it, and so that is an issue if we need to pick a different dispenser. But I mean, it seems like we're making a decision for girls whether they can use pads or tampons. I'm already having that conversation with the fifth graders. So I don't think this is really a decision for the school system to decide.
[Paul Ruseau]: I feel like one of the least qualified people around this space to talk about this, but I had to learn about toxic shock syndrome in the little books that I had to read for my own child. It's the frequency of changing them that is important. So not having them seems like we're setting ourselves up for a liability versus having them. So I don't really follow the logic that not having them is better because we just want to pretend nothing's going on. If we're putting the pads in there, then we are saying that we care about this issue. And if you make the decision as a girl to use tampons, Well, that's not our problem. And I just think that's not OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: What does SRB option mean? I see it mentioned a few times. It's on page 103 on the right under bonus, then there's requires SRB option. It's not so obvious today.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would like to ask a question perhaps of Ms. Patterson about our MSBA application. Oh, sure. Do we get feedback or do they just simply give us a no? Like is there something about our application they dislike or think that we can do differently?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. In your benchmark around the MCAS math increase from 40.6 to 45%, was there some kind of rubric that you used to pick that number?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I, who doesn't love Hawaii, in December especially. But my question is, the dates, the 4th through the 9th, if a family went, do the kids have to come home with the rest of the group?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So you mentioned this, I think. So this report that says there were 77 kindergartners at the Brooks. Desi's website will not show that for another year.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: But this October 1 date is the date Desi uses.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's the snapshot. If enrollment goes way up or down, this is the snapshot that will show up on Desi's website.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. You specifically mentioned the revolving counts of athletics, and so that made me look in here for the athletics. But on the summary, School athletics had a shredding balance of negative $21. So I'm confused.
[Paul Ruseau]: So maybe, is there a column missing that tells us how much we are taking from the pile of money?
[Paul Ruseau]: But it says $21.
[Paul Ruseau]: So the debits for athletics, $489,453. Let's just say half a million dollars. That's the money spent, but the credits of $489,432, how much of that is from?
[Paul Ruseau]: User fees. So none of that came out of this $1.9 million?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. But is there any report that shows us that? Because I'm looking at school lunch, for instance, which, I mean, $188,000 in balance, which is fabulous. I mean, that's nice. But this report doesn't help me understand. We have all this money that you found. We had savings. And then it's being used to cover all these things. But I can't tell from this report who's getting the money, who's getting coverage.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll try to get to my actual question. OK. I'm trying to understand, are we spending $200 per student for athletics, $30 per students for the band, $2 per student who want to do an academic club? And that's important information because, well, some people think Those other things are as important as athletics. And when we have the band endlessly fundraising, the different activities cost different amounts. So it isn't just that. But it would be nice to know that is our budget and our commitment to a per-pupil activity rational? But I can't seem to figure out how to get that information.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. But if the gymnastics team has to fundraise, like it's their only job, and the hockey team The football team doesn't have to do anything, because we just write a really big check. That's not fair. And I just want to get a sense or find some way to say, this is how much it costs to be a soccer player. This is how much fundraising each person has to do. And I know the whole families and all that other stuff. And this is how much Medford in our budget, from our taxes, is giving each student to be a soccer player so that we can identify what is surely some big inequities here based on which sports are popular, which clubs are popular. Because I've seen some of the fundraising going on, and I'm just like, do these kids get to go to school at all? It's like all they're doing is fundraising.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm certainly not suggesting that you should have a single consistent user. We shouldn't be budgeting us. You know, some number of dollars per student for activities is not where I'm going at all. But it's not possible, it seems, to get a sense of, are we being fair, rational, or deliberate in the current model? Because people are getting funds from all over the place. But that makes it complicated. But one place they are getting it is in this. part of the budget. And I can't affect how well the band raises money in the community, but we certainly should have some sense of, you said that every year the athletics is running a pretty big deficit. And is anybody else running a big deficit that's on this list every year? is athletics have 1,000 students and that deficit is rational for 1,000 students versus another group which has eight students. If there was a group that had eight students and they had a $30,000 deficit we covered every year, and then we had another one with 1,000 students and a $30,000 deficit, something's wrong there.
[Paul Ruseau]: But some of these also should be showing up in our PTO process we laid down this past year. The band PTO should be doing a report with all the friends of, you know, and that would tell us number of participants, how much did you raise, what did you do with your money.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just wanted to highlight how quickly this all happened. I had to go back in my emails, and I first was contacted on August 29th of this year. So I was really surprised when I saw this on the agenda, because this This level of efficiency needs to be highlighted. So thank you so much for getting it just done so quickly. Thank you. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: How do our numbers compare to similar communities in Massachusetts?
[Paul Ruseau]: All right.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you for the report. So I know that making trainings available is different than mandatory because of contracts. Yes. So for the zones of regulations, I see that we want to make it so that in the next few years, there'll be the opportunity to participate. Yes. When it comes time for contract negotiations, it's good to know whether or not We provided the opportunity, and we provided the opportunity, and we are at 20% of people taking those opportunities versus 95%. Because if it's 95%, we don't have to bring it into the negotiations. But if the school committee wants this to happen, and we provide the opportunities, and few people are taking the opportunities, then maybe during negotiations, we would decide to make that part of the contract. And I find that not just on this, but in several other reports, never get a sense of what was the total number of teachers that could have taken the training? What was the total number that actually took the training? And making something mandatory in part of the contract costs money. We don't want to add something and make it mandatory if virtually everybody's doing it voluntarily. don't know what it means to make the opportunity available, and from a rollout perspective, does that mean most of the teachers will have actually done it or not? And I'm not saying you have an answer for that, but just sort of a bit of a pontification about some of these words and how they don't give me the information I feel like I need. And I do have another question, though. I have a bunch of questions. The survey, 92% of the respondents strongly agreed. How many respondents was that, and how many possible respondents was that?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'll just keep going with my questions. On the Columbus Elementary LGBTQ youth training that Desi did, which I was very happy to see, we aim to provide the training at all of our schools. I would be more than confident in saying that none of our schools do not have LGBTQ youth. So this is one of those things where having the training available at all the schools, I mean, what's the timeline? Are we talking like in the spring? Or are we talking in the next few years? Because all those students, that would benefit from this aren't getting the benefit until their teachers and the administration have been through the training. I don't think you have answers to these questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sort of asking them out loud. The NAN project on suicide prevention, I see it says high school has been more than enough recent high-profile middle school suicides to make me question why we aren't doing it there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Last year, I think it was in December, I attended a school committee meeting at the high school because of construction here. And there was a report on a survey
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Is that an annual? Yes. And so will we be having that again in December or whenever? OK, great. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for answering my first question before I asked it. I had a question. Well, first I wanted to say I was really excited to see that Teaching Pathways through the Music Curriculum was in there. That sounds wonderful. And I have to assume that one was very well received based on all the other ratings.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then my last question is, so around the curriculum review and media technology, the computer science frameworks that I see and I have actually, I think read them all, the Massachusetts ones, and I know that the federal ones put out during the Obama administration were, really they were computer science frameworks. And what Massachusetts adopted was this sort of watered down thing that Massachusetts legislature thought we could probably do something like that. So their computer science frameworks includes typing and using a mouse, which is not a computer science, isn't in the computer science framework. So I'm just wondering if we are just sticking straight to the computer science frameworks, or are we going to go above and beyond to do what we really should be doing?
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. Not tonight.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. My question is, have you looked to see if other communities have done something along this line and their success?
[Paul Ruseau]: And I just want to make it, when I read this, I do not see that this is a school committee meeting. We will not deliberate, we won't have to have a quorum, the whole thing has to disband, or is this a school committee meeting you want to have where we take votes and there's roll call and somebody doesn't show up and the whole thing's over because we didn't have a quorum. So I just want to be clear which one you think. Yes, all the people that would be involved, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I guess that's where I'm trying to really get at is because I've had conversations with Mr. Ruggiero and others about how this isn't a dinner table. And there's nothing physically or operationally we can do to make this feel like anything other than it is. If I could inject a point, there's no reason that we could have a recess for 15 minutes
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi. So what's the process for colleges getting on this list?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's awesome. And 99 is a big number. I'm sure it must be fun to fit them in there. But what is the capacity of, like, If we had 300 show up, would you be able to manage that?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: This is a question about, I'm just worried about if we, are going to reimburse someone for their, oh, are we taking that off? We took it off the table. Never mind.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, so aside from the staff though, the wait list is also space related, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: So I guess my question then was that the wait list is a staffing only issue.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you very much, by the way. This is great information. When I had met with you, we had discussed this issue Sort of the modality of teaching this, whether it would be like a dedicated science teacher for each grade, which would affect scheduling and the movement of students quite a bit, but would have a different impact on budgeting, because it'd be one set that you buy and it sits in the classroom, versus every teacher needing a set. Is this estimate based on the every teacher is getting one set? Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. On page three, four, whatever it is, four, there's year one, year two, and there's kits to be shipped, and there's the $126,000 for year one, $126,000 for year two. Is that just that the payment is split, or are we actually only going live with half, are we only implementing it half of the classrooms one year and then doing the other half the following year?
[Paul Ruseau]: The pre-K and the K are added into these numbers on the totals, but those kids, I mean, they don't count.
[Paul Ruseau]: Kindergarten doesn't count for absences in the DESE reports. It was one through five, wasn't it?
[Paul Ruseau]: But our scores are not based off of kindergarten attendance.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. The absenteeism, I mean, isn't impacted by those kids for any school. The kindergartners, they can come and go as they want. I mean, they should come to school every day.
[Paul Ruseau]: No, but I mean, but our report card does not. In terms of numbers, yes. does not have any concern for kindergarteners.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: And now we've got to figure out where. OK, page 3 in the new notes, second paragraph down, it says that the compressors were $50,000 per compressor. The number is 15.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you. I'm just noticing we have, later on in the agenda, an acceptance of a gift from the Kiwanis. And I'm just realizing that when we went, I served with Jenny on this subcommittee, and I'm realizing that, did we really think about, like, if the Kiwanis is having a fundraiser, ostensibly to raise money to buy stuff for public schools, then the policy really means that Kiwanis has to go through this. I mean, you can't say you're raising money for our kids, and then use that to raise money, and then we have no idea, transparency-wise, like, so you raised $50,000? How'd you spend it? I mean, to me, that's kind of the point of this, is if the PTO has raised $50,000, and we don't know where it goes or how they spend it, we care about that. So I'm not sure why, like if the policy, as I remember it as being written, if you're raising money in the name of Medford Public Schools or our children, our students, you must comply with this. And I just realized that I don't think we thought through international organizations. So we may need to revisit the policy in some way to rehash that. But I do know for a fact that the policy as written, Kiwanis, and anybody else who says they're raising money for Medford Public Schools to register with us. I mean, these are 501c3s. It's not like they don't know how to do all this. But the key thing, one of the transparency was, the good news stories are important, but also at budget time, it's nice to know that we budget $50,000 for supplies, but we rely on $200,000 from everybody else. We don't know what supplies cost if we have a budget for a number, and we spend far more than that, or supplies just get dropped off all over the place at centers and in schools. It'd be nice to know what supplies cost, and we don't actually have an answer to that question because they're just coming at us from all over the place. So the transparency for me wasn't so much because I'm concerned people are doing anything nefarious, it's just that we can't answer simple basic questions about what it costs to run our schools. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just, I guess I'm seeing this a little differently. The American Cancer Association or Society raises gazillions of dollars and all of their advertising has children in it. even though only a small portion goes to pediatric cancers. And they do that because they know we'll open up our pocketbooks for when we see pictures of kids. And I don't have any problem with that, actually. But I just want to know that there aren't organizations of any size and caliber saying, we're raising money for Medford Public Schools, and then a portion of that actually gets to Medford Public Schools. If you say you're raising money, and you list Medford Public Schools, If 5% goes to Medford Public Schools, you need to say, thank you for your donation of $100. Five of it's going to Medford Public Schools. I want to know that and expect that. If you were going to say, you're raising money for our schools, I don't think that's unreasonable. And I think that's a level of transparency that's not outside.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I guess I'm a little surprised to not see literacy actually as the focus here. More than half of our third graders are not able to read proficiently or even meet expectations on MCAS, and I'm not a fan of MCAS, but it's the last time we have publicly available data. And I mean, I know that my own kids, as they've gone through elementary school, the biggest and hardest thing, fairly certain every one of us has heard from parents who are like, what on earth is this math? And the key thing that I see when I see our math is that it's all words. It's all languages, language-based. And to expect kids to perform well on math when they're expected to be able to read, when that's their key weakness, to me is kind of putting the cart before the horse. And so while I know that the math scores last year caused some concern, I just feel like that doesn't make sense to focus on the math scores because it's the reading that they are not, our kids are not readers.
[Paul Ruseau]: I understand what you're saying, and it makes sense the way you describe it. I'm just not sure where the assessment that we're strong in literacy comes from, because all I have is the data on the website that any of us can look at. And while we are about on par with Massachusetts, and sure, if we compare ourselves to other states that don't do well in education, we look great. But if the assumption is that half the kids not being able to read adequately by the time they have to have learned third grade is somehow, you know, we're doing okay, I just, to me, like 95% proficient in reading by the end of third grade would probably be considered something I could say, well, we could work through the 5% other kids, maybe there's some other issue that, you know, special education or whatever needs to be involved. But 54% of our kids, or 55% of our kids are, the research that I'm seeing says if you're not a proficient reader by the time you're done with third grade, you will never be a proficient reader. And half of our kids are not proficient readers by the end of third grade. So, I mean, to expect them to run before they can walk
[Paul Ruseau]: So I mean, I know that the MCAS third grade reading is the only option we get on the Department of Ed's website to see anything about reading. Yes. And I also know that we do reading assessments and a lot more than just that one thing. Is it possible to get a report that shows how our kids are actually doing on reading other than that one snapshot? Because I know you all collect a gazillion, I mean, I've heard about these reading assessments and we're doing it all, but I don't have any way to ever see that, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: I have a question about classification that I see many times. There's tuition listed, and then there's special education out of district tuition. Can you explain the difference?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I noticed in many places there are school-specific miscellaneous charges. I won't list them all, but for instance, on page 14 at the bottom.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then, I had a question about, this is not just about this spending on vocational supplies for automotive on page 19. I actually have a question about the supplies that we purchased, but when somebody brings a car in to get worked on, they have to pay for the work. Correct. When, you know, if I bring my car in to get worked on and I write the check, Where does the money go since it doesn't show up here?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, is this the duplication where the trustees? OK. I won't ask about that then. Is the duplication? That was, oh, this one here. On page 38, New England School Services for $42,000. It's sort of about 2 3rds of the way down. Just because it's such a big number, I was like, well, what is that for?
[Paul Ruseau]: That's everything. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, the questions that member Ms. Stone is asking is exactly why we need everybody to respond to the same bid. You know, I'm trying to get somebody to paint my house, one guy comes out, he's gonna do one coat, the other guy's gonna do two coats, and shockingly, they aren't the same price. And, you know, what's the warranty? Are the warranties the same? Are they gonna have one guy who takes six months to install this, or is there gonna be a crew there for two days? Like, the requirements, I'm assuming in the RFP, were not like, do the playground. They were pretty detailed. And this is great, and if we can get this done for half the price or less, I absolutely can find a lot of ways to spend that money, like on air conditioning units. Or another playground. But three lines with a number next to them. is probably like 1,000 times less information than we need to compare.
[Paul Ruseau]: He was just trying to get me something to bring in today. Yeah, but I mean, I just think that's why, you know, to be fair, I mean, it has to be an equivalently built-out bid. Even if we were to say, if they were to say, we can do it for half the price in this meeting that's going to happen, and everybody agrees that it's perfectly legal, I would hope before we were accepting it, we were gonna have them say, here is the exact details based on the same bid, even if we're not going through the bidding process with the state. I wanna know that they have really decided to do all this and not like at the end of the day discover, we threw down a plastic membrane instead of the proper stuff that's supposed to go under those, that equipment, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. I have a question. Have we heard anything back on our MSBA application?
[Paul Ruseau]: Arlington, do they release those sort of in dribs and drabs? Because Arlington's was just approved.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's not like once a year, here you go.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Along those same lines, would it be possible at the next meeting or the meeting after to get a report from the new director of?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, before and after school. And do you have something coming on? She's already on, you've already asked. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you for this report. And it was, I showed up for the very beginning of the administrators.
[Paul Ruseau]: I missed the red carpet, and I was very, very sad, actually. Pretty cool, pretty cool. I somehow missed that there was that going on. I showed up a little afterwards. But you mentioned something that just made me realize that I wanted to ask, when can we get a copy of the CPR? The state's website apparently puts it up like two years later. I'm like, well, that's nice, but. You have to wait until the district responds to you. It will probably be up in the next couple of weeks. OK. Can you send that to us? Because the state, like right now, I think 2016 is the latest one I saw on the website when I went and looked. And I was like, that's. There are currently, maybe on the polls. But there are current reports different. So that just has to be.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mm-hmm.
[Paul Ruseau]: The grade six enrollment numbers between the two schools in the report we were given in our packets, shows exactly the same number.
[Paul Ruseau]: So them being very much the same number was very interesting. But I guess the hard question I really want to ask is, did people leave the district because they did not get the Andrews?
[Paul Ruseau]: At the beginning of the summer. after we had done the randomization, which I wish I could remember the numbers off the top of my head, I think the Andrews was still a dozen or more than the McGlenn. I'm looking in our packets on... Ms.
[Paul Ruseau]: The old report. The old report has the one that was included in our packets, not the new ones. Last page.
[Paul Ruseau]: But them being very much the same, that was just fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: But the numbers for tonight, this is just attendance, not enrollment, correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just, I'm confused by the second page. This is enrollment, because literally from one day to the next, the enrollment changed between the schools. So, I don't, the second page is not enrollment at all, it's just attendance.
[Paul Ruseau]: So in the new sheets we got, we got one for September 5th and one for September 6th.
[Paul Ruseau]: The September 5th one, it says right there clearly, this is attendance, who showed up, not who's enrolled in our schools. Right. And on the second page, it's the same thing, this is attendance, this is not enrollment.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, you know, when having conversations about class size and how many people are at each school. We're not talking about attendance on any day. We're always talking about enrollment correct.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. So at the moment we don't have enrollment numbers for the schools. Well we do for the elementary schools. The last page has the elementary schools that Brooks has 504 etc. But we don't know how many kids are enrolled at the middle school. or the high school right now?
[Paul Ruseau]: But for the, the district knows the names of every single child that's enrolled in our school, whether they show up or not.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Sorry. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Question about school supplies. Is it something anybody's considered to perhaps do a school system store? Just for one class for my son, it was $48 in supplies. And I went to Staples to buy it, and I was like, hey. I was so irritated. at the cost, and so I went up to the front desk and I talked to a manager and I'm like, you know, if we had a corporate staples account, what's the discount? And they're like, it could be up to 40%. And I'm like, there are like, how many parents are spending 48 bucks per class? And if the school system can buy in bulk, even if we're not gonna just give it away, just resell it at a huge discount. I mean, that's a lot of money. And I don't know if other schools do anything like that, but it just seemed kind of absurd to be spending that. I mean, I saw all these families with their carts filled to the brim with $15 three-inch binders, the mandatory ones the teachers ask for.
[Paul Ruseau]: the Mass Association of School Committee, the Poverty Summit that I attended, every single community is up in arms in this. So I mean, we're certainly not special in that regard. In fact, we probably have a lower number than a lot of communities. But as I believe somebody else, maybe it was you who pointed out, the Supreme Court's already been cleared. No one funded mandates. The Supreme Court doesn't have an army. So they can say that, and the legislature can just ignore the Supreme Court, and that's what they're doing. And the judge isn't going to pass this up to the Supreme Court. It's something that's already decided.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh my gosh, sorry, I just had to switch my thought. Again, yes. Sorry, give me a moment. Would anybody else please?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Thank you for saying the words capital budget. So For the capital budget, unlike this budget, or maybe like this budget, will we develop a budget for the capital budget, or will you in your office?
[Paul Ruseau]: So you give us a number. We decide how it's spent, not here's the list of the things that we're going to do. OK. I just want to be clear on that. And then one other issue.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. I don't want to spend all night rehashing the issue of the security spending and the budget, which I probably spent too much time on Thursday on. But I do want to be crystal clear that the report from Safe Havens will not decide what we do. We will decide what we do. Sort of, kind of. the statements around that report sort of were a little vague, and that we will not, the school system will hire zero new security personnel prior to the school committee deciding based on that report that we want to hire security personnel. Is that correct?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm just trying to decide like, Well, I thought we actually decided that on Thursday, that there'd be no hiring of security personnel prior to us deciding. I mean, the report coming in to the superintendent's office and the mayor's office isn't the same as us getting together, having read the report, and deciding what action to take. So when I approve, you know, vote for the budget, I mean, there's five security personnel in there. And Dr. Edouard-Vincent, you know, she is legally free to go off and hire those people on July 1. And I just want to be crystal clear, that won't happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, a question about procedure. So when... He's having trouble hearing. Sorry. Just a question about procedure. So for the next budget cycle, I'm just trying to figure out when the right time is to ask for some changes such as Like sports, I'd like to know the per pupil, how many pupils are participating in each sport. And that's just one of many changes to the way the budget's presented to us. So.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. This is lovely. I think it's an exciting project and certainly I'd be happy to not look at that current field. The soil is, I mean, I realize these are not just fruits where you have to care a lot about a regular vegetable garden where soil matters a lot, but is the soil acceptable as it's been tested and is perfectly fine?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's all I wanted to know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. For children that had 504s and IEPs, were they fully integrated and supported in whatever they needed?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, yes. Because I noticed there was some commentary about disruptive student, maybe just one or more, I don't know. And I just want to be sure the disruptive did not have anything to do with either of those.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, cool. And the issue of the PTO and the PTO would love to be able to use the bus. Can you explain that? First of all, what did they want and why isn't it?
[Paul Ruseau]: Because I know that when I've talked about I'm never gonna get used to the clubhouse name, by the way, but for the afterschool enrichment activities, I mean, in my six years at the Columbus, you know, it's sort of a running joke that it's always the same kids. And that's true. It tends to be. There can be lots of reasons why other kids aren't participating, but it's pretty clear that one of those reasons certainly is transportation. So, you know, figuring, and if we were to reduce the number of students participating in this, by invitation or whatever method happens, I want to make sure we don't end up paying for a bus where there's four kids on it. And so I would just hate to be in a position where we have to decide to cut the bus and lose those four kids when we have another way to fill up the bus, even though it might be more complicated.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Ms. Caldwell, you also mentioned earlier the, I think you and I had discussed earlier about the sixth graders and trying to track them, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there was, we didn't see any correlation between the students that had low MCAS scores at the Columbus last year and their grades now.
[Paul Ruseau]: It is great and also makes me just... Yes, I know it makes you... I've got to stamp the soapbox so we'll be here all night. So I just want to make sure that we're not... the curriculum or the tutoring now or when it gets to be smaller groups, which obviously I agree would be much better, is not test prep?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. So the scenario where we're treating children like luggage, I can't even believe that that's a real scenario. Is that something that as a school committee policy we can change or is there a reason why we can't just I mean, is it there's not enough space? What do we need to do to stop that? Because that's totally written beyond acceptable in my mind. Yeah, I mean, you could do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you very much. Um, so, um, I did ask a question in the committee of the whole, which didn't seem relevant at the time because we were going to be doing the work ourselves, but can the RFP legally include that it must be union labor? Oh yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: And so if I talk to a union person, is that going to be the same thing? They're going to be like, oh, no big deal. Or.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I mean, I just like, you know, I feel like every week I drive by a giant construction site with people picketing because somebody wanted to get the cheapest wage. They didn't go prevailing wage. And so I just. That would be our goal.
[Paul Ruseau]: They seem to think they have no money, but I just worry about cutting corners on the backs of people who are going to be doing the work for us. It's not going to happen. We get to reap the benefits, which- Not going to happen. Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Ms. Nelson, for your work. Two things I want to say. First of all, can we make sure that the five students that did voluntarily switch are all placed in the same block if there's no major schedule? We did.
[Paul Ruseau]: And second, you know, I've been running the numbers endlessly, and I just wanna make sure that when we do the, I've decided to no longer use the word lottery. We all know what a lottery is. We either win or we lose, and I'm going to continue to move forward that both schools are equally good. So I'm calling everything randomization placement or something along those lines. But looking at the numbers and making sure that we are selecting the students that will be randomized into the McGlynn, You know, it's, as you mentioned, Columbus, because of this additional student, needs to send zero more students over. And, you know, I'm seeing that if we're gonna send 20, then we have to send 17 from the Brooks and three from the Roberts, and I just wanna make sure that we are not taking all the students from those schools and then just randomizing them all, in that, in fact, proportionally, Roberts will be sending 17 students that they do not select that school, and three students from the Roberts. But we can work out the details of how that will actually happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, thank you to my colleague. I think that we really need to have a conversation, perhaps as a committee of the whole, not right now, please, about just removing choice 100% and just being done with it. Because I keep hearing how the balance swings back and forth. And magnet options, like if you create a magnet stem on math, it's like, well, I'm going to have 250 kids that want to go to the McGlynn with the magnet stem stuff. And the swinging back and forth to me is like, for one second in the middle of the pendulum, it's good. And then otherwise, we're all talking about this stuff endlessly. And the only real way to get rid of this is to get rid of choice. I do think that the idea of trying to find, if we send 17 of the Brooks fifth graders, I think it's too much to ask that you try to make sure that those 17 know each other. I think the time for that is over. And if you said that the Brooks parents did not get the form, then I think we would have a reason to talk. They did. They got the form. But they did get the form, and they did not return the form saying they cared whether their children would go with their friends enough to choose the McGlynn. And that is what they said by not returning the form, whether they want to admit it or not. So they are going to risk that their kid will go to McGlynn, or they'll move from Medford, or whatever their other solution is. rather than choosing the McGlynn. And this committee cannot pretend that maintaining anything other than both schools are actually equal, which I believe completely, and which is why I'm comfortable saying choice is a ridiculous idea. For non-ELL and non, I understand the programmatic placement is required, and for now, because of budgets and all that other stuff. So, at this point, I mean, you know, I'd like to make a motion that we go to the lottery and that 17 children from the Brooks are selected for the, I used percentage of rising fifth graders for each of the schools to try and get it, to make it proportional. So, while it's true that the Brooks sent the least number, they don't need to send 20 to be proportional to the other schools, and that three children from the Roberts are sent.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's three pages long, my math, and I'm happy to share it afterwards.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct, I used percentage of rising fifth graders, and then McGlynn, has offset that somewhat. So the Brooks has 22% of rising fifth graders, Columbus has 20%, Roberts has 28%, and McGlynn has 30. Now, the McGlynn's overselection is reducing the need for us to choose children from the other schools. The number of students from the Columbus that selected the McGlynn and the Andrews is actually exactly the right number, 20%. the total, they split. The Columbus is the only school that has exactly the right number of students going to each of the two schools. The Roberts is short four, and the Brooks is short 18.
[Paul Ruseau]: So you have 294 rising fifth graders.
[Paul Ruseau]: Nope, they won't be included in the lottery.
[Paul Ruseau]: There is no choice. But that's not a problem, because there are not 18 ELL students at the Bronx that are rising fifth graders.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. So if you have 65 rising fifth graders, 41 of them have, I'm sorry, six of them have selected or are going to the McGlynn.
[Paul Ruseau]: The other 59 rising fifth graders at the end will go into the lottery. The randomized selection. And 17 of those students will go to McLin. And that's proportional.
[Paul Ruseau]: 17 from the Brooks, I just said McLin, sorry. And three from the Roberts, correct. Three from the Roberts. And I will share these with all the math. But member Kreatz asked the question about is this fair? And you know, I had to really work on what the principle was to even begin this math. And the only principle I could come up with is that all elementary schools will send precisely half of their rising fifth graders to each school. Now they don't have to actually do that, thanks to the McGlynn. But going forward, we might want to rethink whether the McGlynn, you know, that's a different conversation about the K through eight kind of model. But if that's the principle, then those are the numbers. And it's not complicated at all, actually.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to point out though, if it's any number 18 or under, they are all coming from the Brooks. Just so we're clear. So if you can bring it down to 15, that just means there are three less parents who are angry at the Brooks.
[Paul Ruseau]: All the schools will go through the lottery, but the number of students that need to come from the other schools is zero. It's just, it's a semantic thing. All the schools go through the lottery.
[Paul Ruseau]: The other schools send enough, so they don't need to send more. So it's not that the other schools aren't going through the lottery, it's just that they don't need to send any more kids, to be fair. So we don't pick any of their kids. We're not going to take all the kids that selected Andrews through the whole district, stick them in a pile, and make all of them have an equal chance of going to the Andrews, because that would be incredibly unfair.
[Paul Ruseau]: So your recommendation is? 17 eligible children from the Brooks be randomized into the McGlynn, and that three children from the Roberts be randomized, three eligible children from the Roberts be randomized into the McLennan?
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information, I, and maybe that's the wrong thing to say, I'm sorry, I'm suddenly used to that stuff. When I had emailed, an even distribution would be 23 students to each. I emailed to ask, does it really need to be 23? And I got 20. And now I'm hearing 17 or 15. So if I'm a parent whose kid might get selected into the school that they didn't want, is it 23? Is it 20? Is it 19, 17, 15? Let's go to 13, because then my kid wouldn't have been 14, 15.
[Paul Ruseau]: So what is the real number? We do have to pick a number. It isn't just unimportant. It's really important for whoever happens to be there. And we'll know who those kids are, because it's going to be one, two, three, four.
[Paul Ruseau]: Last thing. I just want to make sure we're just focusing on the Brooks, not just because Mr. Tucci can only be in so many places at once.
[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: There you go. When somebody in the public comes to speak, they come to the podium, and they state their name and their address. And everybody in the room, everybody in the audience, everybody on TV knows who is asking questions or saying what they have to say. And I know from my own experience sitting here that I have sort of been receiving messages to try and what I see as you assert the point of open meetings, and that is, you know, texting, hey, Paul, ask this question. Hey, Paul, do this. And, well, I don't wear an earpiece, and I'm not, you know, I was going to say the president, but, and I think it's really important that the people that are here, that have taken the time to come here and ask questions, are the people who are asking the questions, and that we are not just mouthpieces for any number of people who could be sitting at home texting us. Now, I also want to point out that the Attorney General's website makes it clear that the open meeting law does not specifically address this issue. The Attorney General does say it is not recommended that we do this. That includes texting each other across the room, although, frankly, the only time I've been involved in these kinds of texts are, oh, my God, could it be any hotter in here? Or, you know, are we going drinking afterwards? It was you, of course it was you. But for matters that are actually before us, I just feel that it's important that at least I make the stand that I will not be having private deliberations or communications with the public during or with other members.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I think it's, I think it's unfortunate if we aren't all on board with this. And, you know, obviously this isn't enforceable, but this is just something that I have seen and I have received messages from the public, you know, to ask questions of the people at the podium or to ask questions of other members or whatever. And I just don't find that to be above board. It clearly is not officially illegal, but I just wanted to bring that up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there any other discussion before I make that motion?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion that a school committee rule is that we do not have private deliberations with anyone during open session.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, thank you. So actually, I did put that in my email that I sent to Mayor Burke and Mr. Belson, saying that that was something that I had considered as an alternative. But I do question whether or not the, well, first of all, who's going to text us? And then we have to say, well, from the public, so-and-so who lives at, which, I mean, I don't get text messages that give me their address, but would like to know this question. And I mean, I guess that wouldn't really bother me. I would just like to amend whatever it is I said before to say that within the private communications that are within our authority, if I get a text that, you know, or that the sound isn't working. I don't think anybody has an issue with that. And I suppose that does mean that, you know, do we go drinking?
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just say that, you know, we can all have our phones out. I mean, that's our, you know, I have Word on my phone and you can have your laptop open. This is a trust issue. I'm not expecting you to, you know, wrap your device in some lead so it can't get the internet. But, you know, so. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello. Hello again. So, do I have to read the front page?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, good. So, I, there are two, there's a Senate bill and a House bill currently in the State House, State Legislature for, related to a lot of things, but primarily recess. And I won't read the entire resolution. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, it's quite long. And I would like to thank the Summerville School Committee for having written this, that I've gotten their permission to just steal it. Apparently, that's pretty common. But the gist of these two bills is that unstructured recess becomes time on learning. One of the issues we have is as a committee, we could simply say recess is gonna be 45 minutes every day, but then there isn't enough time on learning unless we then go to contract negotiations and extend the day and pay the teachers more and on and on. So this really changes the nature of recess in that it is, it must be unstructured recess. It's not gym, not phys ed, and it counts as time on learning, which alleviates the issue of Well, we still have plenty of other issues around scheduling it, but if we decided to increase it. It's 20 minutes a day. It's 20 minutes a day, and it cannot be, and the recess cannot be denied for disciplinary reasons. Very good. If there's any questions.
[Paul Ruseau]: She's second.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you. This is lovely. I think it's an exciting project and certainly I'd be happy to not look at that current field. The soil is, I mean, I realize these are not just fruits where you have to care a lot about a regular vegetable garden where soil matters a lot, but is the soil acceptable as it's been tested and is perfectly fine?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. That's all I wanted to know.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for the report. For children that had 504s and IEPs, were they fully integrated and supported and whatever they needed?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, yes. Because I noticed there was some commentary about disruptive student, maybe just one or more, I don't know. And I just want to be sure the disruptive did not have anything to do with either of those.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, cool. And the issue of the PTO and the PTO would love to be able to use the bus. Can you explain that? First of all, what do they want and why isn't it allowed?
[Paul Ruseau]: Because I know that when I've talked about, I'm never gonna use the clubhouse name, by the way, but for the after school enrichment activities, in my six years at the Columbus, it's sort of a running joke that it's always the same kids. And that's true. There can be lots of reasons why other kids aren't participating, but it's pretty clear that one of those reasons certainly is transportation. And if we were to reduce the number of students participating in this by invitation or whatever method happens, I want to make sure we don't end up paying for a bus where there's four kids on it. And so I would just hate to be in a position where we have to decide to cut the bus and lose those four kids when we have another way to fill up the bus, even though it might be more complicated.
[Paul Ruseau]: And Ms. Caldwell, you also mentioned earlier the, I think you and I had discussed earlier about the sixth graders and trying to track them, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there was, we didn't see any correlation between the students that had low MCAS scores at the Columbus last year and their grades now.
[Paul Ruseau]: It is great, and it also makes me just... Yes, I know, it makes you want to... I've got to stamp the soapbox so we'll be here all night. So I just want to make sure that we're not... The curriculum or the tutoring And I think that's a really good point.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. So the scenario where we're treating children like luggage, and I can't even believe that that's a real scenario, is that something that as a school committee policy we can change, or is there a reason why we can't just I mean, is it there's not enough space? Like, what do we need to do to stop that? Because that's totally beyond acceptable in my mind. Yeah, I mean, you could do that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you very much. So I did ask a question in the committee of the whole, which didn't seem relevant at the time because we were going to be doing the work ourselves, but can the RFP legally include that it must be union labor? Prevailing wage, generally. We put a prevailing wage.
[Paul Ruseau]: So if I talk to a union person, is that going to be the same thing? They're going to be like, oh, no big deal.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I mean, I just like, you know, I feel like every week I drive by a giant construction site with people picketing because somebody wanted to get the cheapest wage. They didn't go prevailing wage. And so I just... That would be our goal.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just worry about cutting corners on the backs of people who are going to be doing the work. It's not going to happen. We get to reap the benefits. Not going to happen. Okay. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Ms. Nelson, for your work. Two things I want to say. First of all, can we make sure that the five students that did voluntarily switch are all placed in the same block if there's no major schedule? We did.
[Paul Ruseau]: And second, you know, I've been running the numbers endlessly, and I just wanna make sure that when we do the, I've decided to no longer use the word lottery. We all know what a lottery is. We either win or we lose, and I'm going to continue to move forward that both schools are equally good. So I'm calling everything randomization placement or something along those lines. But looking at the numbers and making sure that we are selecting the students that will be randomized into the McGlynn, As you mentioned, Columbus, because of this additional student, needs to send zero more students over. And I'm seeing that if we're going to send 20, then we have to send 17 from the Brooks and three from the Roberts. And I just want to make sure that we are not taking all the students from those schools and then just randomizing them all in that, in fact, proportionally, Roberts will be sending 17 students, but they do not select that school, and three students from the Roberts. But we can work out the details of how that will actually happen.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, thank you to my colleague. I think that we really need to have a conversation, perhaps as a committee of the whole, not right now, please, about just removing choice 100% and just being done with it. Because I keep hearing how the balance swings back and forth. And magnet options, like if you create a magnet stem on math, it's like, well, I'm going to have 250 kids that want to go to the McGlynn with the magnet stem stuff. And the swinging back and forth to me is like, for one second in the middle of the pendulum, it's good. And then otherwise, we're all talking about this stuff endlessly. And the only real way to get rid of this is to get rid of choice. I do think that the idea of trying to find, if we send 17 of the Brooks fifth graders, I think it's too much to ask that you try to make sure that those 17 know each other. I think the time for that is over. And if you said that the Brooks parents did not get the form, then I think we would have a reason to talk. They did. They got the form. But they did get the form, and they did not return the form saying they cared whether their children would go with their friends enough to choose the McGlynn. And that is what they said by not returning the form, whether they want to admit it or not. So they are going to risk that their kid will go to McGlynn, or they'll move from Medford, or whatever their other solution is. rather than choosing the McGlynn. And this committee cannot pretend that maintaining anything other than both schools are actually equal, which I believe completely, and which is why I'm comfortable saying choice is a ridiculous idea. For non-ELL and non, I understand the programmatic placement is required and for now because of budgets and a lot of other stuff. So at this point, I mean, you know, I'd like to make a motion that we go to the lottery and that 17 children from the Brooks are selected for the, I used percentage of rising fifth graders for each of the schools to try and get it, to make it proportional. So while it's true that the Brooks sent the least number, they don't need to send 20 to be proportional to the other schools, and that three children from the Roberts are sent.
[Paul Ruseau]: It's three pages long, my math, and I'm happy to share it afterwards.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct, I used the percentage of rising fifth graders, and then McGlynn, has offset that somewhat. So the Brooks has 22% of rising fifth graders, Columbus has 20%, Roberts has 28%, and McGlynn has 30. Now the McGlynn's overselection is reducing the need for us to choose children from the other schools. The number of students from the Columbus that selected the McGlynn and the Andrews is actually exactly the right number, 20%. of the total they split. The Columbus is the only school that has exactly the right number of students going to each of the two schools. The Roberts is short four, and the Brooks is short 18.
[Paul Ruseau]: So you have 294 rising fifth graders.
[Paul Ruseau]: Nope. They won't be included in the lottery.
[Paul Ruseau]: There is no choice. But that's not a problem because there are not 18 ELL students at the Bronx that are rising fifth graders.
[Paul Ruseau]: Right. So if you have 65 rising fifth graders, 41 of them have, I'm sorry, six of them have selected or are going to the McGlynn.
[Paul Ruseau]: The other 59 rising fifth graders at the anchors will go into the lottery, lottery, the randomized selection. And 17 of those students will go to MacLennan. And that's proportional.
[Paul Ruseau]: 17 from the Brooks, I just said MacLennan, sorry. And three from the Roberts, correct. Three from the Roberts. And I will share these with all the math. But member Kreatz asked the question about is this fair? And you know, I had to really work on what the principle was to even begin this math. And the only principle I could come up with is that all elementary schools will send precisely half of their rising fifth graders to each school. Now they don't have to actually do that, thanks to the McGlynn. But going forward, we might wanna rethink whether the McGlynn, you know, that's a different conversation about the K through eight kind of model. But if that's the principle, then those are the numbers. And it's not complicated at all, actually.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to point out, though, if it's any number 18 or under, they are all coming from the Brooks. Just so we're clear. So if you can bring it down to 15, that just means there are three less parents who are angry at the Brooks.
[Paul Ruseau]: All the schools will go through the lottery, but the number of students that need to come from the other schools is zero. It's just a semantic thing. All the schools go through the lottery. The other schools send enough so they don't need to send more. So it's not that the other schools aren't going through the lottery, it's just that they don't need to send any more kids, to be fair, so we don't pick any of their kids. We're not gonna take all the kids that selected Andrews through the whole district, stick them in a pile, and make all of them have an equal chance of going to the Andrews, because that would be incredibly unfair.
[Paul Ruseau]: 17 eligible children from the Brooks be randomized into the McGlynn, and that three children from the Roberts be randomized, three eligible children from the Roberts be randomized into the McGlynn.
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information, when I, and maybe that's the wrong thing to say, I'm sorry, I'm so used to that stuff. When I had emailed, an even distribution would be 23 students to each of those. I emailed to ask, does it really need to be 23, and I got 20. And now I'm hearing 17 or 15, so if I'm a parent whose kid might get selected into the school that they didn't want, Is it 23? Is it 20? Is it 19, 17, 15? Let's go to 13, because then my kid wouldn't have been 14.
[Paul Ruseau]: So what is the real number? We do have to pick a number, because it isn't just unimportant. It's really important for whoever happens to be there. And we'll know who those kids are, because it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4.
[Paul Ruseau]: Lastly. I just want to make sure we're just focusing on the Brooks, not just because Mr. Tucci can only be in so many places at once.
[Paul Ruseau]: There you go. When somebody in the public comes to speak, they come to the podium, and they state their name and their address. And everybody in the room, everybody in the audience, everybody on TV knows who is asking questions or saying what they have to say. And I know from my own experience sitting here that I have sort of been receiving messages to try and what I see as you assert the point of open meetings, and that is, you know, texting, hey, Paul, ask this question. Hey, Paul, do this. And, well, I don't wear an earpiece and I'm not, you know, I was supposed to say the president, but, and I think it's really important that the people that are here that have taken the time to come here and ask questions are the people who are asking the questions and that we are not just mouthpieces for any number of people who could be sitting at home texting us. Now, I also want to point out that the Attorney General's website makes it clear that the open meeting law does not specifically address this issue. The Attorney General does say it is not recommended that we do this. That includes texting each other across the room, although, frankly, the only time I've been involved in those kinds of texts are, oh, my God, could it be any hotter in here? Or, you know, are we going drinking afterwards? So, it was you, of course it was you. But for matters that are actually before us, I just feel that it's important that at least I make the stand that I will not be having private deliberations or communications with the public during or with other members.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I think it's, I think it's unfortunate if we aren't all on board with this. And, you know, obviously this isn't enforceable, but this is just something that I have seen and I have received messages from the public, you know, to ask questions of the people at the podium or to ask questions of other members or whatever. And I just don't find that to be above board. It clearly is not officially illegal, but I just wanted to bring that up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there any other discussion before I make that motion?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion that a school committee rule is that we do not have private deliberations with anyone during open session.
[Paul Ruseau]: So actually, I did put that in my email that I sent to Mayor Burke and Mr. Belson, saying that that was something that I had considered as an alternative. But I do question whether or not the, well, first of all, who's going to text us? And then we have to say, well, from the public, so-and-so who lives at, which, I mean, I don't get text messages that give me their address, but would like to know this question. And I mean, I guess that wouldn't really bother me. I would just like to amend whatever it is I said before to say that within private communications that are within our authority, if I get a text that, you know, I don't think anybody has an issue with that. And I suppose that does mean that, you know, doing the drinking.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just say that, you know, we can all have our phones out. I mean, that's, you know, I have Word on my phone and you can have your laptop open. This is a trust issue. I'm not expecting you to, you know, wrap your device in some lead so it can't get the internet. But, you know, so. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, hello again. So, do I have to read the front page?
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, good. So, there are two, there's a Senate bill and a House bill currently in the State House, State Legislature for, related to a lot of things, It's primarily recess, and I won't read the entire. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, it's quite long. And I would like to thank the Somerville School Committee for having written this, that I've gotten their permission to just steal it. Apparently, that's pretty common. But the gist of these two bills is that unstructured recess becomes time on learning. One of the issues we have is, as a committee, we could simply say recess is gonna be 45 minutes every day. But then there isn't enough time on learning unless we then go to contract negotiations and extend the day and pay the teachers more and on and on. So this really changes the nature of recess in that it is, it must be unstructured recess. It's not gym, not phys ed. And it counts as time on learning, which alleviates the issue of Well, we still have plenty of other issues around scheduling it, but if we decided to increase it. It's 20 minutes a day. It's 20 minutes a day, and it cannot be, and the recess cannot be denied for disciplinary reasons.
[Paul Ruseau]: Any questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. I can speak quickly to the survey results, like five times now I've written down. Get those results out to the public. The challenge is that they're the open-ended questions, or the other, where you could then become open-ended, is printed like this. And I at least feel a responsibility, although I don't know that it's technically a responsibility, to at least read them all before dumping them into the public. Because a quick search of a couple of words that you might see in a survey, if you have kids, you've probably seen these kinds of words. you know, personal attacks on staff members, that kind of stuff. Like, I feel like some things deserve to at least have a conversation about whether they should be redacted from the release or to ask, you know, our lawyer, should this be included in the release? And I just have not been able to get through. Now, I do believe I released to the committee, I don't remember if I released it to the public, the purely, you know, the statistics kind of stuff, which doesn't have anything interesting, like what percentage were men and women and all that other stuff. So if that hasn't been released, I can certainly release that. But honestly, the important and interesting stuff is not in the numbers. There's just really very little surprising in the numbers, although you should still be able to see them. It's in that really detailed stuff that people had to say. And believe me, people had a lot to say on the 470 responses or so. There was nobody who didn't have a lot to say. So that's what I had to say about the survey.
[Paul Ruseau]: My question, you mentioned about this format, which I don't think anybody actually thinks this is the most enjoyable format, especially that one spot. This is actually much less of a challenge than that spot. But I'm just curious, and I'm not a history teacher, and I have no civics education other than the one I got in high school, but are there other formats for this are implemented in this country that people know of? Or is this really, I mean, I just sort of assume this is the default format everywhere.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can you be clear as to what this meeting would do and be about? because we just had a conversation about an agenda item that was too vague for people. So once people read this agenda, they need to know whether they care and they're gonna go there. So this list, that's not anywhere good enough in my mind to vote for a meeting.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So I'm a software developer and have been for 20 years. And one of the things that I learned probably a couple of years ago, quite surprisingly in an article, was about 80% of what I write for software, if I'm doing my job correctly, is exception handling, is handling the unexpected. And the reason I bring that up is that as a body, when we write policies, We have a choice, not sure it's always necessarily a conscious choice, but we have a choice about whether to make the policies robust to handle the unexpected. And in software, where literally the entire environment is completely controlled by me, 80% of what I'm writing is to deal with the wild, crazy things that are happening. But in a human endeavor, which is everything we're talking about, it's probably 99.999% of the possibilities are not within the control of anybody in this room. And my point is just that when we write a policy, if we try to write policies that are truly robust and can handle endless scenarios, and the people in this room could write for months and never finish coming up with scenarios for how any policy probably won't work. So, you know, we can either focus on a single policy for weeks and months and probably years and still never get it right, or we can rely on the fact that we're gonna come together when it doesn't work right and then deal with that, maybe make a tweak to the policy and move forward. And in my mind, there is just not the bandwidth. I don't just mean my personal time, but I mean this meeting to get our policies perfect, or even close to perfect, because that's not a reality, even in situations like my job, where I am in control in a way that is not a reality in the human experience. So do I think it's better to have a one or two page policy that has holes you can drive a truck through if the building burns down, or if all the superintendent deputy and everybody with a superintendent license goes to a conference and, you know, they shut down the airlines. I mean, we could go on and on for how the policy could be better and more robust, but then the simplest of policies will be a book that nobody will read, nobody will know what it says, and you won't be able to use it when you actually need it. So I want our policies to be as simple as they can be without, too simple. Like, you know, a succession plan that said if we needed a new superintendent for an unfortunate reason was we'd get a new superintendent. Like, that's obviously too simple. But the number of people in our district that have either a superintendent license or that we could use the MASS to get an emergency superintendent, I mean, that's good enough for me. One pager's plenty. we can't cover all the scenarios, and so.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it can be improved, I agree.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Ms. Nelson. Some parents did not submit a form back. Very few. Were there efforts to contact those families to make sure that, to find out what their preferences were?
[Paul Ruseau]: And so I've spent entirely too many hours on these numbers this weekend. Thank you for getting this to us as early as possible. You know, reviewing this was not really very fun, because the imbalance was so pronounced. And I just, you know, when I was trying to figure out how we would handle this, other than the fact that we would have to have a partial lottery, you know, I was trying to figure out, like, what are the principles that I feel are important, and, you know, the basic principle that I felt was the only one that I could stand on was that each school sends half their kids to each middle school. And because the selection between the schools from the individual elementary schools is very pronounced in a couple of the schools, that means that a couple of the elementary schools will have a much greater amount of getting their non-preferred school. And I just want to make sure that We are, so I've never had any doubt that this process is perfectly fair and there's nothing, no shenanigans going on. But for this year in particular, I really think it's important that when the randomization is happening, that there is at least one school committee member present, that the public is free to show up if they want. and that this randomization is done live with people present, whether it's recorded or not, because, you know, because it's randomized, you know, they go, you're the brother of that person, that's why you got to go to Andrews or whatever school. And those things are gonna happen, but not because of that. And I've never felt that I had concerns that this stuff wasn't being done honestly, but I just feel like there's no reason we can't shut that down by saying, look, here's the video, you can show it if you want. I realize there's some planning involved in that, but I just think it's worth it because there's gonna be a lot of unhappy parents, at least, maybe students too.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just like to speak to the issue of the 21. McGlynn Elementary students that have selected the Andrews. I am actually quite uncomfortable with them even being contacted to see if they would switch. The goal of 50 percent of the kids from each school is an incredibly important one we should be working towards. And we should be thankful for the 66 kids that selected the McGlynn for reducing the pressure that we're currently experiencing because if the McGlynn had done a selection very similar to the other schools, this whole mess would be a much bigger mess. So, you know, I'm not really thrilled that there's a greater number of students from the McGlynn that are going to stay in the McGlynn, but I sort of, like, thank them anyways. But, you know, the 21 kids for the McGlynn that have selected the Andrews, to me, are not the families that should be at all looked at for finding more seats. And at the Columbus, as Mr. Belson alluded to, I know some families at the Columbus who got together, talked to each other, and decided, look, we wanna be together, and if we all select the Andrews, who knows? and they decided after going to the open houses, look, these schools are both great, and they decided to take the safe bet based on what was going on at the time, and they selected as a group to choose the McGlynn, and they all got the McGlynn, of course, and they're super happy. So I would just recommend to the families that have selected the Andrews, the Roberts, Columbus, and the Brooks, that if you have even thought about this, talk to your friends, your kids' friends, which is, you know, and start this conversation right away, and then raise your hand right away so we can get this stuff going earlier, because if we can get the numbers down low enough where we don't even need a lottery, that would be great, but also, wouldn't it be nice if you have a child with four friends who have never been separated since preschool, and you want them to go together to one school, If you don't decide to go to the McGlynn together and you go into the lottery, one of your children, maybe yours, is going to be going to the McGlynn and the other three are staying at the Andrews. And yeah, that is awful, but that's not really one of our choices to not do that. So families need to think about that, really think about that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, just one follow-up. So I just wanted to be clear, you know, that we could send half the kids to each school, We could have a policy that half of the children from each school will go to each middle school and move no programs. All ELL students could stay in the McGlynn. The TLP students could all stay at the Andrews. We do not, those are not in conflict. There are sufficient spaces if we decided that half the Brooks kids will go here, half will go there, half the Columbus kids. There are more than enough spaces to accomplish keeping the programmatic stuff where it is, and get half the Brooks kids to each school, half the Columbus kids to each school, half the Roberts kids. We will run into the issue of the McGlynn children that were looking for the K-8 experience, and so we would have to explore how that would work out.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just really have to, I mean, the MIA's statement about this being cost prohibitive, This sentence rubs me so terribly, because what it really is saying is the financial cost is acceptable to be borne by the risk to the student's safety. And those two things, one has risen to be more important, and that is the money. What is the purpose of MIA? Is it really not safety? So I'm just really disturbed by that statement. I mean, I bet it's cost prohibitive to have them for football. Is it cheap for football to have trainers? No. So why is it, in one way, one situation acceptable and the other one not? And I'm just beyond disturbed that that's their excuse for why it's not their problem. And I just wanted to rant. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just a quick question about this. So is there no model for communities to work together? whoever, the conference that we're in, I mean, our soccer players are presumably going to Canada. We know who we will play. Is there no model for sharing this particular, I mean, the idea that sometimes teams come together and they both have a trainer at $60,000, $70,000 a year. That's kind of insane. And why wouldn't they be sharing resources and schedule? I mean, the schedule for games is not like every morning you wake up and you guess where you're going.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. You're welcome. There was one thing on this report that sort of jumped out at me. In all conversations around ALICE that I have heard from the community and from proponents of ALICE, it was, why isn't Medford doing it? Literally everybody does it. And to see 100, I mean, are there more than 100 schools in Massachusetts? I think there's a lot more than 100 schools in Massachusetts. So I just think that the hyperbole of we're the only ones not doing it needs to be called out. Because it really angered me when I read this. I thought we were literally the only ones not doing it. The drills twice a year, I mean, if we're going to do it, then we've got to really do it. And how many more drills can we put our kids through when they're all doing MCAS all the time, too? You know, the other issue I have, oh, can you invite me on the 18th in case?
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, we have a quorum, but I actually am available, so I would like to go. That's all.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. So other than the data analysis, what is a math coach doing?
[Paul Ruseau]: I was a little surprised by, thank you, by the way, for the report. I was surprised to see that the Brooks and the McGlynn only have one full-time PE teacher, and then the Columbus has one and a half, even though the Columbus has like a hundred and something students fewer than the Brooks, and even more fewer, if that's a thing, than the McGlynn. Is there a history? Why is this situation this way? To me, it seems a little odd.
[Paul Ruseau]: The safety care training and protocol that that your staff have. I was under the impression that this body had adopted safety care across the district, and I wasn't sure who has been trained or has not been trained on that, and you probably don't actually have the answer, but is this new for your staff to do this?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's an every year training.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, Mr. Ruseaul. Has the issue with the prep table been resolved at this point? I'm sorry?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to, Mr. Nelson already kind of covered it, but I would not be comfortable, a $3 magnetic strip, I would still not be comfortable without an analysis of the cost to implement and maintenance. A $3 strip, I'm assuming, is not the most robust thing and will have to be replaced with some regularity. I'm guessing. There's not a lot of products for $3 that last a long time. So I want to know what these things really cost before we consider any of them.
[Paul Ruseau]: Question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do you mean as of those dates? Because if you got it on December 31st, then if I wasn't there.
[Paul Ruseau]: The next scheduled meeting following those dates.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's exactly what I would like to see a full picture I have to look at the schedule, but I'm not really sure we meet I
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, it might be a couple of months. I mean, we don't meet all summer long, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: I was just wondering if we could get a report on the rates of the forms being filled out for each of the schools. I don't have any reason to believe that different schools have different rates of bullying. I just want to, not that I don't trust the principals, but I'd like to know that the principals are really filling They don't necessarily fill them out, but they're really getting these. They're being used. Right. This is being used. I mean, it's the policy, but one school gives you 30 of these a year, and another school gives you two. Either that school that gives you two is doing something very different that we need to replicate. or we should have a conversation with the school about how they are actually doing the reporting. And both of those are things we would want to know and figure out. So I just have a motion to get the rates, just like one year rates of that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Just to get a simple number of these that have been received by the principals at each of the schools for one year snapshot.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I mean, I honestly haven't spent enough time on the forms, probably should have, to know is there really more about these forms like do we, you know, I mean, I'm guessing at the elementary school there's not a lot of sexual harassment or stalking, but you know, I don't know what these things would look like. But this form, this is a state form, correct? that is compatible with state requirements. Okay. And, but this is, is this form just kept as a paper or is it put into a system?
[Paul Ruseau]: But is this data presently coded and You know, can you just quickly say how many teasing incidents were there? Or is this like a huge amount of effort to collate? I think we can.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I have sort of a technical question around bullying and the school systems responsibility. I certainly think that providing educational opportunities for parents and how to handle this is important, but if we don't draw the line anywhere around social media bullying, then literally 365 days a year, we're on the hook for, a kid sends a nasty text to another kid in the middle of the summer, how is that any different than a weekend? And if we are going to be responsible or, I guess responsible is the right word, for dealing with the bullying that may be happening, this is not going to be a free activity to do. And we'd have budget implications and staffing, which if we want to do that, I'm not necessarily against it. But as Ms. Rodriguez said before, when I went to school, bullying was on the bus and was in the school building. And then thankfully, I went home. I was a bullied kid. And I went home, and I was yay. I'm not back at school anymore. But that doesn't happen anymore. But I would not expect my school administrators or my principal to trek to my house or help deal with my being bullied outside of the school setting.
[Paul Ruseau]: When it comes back into school, which of course, I mean, it's not like if you're bullied at home or on a weekend. and you show up on Monday, that experience doesn't go away. So I'm not saying we don't deal with it then. But filling out an incident report of the bullying that took place over the weekend, or school vacation week, or the summer. But I would expect that we respond very seriously to these kinds of reports. But if we don't have any boundaries on this, then do we have a system that can really handle that? should we have a system.
[Paul Ruseau]: I would just like to ask another question. No. I would just like to request that we not even consider a date. I mean, I mean, we have to do this, and I'm not suggesting it's not critically important, but at some point, I should probably sleep this year. And we have to, in my mind, this, while it's important, the priority is the superintendent search. And there's only so many nights a week, so let's get a name, and let's get somebody hired, put it right on the list to do right away. Usually we schedule or say within a week or two.
[Paul Ruseau]: All those in favor, aye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, thank you for the report. Can we make sure that the Brooks teachers that piloted this year, I mean, I don't know if we'll have enough to be able to do this. But one of the things that I'm concerned about, and I'm sure everybody is, is the first year doing anything is probably not really any fun. But what you don't know and you can't learn from that first year is that our subsequent years equally as challenging or is it really wasn't the first year we learned it and now it's like we can drive the car. Or is it every time we get going, it's completely a lot of work? And I'm sure that this BOSS program probably has reviews out there. And you probably have a sense of that. But it would be really good to have the teachers that piloted this year. I mean, I guess it's still officially piloting. But to run it again next year, at least with a couple of the teachers, and get their feedback that says, oh, wow, this year was so much easier.
[Paul Ruseau]: Something you just said, though, about the timing. I guess my colleague's question made me think about this. If one of the options really is that one of the buildings could decide this isn't for us, then we are years away from them having something that is for them. And so I'm certainly not suggesting we just rush in without knowing, but I mean, FOSS is a, you know, my understanding is a pretty respected program and has lots of research to support it and where wouldn't be the first district to actually use it. So I guess I just worry a bit about, I'm fine with waiting another year to pilot to make sure that there's buy-in at the individual schools and everybody's kind of is, you know, like this September they aren't surprised by it. I just want to make sure that when we are saying we're piloting it, we're not saying, what do you think? Should we consider this? Because if that's their option, then that means at the end of 2019, we can decide to find some new programs to pilot. And then we're years and years before we have data curriculum for the sciences. And I'm guessing that's not anybody's desire.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I just have one more question. So this is sort of a question, I guess, for policy is that, I mean, is it the school committee's decision whether to reject? I mean, could the principals decide to reject it and we come back here next year and say, well, that's too bad. This is what we're doing. Or who can make that decision?
[Paul Ruseau]: I would also just like to thank Mr. Cieri for the several hours we spent together last week getting up to speed on everything going on. Well, I didn't get up to speed on everything going on in two hours, but I really appreciated the time and getting to know you and also getting to look at the FOSS as well as the other curriculums. That's why I'm like, I really hope we are just going to get going on this FOSS thing, because it's really quite an impressive looking program. And we talked about a lot of the details on why it's the premier program. So I'm very excited for my own children as well. So thank you. Thanks.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I guess I just want to make sure I'm understanding this. I mean, I'm fine with having it on the agenda in perpetuity. to simply ask the question out loud, are the reports available yet? That's all I asked. That was my total intent. But I don't like, I don't think we should be dragging, you know, chiefs that go in here every week to say, is it ready?
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello again. Well, with all these schools, I'm sure, I'm hoping you can have an answer to this question. What is a popular educational initiative or practice of which you're skeptical and why?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, actually, one that's popular, but for which that doesn't make it necessarily a good idea. And I'm sure that answering this is uncomfortable.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: How does recess fit into a school system under your leadership?
[Paul Ruseau]: And do you think that recess should ever be used, should ever be removed as part of disciplinary action?
[Paul Ruseau]: Should you ever take away recess?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, but when you get a chance, I have a question from Sebastian and from Justin. Oh, certainly.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I know. That sounds pretty cool. So let's see here. Do you believe that civic engagement should be a part of the education process? And if so, what programs or policies would you continue or begin to foster civic engagement? And if not, why?
[Paul Ruseau]: This is a lot better, I know, sorry. I didn't write the question, so.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Good evening. Hi. I have a short question. Sure. Not necessarily a short answer. What is a popular educational initiative or practice of which you are skeptical and why?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sometimes I feel like the more I learn, the less happy I am. How does recess fit into a school system under your leadership?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mrs. Metz, here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello. Hi. Michael stole my first question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. It was bound to happen. I knew it was bound to happen. So what is a popular educational initiative or practice of which you're skeptical and why?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm struggling. Could you all stop taking my questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: No, that's OK. I understand. How does recess fit into a school system under your leadership?
[Paul Ruseau]: Just to follow up on that. Sure. So do you think that recess has any place in the discipline system? Should recess ever be taken away for disciplinary reasons?
[Paul Ruseau]: Teaching colleges, you did mention your work with Desi around, you know, what teaching colleges are really, how they're preparing teachers or often how they're not preparing teachers. How would you systematize supports for new teachers in particular? Because, you know, of all the teachers I've spoken to, their first year is sort of like a very bad memory. Well, they don't sleep. That's true. Right. And it just seems to me like a lot of that is just a lack of supports for them. So how would you systematize some supports for them?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I really like.
[Paul Ruseau]: I get to go first so that nobody steals my questions. What was my number four question, sorry. I wasn't prepared for you to point to me. I'll just go with the question, my number two question. What is a popular educational initiative or practice of which you're skeptical and why?
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello. Teaching colleges often don't prepare teachers for the challenges of a classroom right out of the gate. What would you do to systematize supports for new teachers to ensure their success?
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello again. How does recess fit into a school system under your leadership?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I just wanted to provide some feedback. I received text messages from a number of parents that went to the McGlynn open house, and they were beyond excited. And they just could not believe how wonderful the event was. I didn't get to go, so I can't really give more feedback than what I received. But they were universally very excited. So thank you very much.
[Paul Ruseau]: professional development days do we have a year?
[Paul Ruseau]: considering using the majority of professional development on something that is virtually, like the likelihood is incredibly low and will thus delay RTI and all the other trainings that we want to do which will affect our children right away.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to make sure we're not going to say, if Alice's training, which is what we're going with, is one and a half days a year of training. We're not going to just wave a magic wand and give it a couple hours a year and think that's enough. So if we have to give up most of our professional development for all of our teachers, for all of the things that we currently do, I think the community really needs to understand and make a choice.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you very much. That was a lot of information. I was wondering, because I was confused about the fact that the elementary schools do not have the guidance Councilors, for the middle schools and for the high school, what is the guidance Councilor to student ratios right now? About 300 on average. That's not terrible.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK. I was just looking on the, I don't know which Department of Ed website, showed us in the 420 range, but I think that might have been including students that are in elementary school or something was weird about that. So this number is much nicer. I have one other question, though, about the, so the additional $1,000 Is that enough or do you know?
[Paul Ruseau]: So is this a, are we required to provide this in a format on the on the website.
[Paul Ruseau]: But if it's approved, we would have to make this public. And am I correct that printed this is, in fact, going to be another REMA paper per person per meeting?
[Paul Ruseau]: Is there any capacity issues, or I? Mean you you don't turning any you know turning anybody away.
[Paul Ruseau]: These are finances that are just part of the school system, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Anthony's not going to be- It's a program. Okay, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm sorry. Thank you very much for this. Um, I see you're not asking for more money for art supplies. And I'm just wondering, my experience at the elementary level was that the art teachers seemed to be out of supplies before Christmas every year.
[Paul Ruseau]: So I'm sorry, I'm just very familiar with the Columbus's layout. And I'm just really trying to, so we have had people voting in that cafeteria when there were 400 kids eating there.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion, if in fact it's allowed, to close the superintendent search survey this Friday. We've never discussed an actual end date, but of course the search committee will struggle to analyze the data if we actually don't turn it off.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do we have an estimate of what it costs to sweep each building each time we do it?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's pretty good for a community. The multiple choice questions, those are easy to give answers to.
[Paul Ruseau]: Bring it closer. So for the multiple choice questions, these are kind of easy to get answers to. I will say the multiple choice questions, sort of as predicted by Glenn and Richard and Nancy, were really much less interesting than we thought we could imagine. I think the hard part about this survey is that, Generally speaking, the public doesn't know what a superintendent does because the superintendent does so many things. And so, you know, there's a pie chart with like a gazillion little slices and almost no slice that's particularly big. So, I mean, I don't have the, to close it, I'm not gonna sit down and spend days analyzing the data, because I'd have to do it all over again. But what I will say is that in the open,
[Paul Ruseau]: Anyways, it's the open-ended questions. What would you ask a new superintendent? What do you think is great about Medford's public schools? Those are the questions that, well, first of all, are going to require a small army of people to analyze, because people were not brief. So 458 people so far have responded, and each person seems to have prepared a small novel. So we'll be reading through those, which I have not done yet, and pulling out themes that come up. And then once I have had the time to do that, then I will certainly present those results.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I would like to add to the policy a statement that this will be integrated into all annual reviews, contracts for rentals of school facilities, and the student handbooks.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. So this has certainly been as everybody else has indicated and I think everybody here has experienced a week that I hope we don't have to ever have again. Last Thursday's meeting was was, I guess it spoke for itself. And, you know, I've only been on the school committee now for eight weeks, which is, I guess, trial by fire. You know, I've responded to 250 emails this past week. And what struck me about the emails was that, without exception, they were the longest emails I've ever received in my life. I mean, these things were small novels, every one of them. And they were all very unique and passionate, and many of them were very conflicted, you know. Individuals were not necessarily on one side or the other. And I think that many of us on the committee have experienced that as well, where it's like, this is not a black and white issue that we've been dealing with. My children are in our schools. I felt like they were safe before December 28th or 29th. I have felt like they've been safe since then, and I felt completely that they were safe when they went back to school. And I say that knowing as much as any of us know about what has or hasn't happened. I think it's important to say that I sent my kids to school, and the only thing I was concerned about was, was the media gonna harass any of the kids, which... I don't think that happened, but I was never concerned for their safety. And that's really the most important message here, is that from a safety perspective, there's no safer place for our kids than actually in school. Those are just the facts. They might not feel like the facts, because we all see the news. None of us are ever going to be as safe as we were or we are as children in our schools. I have a much longer statement which I'll release tomorrow. I was going to read it, but I think you all are probably as tired as the rest of us, so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for this report. Do you know when they will give us feedback on what they've approved?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm not sure what the report request was. I'm sorry.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did have a question. So for the things that are coming from the payroll system that are not lining up yet, that you're still working through, are those, they're not on here at all?
[Paul Ruseau]: So that's how, for instance, there's just magically no psychologists at the Roberts. But of course, there is. Yes. It's just they're showing up somewhere else.
[Paul Ruseau]: Correct. OK. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hi, Diane. Did the fifth graders last year had these less than stellar MCAS scores have particularly bad grades on the report cards?
[Paul Ruseau]: Could you like to make a motion to actually correlate those if there really was any?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: So this form that we're holding is a piece of paper. It's actually a link on the website already, or will be.
[Paul Ruseau]: And is the entire policy, like the next item on the list of links or above it or near it, or do you have to go someplace else on the website?
[Paul Ruseau]: It's all together.
[Paul Ruseau]: On the page two of this, there is a reference that the lottery system is used if demand exceeds space. But I just have a question. When there's a sibling already in the school, that is a priority. Siblings have priority. OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, is it possible? I know inflation isn't really known until it's already in history, you know, until it's the past. But, you know, I mean, $400,000 going up to 405, everybody gets excited, but that's actually a reduction. Is there any way for numbers to be presented with a projected inflation adjusted, what it really will be? And I'm not sure if that's even a thing, projected inflation adjusted. I mean, I feel like you can always do that historically and say, you know, McCope was this much then and it is this much now. You know, whenever I see these numbers, I just feel like even if they go in the right way, even if they did, that is actually not the right direction necessarily. And so I don't, I mean, I don't even know if that's a thing to do. a future budget's projected inflation adjusted value. I mean, is that a thing?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I'm not really sure if we can talk about it tonight, but it became clear that we had never discussed as a committee or as a subcommittee on the superintendent search when we could release the survey that we had approved as a committee.
[Paul Ruseau]: And I did talk to Paul on Friday. And he said he would have those by Wednesday of this week. So once he's completed that and I can put up the other languages, I've been working with Mr. Kuchar to complete the SurveyMonkey. The English language version is completed. And I just didn't want to. start putting it out there. We needed to approve that.
[Paul Ruseau]: We can put it up.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just want to be clear, and maybe we can't answer this without Glenn, Mr. Kuchar, but I mean, the focus group is not just anybody and everybody shows up and gets to just like a stadium full of people. That's not a focus group. That's not a focus group. So even if 100 people want to come to a focus group, it's 7 o'clock on the 15th. Well, they can show up, but there's not going to be 100 people there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Mr. Rousseau. Yes, thank you. The response I got from some PTO members when they saw this was interesting. It was sort of like, well, that's it, I'm done. That was pretty much... I'm sorry, you didn't hear that? That's it, I'm done. I'm not doing the PTO anymore. And most of this seems to be solving a problem that doesn't exist. The financial aspects about having some kind of a reporting on the finances makes perfect But, you know, the voting stuff, you know, I know of a PTO that nobody can remember having an election because there has never been enough people to show up to fill all the spots in the six years that they've been participating. So it's fine to say we should have elections, but when you have three people, four people, or five people filling the six spots year after year, adding one more thing where they have to post that there's going to be an election, print it, get it distributed to all of the families, have an actual meeting so that the three or four of them can come together with their cookies and say, I guess it's us again, but don't forget to take a roll call. And that kind of effort doesn't seem like that big a deal. But when you add things like the training, so if it's going to be the same treasurer for seven years in a row, Are we going to make them go to training seven years in a row or we decertify that organization? I mean, we can certainly do that. going to have a lot of trouble finding any treasurers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I continue? I do think the sort of slightly off that topic, the issue of other 501c3s, I mean, I think about like the Medford Education Foundation. I mean, they are about Medford public schools.
[Paul Ruseau]: But we don't want the MEF to have to go through this. Or do we?
[Paul Ruseau]: We do. OK. So that kind of gets back to my very first kind of question they didn't ask yet was, so the PTOs were not consulted for this, correct? No, we haven't done a wide sweep on that. So I mean, I just feel like that this should at least, that they should be part of the conversation on what would work.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm on support services, so I would certainly be happy to send it there, if that's okay.
[Paul Ruseau]: At this, I'd like to make a motion to send this to support services to create a form.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to make a motion to send this to the Rules Subcommittee.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I had a question about whether the in-class breakfast, how is the milk transported to the classes and how long does it sit in the classes and come back and over and over multiple times a day? How do you track that the milk isn't the same milk going to the class for four or five days in a row? And is it actually kept cold while it's sitting in the class for an hour or two?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just had a question about, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I had a question about whether the in-class breakfast, how is the milk transported to the classes and how long does it sit in the classes and come back and over and over multiple times a day? How do you track that the milk isn't the same milk going to the class for four or five days in a row? And is it actually kept cold while it's sitting in the class for an hour or two?
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm trying to stay awake. My name is Paul Rousseau. I'm a candidate for school committee, as you probably have guessed. I'd like to thank the Medford Democratic City and Ward 6 committees for hosting this event. I think it's really important that everybody has a chance to see us. I think it's a little better than yard signs. I'd also most importantly like to thank you all for taking time out of your very busy weeks to come out here tonight. I live in the hillside neighborhood with my husband, Bob, whom I don't think made it. My kids probably weren't up for this. Our son, Matthew, is a student at the Andrews Middle School, and our daughter, Nev, is a student at Columbus Elementary. I'm a software engineer by profession, and I've worked at Partners Healthcare for 20 years, and yes, I do have the best commute right now in the world. I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Keene State College in New Hampshire and a Master of, I have the longest Master's name in the world, a Master of Science in Human Factors and Information Design, it really says that, from Bentley University. Since our first child entered school at Columbus seven years ago, my family has been very involved in the PTO. I've been volunteering every year to go on field trips, The buses are really a blast. And I've also co-led the Computer Science Club at the Columbus, which is an enrichment program after school. We've had really excellent teachers. Every single teacher has been amazing, and I feel very fortunate that we've had such a great experience. We've also had experiences in the special education system, and they have all actually been positive. So I think we have an excellent foundation for our schools to build upon. I do not believe we need to make massive changes to see some pretty incredible improvements. Sometimes small changes can have a great impact. That said, we do have some pretty substantial challenges that we have to address head on. Some of my fellow candidates have mentioned maintenance. perhaps not maintain the wonderful schools we built 15, 16 years ago as well as we should have. I think that we need to do more than deal with the daily crisis list of maintenance issues and have every single facility analyzed top to bottom. And we need to plan for what we're going to need to spend this year, what we're going to need to spend next year, three, four, five years from now even. The equipment failures that are gonna happen, and many of them are already happening, are completely predictable, and we shouldn't have to deal with them only on a crisis, in crisis mode. So I propose that we do something a little different, that we actually have a set of kind of principles on how we prioritize maintenance instead of just what's the current crisis today. So I think we should be addressing all of our maintenance issues First, by safety issues. Second, by whether or not, how they impact education, things that impact education. And then finally, and really lastly, should be cosmetics. And I know that's not always popular because we all see the cosmetics. But that's what I think. We also need to implement a computer science curriculum. Now, we have some computer science elements in our education now. We have some program classes here and there. and everything that is being done is great, but a curriculum is not what we have. A curriculum in computer science is kindergarten through 12th grade. It is sewn together in a meaningful way so that, you know, you don't just get to middle school and if you happen to be the geeks that know how to program, you take the programming classes. It's, it's, every student needs this for our Certainly colleges are expecting it and most of them are not getting it from kids out of high school. Many, many jobs expect you to know more than how to type. We need to do some access issues at the elementary schools. We don't have late buses at the elementary schools, so all that wonderful remediation that can be done through tutoring that is there is not accessible to all of the students. This is kind of a cheap thing, in my opinion. We can spend some money early on remediating kids that need help, and then... 15 seconds.
[Paul Ruseau]: And then not spend so much money later on. I have a lot on special education that I wanted to talk about. We need to focus on the transitions of our kids around special education, getting into special education and going between the schools. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you Mr. Russo Yes, thank you So the response I got from some PTO members when they saw this was Interesting It was sort of like well, that's that I'm done That was pretty much. I'm sorry to do that. That's it. I'm done. I I'm not doing the PTO anymore. And, you know, most of this seems to be solving a problem that doesn't exist. The financial aspects about having some kind of a reporting on the finances makes perfect sense. But, you know, the voting stuff, you know, I know of a PTO that, Nobody can remember having an election because there has never been enough people to show up to fill all the spots in the six years that they've been participating. So it's fine to say we should have elections, but when you have three people, four people, or five people filling the six spots year after year, adding one more thing where they have to post that there's going to be an election, print it, get it distributed to all of the families, have an actual meeting so that the three or four of them can come together with their cookies and say, I guess it's us again, but don't forget to take a roll call. And that kind of effort doesn't seem like that big a deal. But when you add things like the training, so if it's going to be the same treasurer for seven years in a row, are we going to make them go to training seven years in a row, or we decertify that organization? We can certainly do that, but we're going to have a lot of trouble finding any treasurers.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can I continue? I do think the sort of slightly off that topic, the issue of other 501c3s, I mean, I think about like the Medford Education Foundation. I mean, they are about Medford public schools.
[Paul Ruseau]: But we don't want the MEF to have to go through this. Or do we? I don't. We do okay, so that kind of gets back to my very first kind of question I didn't ask yet was so The PTOs were not consulted for this Correct. I mean, no, we haven't done a wide sweep on that So, I mean, I just feel like that this should at least That they should be part of the conversation on What would work?
[Paul Ruseau]: Your motion, I guess I'd like to make a motion to send this to support services to create forms that are appropriate.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, but I'll I'd like to make a motion to send this to the rules subcommittee on the motion as seconded by Miss Van der Kloot.