METCO Update (15 minutes)

Transcript (~11 min @ 34:20)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 34:02 Jennifer McAndrew: Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the balance of the consent agenda made by Mr. O'Connell, seconded by Ms. Razzi-Thomas. All in favor? And that carries unanimously with one absent. Thank you all. Next up is the work of our subcommittees. And up first is educational programs and personnel with Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Obramski. Thank you.

▶ 34:41 Speaker 4: Superintendent. Good evening. Nice to see you.

▶ 34:47 Speaker 4: Hello folks. Welcome to the educational programs and personnel portion of our program. First up, we have a METCO update and I see Ms. Amy Jackson in the audience. Ms. Jackson, if you could come forward. Superintendent, do you want to introduce this or are we just going to hand this over to Ms. Jackson?

▶ 35:05 Speaker 2: We're ready to roll.

▶ 35:07 Speaker 4: We're ready to roll. Ms. Jackson, welcome. Thanks for being with us.

▶ 35:12 Speaker 1: Good evening, everyone. My name is Amy Jackson. I'm the MECL director. I'm here to provide just an overview of the program for this past year. So first I'll start with the enrollment. We currently have 116 students in the program, 33 are in elementary school, 33 in the middle school, and 50 at the high school, which we have six seniors this year. We have currently have 16 at Hoover, eight students at Lincoln, three at Roosevelt and six at Winthrop. And enrollment at the elementary schools are depending on available seats. In this past year, we added seven new students from kindergarten through eighth grade. Next, we just wanna start off with the highlights of the year. We started off with a fabulous summer program with 25 of our lovely middle school students, sixth, seventh and eighth graders. We had a five week program will be focused on ELA and math and also enrichments in the afternoon. The students read two fabulous books, Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds, Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, which was a part of the ELO curriculum and students focused on completing their summer math work, which included math IXL lessons. During enrichment time, we invited a local artist with the students who worked on a art project was focused on the two books they read and we also had a presenter to come in to work with students on self-awareness, medication techniques, and life skills. And that presenter was actually one of our Meckle parents. It was a phenomenal session. The students loved it. The students had such a great time in the five weeks. They can't wait to come back this summer. thing i submitted a grant to mecca inc to bring in a presenter from dialogues of diversity his name was ron jones he um he ran two sessions with our high school students in the sessions called get out of our bubble it's the game show that talks about the introduced students on new and open ways just to talk about cultural differences it was really fun because it was sort of a game show student won prizes and the students were really into it and it was two fun sessions and the students were able to either go online and they could chime in in the chat they can answer the questions they could ask some questions it was really fun and entertaining and the students had a really good time next in collaboration with the friends of Melrose Mecco we continue to meet with the boston families as well as the melrose families we had a fabulous event this past may we're in partnership with follow your arts community studio and circus up circus up had many workshops that the students who were able to get on stilt they were able to see different circus activities and the kids and families had a really good time we had our local artist steven elders who worked with all the families they um presented parklets they were actually after everyone completed them they were hung on main street in melrose which was really nice that the families would come in melrose they can see all the little art designs actually saw mines which was really cool and this past sunday we had double header it was a game day we had several of the boston families come out we had mayor broda ashley join us and some other our school committee members it was so nice to see you there and the families enjoyed themselves and other families after that they walked over for the melrose alliance against violence visuals and a lot of families went over and they said they had a really good time and they were excited about it and i'm just so excited to continue to work with friends of melrose mecca and when the process planning event in boston this coming may and the families are very excited and can't wait to come to boston we have a lot of fun activities for them next i partnered with new generations consultant and associates to start a melrose mecca parent support group and this group is just for parents it's a confidential safe face for parents just to talk about issues they're faced with their children just learning about just how our children are in boston they live in boston they go to school in a different town and the students and the parents deal with a lot of things so it's a safe face for parents just to really talk because a lot of parents feel like it's just my child but once they talk to other parents they really understand that it's not and they feel a lot better and this we had our first meeting a couple of weeks ago it was really nice the parents were really just open just having really good dialogue sonya patton she's the counselor and life coach and the fun thing about her is she is an alumni of mecca she's also a parent so she really understands and she gets it and the parents can really relate to her we had a really good discussion it was only supposed to go an hour we were on the phone for two hours so it went really well the parents are really excited and they were like we got to tell more parents so we can get more parents on the call for the next one and we're going to do this every single month next i'm excited to report that i'm still in the diversity equity task force we're in our second year we've been meeting on a monthly basis excited to share the four drafts of our goals and we're also working on infinity groups for our middle school and high school students as well as our staff and that's coming and we had a meeting with the high school principal and the middle school principal and we're going to partner with some teachers and we're going to start those groups soon and that's what i have for you right now terrific thank you mr action this is really

▶ 41:07 Speaker 4: great stuff uh any comments or questions from the committee mr thomas please um this is i i'm really

▶ 41:17 Speaker 3: amazed at how much you've gotten done in such a short amount of time since you became the director and also during a pandemic and so thank you so much for your service to to our to our district and for um doing such a great job with the mecco program i'm really curious just about how the students within the mecco program have done through the pandemic just kind of curious about how they're doing how the families are doing because it's just been such a hard time for

▶ 41:45 Speaker 1: everyone so well the students are definitely happy to be back in the building yeah very excited a lot of students did not participate when they were able to come back just even in the hybrid so the families are excited to have the students back in the building a lot of the students lost family members during this time so it was a very very difficult time so that was the whole point of having a support group for the families to help them and also support their children through this but other than that everyone's happy to be back in the building their parents are excited to have the students back so it's going really well and the summer program was a huge success from the

▶ 42:22 Speaker 1: oh we had such a good time so i was the coordinator of the program i really enjoyed just spending the time with the kids especially with all the students not being in the building so i spent like two hours with them every single day and i loved it i learned so much about them they learned so much about me we had a really good time and they were already asking me justin are you going do it again absolutely i can't wait thank you for your leadership oh thank you any further comments

▶ 42:52 Speaker 4: or questions i actually have a question and maybe it's a superintendent question more than a miss jackson question perhaps both of you um how does enrollment work um you know i'm i'm and i'm sure that's that's a big question with a complicated answer but i see hoover lincoln roosevelt winthrop i obviously don't see horace mann or franklin i know space is beyond tight um but how do we get that how does it ever start do we just have to wait until enrollment goes down and the reason i ask is because i think there's a huge benefit to our schools to be participants active participants in this program and i i feel some regret that horace mann and franklin at least at present doesn't have that benefit how will that play out over time is there an answer to that so space is

▶ 43:41 Speaker 2: definitely part of the equation amy could talk about the whole process from the perspective of our families who live in boston but here in the district we actually wanted to apply for a metco expansion grant but as we looked at our available space we looked at our projected enrollment numbers we didn't feel that we had the capacity to really apply for that grant and and reap the full benefits of it but we try to fill as many seats as we can each year and we do look at not only where's their space but we also want to make sure that we're not putting one student in one school where they're feeling alone or don't have that other students that they can relate to collaborate with connect with be in the same class with but space is definitely a big driver for us

▶ 44:27 Speaker 4: amy yeah and amy just so you know i don't need to know about the process okay by which which students get into METCO or get assigned here. It's really, you know, our piece of it. And ultimately the question is, when are we going to see students at Horace Mann? And I hear what you're saying, Superintendent, I don't want to see one student by him, her, or their self at Horace Mann, but looking at it makes me wonder, how do you ever get there? How do you get that started? There's obviously no siblings there. There's no one there. so perhaps food for further thought and discussion absolutely great any further

▶ 45:11 Speaker 4: or final comments from the committee mr. Jackson you're doing a great job keep it up and thank you so much for being with us tonight we appreciate it thank you

▶ 45:21 Speaker 4: Amy thank you and next up under educational programs and personnel the youth risk behavior survey and programmatic updates and I see we have Miss White Lambright Miss Berman and Mr. Fogarty with us any introduction to this superintendent are we just going right at it we're gonna jump right in

▶ 45:37 Speaker 2: obviously this is a little bit of passing of the torch here with Miss Berman joining Miss Lambright on her final school committee presentation Steven and and Patty have been working with our SWAC which is our oh I'm gonna forget what that stands for but our health advice our wellness and advisory committee and looking at the data you're going to see the data presented a little bit differently this year but that's because we have some projects in the pipeline that they will speak about tonight so with that i'll