Beebe School (30 minutes)

Transcript (~53 min @ 1:25:01)

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

▶ 1:24:53 Speaker 7: seeing them thank you very much for your presentation and all your hard work on the wellness review program I look forward to the conclusion of this as well as the initiation of the review of fine arts thank you thank you please

▶ 1:25:14 Speaker 7: fill out those surveys and with that we move on to what appears to be based on public comment the marquee topic for tonight the BB school at this time I see presentation has been prepared and is up on the screen madam superintendent would

▶ 1:25:32 Speaker 6: you please thank you mr. so presentation to the school committee with some background information most of which you know I certainly do not plan on reading

▶ 1:25:47 Speaker 6: slides I don't know how it translated on IQM when I downloaded my IQ man they It got funky, but I think what Dr. Adams has there probably is a cleaner copy. So again, as you know, when we were heading into the override discussion, we had two demographic studies done. We had had a demographic study done in 2015 leading up to the modules. Can I bother somebody to close that door, please? Thank you.

▶ 1:26:23 Speaker 6: And we decided to repeat it with two different sources in the fall of 2018 in order to have a second opinion on our numbers. In the chart that you have in these slides is the range with the difference. And at least for 2019-2020, it's holding true to the Collins numbers at this point in time. A question was raised about methodology, and I can do this correctly, and what, just to address that question, in literature from NASDAQ, who probably are the primary providers of demographic information for school systems throughout New England, regarding their methodology and reliability for enrollment they tell us that each ratio for grades K through 12 represents the cumulative effect of the following factors migration in or out of the schools changes in school program dropouts transfers retention in the same grade births and deaths housing growth and usually within a one to three year three years in the future so the methodology is a little bit more complicated than it's captured in this blurb current enrollments by class again that is provided for you because it is the school committee policy that we are to balance class size to the best of our abilities at the elementary level it's a bit more difficult at the middle and the high school level with electives and as a result as we've discussed the first year I was here 95% of our families got their first choice by last year only 80% of our families got their first choice that's a little bit better than 1819 and which only 76% got their first choice but again it is a struggle to balance class size given the criteria for student placement Margaret move ahead to student placement thank you one more that is the school committee policy and the priority is on siblings but the need for a special education or English as a second language program balancing class size geographic proximities and family choice so having said that we still have some variation and the class size the goal would be no matter what solution we have to build the opportunity to lower class size even if it means adding a class on a rolling basis so what does that mean what it means is some years we need 15 grade twos some years we need 14 grade twos I don't know if we'll get to point where we need 16 grade twos but it would give us the flexibility that we need within our space to make those adjustments as we need to make them rolling forward the lowest we've ever had in the district and i believe it precedes me was when we had the typical 12 classes at each grade level then it crept up to 13 14 and as you know now we're pushing 15 16 and that's where we're feeling the um stress um we also know from the demographic study that this is a not a bubble as i refer to it often it's a wave or a trend that will roll its way up to the middle school in the high school and eventually drop off somewhat at the elementary level but the prediction from the demographic study was it would not drop below 300 at the elementary level it would drop from 320 330 as we've seen in the past but it will roll its way up for the high school and eventually we would

▶ 1:30:42 Speaker 6: have to address it there which I can talk about in response to questions so So the grade, the two options are, there is not enough space at the BB to take 15 grade fives and put them there, and to have specialty space and everything else we can have. You could have a two-strand elementary school. That is what we typically had in Melrose before we added the modules to Winthrop, Hoover,

▶ 1:31:17 Speaker 6: And that was the only thing. We did not get added to the Horace Mann as originally planned because when we went to do that, it would creep onto the park land. The park land belongs to the state. We would have to ask permission from the state. And at that time, the city planner decided that is not a route that we could go down because that could take years. So we only put up five modules, not six, as originally planned.

▶ 1:31:46 Speaker 6: So the reassignment to grades one to five,

▶ 1:31:54 Speaker 6: which would require us to set up a whole other elementary school. The problem is, with that, is it's not I'm going to take 12 teachers among my other five schools and transfer them. What you end up doing is taking students from every school to create a class you lower the class sizes at the other buildings to an optimum size maybe 18 19 which I know many of us would love and you build the class at the BB so that means hiring teachers for those classes those of you who were here for the previous BB experience where we closed the BB and And again, I think it's, Madam Mayor, 16 years ago? At least, sure. 16 years ago. That was quite painful to families being taken out of the BB and sent to schools that they may or may not have liked. There were some volunteers, but many people were involuntarily transferred.

▶ 1:33:01 Speaker 6: I would assume the reverse in building up the BB for one through five. you heard tonight from one of our parents very happy where her family is and would like to stay

▶ 1:33:12 Speaker 6: there um so that is a real consideration in making it one to five um once the bb would be up and

▶ 1:33:22 Speaker 6: running as a grade one to five i would not necessarily relieve the school committee of of the placement policy. Do I believe the placement policy ought to be revisited? Absolutely. I've had conversations with parents who are much smarter than I, that tell me that they can run a computer program that would fix it for me. I would gladly invite that. Here's the problem within my experience. The growth in the city is not even. In the seven years I've been doing this, one year I had a Winthrop problem. one year I had a Roosevelt problem, one year I had a Lincoln problem, I've had a Horace Mann problem for two years now. It's not predictable growth. When you look at the map of the city and where you have your schools, they were not designed equidistant from neighborhoods. Quite honestly, you have more schools on the Lincoln, Beebe, Hoover side of town than you have on the Horace Mann, Winthrop side of town and Roosevelt somewhere in between so you don't have that type of thing and you cannot predict the turnover in your neighborhoods so you would still have to have some sort of placement policy so and what the domino effect would be I don't know at this time to open the BB regardless of

▶ 1:34:51 Speaker 6: whether you open the BB for a one to five or another K building you need a a whole new set of people to run the building you need an administrator you need a secretary you need a nurse you need a custodian those are given we knew that when we began this discussion last year about taking back the BB we talked about you would need a operational staff what you would actually need in teaching staff may vary if you move the case there you're basically taking the K teachers and moving them there unlike taking the other grades so that's why

▶ 1:35:36 Speaker 6: there's no teacher impact there when we when I built up this model the closest model I could use for an example was Horace Mann because the Horace Mann is a 12 strand school it has two grades at it has two classrooms at every grade that's That's what makes it a 12-strand. So Beebe would look like the Horace Man. Those of you who know the buildings know that the Beebe looks exactly like the Hoover looked before we put the modules on. It's not as big as the Franklin because the Franklin has a bottom floor, and that gives it extra classrooms. So it is a replica of the Hoover with all the restrictions of the Hoover.

▶ 1:36:19 Speaker 6: So whatever solution we decide on, you have this physical configuration, which I think is on the slide, thank you Margaret, 12 classrooms, not enough classrooms for 13-16 strand, okay, and there is work to be done in the BV.

▶ 1:36:39 Speaker 6: I have shared with the city my belief that the work can be done in stages. To open the Beebe in September, we would need appropriate furniture, clean it up, make sure the plumbing and electricity were up to grade, put in some additional wiring so that it could be technologically equivalent to our other buildings, and then we would be able to open it. Any other work that needs to be done in the Beebe is no different than the work I have to do in other buildings. We recently met with the capital's improvement program, Mr. O'Connell was on that committee, and we laid out to the city all the repairs that have to be done across all the buildings. You're talking millions of dollars of repairs, okay?

▶ 1:37:32 Speaker 6: Every smart board in the city has to be replaced within the next several years. That's a million dollars alone. I need windows at the Franklin. I need windows at the Beebe. We're looking out to build a double door entry at the Winthrop. We're looking to upgrade the door entry at the high school for security purposes. Almost every building in the school district needs roofs. There's lots of financial needs here that are competing. And again, it is up to the city to decide where, when, and how to prioritize those and what monies they want to spend.

▶ 1:38:15 Speaker 6: So what I have focused on alone is what do I have in front of me and what is the educational program that would be feasible for the BB at this point in time. So I also put in front of you criteria for a solution. is very important to us as you know when we did the work on the modules one of the things that we insisted upon with the city was we would do work on the Horace man the Horace man did not have an art and music space it did not have a library it was important to give them the same space as we've given everybody else okay so maintaining that space or regaining that space is very important to us as a district for example at the Roosevelt we no longer have a music room. We now use a teacher's room for the music room. At the Lincoln two weeks ago we built a wall in the library to create a music room. We no longer have computer labs but that's okay because technology has changed. Kids don't go down to a computer lab anymore, the carts come to them. So that was space we grabbed for classrooms along the way the other thing that has impacted our buildings when you talk about equity of space is this district works to keep our children with significant special needs in district we only put 47 children out of almost 4,000 out of district that's quite an accomplishment those programs take space we have built those spaces at the Lincoln and at the Roosevelt that impacts who gets to go to the Lincoln and Roosevelt because I need space at the Lincoln the Roosevelt for students going into those programs so other kids who may live in that neighborhood end up getting moved to this second or third choice we are required by law to provide ESL programs any solution you have has to begin to address this later on tonight when we talk about enrollment I make that important point in the enrollment report when I came here we had one ESL program at the Lincoln we know that our Lincoln is our most diverse neighborhood it has a lot of our English as a second language speakers that's where the program was that's where those students got placed we then built out a program at the Roosevelt. Now we've built out a program at the Hoover. For equity's sake, we should have an ESL program at every building, okay? That's a

▶ 1:41:01 Speaker 6: consideration in building out buildings and space in buildings and building out programs. Sustainability, it has to be a plan you can live for seven to ten years.

▶ 1:41:15 Speaker 6: If you look at the demographics, if we go over the demographics, we could live this plan we could live with some other plan for seven to ten years okay because this number is going to roll up to the high school efficacy again at the end of

▶ 1:41:33 Speaker 6: the day it is the program we provide to our kids that matters the most we have eight buildings all eight buildings are not certainly equitable in the sense that they're all beautiful buildings like Roosevelt and Lincoln but what What happens in every building is what is equitable and is what is most important. We are providing every one of our students in all six of our elementary schools a quality program. And the last thing, of course, is responsiveness.

▶ 1:42:05 Speaker 6: I don't know how much time we have to wait, and I'm going to talk about that in a little bit in a couple of minutes. So those are your criteria for making a decision.

▶ 1:42:25 Speaker 6: i have an opinion about could we wait could i do other things yes i could could i could add two more k's to the franklin i've already had a conversation with miss maranto and miss st george could i add another case there could i add another k to those two buildings where would i find space if i had to add another k to those two buildings so i do have a plan b and a plan c because that's what I need to do but everything has impact you add more classes to the Lincoln and the Roosevelt the Lincoln is at 420 something and the Roosevelt's at 430 something you add another 20 odd kids you can play out in your heads the neighborhoods you add another two classes to the Franklin as a short-term approach, Ms. Rosso then provides two less pre-Ks. The school committee can play out in their heads what that means financially to the operation of the early childhood center. But more importantly, you have heard me say in this chamber many, many times, I defend that program to the nth degree because I know the difference it makes when those kids enter K. The 150 to 60 kids that go to RECC and come into K every year are much better prepared than some of the other children we see. That doesn't mean they're all perfect, they're not all going to be A students, they're all going to come with their needs. But they come very well prepared, and it makes a difference for those K teachers.

▶ 1:44:10 Speaker 6: Having said that, we are also seeing a difference in our student body. We're seeing children come into the district with more needs. We work very hard to keep them into our district. I was at the early childhood center today because it was my, I visit every building multiple times during the year. It was their turn to have me there. I had a great visit, but I'm seeing our children at three, four, and five who have a wide variety of needs. I'm also in our buildings, our K5 buildings, and I'm seeing kids in K who are still struggling because of their needs. So when I think about this educationally, and we talked about this internally, we thought about what would be the advantage of an early education center that allowed us more time to work with young students to build their ability to do school better. when they go to the big school with the big kids with all the turmoil that was

▶ 1:45:20 Speaker 6: something that entered our mind and so that led to the plan option two so option one was a replicate of another elementary school option two was an opportunity to work with early childhood students and to maybe have a different approach a different model that built up their ability and Ms. Rosso can talk to that Ms. White-Lambrey can talk to that as well as can Dr. Adams the

▶ 1:45:56 Speaker 6: decision the decision may or may not be in our hands everything depends on whether or not the same collaborative finds a building to move to they have agreed in principle with us and have voted on it as a board of directors that that as soon as they have another building, they will vacate and turn the building over to us. If they do not have another building by January,

▶ 1:46:29 Speaker 6: I think we have a different set of considerations because we need to get into the BB and do the upgrades to get it ready for our students. So that may give you more time, that may force me to plan B or which is another discussion with the school committee. For the purposes of today, I was asked to plan, what would you do with the BB if you could have it tomorrow? These were the two plans we had after the administration spent a lot of time thinking about the different options.

▶ 1:47:03 Speaker 6: In 2016, when we were first faced with this surprise growth in population, we thought it was going to be a bubble, it turned out not to be a bubble. I came up with nine options pros and cons and nine options ultimately the city decide on the modules among those options were all sorts of different things including moving the fifth grade to the middle school rethinking whether you should have a k2 three five all there are so many options out there for

▶ 1:47:43 Speaker 6: education it's incredible i am hesitant to say one is better than another i think cities and towns have preferences based on their population their parents and their school committee philosophy i have taught in districts where i've had k-8s i have taught in districts where i've had k-2s three-fives i have taught here where i have k-5s in every one of those districts i will tell you

▶ 1:48:11 Speaker 6: the same thing wonderful teachers committed to the well-being of children that was the common factor regardless of the configuration you have to decide what configuration works for us all right the other thing is I want to say

▶ 1:48:29 Speaker 6: is about the long term because I believe somebody brought this up and again forgive me if I don't get my dates right in 2013 or 14 the permanent school building committee which has existed in the city for 20 years I believe madam a are right yes all right they oversaw Lincoln they oversaw Roosevelt they oversaw the middle school they came up with a multi-phase plan for the high school there is a plan on record to build out space in the high school for

▶ 1:49:10 Speaker 6: when we need it okay again that plan involves taking central office and moving it out of central office at that time in 2016 the cost of moving central office out of the high school building out more classrooms plus the third floor those of you who grew up in Melrose the old CAD rooms is approximately 1.5

▶ 1:49:35 Speaker 6: $5 million, and that's a plan that we're sitting on if we need the space at the high school in the future. Where central office will go, that's a different set of problems. But that has been anticipated.

▶ 1:49:54 Speaker 6: Bottom line is, what do we need for the next five to seven years? What is feasible for the city educationally, logistically, and financially, and what is

▶ 1:50:05 Speaker 6: the belief system of this school committee? What do you want to see happen?

▶ 1:50:18 Speaker 7: Thank you, Madam Superintendent. Mr. O'Connell.

▶ 1:50:21 Speaker 1: Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sure like everyone sitting here throughout the room, we have lots of questions, but if I may Madam Superintendent you touched upon this in terms of hoping to have the BB back for our use for next school year can you can you talk a little more about that just to share with members of the public the rationale for why we're taking what I think rightly has been described or perceived as a somewhat accelerated process we're looking as I understand it at an eight-week review and decision-making process spread over several school committee meetings but ultimately with a vote or a planned vote on December 10th can you just talk a little bit about why we have to do this now so again it has to do with bid

▶ 1:51:19 Speaker 6: process and again this is where it's not the school committee's control it's the city's control so we own the buildings but the city manages our buildings quite

▶ 1:51:38 Speaker 6: well thank you in order to get workmen in there in a timely manner for us to have the building ready for the end of August bids have to go out the beginning of January we have to follow the state bid process you have to do the bids they They have to be posted, I want to say six weeks, somebody may have a correction for me. Then you have to open the bids, then you have to contract, and then you have to get people in there. We've done repairs to buildings that fast, those of you who lived through Horace Mann with us, we did it that fast. We did the high school build out for the learning commons and everything else in a little bit more time while the kids were in the building. But Denise Gaffey and I have done this before together and we think with that timeline we could get the basics done.

▶ 1:52:29 Speaker 6: But you have to get those bids out by January 1st, probably.

▶ 1:52:34 Speaker 1: Okay, very good. Thank you for that. And if I may, Madam Chair, a couple of follow ups. Starting with the comment, I'm anticipating that going forward this review and decision-making process will be akin to our budget process in many ways in that not only are we planning a public forum on November 19th but we also have a series of or we have two school committee meetings in addition to the tonight and I anticipating that this topic will be on those agendas as well so this is this isn't the end of the story by a long shot moving beyond that Madam Superintendent one of the issues that's been brought up by many people rightly is the issue of traffic and traffic concerns and I know traffic isn't your primary concern this this isn't the traffic Commission this is the school committee how do we address that how do Why do we take that on? Are there resources available within the city that we can call upon to assess the traffic implications of whatever educational program we choose or consider?

▶ 1:53:49 Speaker 6: So we work with Sergeant Gawk, who is the traffic officer. We work with the traffic commission. We've been working for the past four years with I want to say it's Healthy Melrose, but it's not Healthy Melrose. It is Healthy Melrose. It is under Healthy Melrose where we've done a number of traffic studies and traffic reworking. The high school, they worked with us. They're working with us on the Hoover right now, because the increase in the Hoover population has resulted in more traffic. So they're working with us there. I think we're waiting to hear if we get a grant to build more sidewalks up at the Hoover neighborhood. We are a walking city. I mean, if you are on the high school campus, the middle high school, middle campus every day, granted the older kids drive to the Nolan Park, but the amount of bikes, the amount of kids walking, the kids walking down Main Street, we walk as many places as we can, but it's also parent preference. Part of the greater issue is this. Our schools now run from 7.30 to 6 o'clock every day. Most of our families are two-career families. We provide before school care and after school care. And many of our families drop their kids off on their way to either wherever they work or to the train station or wherever it may be. I know that one of the aldermen has tried doing, what does she call them, walking trains? School pools. What? School pools. School pools, thank you. And has had some success with that. But ultimately, I can't tell parents how to get their kids to school, so that's a real issue. The other issue is, we went to late start at the high school because we believed that was in the best interest of adolescents. And that has had an impact on the parkway, as we all know. But it's difficult. It's a very dense city as well. You know, we don't have schools that are on back roads with acres of land around them. We have city schools that are in congested neighborhoods. You know, we've done whatever we can with the traffic commission. We put the cut out in Winthrop, and that has had some help, but I don't have an easy answer for you on traffic in the city.

▶ 1:56:21 Speaker 1: Very good. Thank you. And I know we have a lot of other people who want to ask questions. Thank you for your forbearance. The issue of transitions for young students, Madam Superintendent, can you talk a little bit about that? And again, I know this is the first night of a multi-meeting process, but it seems the number of people have brought up that particular concern.

▶ 1:56:53 Speaker 6: I think that you have to choose where you're going to have your transitions. That's the bottom line. And again, I just described umpteen different approaches to school systems that people have. Some people have a transition from second to third, some people have it from pre-K to K. There are districts that have total K schools, massive K schools, and those kids go from K to one. Bill Ricker just built an 8 to 12 high school, so their transition's going to be 7 to 8. I think the success of the transition goes with the success of your planning. If you plan for it, you have transition activities, you do it thoughtfully, we can do it successfully. We do a lot of that when the K kids come into us. We do the building base breakfasts, I mean on picnics. We do the big event on Fred Green. Again, all that's part of planning for transition.

▶ 1:57:52 Speaker 1: Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 1:57:57 Speaker 7: Ms. McAndrew?

▶ 1:57:59 Jennifer McAndrew: Thank you, I appreciate the presentation and the questions raised by the community as well as folks who emailed us, talked to us about this in advance. And I, just to echo Chairman O'Connell point, I have a lot of questions in various categories about this. As the superintendent knows, we've talked through some of this, but I think it's still worth talking about it, all of it in public. So I do want to be mindful of time and other opportunities that we'll have. but I do want to sort of, I think, pick up on a couple of things that you mentioned tonight to dig in a little bit on. And the first question is around the K to five option. And I think we could have a little more discussion if you wouldn't mind and clarity around this idea that 12 additional full-time teachers are definitely needed. Is that, let me just play out a scenario. So is there a scenario where, for example, students are moved from other elementary schools and then at those homeschools, let's call them, just for purposes of the conversation, those classes, the grade level is then combined into a smaller class or two classes, say from three, and then that frees up a classroom teacher to either teach another grade at that same school if we then need to add another first grade, which is gonna be my second set of questions, or maybe move and or move to the Beebe. In other words, is the 12, how firm do you feel that is? Is it an estimate?

▶ 1:59:37 Speaker 6: It's an estimate. Again, when I ran these numbers with the previous business manager, we could not assume that we would be reducing classes because we were basing it off of our experience with having closed Beebe and this is in the reverse. So I can't promise you. I try to run a scenario, as somebody suggested, where I had four of a grade. I said, can I move this whole grade? But then again, that means all 21 parents in that class saying, okay, you can pick up the fourth class of grade four at Roosevelt and move it all the way over to the BB. I doubt I'm gonna get that type of cooperation. But to your point, as you know, Often what we do in the district is we move FTEs around, full-time equivalencies around. So if you had a situation where you were able to combine classes and run better numbers, and you had a FTE filled up, freed up, would that mean I could add a fourth grade two at the Lincoln? Because a lot of people would like to be at the Lincoln and then have that FTE, not that teacher, but that FTE roll up over the years. Yes, that's a possibility. That is one way that you manage staff numbers.

▶ 2:01:04 Jennifer McAndrew: Okay, thank you. On the K, sticking with the K to five option, and then I have a question about the pre-K to K option. One of the things that folks have asked, and I just want you to address it if you could, is this idea of having like a roll-in option for the BB where you would have like just put two kindergartens next year and then kindergartens in first and sort of like build it up over time or put two kindergartens in two first and then and you and I have talked about that the challenges around the feasibility of that and also why it doesn't actually possibly address the overcrowding issue that we actually have but could you please talk about that for the community so if I so I'm trying to wrap my head

▶ 2:01:51 Speaker 6: around it because is it two kindergartens the year sharing space would seem or seem is gone and we have only two classes in a building with 12

▶ 2:02:04 Jennifer McAndrew: classrooms two classes in a building with 12 classrooms and nobody else yeah

▶ 2:02:10 Speaker 6: and we can you just talk about I think that answers itself I get it I mean it's

▶ 2:02:17 Speaker 6: It's expensive and you can, inefficient and a lousy experience for 50 kids and staff that have nobody to rely on. So that's a difficulty.

▶ 2:02:32 Speaker 6: And I will tell you that we have debated sharing space with SEEM, but the program there is such it would not be in the best interest of either SIEM or the Melrose schools it's a highly specialized special ed program and and it would

▶ 2:02:49 Jennifer McAndrew: which is one of the reasons why their construction costs associated with this move to an elementary school whatever model right exactly so similar thought exercise around the K and pre-k to K option two let's sort of think about if that scenario so the kindergartens are moved out of the current elementary school five elementary schools I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about what would then happen there so or might happen so you've meant I've heard you mention that we could reclaim some of that space for specials or where the library the music room that are now being used as classrooms I you talked about special and the autism program ESL in every building and then you talked about reducing class size I think we can all see how that makes sense won't we also need to add first grades next year potentially or other grades I mean isn't part of the idea that those classrooms will be used for one to five and when and how is that communicated in those decisions made so because I think that is the essential piece to reducing class size would be adding in those buildings would be adding other classrooms right I don't see it reflected in the presentation so I just want to draw it out okay so I'm still not sure what

▶ 2:04:22 Jennifer McAndrew: you're what you're when what do you anticipate needing and when will we talk

▶ 2:04:26 Speaker 6: about that I think I won't be able to anticipate what I need until I know what my space is and where the families want to go so miss Rosso and miss white lamb I didn't write it here and they will begin the process with the Franklin families patty when we have families want to go so but you have to put those

▶ 2:05:11 Speaker 6: kindergartens in first grade somewhere right so last year when we went to do it we had a number of families who did not get their first choice right because we just simply did not have space

▶ 2:05:21 Jennifer McAndrew: um and just one final point on the choice issue most families pick the school near them isn't that right yes um and so one other i've gone too long i just want to raise one other issue and then table it to talk about another time but just ask you and your team to think about um which is that no matter as has been clear from the discussion so far no matter what scenario we choose there will be many many many decisions thereafter related to implementation and you know we registration process timing logistics is are is the time of the school day shifted um and if so how parking i mean all the things traffic everything we've and i just want us to think about it at some point maybe put formally on to our conversations at epnp how parent feedback will be incorporated into those conversations under either scenario and really think about you know what kind of surveying info sessions you know we're going to have a pto formed if so when all of that we do have the experience of the families that were at the franklin for kindergarten to draw on with some of that early release days i mean it's just on and on so and

▶ 2:06:36 Speaker 6: those families some of those families i'm sorry have met with me and patty um separately and have given us some great feedback and some great ideas great i'm going forward so yeah great so i just

▶ 2:06:47 Jennifer McAndrew: want to put that out in the ether for talking about at a later date yeah thank you madam mayor

▶ 2:06:55 Gail Infurna: Thank you very much. I'm feeling really old sitting here. You talked about the closing of the BB school. I was there. You talked about the school building committee 20 years ago. I was on that. but since this is my last meeting, I just want to really just ask a quick question because someone brought it up in the public and then you had mentioned it about the elementary schools, if they had space for a computer lab, would you still use it for that? Is that model kind of passe? That model's passe. I thought we had heard that somewhere along the line the past 22 months. The city has very generously supported the Chromebooks. right right so that's I just had a quick question I look forward to listening to from home and oh thank you

▶ 2:07:54 Speaker 6: see how this all turns out you can at least Texas during the meetings any

▶ 2:08:05 Speaker 5: further comments mr. Ozzie Thomas please just have a process question so because we're pretty sure this is going to be either an elementary school or a pre-kk school that's what it looks like so far is there a way if we needed to have more time before we voted could we push it off and what's the drop dead date because either way we can get bids this is not going to be that different one way or the other it's going to be a school so i know that it has a huge trickle-down effect but we also want to encourage as much thought and input as

▶ 2:08:45 Speaker 6: we can get so process question I'm gonna be real blunt here and may is not gonna be happy with me 11 more days 11 more days I've been asking for bids for six

▶ 2:08:58 Speaker 6: months and the city has not and the city has preferred to wait I don't know I

▶ 2:09:07 Speaker 6: think this is a chicken or an egg but I have been asking for bids for several months now because I am uncomfortable not knowing everything up front because that's just how I operate but that's the situation we're in so separate from the

▶ 2:09:24 Speaker 5: final decision you need to get the bid process going right and that's what saying yes and so in terms of what the committee needs to do in terms of making a final decision we need well we need to really study this more obviously and we need to get feedback we so we have time I don't know how much time you would

▶ 2:09:42 Speaker 6: have because the other thing that I want to put in your radar is we register for kindergarten in February right and we want to make sure that we parents know what they're registering for so you really do not have that much more time

▶ 2:10:00 Speaker 5: right because we have the pressure of we want a long-term solution and we want to soothe everyone's concerns and worries about what's coming up for next September and people have to plan their lives and figure out their budgets and everything so but those are the two things that we're gonna be those are the

▶ 2:10:21 Gail Infurna: two pressures right okay well put if i could just intervene here through the chair please we are still having conversations with our administration on this and i think we will have an answer especially after tonight's meeting thank you i think we were i think it was waiting for this point to come public and mr obramsky please uh he's not questions that have to be answered

▶ 2:10:41 Speaker 1: tonight but just stuff that I think we need to be looking at if we're looking at the pre KK model is just maybe possibly I don't know how you would do this would stagger times possibly with they would arrive at different times and then like you mean within the pre KK building yes yeah and then the planning for traffic in that area specifically because the train tracks are right now there too so you'd be also dealing with that people coming from the main street side not so much the other side but just considerations that we might want to be

▶ 2:11:25 Speaker 7: talking about so thank you thank you it's just cool nothing for you no I'm making sure that everyone had a chance to go through before I asked any

▶ 2:11:39 Speaker 7: questions she's working off of a double I am working off of a double screen yes I've got two different things going on so I appreciate all of this for my first question is if we were to follow the was option one they all came model pre KK model do you do we know if we have sufficient parent interest in having that both schools full of pre-k students another put it a different way and if I may redirect to miss Rosso has our waitlist been so expansive that we will be able to fill all of these spaces that you anticipate pre-k wise please come to

▶ 2:12:35 Speaker 6: microphone yeah it's not adding in preparation for this we have been consolidating the franklin for a couple years still maintaining the same number of children increasing class sizes and consolidating programs so that we are at full capacity right now we would need to if we went forward with the bb plan we have 15 preschool classes we would need to get ourselves down to 12 preschool classes taking a look at some of our information we have currently 22 students who are not melrose residents so that probably would be the first place that we would take a look at that would eliminate one class we have other configurations that are two day three day classes that we can change some things around to get us down to that 12 is the number that we are looking at if we were going to have 16 k's if you're going to have 16 k's between the franklin and the bb she would have to reduce the pre-k program by x number of classes at three there

▶ 2:13:39 Speaker 6: would not be a growth in the pre-k program no no the the the other thing that uh miss russell and i have talked about is the flexibility this gives us that if you have less k's in any given year you can add a pre-k classroom so it gives you flexibility in your pre-k program to go up or down which we've already been doing because when we had to move the two k's into the franklin we had to go down in the amount of pre-k programs we had to accommodate the two k's

▶ 2:14:10 Speaker 7: at the franklin okay that makes sense it does yes thank you um and then uh following up on this model here can you remind uh well i'm sure my colleagues probably know this uh but i have seen forgetful of late can you remind me what percent of our kindergarten students from the franklin last year got their first choice in terms of schools for first grade the franklin by themselves

▶ 2:14:34 Speaker 6: i don't know the number for the franklin families by themselves i know for the whole city it was 80 got first choice so um the franklin is approximately half of our um we had 165

▶ 2:14:52 Speaker 7: students from the franklin go into the kindergarten uh forgive me i i was not clear uh i'm talking strictly the franklin kindergarten students going into first grade and what

▶ 2:15:03 Speaker 6: percentage they had okay yeah so i did take a look at it um this morning taking a look at it there were originally when we went out 19 of our 22 families got their first place as we rolled forward four more families moved out of that group four families moved which opened up additional spot so that in addition to that 19 it looks like um one two three four more got a first place because somebody moved out so so we applied the same process to one that grade one that we had applied to k what what are your preferences we'll try to give you your first choice when the first time we rolled it out in the spring we were not able to give everybody going into one their first choice we had to wait until there was movement in the district and then we were able to accommodate a few more families i think as late as august with their first even even to not get their first

▶ 2:16:13 Speaker 7: choice yeah of course yeah um and then moving on to uh the k-5 option um do we have any sense of So how many families would be voluntarily willing to move their one through five?

▶ 2:16:30 Speaker 6: No, we have not asked families for that. I think that I really am reluctant to put families through that anxiety of even asking that question prematurely before we have more information or more of a decision about where the district wants to go.

▶ 2:16:48 Speaker 7: I appreciate the reluctance but as a data point that would be helpful in guiding our own deliberations I think so then as the chair mentioned we have two

▶ 2:17:01 Speaker 7: additional meetings school committee meetings to discuss this and then and also a public forum the public forum is November 19th in the Learning Commons at high school at 7 p.m. I strongly encourage the public to and all those interested in attending said forum at the Learning Commons.

▶ 2:17:30 Speaker 7: Seeing no further interest or discussion on the BB tonight let's move on to the final topic for the EP&P that being enrollment. So before you you have your

▶ 2:17:43 Speaker 6: Mr. Annual Enrollment Report, again, we continue to grow.