Superintendent Updates (5 minutes)

Transcript (~4 min @ 1:09:18)

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

▶ 1:08:43 Speaker 7: to benefit students versus this position doing to benefit students i don't see that if you don't do that you know don't come whining next february and march and say oh we only have six weeks to look at this we have to rush through it and look at nothing that's the hypocrisy that comes out of this body year after year after year you're all good individual people but collectively you're not getting the job done that you could do the people who pay the price are the future students children of melrose because they don't get what they need thank you for your time

▶ 1:09:21 Speaker 1: thank you mr morose in seeing no further members of the public present uh without objection the public comment period is now closed that brings us to the announcements of the superintendent

▶ 1:09:31 Speaker 3: of schools madam superintendent thank you mr o'connell i just want to give you update on where we are with registrations it's been a little bit busy this last report was run over a week ago at that time June 22nd we had 335 students registered for K I compared it to last year at August 1st at August 1st of last year we had 337 so we are right in line with what we had last year at this time of year when we opened last year we had 334 but by the time we did the October 1 census it had dropped to 321 so it is unfortunate not everybody informs us when they're moving or deciding not to come we have asked the principals to keep us abreast of any changes and literally all I have gotten at this point is a handful of changes tomorrow we're doing the hardship appeals and i am very concerned because the class sizes are still running very high and while there are a lot of families who want their first choice at horace mann my k's are right now 23 and 24. at roosevelt my k's are 18 for the integrated 23 and 24. at winthrop they're 22 23 23 at lincoln it's 18 for the integrated and 22 and 23 a little bit of play there and at hoover where i have the most play is 20 20 21. um the franklin is small those are two integrated and right now one integrated is at 16 one integrated is 15. so um 15 was that last number 15. those are both integrated integrated as a capped at 18 as you know so um i am concerned about the appeals process the number of people who may have very real need but quite frankly um we cannot push these classes much higher we certainly cannot go above 25 as you all know not only do we have new have a new contractual language but you're also impacting learning in that room especially among the kindergarteners and so we are going to be faced with some hard decisions tomorrow of which i wanted you to be

▶ 1:11:56 Speaker 1: be aware very good any comments or questions miss McAndrew just a quick

▶ 1:11:59 Jennifer McAndrew: question on that thank you it's very helpful I know you don't like to do this I assume but do you ever would you move students in the first few weeks if say you do realize like oh this person moved to Medford or whatever we keep the

▶ 1:12:19 Speaker 3: waitlist open until November 1st obviously the later you get into the school year the harder it is on the child of course but we do but we do do

▶ 1:12:29 Jennifer McAndrew: that and if student if families hardship appeals are denied you let them know

▶ 1:12:37 Speaker 1: that yes okay yeah thank you any further comments or questions this

▶ 1:12:40 Speaker 5: Rosie Thomas I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether there's gonna be any supports in the kindergarten classrooms we have a para

▶ 1:12:46 Speaker 3: for every two kindergarten classrooms the integrators have a full-time times special ed para we have a general kindergarten para shared between every two classrooms and then we're going to have the additional building para that we was voted in the override and that's used at the principal's discretion so

▶ 1:13:10 Speaker 5: it's still pretty thin it's still pretty thin okay thank you any further comments

▶ 1:13:13 Speaker 1: questions seeing none Thank You superintendent that brings us to the consent agenda which this evening consists of the following items the school committee regular meeting minutes for June 25 2019 a donations memo the annual concussion report the monthly budget summary the personnel report for July 2019 and the warrants as follows FY 19 June meals tax s 1 9 0 5 9 and the amount of 18 dollars and 86 cents FY 19 high school wire transfer for the month of June S19060, the amount of $9,888.74. FY19 MVMMS wire transfer for the month of June S19061, the amount of $2,956. FY20 school S20001, the amount of $218,041.36. And finally, FY20 debit card for the month of June, S20002, in the amount of $2,010. Are there any items which any member wishes to remove from the consent agenda? Ms. Driscoll.