REPORTS - RULE 53

Transcript (~5 min @ 1:21:40)

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▶ 1:21:30 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: everyone for your patience with the procedural requirements there we will move on to reports under rule 53 from any boards or commissions alderman

▶ 1:21:43 Robert A. Boisselle: Boisselle I like to make an announcement to the public that the next traffic Commission meeting will be on Wednesday March 20th at 5 30 p.m. in this chamber and the agenda is posted on the city of Melrose portals and you have a listing of the agenda items there thank you thank you

▶ 1:22:05 Monica C. Medeiros: Alderman Medeiros thank you I have a report as a school committee liaison I just wanted to cover primarily the school committee sort of conversely to our board has really been primarily focused on the override for the last last couple of months in particular the different budget scenarios and so at the last meeting and they had a detailed presentation from the CPAC it's the special education parent advisory committee led presentation given by Sheila Gauch who's the chair and Mary Sparks who's the vice chair and these are two very dedicated volunteers in our community who came forward and gave their presentation it focused primarily on something that's called MTSS and I'll do my best as a lay person to explain this is multi-tiered system of supports in education, and hopefully get this correct, but in general education, a way to sort of evaluate and hopefully reach the needs of all students in the classroom, depending on what levels they're at. And the presentation by Ms. Gouch and Ms. Sparks really focused on

▶ 1:23:37 Monica C. Medeiros: what they how well they think that this system has been working in the city of Melrose especially with our limited resources and how well it's been going and their concerns that if this goes away with any kind of cuts that that may come that this could put the system at risk and so they talked very much about

▶ 1:24:00 Monica C. Medeiros: different challenges and how things students who may not have special needs may start to appear as though they do need have special needs and how some challenge children may not be as challenged as they should and may appear to have behavioral issues as a result so I think they did a very good job of presenting that again that's from from two volunteers in addition you know we did hear a lot of the different budget scenarios and in particular the school committee is sort of a different board than we are legislative they are also the not just legislative in terms of school policy but also the executive and so they can do things like that we can't add where they could say cut here and

▶ 1:24:53 Monica C. Medeiros: and add somewhere else or you know if there's an order about fees for instance they do have the ability to to change that themselves it doesn't have to come from the mayor's office as though it does here that wasn't quite the presentation that we saw so far as we did see some discussions about for instance freshman sports and there's a proposal that if the override fails that freshman sports would be eliminated they didn't at that time they chose not to discuss the options of maybe changing the fee schedule or any kind of alternative I think we will probably see that in the meetings coming forward once the override question has gone forward the next scheduled meeting in particular related to the school budget is on March 26th and it's going to be budget scenarios topics topics as needed so expect that coming up and then at that point I think we'll have some kind of idea a better idea of where we stand and you'll see that the committee will return to a full public hearing on the budget scheduled for April 9th 2019 and budget deliberation and discussion of fees as well on that that meeting with possible votes on April 9th and more budget deliberations and a likely vote probable on April 23rd so that's kind of the schedule there and of course there's lots of information on the Melrose school's website and on the meeting portal meeting agenda portal thank you