REPORTS - RULE 53

Transcript (~8 min @ 2:01:23)

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▶ 2:01:07 Speaker 2: problem autumn and you try yes autumn and boys out yes autumn and lemmerman yes autumn and lipper Garabedian yes autumn and McMaster yes autumn Medeiros yes autumn and Mortimer yes Alderman Tramontozzi. Yes. Alderman Wright. Yes. President Zwirko. Yes. We now move to

▶ 2:01:25 Michael P. Zwirko: rule 53 which is reports from any committees of which a member of the Board of Aldermen serves. I believe we have two this evening. I will begin in

▶ 2:01:36 Manisha Bewtra: alphabetical order with Alderman Dutra. Thank you. On October 6th the Library Strategic Planning Committee met to kick off the strategic plan for the next five years this group includes Linda Gardner the director of the public library as well as a number of public library staff trustees of the Melrose public library friends as well as residents and folks affiliated with the school libraries this was this is going to be an interesting time because Melrose is in line for a grant from the library building authority and that grant will likely be received during the period within the next probably two to three years so this strategic plan is going to cover kind of how the library will operate should we receive the grant thinking about also funding that we would need from the city side to match that grant and what will happen to the library during construction as well as ultimate occupancy of the expanded and renovated space but also what happens if we don't have that grant we had a really great conversation just looking at examples from a few other communities that have done strategic plans I think the goal with this particular strategic plan is to make it more of a public facing document than what Melrose Public Library has had in the past all of these documents are currently available on the public libraries website but but again making it doing more community engagement having this document be more accessible to the public is a big goal as such you know at our next meeting I think we're going to be looking at the library's mission statement we talked a lot about a variety of different things at this first meeting how is the public library meeting curriculum needs and working with the Melrose schools how the library facilities are potentially how could they be made more accessible for community groups a whole variety of things we did talk a lot about this potential construction that took a lot of the air in the conversation and this is going to be a six-month process aiming to have a presentation to the trustees of the library in May or June because Linda has to present this to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners I have an acronym here and I'm trying to remember my acronyms right now but that needs to be presented to them by October I believe so the goal is to have a completed plan by that time. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Dutra. Alderman Lipper-Garabedian.

▶ 2:04:58 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Sure. I have about five items to share with you related to the school committee work and things going on in the Melrose Public Schools. So first is simply a reminder that this is the year that the school committee will be negotiating two contracts, and one is the teacher's contract, so that's a very substantial amount of work that's going to be happening this year. and the second contract is related to the traffic supervisors the second update is to talk a little bit with you about the goals that the one goal in particular that the school committee has adopted this year which is to lead I'm gonna read from it lead a comprehensive reality based discussion about the Melrose public public schools budget and here what is envisioned is that the meetings of the school committee will reflect real deliberation for the public in terms of breaking down what trade-offs will be depending on the budget situation what choices will have to be made and that then also trying to provide the public with a real sense of the impact of decisions that are made at the budgeting process so not simply saying you know we're gonna cut the per pupil spending on art supplies to six dollars a pupil but to actually say what would that what does that look like in the schools what are we now no longer able to purchase for our art just by way of a quick example so I think that's good to hear that they're that they're thinking about the budget in those terms focusing on trade-offs and and real impact third issue I reached out to the superintendent and the city planner just to follow up on the approval that we provided to the city to apply for MSBA grants for the roof in the high school it turns out we were denied our application was denied in July MSBA got far more applications and they had resources for so they ended up adjusting the requirement of timeline or time frame for roof replacements from 20 years to 25 years so we didn't qualify for that so the city is planning to continue to investigate the roof and make selective repairs as needed fourth we also approved an appropriation earlier this year to improve school door security at the elementary schools and the ECC and perhaps the high school in any event that work has all been completed so all of our school buildings now have secure external entrances and exits and then finally at the end of September September 25th the Melrose school building committee met so I am the liaison for the board on that and by way of context six years ago there were fewer than 3,500 students in our schools we're now at almost 4,000 we are currently running two classrooms above the projection that we received a couple years ago for where we should be for this school year the middle school for example is designed for 900 students and the projection is that we're going to start to exceed that in a couple years the Lincoln has now moved music into its library the Roosevelt has lost its teacher prep room the superintendent mentioned there is a third grade class at the Winthrop Alderman Butcher and I do not have a son in that grade yet but perhaps one of them will be in this class that apparently is a tiny classroom and that it's just busting at the seams with too many students so based on that the school building committee is going to be looking for solutions with our space issues based on some goals around equity efficacy sustainability and timeliness so there is a new demographic study that is currently underway this month and then the school building committee approved the getting an architect retained to look at our space options again from an educational perspective so I'm not clear on when our next meeting will be but I certainly will keep everyone updated and

▶ 2:09:03 Michael P. Zwirko: if you have questions just let me know any other reports out of rule 53 at this