Report: Special Education Expense Update

Transcript (~2 min @ 11:16)

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▶ 11:14 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Made by Chair Kelley, seconded by Ms. Holleran. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, oppose that motion carries unanimously with one absent. The next item is an informational report through the superintendent to Mr. Kelley to speak about special education expenses.

▶ 11:33 Speaker 4: Sure. So this is a report that's prepared by our co-directors, Chase and Kerbel, for

▶ 11:42 Speaker 5: our monthly report out on that. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have on that, or if I don't have the answer, I'm happy to take it back to them for clarification.

▶ 11:51 Speaker 6: Questions?

▶ 11:54 Speaker 4: Mr. Hartman. I just have one comment reflecting on the document. I noticed that we've had a few different rounds of literacy efforts. I think that's in line with a few things we've seen, and we're seeing that effort at the state level as well. I just wanted to express my gratitude for how much it's been spelled out in these reports, the efforts we've been doing, and I know we had the Orton Gillingham training earlier in the year as well. It seems like we're really investing a lot of time, energy, and resources into improving our literacy at the early level. I know that comes out of the work of the literacy task force that convened a year or two ago and made some recommendations to the district. So I just wanted to highlight that in the report and appreciate that we're continuing to hear those updates. I think that's really important for the community to understand that we're hearing the progress on the outcome of that task force, and the district is implementing changes as a result of that. So I think that's a great update that's included here. Sure. Thank you.

▶ 12:47 Speaker 5: And I'll just add Ms. Acevedo into that too. She's locked up in a lot of time meetings with the special education department on that literacy focus, so...

▶ 12:56 Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

▶ 13:00 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Very good. Seeing no more questions, we'll move on to the last item on our agenda, which is the very happy challenge of exploring some additional Melrose Public Schools funding. We're going to look at this through two lenses, so a couple of decisions need to be made. One is whether to accept the money from the City of Melrose, and that would be one discussion. And then the next would be how we would like to see that money deployed. Whether you want to make that decision now or at a future date would be included in that discussion. So, I would certainly invite the superintendent and/or Deputy Superintendent Kelley to speak to that. Thank you.