School Committee — 2017-10-17

Agenda

1. Superintendent's Update (29:28)
2. Second vote required Policy ADC: Smoking/Vaping on School Premises (38:28)
3. Second vote required Policy BBA: Powers and Duties (38:38)
4. Second vote required Policy BBBA/B: Member Qualifications/Oath of Office (38:43)
5. Second vote required Policy BDD: Committee/Superintendent Relationship (38:48)
6. Second vote required Policy BEDA: Notification of School Committee Meetings (38:53)
7. Monthly Budget Summary (38:57)
8. Warrants (39:00)
9. Donations (40:16)
10. MHS Field Trip Request - buildOn School Construction Methodology (1:39:12)
11. Technology Plan Update including Internet Safety and Summer Work (15 minutes) (42:18)
12. Disposition of Surplus Materials (5 minutes) vote required (1:31:28)
13. Internet Safety Measures (10 minutes) (1:32:48)
14. MASC Recommendations (15 minutes) (1:34:26)
15. No New Business
16. Student Representatives (5 minutes) vote required (1:53:54)
17. Liaison Reports (5 minutes) (1:55:55)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE MELROSE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES● OCTOBER 17, 2017 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Regular Meeting 7:00 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176

(ID # 5955) Announcements - Superintendent Superintendent's Update

(ID # 5956) Consent Second vote required Policy ADC: Smoking/Vaping on School Premises Adopted

(ID # 5957) Consent Second vote required Policy BBA: Powers and Duties Adopted

(ID # 5958) Consent Second vote required Policy BBBA/B: Member Qualifications/Oath of Office Adopted

(ID # 5959) Consent Second vote required Policy BDD: Committee/Superintendent Relationship Adopted

(ID # 5960) Consent Second vote required Policy BEDA: Notification of School Committee Meetings Adopted

(ID # 5944) Consent Monthly Budget Summary Adopted

(ID # 5945) Consent Warrants Adopted City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 10/19/2017 8:17 AM Minutes Melrose School Committee October 17, 2017

(ID # 5974) Consent MHS Field Trip Request - buildOn School Construction Methodology

(ID # 5943) Finance and Facilities Technology Plan Update including Internet Safety and Summer Work (15 minutes)

(ID # 5948) Finance and Facilities Disposition of Surplus Materials (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 5950) Policy and Planning Internet Safety Measures (10 minutes)

(ID # 5951) Policy and Planning MASC Recommendations (15 minutes)

(ID # 5977) Educational Programs and Personnel No New Business

(ID # 5972) Announcements - Chair Student Representatives (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 5954) Announcements - Chair Liaison Reports (5 minutes) Note: The listed agenda items are those that are reasonably anticipated by the Chair to be discussed at the meeting. Not all items, in fact, may be discussed, and other items not listed also may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 10/19/2017 8:17 AM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Good evening and welcome to the Melrose School Committee meeting of October 17, 2017. Please rise and say the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And just a note that this meeting is being recorded. first on our agenda this evening we're delighted to begin this year's school committee spotlights where we welcome a school once a month to share with us what is happening in their school and what they're looking forward to so we're going to invite director Donna Rosso from the Franklin Early Childhood Center to come and sit with us and share with us and and we knew the superintendent

▶ 0:56 said there's going to be show-and-tell so we're pretty excited about that welcome so I have to I have to squeal on Donna I told her at approximately 2 30 no I I don't think we can pull off the computer and here here it is short time later and she came up with plan B because framed poster well because we can't bring our little ones with us and we want to make sure you get a glimpse into what it's like to have the little ones so thank you for having us when I was here the last time I think in February we were talking about the partnership between stay and play so I thought that was a good place for us to start we continue our work with a school-wide positive behavior intervention in June our faculty completed a survey and one of the themes

▶ 2:06 that came out of that survey around where are we at with PBIS was that the school-wide piece seemed to be missing from Franklin that we were doing really a great job in our individual classrooms but in terms of having a cohesive plan for everybody as children leave us as we work together that was one area that we really needed to work on so as soon as we came back in September these two posters represent some of the work that the teachers do and you'll see them the tenants of what we're really intentionally focused on at the Franklin and you'll see these same statements being used throughout every classroom including the stay and play program I think we had a couple years under our belt with PBIS focus at the Franklin using our second step

▶ 3:05 curriculum and then really intentionally providing students with opportunities to work on the Massachusetts standards for social-emotional learning and approaches to play in learning so in February when we decided to bring stay in play and Franklin back together again we really Jackie and I worked on setting goals for ourselves and our main goals were to meet the needs of our students and to meet the needs of our families some of the challenges that we had identified was staffing turnover that we were investing a lot of time and effort into professional development and training for staff and very quickly they would leave us and so we really wanted to work on what what could we do to keep maintain staff exciting as i met with jackie this afternoon to really kind of give you some key

▶ 4:07 points about what we have done 30 of the staff members that are with us at stay and play after school and before school out of those 30 only three are new to us which is a really big hurrah we worked very closely together this summer providing training and the support that we provided to the staff ongoing every day made it for a happy place that people really want to there are opportunities for advancement so that the majority of the people who are working in our stay and play program have an education background and can potentially move into positions in in our public schools so we're excited about that and then the second challenge that we really wanted to look at was challenging behaviors our little ones we have currently a hundred

▶ 4:59 families that are making use of our before and after school program in addition to our school day program and out of the the majority of those children are with us from 730 in the morning until 6 o'clock and so it's not surprising that we they are demonstrating some challenging behaviors so we really took a look at student engagement and what can we do do to really support positive school engagement and so what we're going to share with you is we've a little lesson on the SEL and APL standards for you and what they really look like in when we're working with the children so all of these photographs were taken during the summer program and we have just matched them up with the SEL and APL standards as a example for each of you but it

▶ 5:52 really demonstrates the intentionality how young what APL is they know I'm sorry they don't know thank you timeout approaches to play and learning standards and the SELs are the social emotional learning standards and so these were published by the Department of Early Child EEC Early Education and Care and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2015 they started with pre-k and K and have promised to go up to grade 12 I haven't heard any news but the work that they did the radar but they fell off the radar unfortunately but the work that they did do is really phenomenal and you will hear that these the standards that we've chosen to share with you are absolutely pertain to all of the the children pre-k to our post grad students

▶ 6:47 and each one of us are their standards we continue to work on some of us more than others so the first one that the first picture that we're going to share with you is for sel1 and it's about helping children recognize their emotions and some of the work that Jackie did was around mindfulness and calm down caddies this is a picture in the summer we made mindfulness jars and mindfulness jars help a child to calm down when their body needs to be calm so each child made their own individual mindfulness jar do you want us to pass them short on the back of them we put the SELs in the APL so that you could take a look at some of that focus so the second SEL is around self-perception really helping children understand Who am I Who am I as an individual Who am I

▶ 7:46 as a member of a family as a member of a community and really helping children make choices and understand what their personal preferences are so we chose this picture because we made stepping stones for the garden at the franklin and each child made their own stepping stone and they had a plan of how they wanted their stepping stone to look before we made the final stepping stones for our garden and the purpose of the stepping stones was really to teach the children about community that when you're part of a community garden there are certain places that you should be walking and other places that you should not be walking so again you can see that intentionality so sel3 is around self-respect and self-efficacy it

▶ 8:29 helps children we work on helping children to develop confidence and competence and what it looks like to take risks appropriately this is a child performing karaoke around the campfire in the summertime so sel4 is around impulse control and stress management we work on helping children to solve problems and to be flexible when it doesn't go quite their way so this picture shows a child being focused or in a science science experiment and adding to the volcano sel7 is around communication learning not just to be able to communicate and share your ideas but to listen to the ideas of others and consider their perspectives this is a picture of the children with the teacher sitting around the campfire reading stories and telling stories as well so

▶ 9:44 SEL 9 is around conflict management, learning how to compromise, negotiate, and actually prevent conflicts. This is a picture of the children that work together to make this one puzzle all together. And then the approaches to play and learning look in some ways very similar to the SELs, but they are definitely lifelong skills that we need to be successful learners. So APL 1 is related to taking initiative and self-direction, developing independence, being able to set goals, try new activities, and be willing to challenge themselves. So this was a relay race that the children did, and it was performed by the teacher at first, and then the children were independent and did it by themselves. APL 2 is to be an eager and curious learner, understanding what it means to ask questions,

▶ 10:48 and to become a thinker and an independent learner. This is a picture of a geyser experiment we did during Mad Scientist Week with Coke and Mentos. APL 3, and this was fascinating. I was there the day that they worked on this activity. and the APL 3 is related to focus attention and effort being able to persist in complete tasks and the children worked independently for 45 minutes once the task was introduced it was quite amazing to see what they were able to accomplish so the task was that we had built little beaches with shells and fish and coral inside of them and then we froze them and the children were excavators with toothbrushes and salt and they had to melt them and scrape down and then they got to take home and treasure chests from the beach

▶ 11:49 APL 4 is around creativity and thinking using understanding how to use humor appropriately exploring art music drama and movement this is a child using our the outdoor easels outdoor easels and we use them with many different things to show them how we can use that one material with either shaving cream paint water all sorts of material and then the last one is around cooperation in play and learning learning how to take turns and how to share so this is a really exciting activity for the kids it was a kid car wash car wash so they had to wait their turns because it was obviously a one-person thing and so if you remember what I talked about the what Jackie and I had identified as some of our challenges and the challenging behavior and student engagement was

▶ 12:58 definitely something that we looked at thinking about children who are with us and focused on that the math and ELA standards during the day when they're with us from 2 15 until 6 the learning needs to continue there are sometimes 80 children with us in the afternoon so we need to make sure that the activities are exciting engaging they're not cookie cutter activities that maybe a lot of of children like one thing but not every child so we've added woodworking areas and we've done some experimentation with some the be bots which are coding for young children so really expanding and broadening our understanding of how to meet those needs so our next steps are already starting to look at what should

▶ 13:53 our registration in december look like we have received lots of feedback from our families around the changes that we've made and some of the one of the areas that we are considering we have right now a pickup at 3 30 4 30 5 30 and 6 3 34 36 um in the schedule for a family who gets out of work at 3 30 in boston in order to make it to melrose by four is extremely challenging so really taking a look at how do we shift it really making sure there's a consistent schedule for predictable schedule for the children but also that it will work for these families as well so i'm really taking a look at that we have taken back two spaces at the franklin um education stations has moved up to central administration and so the office that they had we have already

▶ 14:59 turned it into our um an otpt room for two children who are with us this year who are non-ambulatory and so getting downstairs to the ot and pt room was not going to happen so we've we've changed adapted that space to accommodate the needs of those children the downstairs area because on early release days we use the all-purpose room for professional development so finding a way for gross motor activity still to happen for the children while they're in the after-school program and early release so we are working on hopefully writing a mef grant to fund some materials that we can put into that space so that on rainy snowy days there are still opportunities for children who need to move and get that gross motor work in

▶ 15:54 so we're excited about our partnership and the work that continues at the franklin wonderful um any questions from the committee ms mcallister grand this all sounds excellent thank you so much for the pictures that really helps to visualize each of the standards I had the sense from the numbers we saw last month that you're pretty much at capacity for the school year for ECC I was wondering how the summer program was in terms of capacity I think this was a hard one for Jackie I said I was about quality this summer that I wasn't about building the capacity in terms of lots and lots of enrollment we really wanted to reorganize and structure we are required to provide special education programming

▶ 16:45 during this summer and so that was really our focus and our goal and it was an amazing summer lots of really positive feedback and so now that we really have an hour under our belt that enrollment and changes with how we we collected the tuition that I think next summer our enrollment will be much bigger. Great. Thank you. Thanks. Mr. O'Connell. Thank you very much. Thank you both for being here and for the presentation and for the work you do. One of the great things about the ECC is that it provides us collectively with the ability to identify special needs and provide services. And you touched upon a bit summer programming. programming. Could you talk a little bit more about that, about the type of summer programming

▶ 17:34 in the realm of special education? Sure. And I say it because not only do you do a good job with it, I think, and it's an important service for the city, and it proves extremely invaluable not only when it's happening but down the road. But, you know, the fact that special education is a budget challenge for us perennially isn't lost on anyone so if you could talk a little bit about that that would be great during the school year and because of the federal requirement that we provide children with special education services in the least restrictive environment we model our summer program after that exact exact same process and it was an education I think for Jackie this year she really got to understand what it means to provide least restrictive

▶ 18:29 environment so instead of having in the past there have been two teachers in each of the classrooms in the summer one was our special education teacher and then one was hired by education stations we hired one teacher because they're all of our children and really that understanding of how do you meet the needs you provide occupational therapy physical therapy speech and language therapy within the context of that those fun exciting activities that meet the needs of of the children that answer it does thank you for that I appreciate it welcome miss Castelli thank you for coming tonight so I mean many of us think of the ECC is being around forever how long have you been there in Franklin in the franklin school this is my sixth year as the director but before that i was the special

▶ 19:27 education team facilitator so this is my 12th year so how long has it been in that in that building 11 years so i mean so mr casey presented it to jenny and to me i will never forget being in that building the first day with all of the leftover junk from everywhere and what he called the suits downtown meeting with us with all of the plans and he was convinced that we could do this and both of us it was our first year as administrators and um we we did painting the red doors and putting the work the sign in the front yes so in 11 years we've we've done remarkable things at that school and it's it's at capacity every year parents it's it's a gem of the city so i congratulate you and your staff and and making it even more wonderful than it's been

▶ 20:24 and just to ask the superintendent what would you say has been the impact of the ecc on our school district just in terms of the programming and the the preparation it gives to our kids i i don't know how you measure that miss casatelli um i think miss rosso having been on this journey for 12 years with us can tell you that the very real difference we see as we've grown the curriculum and grown the model to be a true integrated developmental model the ability to address children's challenges early have made a host of difference I was just looking at the numbers next week we're going to present an enrollment currently she has 318 students 37 of those are special needs they range from children on full-scale programs to children who just get

▶ 21:18 related services so it competes on the size of any one of our elementary schools right absolutely but the work that they do that is both remedial and preventive cannot be measured I would say half of all our new K entries come from ECC and there is probably quite a few children that do not end up getting screened for special education when they get to k12 because of the exposure they have had at ECC not only to curriculum but to other skills such as fine motor gross motor speech language even emotional issues so I don't even know how we begin to measure the impact that this program has had on the overall success of a child once they come to the k5 setting and some of the interventions that we're able to have at the ECC it helps us by keeping children into our

▶ 22:17 district right or helps probably all the children there prepare for their school career in Melrose public schools absolutely so by by regulation and law children three to five with special needs need to provided services so typically what would happen students related service needs ot PT speech would typically come into your elementary school at a given hour get their half hour service and leave children with more complicated needs who need a full time program we would be spending tens of thousands of dollars to send their child out of district in any given year so not only does this give a children chance to stay in their own city in town with their peers it embeds them in our school system because the truth of the matter is if a child goes out it's often

▶ 23:19 Christine Casatelli: very hard to get them back in and quite frankly it gives us control and we like control I don't think we like to know what's happening with our kids and now we make that essential connection right between our preschoolers and our school district so even though this is not part of our essential core program it's a tuition based program the value it seems to me that it brings the city is it's almost immeasurable I mean you could measure it possibly in terms of dollars and cents and money savings or money a cost avoidance possibly to the district but again this is a gem of the city and we are fortunate to have such a facility as part of our school district we're also fortunate to have the director yes

▶ 24:13 absolutely and her wonderful staff one last question can you give me a sense of what other school districts have something like this so most of most school districts have a federally mandated integrated integrated pre-k that meets certain federal guidelines for those children that need a more intensive program it's typically a 51 49 percent program in other words 51 percent have to be typical peers to 49 percent special ed peers so that they get the modeling they may have one or two classes very few people Malden has a program like we do I don't know who else has it and Wakefield model the program after hours somebody who used to work as ours but very few cities and towns have a program this large but everybody meets their federal obligation for it's some

▶ 25:10 sort of integrated K but it may only be one I mean pre-k but it may only be one or two classes so kudos for for making this program bigger and better every year and you know let us know how we can help you make it even greater in the future thank you thanks anybody else see none thank you so much for coming you have a great school year next on our agenda is the report of the student representatives and tonight we're happy to welcome for the first time student representative Virginia guancy thank you so in the past few weeks we've had a lot going on at the school on October 3rd the German exchange arrived and then recently on October 16th the French exchange arrived so that's very exciting on October 10th no sorry on October 11th and the sophomores and juniors took the

▶ 26:21 PSAT while the ninth graders went about their regular school day and then the seniors had a day off to apply to colleges work on applications tour colleges or learn about future internships and then also on October 6 our school had a lockdown but that was taken care of very quickly and then in In the future, tomorrow, the 11th and 12th graders will attend the Melrose High College Fair, which it just gives students the opportunity to learn more about different colleges and learn about programs that they have to offer. And then on October 22nd, there is the Melrose Alliance Against Violence Walk, which is at 4 p.m. And then a little bit more in the future, November 1st, we have an early release day in evacuation drill, which we start at the Fred

▶ 27:27 Greenfield, and then we evacuate to our off-site locations, which is the First Methodist Church and the First Baptist Church, and they're both on Main Street. And then also on the weekend of November 3rd through the 5th, the Drama Club will be performing two shows. One is the importance of being earnest and then the other is black comedy and they're both performed on the same nights wonderful any questions for Virginia seeing none thank you so much thank you so much next on our agenda is public comment is there anyone who would like to speak at public comment may I have a motion to open public comments I'll move second made by miss casa Tully seconded by miss Dugan discussion all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously miss

▶ 28:29 couch hi so I'm Sheila Gauch I'm the co-chair of CPAC for this year and we just had one of our meetings and so I just kind of wanted to update the group we reviewed our mission statement as well as our bylaws we also our members created an initial survey that we're going to have reviewed by Cindy Taymor and hopefully send out district-wide to kind of get a gauge on on CPAC and kind of how families are using special education if they're using CPAC as well and we also met with Patty Wright Lambert and reviewed our budget and agreed upon it with her and that's about it okay thank you so much seeing that there are no other speakers signed up for public comment may I have a motion to close please so moved second made by miss Casatelli seconded by miss

▶ 29:30 McAllister grand discussion all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously and we are moving on to the announcements of the superintendent of schools Thank You Mr. Driscoll a number of things I apologize as you all know it's been a little bit busy so not everything made it onto paper in terms of previews tomorrow DESE will release the MCAS they will not deliver children's individual score reports to us until October 24th and at that point we take them out of the DESE packages restuff them into envelopes and send them home so it's a little bit of a labor-intensive process one of the things that you all should be aware of is this is a very different instrument and DESE is doing a lot of education publicly around how this is so different

▶ 30:33 not only has the test changed the scoring has changed there are also no accountability this year for K through eight excuse me three through eight only for high schools they are they need the year to transition they've had three different exams in four years and they are struggling to transition to some sort of comparison none of us know how they're going to do that but and in that effort they decided no accountability this year for elementary and middle schools only for high schools and then they are supposedly going to reset the baseline in 2018 and begin moving forward then we'll have more information for you when we present on November 14th but it's important for you to know that this is a very different outcome and a very different process than we've done

▶ 31:34 for 25 years purposely so on desi spot it's a reflection of changes in curriculum instruction changes in expectation a major concern of desi's is college and career readiness and whether or not the 10th grade MCAS which is the competency determination that children have to pass graduation is really telling colleges how ready kids are or are not so it's a long-term view of how we get a better exam that is more valid and reliable as a predictor for college and career readiness so lots of information coming forward on that better news just want to share that tomorrow not tomorrow the 25th Winthrop is having a what are they calling it unity day it is national bullying profession month and workup is going to have a unity day everyone's going to wear

▶ 32:37 orange and they're going to do a project connect and that's where they make the paper what's that thing called you know the chain the paper chain and they're gonna see how long they can make the paper chain with all approximately 402 students I think is what they have currently so it'll be a lot of fun for Winthrop and I hope they get a lot of good coverage out of that another matter is the same collaborative communities are applying for the radar grant I think I shared that with you recently radar is the resource allocation and district district action reports this is a new new tool that DESE has created most of us excited about it as excited as you can get about more data mr. O'Connell's laughing at me about that but it gives us a lot of very good data much better

▶ 33:31 data than we had not only about our own district but comparisons to others it's better than the other instrument that they had had before we've applied for the grant because we felt where there was more strength in numbers we would put forth a project to them about how to improve inclusive practices and an inclusion of students what would be our metrics what would be our methodology if we get the grant we will know in November I'm sure there's a lot of other communities also applying for the grant but we felt that as a collaborative we had a better chance the last thing is competency based education I've been in meetings with our partners great schools partnerships over the past couple of weeks we've been assessing where we are in our work what we've done so far it

▶ 34:27 was a very very busy summer we did professional development in June twice in August in October and we'll be doing it again on the PD day in November at this point we're drafting scoring criteria for habits of learning the arts music communities and PE are developing scoring criteria for their proficiencies stem is just beginning to review the CBE framework and work on standards and indicators as its humanities and what we're hoping is by mid-year we can pilot the habits of learning and based on conversation I had today with great schools partnership and dr. Adams we're going to shift our work a little bit and try to get to the more practical piece of CBE the abstract piece is getting people a little bit bogged down and we think if we we shift to the more

▶ 35:27 practical piece people will have a deeper understanding and we can cycle back to the abstract piece so that's where we are in CBE just as a other side note in CBE our five people can't five person team came back from the visit to San Diego very charged so a lot of good things so a lot of things they didn't like we have yet to sit down and debrief they think there are some things we can adopt at a low cost so I'm looking forward to hearing about that and as I was sharing earlier tonight with Mr. Selm I'm participating in a technical advisory group with competency works and I Nicole we're trying to write a better definition of competency based education and I'm one of about a hundred people across the country who are participating online it's a very interesting

▶ 36:21 experience I'm used to being in room a room with people wordsmithing to the nth degree and everything is being done on a Google Doc so it's a whole new world for me so those are the updates on those matters any questions for the superintendent this McAllister grant could you just explain the shift from abstract to practical with so you practical so when you're doing competency-based education you have to if you've remembered Becky's presentation you have to write out figure out your content area proficiencies and then your graduation proficiencies and when you're figuring out your content area proficiencies you also have to write your scoring rubrics so that we all have the same language what is meets expectation what meets exceeds

▶ 37:11 expectation as you can imagine with any group of educators that can get a little argumentative and so and we could spend a lot of time in the weeds so we decided that maybe what we have to think about is moving back to what are the practices that make up competency-based education how do you implement those actual instructional practices in your classroom what do they look like and then circle back to the abstract around the scoring rubrics and the proficiencies per se it doesn't mean we're going to stop our work in that area we're just going to flip our priorities thank you additional questions for the superintendent seeing none thank you very much next on our agenda is this the consent agenda which tonight contains the following the school committee

▶ 38:09 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: regular meeting minutes of September 26 2017 the MHS field trip request build on school construction methodology a second vote required on policy ADC smoking vaping on school premises on policy BBA powers on duties on B policy B B B a slot and B member qualification slash oath of office policy BDD committee superintendent relationship and policy BED a notification of school committee meetings donations the monthly budget summary and the warrants as follows FY 18 school s 1 8 0 1 0 in the amount of two hundred and eleven thousand six hundred and sixty dollars and fifty six cents FY 18 meal tax for September s 1 eight zero one one in the amount of eighty one dollars and sixty eight cents and FY 18 wire transfer for September s one eight zero one two in

▶ 39:11 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: the amount of fourteen thousand three hundred and fifty seven dollars and forty one cents would anyone like to remove anything from the consent agenda miss Cassatelli donations please donations will go to finance and facilities anyone else mr. O'Connell the field trip request please the field trip request will go to the EP and P subcommittee please anyone else seeing none may I have a motion to approve the remainder of the items so moved second made by mr. O'Connell seconded by miss McAllister grand all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously next on our agenda is the finance and facilities subcommittee mr. Selm good evening and welcome to finance and facilities portion of tonight we have two items on the agenda plus an additional recently

▶ 40:25 Christine Casatelli: added just added we'll start with donations first superintendent would you like to I have no understanding no knowledge why miss Cassiteli wanted it removed so I will defer to her miss Cassiteli I make a a motion to accept or approve this the donations second motion made by miss Castelli seconded by mr. O'Connell discussion miss Castelli I just like to thank our benefactors whenever anyone makes a donation to school you know what file cabinets fund monetary donations we're fortunate that we have such a generous community i'd like to thank people who donate to our schools and ask what the process through the chair to the super superintendent if for people who do want to donate so if people would like to donate and then like you said we are very grateful to take their

▶ 41:26 donations they need to contact either building principal or my office indicate what they want to donate often we will ask them for a letter to accompanying it giving it a monetary value and we acknowledge that and then report out to you at least four times a year if the donation is above $5,000 worth we have to come to you first and ask for the school committee's permission to accept it I'm all in favor of accepting those $5,000 donation so am I okay so thank you for that update on how to make donations and thanks to the public for all the great things you do for our schools any other discussion seeing none all in favor of accepting these donations motion passes unanimously next up technology plan

▶ 42:21 update including internet safety and summer work Madam Superintendent yes I would like to ask Neil Ellis the city's chief information officer to come forward to present to the school committee mr. Ellis has had a very busy summer along with several construction firms and the Department of Public Works so mr. Ellis if you would like to just why don't we start with the summer work and all we got accomplished sure sure so good evening we had a lot of projects going on this summer more a little bit little a little more than anticipated but so we started off the summer there were quite a few systems in the schools that we we wanted to update we felt were behind and lacking so we we approached the mayor and mr. de la Rousseau for for funding for those for those projects and

▶ 43:23 and they're very supportive so we were able to attack quite a bit this summer one of the main things when you were talking about the mcas and the computer-based testing for this year one of the things that was a major issue was having wireless access in all the schools enough that would be capable of having a computer-based test so we wired every classroom INSTALLED AN ACCESS POINT IN EVERY CLASSROOM, AND THEN IN MORE THAN JUST A CLASSROOM, MEETING SPACES, LIBRARIES, ANYWHERE THERE MIGHT BE KIDS NEEDING ACCESS. SO GYMS AND CAFS, TOO. SO THAT IS, THAT TOOK A LOT OF INFRASTRUCTURE WORK AND EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE OTHER END, TOO. THAT'S ALL BEEN DONE. So we were ready to rock and roll for the exam this year, for sure.

▶ 44:27 We have a number of servers that were outdated, old, didn't really run like they're supposed to anymore. We were able to replace a lot of those. They have functions like just patching, nothing very exciting or sexy, just patching computers so they don't get malware and viruses. and there's a file server we got that we haven't implemented yet just to carry storage we did implement a printing server I know it's not very exciting but we we went through and renamed all the printers and labeled them so that if there's a problem with one of them the teacher can contact us and tell us what it is with the sticker that's on it and we can access and fix that remotely we did the same with the computers we we renamed and labeled all the computers in

▶ 45:19 the district and that gives the teacher the ability to again send us the name of their computer what the problem is with their problem through our help desk system and we also installed remote management software on all those computers so that we can remotely fix those those computers and that that shortens the the time for us to get to the computer and fix it we're always trying to improve the amount of service we can give to the teachers how fast they can get things fixed so they can do what they need to do every day we had a problem with the phone system which is just the phone system it wasn't I shouldn't even say it was a system they basically had phones in the schools you know what was installed in 1920 is what they had as of the beginning of this

▶ 46:14 summer they couldn't transfer they didn't have voicemail couldn't conference they had a phone line regular phone line like you'd have in your house and that's it if somebody called and said oh I want to talk to the nurse you'd have to say okay you're gonna need to hang up and call this totally different number and talk to the nurse you know that paused posed a lot of just in building communication public communication with parents and that's never good so we built off of the voice over IP system which goes over our fiber optic network through the city so we basically have a phone server here that will now run the phones in those locations and they have fully featured phone systems it also gave us the ability to put central phones for

▶ 47:03 teachers to make calls they didn't have access to the phone in their buildings let's see what else go on forever we we had general network cabling we had different teachers who we want to use space we're needing to use more space all the time to build out those spaces and be able to install computers and let teachers working in different spaces um we did and we uh put six more chromebooks out into the district uh chroma carts of each one has 26 in them two at the winthrop due to enrollment in one in each of the elementary schools we also cleaned up all the server rooms the wiring strained out all that stuff reprogrammed all the infrastructure we did an internet upgrade that's kind of ongoing we had we rebuilt some of the report cards and progress reports to add for

▶ 48:13 translations report card translations and it's kind of dynamic the way it works so you can kind of just say the language that you you want when you bring it up and then print it easily for those families that need a different language of report card in a different language and we need to do those things quickly and they need they deserve to have those report cards at the same time as everyone else gets them we also started reducing our number of printers so we we called some the the this has already been ongoing at the at the elementary schools they've been very efficient with their use of printing and we've we started that more at the middle school and high school to bring costs down and make it more efficient but keep the same

▶ 48:53 amount of printing ability let's see what else so we actually finished this morning we finished a destiny upgrade for the library management system it brought our brought our we were operating I think it's like version 11 this brought us to like version 15 so it offers a lot more for for kids they can see the book covers and stuff when they search and some other information is just a little bit more user friendly and we made it a little bit more accessible and it's available on the web now so the modular projects and Horace Mann that took up and is still taking up a lot a lot of time we installed in the classroom new instructional tools the interactive projectors in each one of those rooms classroom audio systems which are basically there you can wear

▶ 49:53 a wear a lanyard with a microphone and just boost your your your speaking volume in the classroom it also connects to the computer so anything that's going up on the screen is also amplified in the classroom for the kids it really looks and feels like a movie theater when you're in there it's it's pretty amazing so each one of the new rooms have have those um the uh security systems in those spaces we had to make it so that those new spaces were safe and met kind of what we want to have as a district for our security guidelines and uh so we did put fobs and cameras in those locations and there we we did decide to kind of build out a little bit of some of the buildings like the winthrop for a couple other purposes that we needed doors to be on fobs the front door and

▶ 50:48 that kind of thing while we were there so uh those are still ongoing i think the winthrop work was pretty much completed today i think so uh the horse man uh we we did all the office space there's a conference room there with a nice tv that you can connect in computers have have connect in laptops and have a nice digital conferencing space with a nice uh new phones as well in that in there um yeah it'd go on there's somebody it's that that gives you an indication of how much work we have gotten done since last june it's just it's just been amazing um my favorite picture is neil in coveralls crawling in the crawl space at the horus man trying to run wire because he was very hands-on and we have more projects to

▶ 51:42 come I didn't know destiny was finished because I thought we were going to be a little bit late on that than we thought we are also in the middle Neil is also instrumental with Amy Camosa the clerk of committees in building out the new website um we're scared as you all know so we're scheduled for that uh late november um but uh it's it's it's been um interesting because it's things that people don't see it's the it's the in the walls behind the scenes stuff but it makes a world of difference to how smoothly we operate on a given day so we're very grateful to the city for providing the funding for it and for neil leading this effort because at times it was a lot of moving parts you know let's talk

▶ 52:30 a little bit about internet safety and that sort of goes into the policy and planning that they'll be discussed under mr. O'Connell but we recently we we are compliant with the two federal mandates around internet safety for children and we Neil recently did a few upgrades to the system to increase that safety do you want to talk about what we just did sure so we just kind of tweaked the the inside Google Google for the way that Google Apps for Schools works it gives it gives an oversight administration of all the accounts and all the Chromebooks that we have added to the system for our domain and there are a lot of little things you can change in there just to make things a little safer such as safe

▶ 53:27 browsing you can just you can turn that on in the console so in that that works in and out of school so if the kid is logged into their Chrome browser with their Melrose schools comm account it it it'll affect whatever browser they're on at home if they're on their own Chromebook at home if they're using one of our accounts to do it it'll it'll it'll enact safe browsing we try to do some things around YouTube which we had to roll back the the in it it kind of goes more with my philosophy on on filtering which is you filter as much as you can and then and then really when things pop up or kids you know do something that they're not supposed to if they do it in a classroom setting with a with a teacher teacher can address that with the students say

▶ 54:22 here's why you don't do these things because maybe they don't have oversight all the time at home or you know teachers are can carry forth these this digital citizenship how to's that we want to teach in the school so yeah we couldn't we couldn't there are some issues with classroom some things that we that didn't come out that didn't the teacher wanted to show and they could in and it made a lot of sense that they we roll it back so yeah and like the superintendent said we adhere to the for filtering to SIPA which is which was I I guess it wasn't really a passed act, it was an act that didn't get passed, but then in order to, if you accept federal funding, that you have to adhere to SEPA in order to

▶ 55:16 keep that. COPPA was a actually federally passed act, and that's for student online protection. that that more governs it tries to more govern the the the social media and internet providers one of the big things about kappa is you know children shouldn't have or kids under 13 shouldn't have an online account so any kids out there that have a gmail account says just gmail Facebook anything under 13 if they're under 13 by law federal law they shouldn't have an account and it's one of the reasons why we have Google Drive because those are actual student it's social media email everything but it's it's under the dome of you know controlled by the Melrose schools so it gets us out of gets them out of a lot of trouble so thank you any

▶ 56:28 questions mr. O'Connell thank you very much and thank you mr. Ellis thank you also for your help with the ECC documents if this technology doesn't work out you may have a future and early childhood education and and looking ahead in our agenda if I may and as the superintendent pointed out and as I think you know we're taking up our annual certification under the Children's Internet Protection Act and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act under policy and planning tonight and so with that in mind I think you know we have internet safety policies as part of our policy manual have you had a chance to look at those and do you have any questions concerns comments about any of those no I think they're they're they're good policies I mean like like any

▶ 57:21 policies that are around social media or internet or web even accessible acceptable use because the technology changes so quickly you do have to you know edit them so I'm sure by the end of the year I'll I'll be thinking about it and think oh you know I should add that or tweak that but you know they're they're strong policies now great um oh sorry um mr o'connell i would like to ask that you refrain policies questions for policy and uh planning subcommittee as we are now under finance and facilities um can i ask a couple of follow-up questions uh if i don't use the word policy is that okay um and i guess this is more for the superintendent but and again thank you mr ellis for that no concerns about compliance no no in fact if if i may i know that we we uh myself and

▶ 58:19 amy lindquist the new solicitor for the schools we've been talking a lot about student privacy and and safety and one of the things that there's a state organization a consortium called mspa which is a massachusetts state student privacy uh protection alliance and they have because the state of massachusetts does not have a state law governing uh student privacy online privacy which is unfortunate um the consortium of schools and i.t directors have gotten together and have drafted now about over five years with legal help an agreement that that governs protection privacy if there is a breach the step of notification and and we've recently joined that organization and we're hoping to fill out the

▶ 59:17 agreements for the different software companies that we we do business with that they adhere to our protection agreements so that we make sure that all our students are safe so that's just kind of an add-on to the policies that we have terrific thank you for sure and a follow-up if I may to the superintendent just so I'm clear about this and this agenda item is styled as technology plan update and I know a superintendent you regularly provide us with technology plan updates is this a reference again just so I'm clear to the technology plan that we adopted in April of 2015 is there a different technology plan out there no the technology plan that we adopted and it was April of 15 yeah feels much longer than that was mainly about educational technology and

▶ 1:00:11 how we improved the use of educational and instructional technology there is reference in that plan to infrastructure and equipment because obviously you can't have one without the other but Neil is here updating you in a similar way that John Shana comes in front of you and update you about his work the structure of the city is such that while maybe on paper with separate departments we are pretty much a tight group and we work together all the time and we're dependent upon each other so um this was a good opportunity for you to hear about the type of work that we're doing together so i i and i guess i asked the question not to put too fine a point on this um you know when i think of the technology plan i think of that as a a guide and a point of

▶ 1:01:02 reference for us as a committee um and i i guess i'm i'm wondering if if it serves a similar purpose and i know we're here talking about hardware and software upgrades uh at least in terms of the summer work um is it something that you look to mr ellis i mean is it or is it just something that we use as from an educational standpoint well it was george pesos mr ellis's predecessor and i drove that we appealed to both the committee at the time and the board of aldermen to support us in that because it does address the city side as well um it was it was an effort to help the city shift its thinking about technology a lot of people at that time thought of technology as a nice to have rather as a way of life the analogy that i've often used with people about it is you

▶ 1:01:55 now have to think about technology the way you think about roads they're necessary and need ongoing upkeep in order to be effective and efficient and that's how we've got we've begun to think about technology so the plan was an effort to um get us going in that direction it has a five-year timeline after that i'm hoping that we have implemented enough practices and protocols that it becomes an institutionalized habit and rather than necessitating a specific plan in which you say did i do this did i do this did i do this and and so ultimately i guess my question is you know is this technology plan you know a living document this isn't sitting gathering absolutely you see you see my updates on it yeah no that's what i thought and quite

▶ 1:02:45 frankly on the updates we tell you the things we cannot do because of either funding or because the field has changed so fast when when you read the beginning of that plan it addresses the fact that it's a hypothetical plan to some degree mr o'connell because everything changes so fast You know, and I'll tell you, our staff has helped us change. I never, and George and I talked about this at the time that it happened. We never, ever predicted how fast Google Ed was going to take off with our staff. They love it. They would prefer Google Ed and Google Docs and Google services, you know, the writing, the Excel sheet, everything else, over almost anything else we have um and we never thought that would happen we thought this

▶ 1:03:39 this would be a multi-year run-up and within a year's time it was throughout the district so even there the plan is wrong and you have to adjust like i said the main purpose of the plan was to help the city and the schools reshape their thinking about the role technology has to take in our lives fair enough and my last question and thank you for the indulgence uh dr adams tech committee is the technology plan part and parcel of what they look at is that completely separate no it's part and parcel why would it be separate i don't i don't know it's part and parcel but so aren't many other things that we look at i mean they do technology surveys every year to see what staff need for training they they they inquire

▶ 1:04:28 how staff are implementing it we put the badges program into place you may not be familiar with that I am teachers earn badges and as of this year kids are in badges for their technological expertise that all came out of that committee that pot was never part of the technology plan you know again the best way I can say it to people is everything we do every day is dynamic um it's forever changing in response to our kids and the educational environment as well as the city's ability to support what we're doing thank you very much ms dugan thanks so much um from a i guess a finance perspective we made a a tremendous investment in chromebooks a couple years ago we still are you installed new carts this summer but i also understand that ptos are still

▶ 1:05:24 Jessica Dugan: doing some of these purchases chromebook purchases so what do we have a real solid idea on usage for chromebooks and what the gaps still are and how are we making sure that there is equity across our schools when some ptos are supporting some aren't like what's the ask there what's the expectation sure so i know the superintendent uh definitely uh puts an emphasis on equity um with all the schools so uh we recently looked at the ratio the student to chromebook ratio and right now they're around one to uh one chromebook for two students or to roughly around one to two and a half in depending on the school the it's it's it looks good and it's it's pretty pretty close for all the schools so definitely in in schools

▶ 1:06:20 where there are increasing enrollment we're trying to get more Chromebooks in those places so are we still asking PTOs to support this oh yeah we had to because when we did this technology plan the original goal was a one to three ratio on the technology plan we at that time did not predict that we would be up almost 300 kids from the time that we wrote that technology plan we leased the Chromebooks the city put a line item in its budget $300,000 a year for five years and the reason why we wanted that was again that philosophy it's an ongoing expense when the lease is up you roll them over and you get the more updated model we did not anticipate the increase in enrollment the other thing we did not anticipate was the state deciding to mandate that everything go

▶ 1:07:14 online and what that impact would be so when we ran the pot when it wasn't a pilot when we did the test online at the eighth grade last year we it was a huge learning curve up for us on what is involved with our Chromebooks and at when with the current amount we had so there was a lot of pieces a lot of fact is coming together do not have the funding you know with the choices we make we make these choices in this chamber every of the week and the and the PTO's came to us I did not go to the PTO's they came to us and said you need more Chromebooks I know you told us you wouldn't ask again but we're telling you we have the money you need more Chromebooks and my conversation with citywide is the conversation I always have with citywide that is your choice

▶ 1:08:06 as PTOs I cannot dictate well how you spend your money but my preference is you act in concert so that we do the equity I came back to Neil we ran the numbers we realized with the increases in enrollment we would need X number that we put into the project we put the six Chromebooks that he just mentioned into the project the FF and E for the modules and the Horace Mann paid for those yet at the middle school where Brent had run the project the middle school PTO was very adamant that they buy another Chromebook I'm not going to say no you know I'm always scrambling for money and scrambling for resources and I'm grateful that they felt so strongly about it so that's that's how we got to this situation if our numbers continue to grow I don't

▶ 1:09:02 know what to tell you Miss Dugan I don't know how we will fill that need but I asked Neil just recently to run me my ratios and as he said my ratios run they're odd 1.78 to 2.25 from building to building so approximately a two to one ratio when two years ago we were aiming for a three to one I don't know yet how I feel about a one-to-one ratio I have a lot of mixed feelings about it because I also have a fear that a one-to-one ratio I have one or two things happening I have a lot of children sitting in front of screens like this not interacting with each other or interacting with staff or I have carts gathering dust so that is a further conversation for me and the staff the real sword over our heads is the MCAS we have been told everybody

▶ 1:10:01 will take the MCAS online grades four five seven and eight next year three and six can still be excused from it for one more year I think Neil again is involved in all this with me and the logistics of that alone basically shuts down the system for the month computer wise because you have to convert all your devices Chromebooks PCs whatever device you have you have to convert to a restricted testing mode during the life of the exam and that's the impact that we have at that point again we've always had a BYOD policy in the district we've never stopped children from bringing their own devices they can't take the exam on their own devices although some of my colleagues have figured out how to

▶ 1:10:56 Jessica Dugan: to do that but it's also very labor-intensive for their tech staff but we will not know the true impact of this until May of next year when we finish going through the MCAS for the first time with at least four grades taking it online and we're dreading it not because of the test because of the logistics so thank you for the understanding I think when we worked through the budget last year I wasn't aware that we still had such a significant Chromebook need maybe I should have been and maybe I missed something so if that's the case then that's my fault but I do think that as we enter into budgeting for this year if we know that we're working on a two to one ratio or whatever that is I think that that should be part of the

▶ 1:11:49 Jessica Dugan: conversation at the table here and if we decide that we can't support that then we should have that conversation here because we know we can't we're super grateful to the PTO's but can't rely on it but again I'm I may not be remembering the process correctly so I apologize for that if I'm not I also think that it would be great to explore the BYOD opportunity a little bit more I don't see many students at the middle school bringing devices to school again maybe I have a limited view there I'm most of them that I know have their own Chromebook at home so I know they can't test on it yes they all have this so why you know if that's the argument why do we need more Chromebooks in middle school I think you know so I guess I'm just looking to explore the depth of the

▶ 1:12:45 Christine Casatelli: opportunity and especially at the elementary school the less screen time better in my opinion although i see the value um just not all day long so that's my feel um i i do think that there are still some things to explore and that if it's um that if it's a need for a growing population that we should make sure that we factor that in thank you miss castelli thank you mr ellis that was dizzying the amount of work that was done i have a good fortune of having the um the technology plan in front of me here and i do have a couple questions uh one thing that we talked about in the plan that the district will aggressively upgrade its network bandwidth over three years it sounds like some work has been done it sounds like from the superintendent the

▶ 1:13:37 the mcas will pose the greatest strain to the bandwidth is that true uh well not necessarily we um the the way that they set it up they have a a caching server uh so you install a caching server in the district and since we're on a fiber optic network what happens is the the tests download to that caching server uh you test it beforehand with it with a number of devices basically pulls the test down it's all encrypted and when the kids are on the devices doing the test they're basically communicating to that caching server and it's not it's it's actually it's safer was it's safer it's only moving just kind of general text so it's not really bandwidth heavy and it keeps it within the district now this this summer what I

▶ 1:14:32 didn't mention is right now we're one gigabit going from the schools to all the other schools going to the servers and everything else we're we're we're in the process of updating that to 10 gigabit across which is will never have well problem communicating back and we didn't this this year getting back to that caching server when we did it at the high school middle at the middle school so we don't anticipate a problem getting to that caching server it should be should be fine so the bandwidth in terms of the MCAS wouldn't be an issue I think it's the daily use just the daily use by students and teachers that that really multi device right for student sure I mean I like to I like to think of it as as a three device per student or teacher kind of model I mean

▶ 1:15:27 they wouldn't all be on at the same time but you know in the future every kid will have you know their phone especially at the high school middle school their phone they'll have a tablet you know they might be using it just for books and whatnot and then a Chromebook or a laptop so any classroom you have 25 kids it's going to be 75 devices so you have to be able to build the infrastructure to handle that which is where are we on that in that on that road to doing that oh we're in good shape I mean that's one of the reasons we ran wired every classroom for those access points and all the ones that we did this summer I ran two wires to every location even though the access points we have right now only except one because there are a lot of access points

▶ 1:16:10 Christine Casatelli: being made in the future where you can double that bandwidth back to the controller and we might need it another thing we talked about in the tech plan is the data center district will also replace core data center systems power backup system select core hardware monitoring solutions that are currently at the end of their life cycles and require opera upgrade to accommodate future growth what's the status of those sure so um one thing we did that we're we're if we're slowly moving we've just been so horrible we do we did buy a data backup solution storage solution to create redundancy in our storage on both sides city in the schools we can move data back and forth the infrastructure itself the switches were purchased with e plus the 2015 purchase that that the

▶ 1:17:09 superintendent mentioned that included the Chromebooks included a lot of infrastructure so that our infrastructure like switches and then kind of all the behind-the-scenes stuff that's in good shape again we leverage some of what we put into that the money that we put into those systems by again putting on voice over IP phone systems makes it makes it much more valuable uh the you mentioned power power backup backup systems we're we're we're not doing great in that department uh there are several failing units around the school district and several uh closets uh server rooms that that they're i've been walking around looking at them you know they've got red lights the batteries are dead you know if the power goes out those switches go down uh which

▶ 1:17:59 is not not a good place to be includes our voice over ip the phones in the for instance the phones in the middle school the high school all run through the network uh so if those there's a power outage those phones all go down um the the systems that we built this summer those three elementary schools we we put in place all new power backup systems so those will all be all set uh we're we've got to build out some of the other elementary uh buildings and replace the batteries in the units we already have in the high school but yeah okay and it said the district will invest in network printers across all levels sounds like that you're working on that and that's going well yep and um cloud-based solutions will be evaluated as part of every new purchase

▶ 1:18:50 Christine Casatelli: yes okay destiny we're moving it all out off the district will implement technology-based assessment solutions that allow staff to assess data and student progress reports yes so we're using uh symphony learning uh ixl uh what am i forgetting the one that we use at the high school i always want to call it scantron but that's not their name anymore that tells you how old i am which which does the data analysis of the exams yeah i'm blanking but yeah we we have several uh we're doing we do dibbles as well right yeah so last question district leadership will undertake aggressive replacement plan to replace all computing devices across the district preferably 2015 to 2016 school year and again in 2020 2021. that's the plan i just referenced okay

▶ 1:19:45 right so all those PCs were replaced basically we're all replaced by my predecessor in all the schools so those all those computers are our new good functioning computers I mean in the future I'd like to see a more mobile staff you know if you know budgetary restrictions are always in place but you know laptops for for teachers and it there's a lot of things that it opens up a lot of possibilities for teachers and instruction and also for PD off-site PD you know they can do it from home teachers when they work together during a during a curriculum time they can all work on the same curriculum they could set up anywhere sit on the floor here with a bunch of laptops and work on the same curriculum and input it straight into the curriculum building software

▶ 1:20:43 Christine Casatelli: that we have so it's interesting now when we have big meetings we roll out the Chromebook cats and almost everybody in the room uses a Chromebook so that we can do Google Docs together that's good hmm so it sounds like this the tech plan is being implemented almost like a checklist it sounds like you're going down the list that I'm sure very thrilled I'm thrilled to hear about that took a lot of work to put that plan together it's I'm glad it's actually being used as it was intended everything is going down the list everything seems to be in progress it sounds like the only thing that may be a concern is the power backup systems yeah I mean there are several other systems that we need to update or that are that are falling behind or we need to just improve you

▶ 1:21:32 know there's a lot of you know for instance just the you know the middle school has a different card access system than the rest of the schools and cities so that needs to be kind of pulled in their cameras are old and they were kind of middle of the middle of the road cameras they're black and white a lot of them so those need to get upgraded some of the the software that runs on those and that the like the Lincoln in the the Roosevelt those those security systems are really old and they're analog closed caption systems and one of the things Neil and I have talked about is you get a rate money back for certain investments you make so we have talked about how do you take the a rate money we get back and roll it over into our next project so it's that

▶ 1:22:24 constant thinking about those type of efficiencies as you know so once we actually Marianne is going to a conference on a right and you know and I are looking at each other one day in Connecticut you know I'm going to that mr. school conference on a rate and so that she can get here what the updates are on the law because as you know um like a lot of federal programs it is being um it's subject to change right now yeah it's been changed quite a bit in the last three or four years and uh well it sounds like you have a handle on everything and that you you'd be able to provide the committee with some good um line items for i'm trying expenditures i'll spend your money yeah so So thanks for all your good work and I'm really impressed.

▶ 1:23:19 Thank you. Ms. McAllister-Grand. Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for all your work this summer and in general. I have just three questions. With the server upgrades, do you think that, I know there's some academic support programs like Lexia and IXL that. Yes, Lexia, that's what I was trying to think of. Yes. Thank you. Like competitor programs that require more bandwidth memory to be able to run because of graphics or other things yes do you think the server upgrade would allow for schools to be able to look at some of those and be able to run them within the system without bogging it down the the most of those are online so they would be direct out so it would be more a matter of the capacity of the firewall and the bandwidth going through the

▶ 1:24:10 firewall so what definitely to answer your question we made strides this summer to add on another internet um another internet line in that that will uh kind of be a subsidy to our current line and then it's it'll be a faster and have more capacity we hope to move to it over the next couple years completely and kind of separate the the the city and school internet bandwidth so that it's we have full school bandwidth and you know we shouldn't run into any well I shouldn't say that because every year we bandwidth increases the use increases but we should be in a good place okay yeah thank you and then my second question is about the remote management system that you're using to be able to do repairs and um i'm only familiar with bomb gars a remote oh yeah

▶ 1:25:12 i don't know if you guys are using something like would would the system that you selected to use allow for you to be able to put the computers into this restricted testing mode remotely or does that have to be done in person so so there's a couple things um the the restricted mode that we launched the computers in from the Google Chrome operating system is done strictly within the Google admin console okay so that will what happens is we make a change in that and then we reboot the Chromebooks and as soon as that happens it goes straight into that software and the kids can't get out of that then on the PCs what we do is we install the application in the state is made you know they foresaw the problem of locking out the computer so when you launch into

▶ 1:26:10 that software it locks out the rest of the computer they're only in that until until we take them out of that mode okay the kids are in in that so we can do some of that stuff on the back end that's just strictly Windows but it wouldn't be through our remote management software what we're using is is vnc okay um encrypted vnc which is a um it's a free software yeah uh and it it basically allows us to to um get in when a teacher has an issue and they can walk through and show us what the problem is while we're on the phone with them we can it's a little bit easier to book appointments with them and say when you're when your fee free oh i'm free at 10 30 and you can just they can call you or whatever

▶ 1:26:52 and you can go straight in right at that time and while you're maybe working on three other things so right okay great thank you and then my last question is about the privacy piece you're talking about how you know the law is that under 13 kids shouldn't have any personal accounts so can you just um i know this is in place i'm just not familiar with it how the email account is sort of scaffolded for a student in terms of their growth like they can start using it at some grade level and then they can actually receive messages from outside melrose at some point right right so uh the the it's set up right now so that i believe students all the way through can't receive emails we have postponed making the decision about opening the uh high school accounts okay

▶ 1:27:44 so we have not made that decision yet so they can send messages to external places but can't receive is that i don't think they can send either it's only they can only send to other melrose schools accounts oh right okay through the end of high school through the end of high school so they can't use it for like college applications that they use the naviance for i believe yeah email through that yeah i'll have to check on that because there are there are yes no but we send this we send the we send a lot of stuff well all the recommendations get downloaded into naviance and then they get sent from there because uh we don't um teachers don't send directly to colleges right no they don't i think they use their personal accounts

▶ 1:28:31 they have a separate account from their school account yeah i mean one of my concerns is as you all know and when people see me why do you carry two phones because long ago a CIO taught me that he can see everything I do on my phone and like I said you don't have to see how many times I change my hairdresser's appointment so the privacy issue for kids and staff is just as important for us so i really don't want to have access to kids personal emails our kids are very good about sharing this stuff with us as it is as we all know from 10 days ago but i really don't think because everything in melrose public schools has to be archived i don't think that's an avenue that we're ready to go down yet without a deep discussion

▶ 1:29:27 and just to be clear we we can't see the emails their emails or anybody else's emails going through if there was an issue we could you know stop the account reset the password so the kid couldn't get in if they were doing something inappropriate then we could log in as that student and and see what happened and that kind of thing but on a general basis we can't see that thank you sure any further questions mr. O'Connell just very quickly through the chair of the mayor this probably goes without saying it should go without saying mr. mayor but none of this works without the support of you and the Board of Aldermen on the city side in terms of finances personnel and the work that happens so thank you for that thanks I think one key point is that one

▶ 1:30:14 of the staff, obviously we'd like to have more staff in IT, but it should be acknowledged that the regionalization agreements that we have with Saugus and Essex pays for one of your staff, and it's just a way that we can create more bodies to do the job. The second is I think last year it's been very revolutionary regarding how we look at IT as a superintendent has said that capital equipment can always be put off for another year it has to because as you know next year like the year before we're going to be spending money on teachers to deal with I guess the next class is the second grade in that trail of staff by leasing and having a capital improvement plan very similar the way we have with equipment and roads is the

▶ 1:31:08 way to deal with it neil has done a really good job when we lost our entire staff we took the entire staff of wilmington and that's i guess that's how it works because there's very few people as capable as neil and very few people in the i.t sector that want to go to pub want to want to come to do public work and it's a real crisis so we're very lucky to have the team we have thank you seeing no more discussion on this thank you sure thank you Ellis for coming and the final item on the finance facilities agenda is disposition of surplus materials we have a memo here from the director of finance and administrative affairs at this time I would entertain a motion motion to approve motion to approve made by mr. school seconded by miss McAllister grant

▶ 1:32:06 discussion miss McAllister grant I'm curious where the where it's advertised that it says in the memo that they'll be we put in the newspaper it's just in like the mail or weekly news thank you any further questions comments seeing none all in favor motion passes unanimously and with that finance and facilities concludes their business tonight thank you thank you next on our agenda is the policy and planning subcommittee mr. O'Connell good evening folks welcome to the policy planning portion of our program and in keeping with the theme internet safety measures the committee undoubtedly is aware that we take this up on an annual basis usually this time of year primarily so that the superintendent can affirm um that she's in a position as mentioned by mr ellis

▶ 1:33:23 that we can certify our compliance in terms of our internet safety measures with the children's internet protection act and also the children's online privacy protection act and so madam superintendent can you so certify I believe we are as shared by mr. Ellis and as you all know in our handbooks we have the internet use agreement that all parents need to sign off and that they have seen read and agree to so we are complying with the two main pieces of federal legislation excellent and Felke members just for the record I did not include our internet safety measures the four policies because at this point we're not making any changes but does anyone have any comments or questions in this regard seeing none we'll move on to

▶ 1:34:27 the next matter of business the record should also reflect that there is a private school student in attendance with us this evening in the back of the room moving on to item number two uh mask recommendations uh mass associated school committees we continue our journey along uh the mask policy update uh the committee will note that we have an updated version of the grid in the packet and that update includes the three policies that are before you this evening for informational purposes they are bhe use of electronic messaging that's by committee members DJE bidding requirements which were changing to procurement requirements in DKC expense requirements any comments questions discussion on these miss McAllister

▶ 1:35:22 Graham please I would love to hear some examples of how the bidding slash procurement policy might be utilized like in what situations or kinds of situations would we be bidding and procuring so let's say I have to replace the boilers at the high school that's certainly going to exceed $50,000 and we would have to adhere to the procurement this is state law yeah you know this is not masc this is state law and um i again i would defer to miss driscoll i think it's two years ago they raised the limits um they um and to the fifty thousand dollars basically reflecting the inflationary nature of our lives um so um that's one example if we were to replace the whole fleet vans that we lease we would again have to go out to bid um i guess my what i'm wondering about is

▶ 1:36:28 like in the case of the furnace it seems like something that would also involve um john shenna right public works and so i'm wondering does this policy apply to them it applies to anybody any any public institution any public function so it would apply to all of us okay yeah thanks do you want you you want a lecture on the Ward Commission and if I may also note our council has also chimed in with regard to this policy and noted that there should be additional language that says any bid should be in writing and that any advertising a bid should be in accordance with current law and ultimately that means that we advertise on calm buys which we can go into if the committee wishes but I don't think we need to I say all of that just to note

▶ 1:37:28 Christine Casatelli: that when this is next before us for a first vote there will be some slight changes to the language along the line suggested by Miss Lindquist and I will highlight those when we take this up again any further discussion comments please so thanks to the the chair of the subcommittee for making sure we comply with the law and of course it sounds like I mean our our hands are pretty much tied because we have to do the right thing and comply with the law but it seems to me that in places where this doesn't really maybe serve our purposes and is the case of the busing contract where we only are we generally get one bid right so there's nothing that we can include in our policy that may give us a

▶ 1:38:15 Christine Casatelli: better advantage in that process you can't you can lead a horse to water can't make them drink can't make people bid through the chair of the superintendent it seems to me that I've heard from many school districts who've had similar experience is that true where there's only been one busing company who's submitted a been bid to a school district I don't know why that would be the case we live in a capitalist society and people should be bidding so I'm not sure why many school districts are are facing that reality so thank you to the subcommittee chair for putting this together thank you very much anything further seeing nothing further that concludes our policy and portion of the program thank you very much thank you next on the agendas

▶ 1:39:16 Jessica Dugan: educational programs and personnel subcommittee miss Dugan on EP this morning we have an item pulled off the consent agenda this evening we have an item pulled off the consent agenda so I would entertain a motion to approve the MHS field trip request build on school construction methodology second made by Ms. DeSalle, seconded by Ms. McAllister-Grand. Discussion and questions, Mr. O'Connell. Thank you very much. And I suppose through the chair to the superintendent. I love this. Ambitious, big, significant, international, and certainly well within our purview in terms of field trip approvals. What struck me about this was not just the cost, but the cost breakdown and I don't recall seeing this in in my brief experience here with the

▶ 1:40:26 school committee of the I think it's thirty two hundred dollars miss Kane rightly noted that two thousand dollars of that was going straight to the school and it seems that this is essentially a donation to the build on organization and that $2,000 per participant goes straight to the school construction costs and I'm sorry that's okay that's okay so is this something that we have seen before in in in in given that I didn't think it was it strikes me that we're being asked to prove not just a field trip which again I love the ambition of it but also a fundraising effort and not just fundraising to help cover the cost of participation by students but really fundraising to support build on organization and you know if we're talking about fundraising

▶ 1:41:34 I think we're talking about some additional policies that are implicated by this so I guess one thoughts on that and two is it worth our holding off on approving this given that we're meeting again next week and possibly giving some time to reflect on the implications for our other policies and if it's not too much to have Miss King come in that's more of you know the ambition and the scope than the fundraising component so please okay so I'm thank you for pulling this because I wanted it quite frankly so on this cane came to see me with mr. Corrigan and to talk to me about this a new club at the high school is a service club we've never had a service club very ambitious if you don't know miss Kane

▶ 1:42:31 she's young she's idealistic has all the energy necessary for this and mr. Corrigan was walking her through the steps and said you need to talk to the superintendent so we talked about it and I said to her this is different than anything we've ever done because of the donation piece I said in the donation piece quite frankly raises the cost of this to a point where it could be an obstacle but I don't like dissuading my young eager staff from doing good stuff for our kids and I did say to her it is probable not even possible but probable the committee would like you to appear before them and talk about how you got here and what you're thinking um when we talked about it I said to her there's a

▶ 1:43:25 couple of places here and she filled out the paperwork in accordance with the work on build on and build on as a well-established organization they're very supportive they're helping her learn about this and walk through this I said there's a couple of trips here as your superintendent I will say no to for an you mean from a location perspective location perspective as you know they're spreading your wings and they're spreading your wings in steps you know let's take reasonable steps similar to what we did with mr. Mahoney who took that lesson to heart and has grown from there and is now I think coming in front of you soon for Quebec so it is ambitious yet at the same time this is what we teach our children we're a school system that you cannot graduate

▶ 1:44:18 unless you've done community service we have many organizations within our high that do community service above and beyond what is the requirement because that's what we want to teach our kids when you do the walk next weekend you know what it's going to look like with our kids so again my major concern with this is some of the locations and what happens if you do all this fundraising and you can't pull off the trip what do we do with the money we have fundraise from people those are my concerns and I'm assuming they're the committee's concerns as well so you know more than happy to ask miss Kane to come in front of you you know we sort of we told her that she had to get this in for this meeting because I'm thinking timelines you know if they're going to start to

▶ 1:45:13 fundraise they have to start to fundraise soon you know all sorts of questions that should be asked it's a learning curve for her but it's a learning curve for us too as to this how this type of trip would work do we just for point of clarification do we raise money for the veterans trip to Washington DC as well students raise money to support that trip yeah yes no it's not a donation that's there's there's part of this that's the donation piece so they're raising money that's for the trip so it's the kids what the kids will fundraise for the gap trip to Germany the kids will fundraise for the trip to Costa Rica it's not a donation to an organization yeah veterans trip the kids raise money for the red to take the veterans it's correct so they're

▶ 1:46:10 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: raising money beyond their own here is that the students are raising twenty six to thirty thousand dollars to build a school I mean that goes straight to build on and and according to build ons website and the related materials it's literally used to buy construction materials so that's that is very much in form for donation so yeah mr. school um presuming miss Kane will be here to speak with us a couple things for her consideration in her presentation one is this is for grades 9 to 12 so I'm curious you know we think about our students and I'm wondering would you want to include all four grades or would you want to limit it to older students on some students are more prepared to handle this kind of thing and I just have a question around that the other is

▶ 1:47:08 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: it would be helpful to know if other districts have done this what other districts have done it and what their experience has been good and bad also this is this is one more trip with fundraising at citywide PTO we've had many discussions over the year about the amount of fundraising the extent of fundraising that's done this is one more burden if you will or challenge your gift that we're looking to our community to help with and especially our local business has who have been so incredibly generous to our school system I struggle having our students ask you know having another ask by the schools for this kind of thing which is not you know directly the way there's the multiple components so one of the things I discussed with miss Kane was think of this as an every

▶ 1:48:14 other year trip because to raise that amount of money and I made similar point In the context of all the money our kids raise, whether it's for athletics, performing arts, or their local Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts, or just a charity because we have one club at the high school that does nothing but raise money for charities. I said, so think of this in terms of an 18-month obligation rather than a 12-month obligation, which would take the seniors out of it. I said, also think about in between, because a service club has to feel their service. They have to do something to feel they're worthwhile and to meet their goals and their beliefs. What would you do locally for a service activity in the off years?

▶ 1:49:03 So I've asked her that as the club advisor. And, you know, we've had kids who've done humanity. Habitat. Habitat, thank you. And God knows we've had tons of kids do the food kitchens, the Bread for Life, and other organizations. So, again, it's shaping this club. It's in its infancy. And how do we shape this club so that it appeals to kids, it meets their interests and needs, and it's sustainable? So I'm more than happy to have her come forward. and just so folks know there's 13 this is 13 students so it's not like we're asking a whole class to fundraise thirty five hundred dollars and how does a lot of our trips abroad are around that much money a lot of our trips abroad we try to keep in the mid twos you know and that does not include a donation so in a

▶ 1:50:06 way this is something that I think it's a very different approach to fundraising as it is a service trip and it's in the summertime so I you know I always struggle with whether or not this should be something that the school committees of what whether or not should be done outside of well well I know there are churches to do that many many of you may belong to churches who grew up in churches that have a service component that you spend two three years fundraising for and then realize I think that in the absence of religious affiliation or the decline of religious affiliation our kids are looking for some vehicle by which to be of service and the truth of the matter is we filled the void on lots of things in his lives and there are lots of teachers who run

▶ 1:51:04 Jessica Dugan: maybe not in our district but who run trips in the summertime different than a the school vacation week in the summertime and do it outside of the district so again to me it's that you know what is that fine line of what the school committee should be approving and what an individual could be doing outside of the district affiliation so I think it would be would be great to have her come with some answers yes mr. pastor grant and I would add to mr. schools list of possible things to discuss I'm interested to hear how she selected build on versus you know volunteers for peace or some other service related international trip operator and to the point about 9th through 12th grade I don't really have a concern about opening it up to all

▶ 1:51:54 Christine Casatelli: grades I'm more interested to hear what is she anticipating as far as an application process to be a part of this effort does she expect them to write an essay or meet with her or something because I think there may be a ninth grade who's ninth grader who'd be very appropriate for this but I think it's important to go through the right procedure I very much excited about this new club and I very much appreciate her initiative and efforts I look forward to talking with her thank you miss Castelli yeah a quick look to Habitat for Humanity they have similar trips for like nineteen hundred dollars to Nicaragua and it does say that part of the fee goes toward the materials but it looks like at half the cost so if she could look into programs I don't know if

▶ 1:52:46 they have an age limit maybe that's what she's dealing with but like miss McAllister grant said I it sounds like there are a number of programs to do that so if she could maybe do an evaluation of those or if she has let us know what that evaluation is and how she settled on that program I have a feeling the kids did the research and this is what they settled on so okay thank you is there a motion to postpone so moved by mr. Selm do we need a second on a to postpone I miss McAllister grant thank you very much that concludes EP thank you oh sorry excuse me I figured we're on board all of those in favor there's unanimously that concludes EP next on our agenda is the announcements of the school committee chair and we will be discussing student

▶ 1:54:00 representatives I will invite mr. O'Connell to lead us in this part of the conversation or I'd some input please thank you very much madam chair we talked about this in our last meeting I did submit a memo I think the memo faithfully tracks what we talked about and if the chair is willing I'd like to make a motion to approve if only for purposes of discussion motion to approve the proposal as outlined in the memo second motion by mr. O'Connell seconded by miss McAllister grant for the discussion miss McAllister grant I love this proposal even the red M I love that part too he was waiting to see which one of us would notice I had a prompter madam superintendent he paid me to say them oh and the footnotes nice touch so I'm so excited about this proposal I I

▶ 1:55:02 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: would say is one of the top three things I'd like to see happen as a member of this body is to see students play a more active and engaged role in our process I think there's so many positives that could come from that and I'm really grateful for your leadership and let a mr. Salm and miss Dugan on this front so I heartily support this for the discussion just one clarifying question if I may the you are not proposing in here that students be permitted to vote is that correct that's correct thank you further discussion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously the final item on our agenda tonight is the liaison reports and I would invite anybody to contribute to that discussion mr. O'Connell I'm sure thank you as our elementary school

▶ 1:56:04 liaison I had the pleasure of attending recently both the Lincoln School and the Horace Mann school site councils they're both doing great work Madam Superintendent, you'd be pleased to know that the first document that was handed out at the Lincoln School Site Council meeting was the strategy overview. You can imagine my delight. But more seriously, the discussion at the Lincoln School Site Council was terrific in the way at that building level they tied the work going on in the classrooms straight to the strategy overview document. And it certainly, for me, provided even greater clarification as to how the document is used. So it was great to see it in action. Horace Mann, very focused on PBIS, like all of our schools, but with a particular emphasis

▶ 1:56:58 on special education learners. And I was also excited to learn of the possible advent of a student council at Horace Mann, I think is a nice tie-in to what we're seeing and doing and engaging with at the middle school and high school levels beyond the site council meetings in my capacity as the school committee's representative on the superintendents activity fees working group I had the honor of meeting with both the Melrose band-aiders and the friends of Melrose drama it was an opportunity to thank them for their work in support of our students and importantly to discuss with them the work to date of the activities fees working group they shared their views on activities both cogently and passionately I should note and I

▶ 1:57:49 encourage them to continue to lend their voice to that discussion and further and finally in this particular regard while I was unable to attend to attend rather last night's activity fee working group meeting I can report that we are presently collecting and assembling data around program and activity revenues expenses and participation rates and the like information I think will go a long way toward clarifying the facts around student activities and will most certainly inform our recommendations or any recommendations that we might make to the superintendent again still an expected report out date for the end of calendar year and our touchstones continue to be equity for students and families as well as the

▶ 1:58:38 financial sustainability of the programs i also uh madam chair had the opportunity to attend the citywide pto meeting in place of our chair with a discussion largely given over to the recent lockdown at the high school the events which precipitated same importantly the communications around same uh and parents reactions to the events i think it was a productive discussion uh which undoubtedly informed both the pto reps in attendance as well as the superintendent as she participated in various debriefings of the incident and finally while i did not attend the most recent melrose cpac meeting as we heard from ms gauch tonight they're working on developing their mission statement, they're finalizing their budget, and their strategic plan for the year.

▶ 1:59:29 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: They are also getting ready to issue a survey, as Ms. Gauch noted, and they continue to focus on working collaboratively with our school administrators. I would again urge all with an interest in special education in Melrose to connect with this group. It's always apt that that they and we do so, but particularly so, during Learning Disabilities Awareness Month. Thank you. Thank you. Can I come to this a minute to figure out his memorandum? Is it problem with him? I just noticed. Does anyone else? Is anyone else interested in sharing? Seeing none. do have one item for your information you may already know that the Board of Aldermen last night has provided their vote in favor of the city charter and so

▶ 2:00:34 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: we will remain our city will continue to have a Board of Aldermen the one item that is pertinent to the discussions that we have in this chamber or I would say one of the most pertinent is our operating budget timeline so in the past the language read the school budget as adopted by the school committee shall be submitted to the mayor at least 30 days before the submission of the proposed operating budget to the Board of Aldermen that language was changed to read the school budget as adopted by the school committee shall be submitted to the mayor within a reasonable time for the submission of the proposed operating budget to the to the Board of Aldermen so that provides us a little bit more

▶ 2:01:21 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: flexibility so I would invite mr. Selm and the superintendent and our director of finance and operations to craft their timeline with that in mind any mr. so madam chair at the risk and I don't want us to have a discussion about this I happened upon a discussion in a Board of Aldermen meeting about changing our term of office I trust that didn't go that did not happen okay thank you for that you're welcome any further questions on the city charter seeing none that concludes our business this evening I would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved made by mr. O'Connell seconded by miss Sal discussion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously and we are adjourned

Original documents

• Minutes (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Other (CivicClerk PDF)
• This meeting on the city portal