School Committee — 2019-07-30

Agenda

1. AIP Presentation (20 minutes) (50:05)
2. Superintendent Updates (5 minutes) (1:09:18)
3. Donations (1:13:22)
4. Concussion Report (1:13:29)
5. Warrants (1:13:34)
6. Personnel Report (1:17:12)
7. Monthly Budget Summary (1:19:30)
8. 2019-2020 Amended School Year Calendar (5 minutes) vote required (1:15:24)
9. No New Business
10. No New Business
11. Superintendent Evaluation Final Report and Comments (15 minutes) vote required (1:23:58)
12. Superintendent Salary (5 minutes) vote required (1:28:52)
13. Committee Delegate and Alternate to MASC (5 minutes) vote required (1:37:16)
14. Approve Site Council Election Process (5 minutes) (1:42:08)
15. Liaison Reports (5 minutes) (1:43:03)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE MELROSE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES● JULY 30, 2019 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Regular Meeting 7:00 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176

(ID # 7374) GENERAL AIP Presentation (20 minutes)

(ID # 7373) Announcements - Superintendent Superintendent Updates (5 minutes)

(ID # 7365) Consent Concussion Report Adopted

(ID # 7362) Consent Warrants Adopted City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 8/22/2019 11:00 AM Minutes Melrose School Committee July 30, 2019

(ID # 7364) Consent Monthly Budget Summary

(ID # 7375) Policy and Planning 2019-2020 Amended School Year Calendar (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 7379) Educational Programs and Personnel No New Business

(ID # 7378) Finance and Facilities No New Business

(ID # 7367) Announcements - Chair Superintendent Evaluation Final Report and Comments (15 minutes) vote required

(ID # 7368) Announcements - Chair Superintendent Salary (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 7369) Announcements - Chair Committee Delegate and Alternate to MASC (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 7370) Announcements - Chair Approve Site Council Election Process (5 minutes)

(ID # 7371) 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 8/22/2019 11:00 AM

Transcript

▶ 0:01 Welcome to the meeting of the Melrose School Committee for this 30th day of July in the year 2019. As is our custom, let us stand as we are able for the Pledge of Allegiance, and if we could remain standing after the pledge for a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible. A moment of silence, please, on the passing of a beloved teacher and colleague at Melrose High School, Mike Noon. Thank you very much. Let me know for the record that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast on MMTV. First up, we have our legislative delegation with an update on education funding. and we have the pleasure to have with us this evening Senator Jason Lewis and

▶ 2:01 soon to be joining us Representative Paul Broder. Senator Lewis if you could. We want to start with you. He likes to make a grand entrance we're used to that. Thank you for being here Senator Lewis. All right well it's my pleasure thank you as always for the invitation to spend a little time together and thank you to all of you for the very good work you're doing on behalf of the students and educators here in Melrose so I think you know Paul and I were on tap to give you a little bit of an update on the budget specifically education funding for fiscal year 2020 which we just started July 1st and then this is also obviously a good time to give you an update as well on the work that we're doing in the Education Committee and as you know I serve as the Senate Chair of

▶ 3:13 the Education Committee on updating and reforming the school funding formula so in terms of the the state budget we were a little bit late getting it getting it wrapped up this year but but it is now on the governor's desk awaiting the governor's signature it does represent the largest increase in funding for chapter 70 school aid which is as you know the largest account for line-item account in the budget for school funding in about two decades in real dollars it's about 270 million dollar increase it is exactly the same as what the Senate included in our budget and it is it is viewed by the Senate and I would say by the house as well as a significant down payment on updating the education funding formula essentially this in calculating the chapter 70 the

▶ 4:25 state Senate basically made the essentially implemented the recommendations of the foundation Budget Review Commission from 2015 which is similar to legislation the Senate has passed on several previous occasions and then we essentially calculated 1 7th of that amount making the assumption that that it was gonna those changes would be phased in over seven years and that's how we came up with the two hundred and seventy million dollars so that is generally viewed as a as a significant you know down payment overall and I'll talk more in a minute about what we're doing to as I said to pass legislation to update the funding formula so that it's it's permanently in statute other other education counts the special education circuit breaker is a fully

▶ 5:17 funded so based on our best projection for what they're the reimbursements that will be submitted to the state from districts it's fully funded to be able to cover 75% of those costs if it turns out that we underestimate that because that has happened in some past years I would expect you know we will look to try to supplement that funding later on in the fiscal year hi greetings welcome representative brother thank you thank you thanks for being with us so we just got underway and was just starting to give an overview of the FY 20 budget specifically on education but I'll hand it over to you in a moment if you want to talk to you know some of the other items in the budget as well as local earmarks so they I mentioned the circuit breaker also a charter tuition

▶ 6:13 reimbursement very important of course to Melrose and to many communities that send students to charter schools we did increase funding for that although it is it is still not fully funded it's we funded it in total at about a hundred and fifteen million dollars to fully fund charter tuition reimbursement would be close to a hundred and eighty million dollars and so we're not we're not quite there yet but I'll say more about that in a minute in terms of the again the education funding reform bill we're working on there was some discussion about how that's calculated in terms of charter tuition reimbursements the governor made a proposal to change the way that those amounts are calculated for each district essentially today it's based on increases in tuition payments

▶ 7:08 just simple dollar increase the governor proposed to base it on increases in enrollment over and it would be compared to a the highest level of enrollment in the past five years so the net result of that if that had been adopted fortunately in my opinion you know that was not adopted by the by the legislature that change but if it had been adopted it would have reduced significantly what full funding of charter school reimbursement would would have amounted to and it would have reduced charter tuition reimbursements for Melrose and other communities and in fact you can see under the estimates again these are still estimates but under the governor's budget proposal Melrose would have received two hundred and twenty thousand dollars in charter tuition

▶ 7:59 reimbursements and under the final budget again which does not adopt the change in the methodology it does adopt one change I'll talk about in a moment but not the change in to from tuition to enrollment Melrose is the number that's being projected by on the cherry sheet right now is four hundred and fifty three thousand dollars so it's a several hundred thousand dollar difference in charter tuition reimbursements to Melrose's benefit and is it a three year so that change was to a five year reimbursement so correct that so that change was made it the under the previous formula well we basically went back to the way it used to be it used to be when it's in 100% in the first year then 60% in the second year and 40% in the third year and we changed a few

▶ 8:48 years ago to 100% in the first year and then 25% for the next five years so we basically have now gone back to the hundred sixty forty so that was not controversial there really wasn't I mean all the stakeholders I spoke with no nobody really had a concern about that so that change was made but that but more importantly I think the change that the governor was looking for to base it on enrollment increases versus a five year high watermark as opposed to the way we have been doing it which is based on just increase in tuition payments we did not make that change and I think that was an important most people didn't understand what this was about and what the impact could have been but that would have if we had adopted that that would have had a significant negative

▶ 9:34 impact on charter tuition reimbursements for Melrose and and a lot of other most many other communities there would have been some a few communities that would have benefited from that but most would not so we did not make that change so those are a few of the key accounts maybe what I can do is hand it over to represent Broder if you want to say a bit more about the budget in general and then maybe I if you want I can come back and speak to the work that we're doing in the Education Committee on as I said on on more long-term future future education funding reform and how that's shaping up sure and some my apologies should be in a few minutes late and it's always a delight to be here I have I

▶ 10:15 Paul Brodeur: don't know if this will be particularly helpful to you all this is the latest from the division of local services and it is a depiction of 2019 cherry sheet and essentially the budget as it evolved from governor's budget through House Senate and then the final budget we have it and it has some assessments and some other I think package in a little bit of a nice way to get a bit of a bit of a snapshot the changes from from governor's budget to our budget you know there's growth in a lot of areas but as you know particularly in chapter 70 a growth in the overall chapter 70 number means different things to different districts so where we landed at the end of the at the end of the process even though there was a fairly significant infusion of money between the passage of

▶ 11:16 Paul Brodeur: the House and Senate versions of the budget and the issuance of the conference committee report we do you remember what the number was about 300 million extra dollars in revenue because the state's revenue picture is is pretty favorable but because of the way the formula works and because of the way we are trying to as a state level the playing field a little bit the vast majority of those dollars go to communities that are judged to have more severe learning needs across the board I don't think anybody Paul would disagree with the needs of Chelsea Revere and New Bedford Springfield what I don't understand is how the increase to Melrose is $30 per kid the increase to Winchester is $81 a kid and the increase to Belmont is 107 that is where I have

▶ 12:07 Paul Brodeur: to focus I don't know I'm never gonna argue with you as a former urban educator with many friends in the field about the needs of the cities but when I look at communities that quite frankly are perceived to be better off than we and they're getting a better bigger increase per pupil than we I'm looking at you and Senator Lewis as our representatives and I want to know why sure and I will tell you the just to give a little bit of a different perspective we appear before I appear before three different boards to explain to them what where the state's going with the budget and Senator Lewis appears for six places to describe that and I don't mean this to be smart alecky but the three folks I talked to are unanimous in their disappointment with

▶ 12:58 Paul Brodeur: the formula when I'm before Wakefield they very often compare themselves to Melrose and Reading and say particularly the Melrose to Wakefield comparison we're essentially similarly situated communities our demographics are very much the same and Melrose gets $600 more per kid then then Wakefield does that's a made-up number but it's in the it's in the ballpark but Wakefield gets significantly less per pupil in Chapter 78 and gets and spends more per pupil than Melrose does so you're right and I'm gonna counter to you they're not paying 2.9 million dollars to Mystic Valley that's right so what's on paper and what's the net is the issue it's the net that's the issue so I'm sorry do should we finish giving an update and then do questions and answers or did you

▶ 13:58 Paul Brodeur: prefer to just do it as we go along I just we should probably just just so we know what you prefer mr. chair do why don't we finish the presentation and we'll go to questions and ultimately we have 30 minutes okay okay I'm happy to take questions but I'm happy we should finish I mean I'm happy to just do the questions because that is I mean I think I'm sure you all are familiar with the numbers they are they're better than they've been in the past sometimes where it nets out to a negative but it doesn't net out to a lot and you know without the governor's budget if memory serves without that $30 minimum elders would get zero because that is a that is not formula driven that is a creation it's a

▶ 14:41 Paul Brodeur: political decision by the legislature to recognize that everyone needs to get something and that's part of the quite frankly part of what our friends on the committee are struggling with is that how to square up a new funding formula to inject new money into a system where there's a lot of there's a lot of angst both you know fairly from a budget point of view and from the politics of how do you get a majority of people to vote for something that means you got to figure out to get 81 people's districts money probably significant increases since I spend most of my waking hours working on this let me make a few comments as well so first of all there's a maybe a misconception and I share this as much

▶ 15:32 with the folks who might be watching at home or you know the legislature doesn't make a determination of how much money is Melrose gonna get for chapter 70 how much money is Belmont gonna get how much money is Winchester gonna get how much money is Malden going to get all we do is make a decision as to what the total amount of money is that we're gonna be able to put into chapter 70 and and then the formula runs and calculates that for every district. I think on previous occasions, we've gone through a conversation. We did a school funding forum actually here in Melrose a couple months ago, and we went through how the formula's built and how it works. So I don't know that we need to go through that tonight.

▶ 16:11 But when foundation budgets go up, either because of changes we're making to the foundation budget to reflect higher costs, like healthcare costs and special education costs, or because factors in districts are going up, enrollment is increasing, for example, is a big driver of higher foundation budgets in districts, or other changes in the district, you know, demographic changes, for example, that drives up the foundation, and depending on what that district's local contribution is, that can also generate more state aid. That doesn't always seem fair, because you could have two similarly situated communities that appear similar in terms of their income levels or however you want to compare them,

▶ 16:55 that doesn't necessarily translate into what exactly the aid levels are in a given year. But we know that there are significant problems with the formula that have been identified now over many years. We have been working, as you know, to make major reforms to the formula. We came very close last year to reaching agreement between the House and the Senate, but unfortunately didn't quite get across the finish line. It is a top priority, maybe the top priority of the House and the Senate and the Governor to get that done. I'm pretty confident we will get that done this year. The Education Committee has spent a lot of time, a huge amount of time this year. We've been traveling all over the state

▶ 17:42 meeting with districts. As I mentioned, as you know, we held a forum here and Melrose was very well attended. We have been reviewing all the legislation that was filed. We had a full day of testimony on those bills. I've had many, many meetings with the Superintendent's Association, with parents, teacher organizations, and other advocacy groups. So I'm confident we will have legislation that will be released from the Education Committee in the early fall, and I expect that the Senate and the House will take up that legislation soon after it's released, because I know it's a priority for both branches. And I expect that legislation will fully implement the updates to the health insurance piece of the formula,

▶ 18:31 which will lead to higher foundation budgets for all districts, the special education changes, which again will lead to higher foundation budgets for all districts, the increased rates English learners which will help all districts obviously those that have more English learners will benefit more and then most important most significantly in terms of the dollar impact we will probably make major changes to how we account for low-income students and we'll say more about that later when the legislation comes out but we are also looking at other ways to help districts in terms of the special education circuit breaker we want to make sure sure there's no unintended consequences of increasing foundation budgets on the

▶ 19:11 circuit breaker threshold for example we are looking at the needs in terms of transportation in terms of charter you know how do we make sure that districts are getting charter reimbursement that they're that they should be getting so all of those issues are being being considered as well the governor has made major proposals that he's pushing around new accountability requirements don't think those are necessarily meeting with a lot of support from my colleagues in the legislature but we are looking at those we have to you know also do our homework on those proposals as well so all of that that's part of this my expectation is that we will you know finish work on this in the fall and and And I do expect that the final bill

▶ 20:02 will have a significantly positive impact on Melrose specifically. It may take some time for the foundation budget to increase enough to then trigger significantly more amounts of state aid beyond what we refer to as minimum aid. But I do think that will be the case as we go forward. But notwithstanding that, it is true that the impact of any changes to the foundation budget and therefore on the formula and state aid is different across different communities depending on, again, a variety of factors. So that's kind of where we are on that, but I'd be happy to come back in the fall hopefully again when the legislation is out and go through exactly what's in there and how it works and what we expect the impact would be you know on on Melrose specifically on the

▶ 20:59 Paul Brodeur: charter piece I just want to put in a plug for a piece of legislation that I filed that would dramatically change the way charter schools are funded of course the challenge of it is that it's probably a two hundred and fifty million dollar a year proposition but the idea behind this would be that there would be be a set district reimbursement formula or rate that would cap and then for they would essentially be a two-tier two ways that that folks would go would go above that cap so in other words if let's say that the the statewide average tuition for sending district is six thousand dollars it would be capped there I'm making it up for the purposes of illustration and we would then then the

▶ 21:50 Paul Brodeur: state would because essentially a state program the state would make up that difference and if a school district I won't pick on anyone particular but if they are way over foundation they would pay part of that as well so that you would there would be a recognition that where there's some you know duplication duplication of educational effort within the district that there is a limited capacity for the different to for traditional districts to split those resources and a recognition that again this is a creation of the state with oversight really coming from desi certainly not a local control if any at all that it would be fair to reset that that formula where the state would take a much bigger responsibility for that financing I think it I think it's a good

▶ 22:41 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: and fair way to kind of rebalance the scales but i'm realistic in the you know in a discussion of a budget or budget increases and reform that's in the tune of 1 billion to 2 billion dollars i'm not sure i'm going to get exactly what i want out of that bill but i'm hoping we can move the needle a little bit on the way we do charters very good thank you both very much any comments of questions from the committee Mr. Driscoll please so I find it kind of ironic that relative to the Charter discussion that charter schools have a longer school day they have transportation they have a wide variety of opportunities that are not available to our students and they have students arguably with disabilities that are less complex the Mystic Valley Charter School

▶ 23:33 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: has a much lower percentage about half of ELL learners yet my understanding is that our per pupil payment is actually higher than our per pupil here in Melrose correct me if I'm wrong superintendent yeah that's because they are allowed to have that the facilities so the 25% for facilities I appreciate that however we are things for that piece by the way we're paying for things that we can't afford for our own students and frankly their outcomes are not necessarily better across the board or much so it seems to me that when legislation is crafted certainly exploring what districts are paying and what districts are getting for that for our own students should align with that in as a complement to that the legislation I believe is pretty clear

▶ 24:30 Paul Brodeur: that charter schools are designed to be laboratories with proven successes then transferred to districts so if it is shown through research that a longer school day is effective when does it transfer over and what is the legislation honored because I don't see that happening right now no it's 100% fed the the the birth of charter schools was just just what you described it to be it was going to be innovation and and collaboration and sharing and I leave it to the professionals to talk to judge the the innovation piece but I think it's clear that the system we have set up is nothing more than competition certainly in the local in our local district in the places that mystic valleys part of mystic valleys catchment area I have yet to see and maybe I've

▶ 25:22 Paul Brodeur: missed something but I have yet to see that collaboration I've yet to see you know best practices meetings or professional development shared around particular learning models a curricula or whatever the case may be and there's no and the way we've built it quite frankly there's not a lot of incentive to do that you can say do it but there's no incentive to do however the And the legislature, I think, can hold people accountable for that. You can hold Desi accountable for that. So my suggestion, as one individual, is I think it would be helpful to our district to push the fact that X was legislated, Y is happening. And before you get any more money, how about you follow the rules? my suggestion alone thank you I'll make it even simpler and and I recognize the

▶ 26:20 Paul Brodeur: limits of what I'm gonna say because in but in some respects it gets to the heart of the problem invite the charter school administration to come before this body and say exactly and say what is it you know tell us tell us the ten best things you do we want to copy them and see if they even come I suspect they will know and don't disagree with all the concerns you've raised in the end believe me they are raised in virtually every community that sends students to charter schools you know unfortunately Mystic Valley happens to be probably more that's the right word to use you know whatever the right word is to use you know for example you know there's a there's a charter school association that charter schools are part of Misty Valley is the only charter school that

▶ 27:11 isn't even part of the charter school association um so in terms of playing nice with others and so there you know there's some unique uh unique challenges uh there um but i i would say that i in the time that i've been on in in the legislature and actually in the time just that i've been in the state senate five years there's really been a sea change in um you know sort of views toward on charter school policy and concerns about you know how charter schools spend money how they're governed how they select students the obviously the impact on finances for the sending districts the challenge we still have though is we have a governor you know who is a continues to be a strong supporter of charter schools the secretary of education feels

▶ 27:57 very much having many conversations with secretary pizer and again feels the same way um so it's still an uphill lift to try to change you know a lot of policy around charter schools but I'm not saying it's impossible and I'm not saying we shouldn't try it is moving in that direction we do have a commissioner obviously he works under the secretary but he has a lot of you know authority himself and Commissioner Riley I think is very well aware of these issues and I think is very committed to looking for solutions um and so i i feel optimistic that you know even within the existing system we have and the existing laws and regulations that his leadership is going to push for for more positive changes thank you miss mccandrick thank you thank you

▶ 28:52 Jennifer McAndrew: for being here both of you um really appreciate all of your insight and all of your hard work you're doing to fundamentally change the foundation budget formula which I know is tedious and long and I appreciate your leadership both of you I have a couple of questions I know we're running out of time so just cut me off if we could go all night um so just to not to harp on the charter school piece but and again that's a family's right to choose that for their students in Melrose whether we agree with how they're funded or run or not but I also just would add two things which is that the school committee has no oversight over what happens to Melrose students who go to the charter school as which is true for

▶ 29:39 Jennifer McAndrew: other districts but even when what they're doing might not match our values as a district so I find that to be difficult and the other thing I just wanted to mention some of the numbers just this everyone here knows them but just for anyone in the public who might be watching that and on the cherry sheet which which you gave out and we have where Melrose will be assessed two point nine three nine million dollars in charter school tuition and while the reimbursement is going up which I appreciate definitely compared to what the governor had proposed which would have been fairly devastating for Melrose fact it looks like we would have been negative um as compared to last year if that wasn't the case

▶ 30:26 Jennifer McAndrew: where the reimbursements are 452 000 so just because often we hear from charter school advocates that oh don't worry that money gets reimbursed by the state the money that goes and i just i want to make those numbers clear for people um and i appreciate the work you're doing to reform that charter school reimbursements and fully fund them um i just i had a question um one thing just to mention or ask about the foundation budget when the foundation budget and i know you can't say specifics about exactly what will come out of the bill but is adjusted changed even in all these different ways that you laid out which this committee has sent you a letter on many of those um uh changes that we would like to see um because the

▶ 31:20 Jennifer McAndrew: foundation budget goes up for milrose does not necessarily mean that our state aid goes up by the same amount is that right that's correct okay so it's possible that the foundation budget will go up our state aid will go up but that they'll still be a local component that increases is that right yes so so um sorry this is i'll try to give the very short answer here this is a long conversation and all of these answers and it's better answered it's better answered with pictures um and uh it's if you want to another time we can maybe we'll do i don't know if you can do powerpoint during a school committee meeting but we can't be happy you can okay we should do that because that that i have a powerpoint that goes through it i think that helps people understand

▶ 32:02 but basically the the formula has two pieces to it the first is calculate the foundation budget which is the amount of money that is calculated that each district needs to educate its students right based on how many students are enrolled in that district the demographics of those students and so on so that's what the major changes we're working on will change is the foundation the other side of the formula which we really aren't proposing to make changes to although you can argue there's some major issues with that side of the formula as well and we are looking at how we can start at least get it going down the road of of making the reforms we need. That side of the formula determines of the foundation budget,

▶ 32:42 how much does each municipality provide and then what does the state provide? The idea being that communities that have fewer resources will get more state aid than those that don't. So Melrose is a community that is judged by the formula to be a more affluent community. And so gets, has to contribute 82.5% of the foundation budget and in other words gets 17 and a half percent and one of the problems with the formula arguably is too many communities are in that same category the formula treats Melrose the same as it does let's say Winchester or Belmont and a lot of communities are treated in that same category and there's a history to that and that is another whole topic but so if the foundation budget goes up in simple terms of that increased amount

▶ 33:34 Jennifer McAndrew: you know Melrose should get roughly a fifth in terms of additional state aid and the remainder would be you know the local contribution on in rough numbers thank you right so I just think that's really important to call out because dollar-for-dollar because even though we of course are I would assume or I'll speak myself I'm advocate for the changes that you're proposing that I thinker will come out in the bill or hope will come out in the bill and i think that melrose will benefit it's also true that it may result in the community needing to understand that as our foundation budget goes up the state expects the community to further invest and that melrose is unlikely to be moved out of the category where the state would expect us to pay the overwhelming

▶ 34:25 Jennifer McAndrew: share of our and i'm not saying i'm again as superintendent taymor said we are not i'm not in the going to be in the business of advocating taking money from cities and towns that are considerably more low income than melrose um and students struggling but i um i do think it's important for us all to keep that in mind we and to know that the state is not in a position to for to sort of fund all of what all of the changes that will come through that bill um i'll stop for now i have other questions very good miss razzy thomas well i am still confounded by these formulas that is for sure but the thing that still doesn't make sense to me to piggyback on uh superintendent tamor's original statement is like cities like

▶ 35:19 Arlington that are similar to us they're getting 18.8% increase and so is let's see Belmont's getting 5.3 Wakefield's getting 5.6 and poor little Melrose is getting 1.4 so we look around Stoneham's getting a huge gift and you look at their median income and our median income they get median income of 90,000 Melrose in median income is 93,000 so understand it's not your fault personally that there's a formula that you're trying to very valiantly to change and we see all the time that government takes a lot longer to change than it should so it's not personal but this still doesn't make any sense to me it seems wrong so I just want more of a person-to-person explanation that makes more sense that's easier to understand than what we've gotten so far because

▶ 36:26 it's still like huh because if you compare it to local communities that are similar ours Winchester is getting more Belmont's getting more Stoneham is getting a lot more Arlington Arlington is getting so much more and if you look at all the records of like how those schools do with SATs and kids going off to good colleges and this pay scales of this teachers there and bubba bubba bubba I'm just trying to understand this I still don't understand it and I doubtly there's a story I'd say yeah I mean I appreciate you you know this has come up tonight totally understand and well you know why you'd feel that way and and and why many people look at these numbers and it seems like a you know a black box and kind of a mystery as to why that would be the case so I'm

▶ 37:20 happy to you know if you want to any anyone or anyone just listening at home want to sit down because this is best done kind of one-on-one and we can literally go through the spreadsheets together you know to look at these are the numbers how it was calculated for Melrose this is how it was calculated for Arlington let's say and you can sort of see how where those numbers were arrived at that may not yeah you know I know about itself you know it's not a fair formula then that's the answer if the formula is not a fair formula and if it's not a sensible formula and that doesn't make any sense it's really not tied to socio-economic need it is it is but there's but it's not the issue the biggest dish one of the main issues how can Winchester be getting more Belmont

▶ 38:08 and Arlington be getting more and Stoneham yeah again I mean they're different factors they're all they're all in the same bucket and the seven what I talked about the eighty two point five seventeen and five which you know we could argue maybe that that shouldn't be the case they shouldn't be treated that way if if that weren't the case many communities would get no state aid at all essentially they'd be deemed too wealthy to get any state aid so that when that reform was made back about ten years ago it was essentially to ensure a minimum amount so that they're in essentially treated the same in terms of the percent in terms of increases in foundation some communities have more a greater enrollment growth right now than Melrose does that has a big factor

▶ 38:51 driving up I'm out of space so it's a variety of factors I'm out of space Arlington and I have tremendous growth Kathy Brody and I talk about it all the time other districts don't so we have growth but the problem here is what you do not calculate is in the city is the town's ability to pay so we were prior to the override and we haven't calculate the new numbers yet we were a hundred and four percent over net school spending mm-hmm the average in the state is 126 yes yes okay the Middlesex is like 149 and what Middlesex County isn't 149 which we are part of okay I don't know Winchester's Estonians offhand we have all those charts somewhere but that's nowhere calculated similar range there in that okay 20 by 30 range but that's nowhere

▶ 39:38 calculated into this and you know that and that goes to what why would you why would you have a formula that rewards communities for I'm not looking I'm not looking I'm telling you the formula does not calculate in the city's ability to pay right but if you know the community was contributing less in terms of foundation then that would essentially reward communities for contributing less from their own research I understand but if they artificially do that Jason there has to be there has to be a consequence from from the state on that but what I'm saying to you is when I know what it's taking us to get to 104 percent and and I look at Belmont, which I'm sure is closer to 126%, and they're getting more money than me,

▶ 40:27 I have to say, you know, I don't understand how that was done. And I understand the formula, and I understand the calculations, and I understand the allotment for each category. But at the end of the day, when I see these figures, and I know what we've gone through, to get where we are and to hold it together and produce what we produce, which quite frankly is better than a lot of my colleagues, I don't understand how these numbers, how these decisions are made. And I cannot help but think that there is a political piece to this. There's not, I can assure you. Because there's no decision made that, and I really want to dispel that notion because I don't want people to think that. We do not sit down and say, nobody sits down and says,

▶ 41:12 this is how much we're gonna give Melrose this year. No, I understand, I'll tell you. Absolutely, this is driven off of a formula. All we do is we decide how much in total is gonna go into chapter 70, and then those calculations are made. Now, are there problems with that formula? Does that formula need to be changed and reformed and updated? Absolutely. It's a very, very difficult thing to do, which is why we haven't completed that work yet, because it's very complex. And when you make changes to it, it does affect districts differently. And that's why it's taking so much time, because we're trying to be very careful and thoughtful about if we change this part of the formula, how does that impact, you know, all these

▶ 41:50 different districts, you know, gateway cities, rural communities, suburban communities, middle income communities, communities with declining enrollment, communities with growing enrollment, communities with high numbers of English learners, low numbers of English learners. That's exactly the challenge. I understand that. Let me tell you where the political piece is. You sat there and said the legislature, all they can do is vote the money. That's not true. point of view you can begin to act on the Charter Melrose would not be in this situation if we were not contributing what we are contributing to the charter school and again I'm not against charter schools per se I understand choice I am

▶ 42:29 I respect parents choice all right but that formula from day one has never been fair if you want to tell me that money follows the kid well when my per pupil was only ten five why was I giving them fourteen three for 265 four kids times four four thousand three hundred dollars is a lot of money to my kids that's the political piece of this and again I'm not holding you personally responsible but I see no will in the legislature to take this on and again nobody is saying just believe me I don't want the child of kids back I have no space for them that's the bottom line here I have no space for 264 kids but if you're going to tell me the money follows the kid then use the actual number that I am

▶ 43:17 that I am able to create for a per pupil it does though I'd have to look at those numbers Cindy but the way it's again the way it's calculated is the foundation budget for those students that are going to the charter school same way it's calculated for Melrose and then whatever the amount the percentage above that Melrose spends would be applied to that and it's a different calculation for every sending district to every charter school so it there should I don't know I'd have to go back and look at those numbers but that's not the case I mean it's the same tuition rate that or spending that would be the case in the in the home district so it strikes me that we could talk about that facilities

▶ 43:57 fee piece right which does get reimbursed we could talk about all of these things for hours and hours and we're clearly gonna have to have you back and I think the ideal time would be when your committee's work is is done with regard to updating the formula miss McAndrew you had another question before we wrap this up well I mean I just like to emphasize that there was an increase in funding correct in which in the in the in the funding currently for Melrose it was it was yeah there was an increase in funding and you're working to correct the formula that would be correct as well correct all right all right thank you miss McAndrew yes thank you I mean I'm not gonna you know beat a dead horse

▶ 44:53 Jennifer McAndrew: here I agree with what everyone has said I just think I actually think and I completely endorsed the comments about charter schools and I know I mean I actually think sometimes we look too much at that though because even if in this formula now and I know you're working to change it great in the just the chapter 70 line though and you know forget about the Winchester and Belmont of the world but in Stoneham it's an eight hundred thousand dollar increase in the chapter 70 line for a district that has 2,400 kids and where ours is you know 186 and change for a district with four four thousand kids so that's where I think and I know there's actually I think all of their I guess the more specific you can be with us and with the community about what are the

▶ 45:49 Jennifer McAndrew: drivers in that formula that make it come out like that forget about the charter we get it that we're getting gouged no question about it but on just the formula itself I think it's helpful I mean you've laid out some of the pieces the health insurance the sped reimbursements the transportation ELL the way we account for ELL English language learners and low-income students but you know I think and there's historical legacy pieces in this to if certain towns you know only got the minimum and and now that you know I get all that but I think the more specific you can be with us the better and I and so maybe it's not now but I just wait examples of why is it just why is it this I mean Stoneham is a Camilla community you're familiar with so just a

▶ 46:43 couple of four examples of why their chapter 70 formula would come out that way compared to Melrose um you get about the Charter if you if you talk to Stoneham historically they will tell you that they have been extremely disadvantaged by the chapter 70 formula and in fact that was one of their major complaints for years and years that they got significantly less than pick the community that they would compare themselves to so they would not feel I I think if you spoke to them that they've been you know benefit or advantaged in this particular year they might have but it's some of this changes year to year as well you know you this particular year our community what a community a might get more money than community B next year could be you know

▶ 47:34 that would not not be the case it I know it's I know it's it's very bewildering and it's hard to it's hard to explain you know but that it is that isn't it It isn't necessarily the case, I know, for example, we mentioned Wakefield, they will compare themselves to Reading every year, and we'll say that they, you know, we're similar and they get more money than we do per pupil. And that is true in absolute dollars today, but in any given year, sometimes one community actually ends up getting more money than the other. So yeah, I'm happy to take, because I hear the concern around the room and the desire to sort of really try to understand this. Whatever would be most helpful, Paul and I would be happy to,

▶ 48:18 if it's a matter of literally sitting down and going through spreadsheets together, or if you want us to share a PowerPoint presentation that gets into more of the detail here, that helps you all, helps members of the public who are trying to understand this. You know, whatever you think would be most helpful, you know, happy to do that, because it is a very important issue, and you know, under any circumstances, anytime, particularly important because you know this is a major topic that the state government is and legislature is tackling right now well we'll certainly give that question some thought in advance of you coming back and try to structure this in a way that works for everybody and gets the most useful

▶ 49:01 Paul Brodeur: amount of information out to the members any any final comments thoughts comments from either of you two things there is a significant piece of legislation around vocational education that Senator Lewis and I are working on it's been built by very impressive coalition of folks from kind of across business and labor and education within the vocational space I'd urge you to take a look at it's a fairly complex bill with a lot of with a lot of moving parts it's really designed to focus in part on workforce readiness and making sure we're meeting the needs of all students and I know how important that is to all of you and I guess the only other thing I would do is thank the superintendent for her full-throated

▶ 49:49 endorsement of my charter school reform bill that I described earlier today that is outstanding and I will take that back to the Statehouse with me great well representative Broder Senator Lewis thank you both very very much for all all the work you're doing on behalf of our community and the Commonwealth we appreciate it well thanks for great discussion thanks for all the questions and again really happy to follow up in any way that works best for the committee we'll certainly take you up on that thank you very much next on our agenda the accelerated improvement plan presentation by the superintendent madam superintendent thank you so this is our second round as you know two years ago based on our experience at Horace Mann we decided to change to this

▶ 50:36 model I believe mr. Obronski was intimately involved with that first time around at Horace Mann as a member of the school site council and the school site councils and the principals report to me that they really enjoy this model it gives them a chance to dig deeper and to create really more personalized plans having said that a couple of things Lincoln if you remember last year because we had a new principal we let her report out late so she's not begin they're not beginning a new two-year cycle they're in year two of a dip of a plan and I've extended the same consideration to dr. best at the middle school so that he can put his stamp on a plan and come up with a new plan by November that'll reflect what he sees as needed there in the meanwhile you have

▶ 51:29 plans from the other five buildings and what I would would say to you is I'll take questions but when I went through them for common themes you'll see there is a large emphasis on how we build out inclusive schools there is a lot of conversation about the use of universal design for learning to create best practices work around social-emotional learning and positive behavior intervention and strategies there are schools that do recognize some academic challenges the Hoover for math the Horace man for reading the Roosevelt for math and the Winthrop for math and they do have action plans for that and you will notice that the high school is really focused on how they communicate to families so that they can be more engaged and have more of a say in what's

▶ 52:22 happening at the high school as well as the maintenance of that facility which is which I will be addressing with the mayor in the capital improvement plan that work as well so there are some common themes here again this is a this is a living document it should not be well here's a plan and put it on a shelf they they update it over the course of the year they know that if they find a goal was not realistic or too high or too low they have the right to revisit that and and change that goal so that it reflects what is happening in the building at any given time one of the conversations that I have had with a couple of principals is they're a little bit skittish about doing that they don't know if they have to bring it back to you if they do that but they found that

▶ 53:10 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: first first round there were some goals they easily achieved and they could have either extended or replaced so that's some thought we have to give to this process by it being a two-year process very good mr. school please yeah I just want to say thank you to all of the members of the school site councils who give a lot of time and a lot of effort to engage in in difficult work that's not always their profession during the workday and it's excellent work on behalf of all the students and the staff in their schools so thank you to them for giving of their time very good any further comments or questions mr. Thomas please um so I was looking at the Lincoln one in comparison comparing Lincoln one to the other elementary school improvement plans and I it's

▶ 54:04 great to have individuality and that but the Lincoln one is really long and now it's very out of date and I guess and there's certainly even within it there's still a ton to work on so I know it's not completely irrelevant by any means But I'm a little concerned about it because I don't know if it's fair to our current principal to have to be holding on to. She wrote this with them. So it looks like it's an old one from 2017, 2018. The DIBELS data in it is from 2017, 2018. And so I'm worried about that data being really old. and then that makes me concerned that people will say that we're not being transparent we're not doing tables pop up up you know that I think there could be a misperception around that and then because the language and the way that

▶ 55:00 they're measuring the data is slightly different than other elementary schools because they do these three tiers and they do ambitious typical not typical the green yellow red now all the schools do they do okay so that's a standard way that's the standard for tables they're just they're just they just they they were just very specific okay and in fairness to and again what I hesitate and I meet with all the school site councils to talk about their plan and what they were thinking and again I did this is the school site councils plan it's not the superintendent's plan so I try to have that balance where I respect what they feel is important to them and try to guide them so that it's realistic

▶ 55:42 and it's doable yeah and their plan when they did it last year with Miss st. George it really came out of the difficult situation they were in with with Jenny Cordick mm-hmm and the school site council really wanted to almost have a map as opposed to an action plan so I think it is to some degree to your point maybe too much and I'll be very interested to see what they do the next round and in next June it is a learning curve also what happens is to some degree like school committees school site councils turn over and often the the goals of a plan reflect the people who are on the school site council they are supposed to take into account the data but sometimes things are important to them that they want to capture and and again what I think you

▶ 56:39 see in Lincoln is that uncertain period of time for sure and they had the change over in the principle understandable and I thought so the dibbles data just so everyone knows is looking through this this is not the last time that they've been rebels no there's plenty of dibbles being done at the Lincoln right right so we have that data for 1819 I can have her update that piece I just think that's right because all she because we don't want someone to be like oh they're not doing dibbles at length no that's a good catch because you know all she did was give me the plan with it so and then what was the other thing I wanted to mention I just think what I know from working in a school myself is that you

▶ 57:20 Jennifer McAndrew: can every year you have incredibly ambitious goals and you want to get so much done and if you're not really focused on the core things that's right three or four things you can lose focus and not get you wind up not doing things really well because you're trying to do so many things right right but anyway that's my little yeah and that's the discussion I've had with with all the principles about that and then that's all I think I had for now thank you very good miss McAndrew please um thank you and I also want to thank everyone who serves on these site councils I know it's a lot of work for the community there's community members educators and parents who all volunteer and I one of the things I just I really liked about

▶ 58:08 Jennifer McAndrew: seeing them all together like this is that you can see the common themes as you mentioned that make us a district and the common challenges but also each one has its own sort of interesting school based opportunities and challenges and also approaches to solving those district-wide challenges so just encourage everyone I know it's a lot of pages and sometimes you know these are all posted on school websites is that right mm-hmm so I encourage on the new ones will go up folks to at home to read the the council plan that AIP for your school where your children are and and because you know because you may see things happening in the school and wonder I wonder why they're doing that and well this might be the reason and and the other thing is I just wondered

▶ 58:57 Jennifer McAndrew: about you know there's a couple really interesting or newer new approaches in here the Roosevelt has some ideas around matching new families with families who have been in the school for a while or even reaching out to other communities to learn about how think how about families and other communities and as you mentioned the high school plan is actually quite different because it's focused on these two big challenges of facilities and communication how do they then share like let's say something works really really well that could be applied in another school to the site councils share feedback with each other no no no not really you know we've done occasionally we've done a midwinter meeting with the site council meet so that they can meet and

▶ 59:43 talk about you know their writing and how they feel about the process but again the sharing becomes among the principals okay the the principals the elementary principals have their own district leadership team beside the two that they meet with me every month and the two secondary principals have their own leadership team the high school in the middle school it's a little easier because we really look at as a campus so a lot gets shared including staff as you know but the elementary principals will often problem-solve together about how are you handling this how are you handling this what are you finding you know that's some of the things that have come out out of the PBIS that we have found so for example you'll see a lot of reference to tier 1 and tier 2

▶ 1:00:28 interventions because there's a lot of conversation about that we're struggling with the tier 2 interventions some people are doing it better than others you know so that's where the sharing happens thank you any further comments or questions seeing none superintendent you've suggested that you're looking for vote from the committee before these are posted accordingly is there a motion to approve the school improvement plans as presented made by mr. Ozzie Thomas seconded by miss McAndrew any further discussion seeing none all those in favor and that motion to approve passes with five in favor and two absent thank you all very much for that and thank you superintendent for the presentation next

▶ 1:01:14 on our agenda is the public comment portion of our meeting without objection the public comment portion of the meeting is open are there any members of the public who wish to address the committee mr moroz welcome good evening um a couple things i'd like to speak about tonight one of them is you know if if people here want to engage in issues of chapter 70 and how that plays out you know there's a it's a complicated spreadsheet but you can get into it and figure it out to sit here and whine about it is not making Melrose schools any better in any way we hear the the righteous talk from here all the time about that the money you get is a lot of money your job is to figure out how to best apply that money to get the best results for our students and you

▶ 1:02:23 know frankly it's it it's not pretty when you try to lay the problems of the Melrose schools on some external thing when you have the complete control in this room between the school committee and superintendent about what happens in the Melrose schools in terms of the Mystic Valley charter school we give them our average per pupil money and they do with it what they do with it you know Melrose just had a new contract we could have had a lot of extended school day we gave teachers more money we could have gotten something out of it we get the tiniest little bit you know the morsels for our kids you have the power you just don't use it that's the problem in this room and what i want to talk about next is the issue of the the superintendent's

▶ 1:03:14 evaluation you know as is typical here superintendent tamer gets a lot of exemplaries and a few proficients however is anybody looking at what these things actually say and what what you're supposed to be rating her on instructional leadership the implication from the summary here is that oh somehow we have competency-based education going on here and aren't we wonderful we don't have competency-based education in melrose again the litmus tests i use year by year i don't you know i can look further i don't really need to but as long as we take every kid from fifth grade who got in the fifth grade mcas advanced in math and put them together with every kid in the fifth grade that got you know below expectations not meeting expectations in math on

▶ 1:04:03 the on the mcas and put them together and teach them the same thing in sixth grade at the middle school it does none of them any good competency-based education would say hey you know these fifth graders that know this stuff put them up where they know what they can learn something give them an opportunity and conversely you know these are fifth graders that don't yet know or now sixth graders that don't yet know the fifth grade material or the fourth grade material competency-based education would say let's put them in a classroom teaching them what they need to know and to disrespect both learners i don't think that's exemplary it's not exemplary you know the students below the grade level do you know what actually happens to them they get into

▶ 1:04:48 the quote wonderful inclusion class teaching them sixth grade stuff that they can't they can't engage with because they're not ready for it and then we punish them by making them take another class that day in a math lab class in there trying to teach them the stuff that we really should be teaching them as a primary thing this is not exemplary instructional leadership i'm sorry at the same time fiscal systems i don't know how many of you school committee members know this but you know for years here i came and said what are these millions of dollars or quarter million dollars of spending on school security. Nobody cared to look at it. I noticed it in the reports we sent to DESE at the end of the year. I noticed it year by year by year. And every year I came

▶ 1:05:35 here and said, what are these things here? I didn't beat you up over it. I was asking a question. Nobody ever answered the question. Apparently nobody had ever bothered. This spring, back in May, I sent a simple request to the superintendent's office. I said, please show me what the school security money spent last year was. What was it on? And then I, oh, I want to actually, before I tell you that, I want to say the representation made year after year after year, and through the whole override processes, oh, we have three different people auditing these things. There's nothing that gets by there that ever would be wrong. Everything's correct there. There's no problems anywhere. Well, hello, now I get an admission from the superintendent's

▶ 1:06:19 office that 10 years ago they did something different, made a mistake, and they've reported $5 million of expenses in school security that were never spent on school security. I mean, I was sitting here saying, how are we spending a million and a half dollars in school security? We weren't doing it. I don't see how anybody here can authentically say that fiscal systems is exemplary in Melrose. I want to jump down to standard for shared vision continuously gauge engages all stakeholders in the creation of a shared educational vision in which every student is prepared to succeed in post-secondary education and become a responsible citizen and global contributor again there's no shared vision here. The school department never invites the community, the parents, and the parents

▶ 1:07:17 represent the actual target of our education system, the students, to get together and say what's working here, what's not working here. In fact, time after time after time, the school system squeezes out the parents. And I want to say I have probably been to more school site council meetings in Melrose than any person in Melrose because I've gone to all different elementary schools middle school high school I've monitored what goes on there there is nothing sophisticated or authentic that comes out of the school site council process yes it's still the statutory process but there's nothing that happens there that somehow is that these why you know um contribute contributions from parents that have any kind of gravitas

▶ 1:08:08 toward making our schools be what they need to be you know mr burroughs that's well over five minutes if you could just wrap up i will appreciate it thank you you know the school committee has a job to do your job is to push the envelope it's not to keep patting somebody in back saying oh whatever you're doing is wonderful you're exemplary and at the same time next year's budget could be starting right now you have time you have a light agenda you could be looking at not the money not the money but the priorities the relative allocations what is this position doing to benefit students versus this position doing to benefit students i don't see that if you don't do that you know don't come whining next february and march and say oh we only have six weeks to

▶ 1:08:58 look at this we have to rush through it and look at nothing that's the hypocrisy that comes out of this body year after year after year you're all good individual people but collectively you're not getting the job done that you could do the people who pay the price are the future students children of melrose because they don't get what they need thank you for your time thank you mr morose in seeing no further members of the public present uh without objection the public comment period is now closed that brings us to the announcements of the superintendent of schools madam superintendent thank you mr o'connell i just want to give you update on where we are with registrations it's been a little bit busy this last report was run over a week ago

▶ 1:09:40 at that time June 22nd we had 335 students registered for K I compared it to last year at August 1st at August 1st of last year we had 337 so we are right in line with what we had last year at this time of year when we opened last year we had 334 but by the time we did the October 1 census it had dropped to 321 so it is unfortunate not everybody informs us when they're moving or deciding not to come we have asked the principals to keep us abreast of any changes and literally all I have gotten at this point is a handful of changes tomorrow we're doing the hardship appeals and i am very concerned because the class sizes are still running very high and while there are a lot of families who want their first choice

▶ 1:10:42 at horace mann my k's are right now 23 and 24. at roosevelt my k's are 18 for the integrated 23 and 24. at winthrop they're 22 23 23 at lincoln it's 18 for the integrated and 22 and 23 a little bit of play there and at hoover where i have the most play is 20 20 21. um the franklin is small those are two integrated and right now one integrated is at 16 one integrated is 15. so um 15 was that last number 15. those are both integrated integrated as a capped at 18 as you know so um i am concerned about the appeals process the number of people who may have very real need but quite frankly um we cannot push these classes much higher we certainly cannot go above 25 as you all know not only do we have new have a new contractual

▶ 1:11:41 Jennifer McAndrew: language but you're also impacting learning in that room especially among the kindergarteners and so we are going to be faced with some hard decisions tomorrow of which i wanted you to be be aware very good any comments or questions miss McAndrew just a quick question on that thank you it's very helpful I know you don't like to do this I assume but do you ever would you move students in the first few weeks if say you do realize like oh this person moved to Medford or whatever we keep the waitlist open until November 1st obviously the later you get into the school year the harder it is on the child of course but we do but we do do that and if student if families hardship appeals are denied you let them know

▶ 1:12:33 that yes okay yeah thank you any further comments or questions this Rosie Thomas I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether there's gonna be any supports in the kindergarten classrooms we have a para for every two kindergarten classrooms the integrators have a full-time times special ed para we have a general kindergarten para shared between every two classrooms and then we're going to have the additional building para that we was voted in the override and that's used at the principal's discretion so it's still pretty thin it's still pretty thin okay thank you any further comments questions seeing none Thank You superintendent that brings us to the consent agenda which this evening consists of the following items the

▶ 1:13:22 school committee regular meeting minutes for June 25 2019 a donations memo the annual concussion report the monthly budget summary the personnel report for July 2019 and the warrants as follows FY 19 June meals tax s 1 9 0 5 9 and the amount of 18 dollars and 86 cents FY 19 high school wire transfer for the month of June S19060, the amount of $9,888.74. FY19 MVMMS wire transfer for the month of June S19061, the amount of $2,956. FY20 school S20001, the amount of $218,041.36. And finally, FY20 debit card for the month of June, S20002, in the amount of $2,010. Are there any items which any member wishes to remove from the consent agenda? Ms. Driscoll. Would you kindly remove the minutes of June 25th, 2019?

▶ 1:14:29 Certainly, and that will go to announcements of the chair. Ms. McAndrew. Could you please remove the personnel report? Thank you. Certainly, and that will go to programs and personnel. Any further items? Ms. Razzi-Thomas. Please remove the Monthly Budget Summary FY19, Budget June, your date. Certainly, and that will go to Finance and Facilities. Any further items? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the balance of the Consent Agenda? So moved. Made by Ms. Driscoll. Second. Seconded by Ms. Razzi-Thomas. All those in favor? carries with six in favor and one absent thank you all very much for that and that brings us to the work of our subcommittees first up is policy and planning with miss Crisco thank you mr. O'Connell this evening we have one item

▶ 1:15:31 on the policy and planning a subcommittee agenda the 2019 2020 amended school calendar a vote will be required this evening and I will invite the superintendent to speak to the document that's in our packets please Thank You Mr. Driscoll as you know when you ratify the new teachers contract in June it includes two more half days for the elementary schools only for the purposes of planning and placement after the boy beginning of year assessments and then at the end of the year for placement in the next grade so we had to amend the calendar with those two dates and those are in gray with that explanation I would invite for purposes a discussion for discussion a motion for approval of the amended school calendar so moved second made by a chairman

▶ 1:16:28 O'Connell seconded by mayor Inferno discussion mr. Ozzie Thomas I just want to verify so the first half day that's elementary only is September 18th and that's the and then it's June 3rd and that means two hours prior to the end of yes okay for the discussion on the motion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with one absent and that concludes policy and planning for this evening Thank You mr. school next up is educational programs personnel with mr obramsky his debut and which one was pulled that was the personnel report just wanted to get to the right document thank you welcome to the section of the meeting known as educational programs and personnel there's one item that was pulled from the consent agenda that

▶ 1:17:30 Jennifer McAndrew: is the personnel report for the sake of discussion could i get a motion to approve so moved second so moved by mr o'connell and seconded by miss driscoll all those in favor wait discussions discussion i'm sorry thank you discussion yes miss mcandrew uh thank you um i just had i just thank you for including this and um i just wanted to clarify my understanding of something with the superintendent um and for the public um on this report we see all of the changes in personnel status over the course of the month including people resign or move on to other positions but in the far-right category it some of the positions are are indicated as new positions and so that includes for example an ELA teacher at Melrose High School a guidance counselor and Melrose

▶ 1:18:33 Jennifer McAndrew: high school um a social studies teacher at the middle school etc um are we should we assume that those are um positions that are are new because of the funding provided through the budget process and the override yes okay so uh thank you for that i just want to call that out for the community so that people can see where those resources are going to new positions being added in this case the secondary level um and uh thank you for that and that was all uh could i get a motion to approve the motion i already have a motion could i take a vote on to approve the personnel report thank you all in favor thank you all opposed the motion passes unanimously with one absence thank you thank you mr rimsky and that brings us to finance and i'm sorry finance and facilities

▶ 1:19:31 with miss mccandre good evening everyone uh this is the finance and facilities subcommittee we have one item on our agenda today which is the monthly budget summary um for purposes of discussion is there a motion to approve so moved second made by mr o'connell seconded by mr driscoll discussion um mr azzy thomas thank you i wanted to um just uh make sure that people who are um I'm curious about where the money goes for the entire year. This is a summary of the entire year, correct, Superintendent? So if anyone is curious as to where the money has gone, what was appropriated versus what was used, what was revised, etc. Your dates expended, and conferences. It's just a great breakdown as to where all the money went.

▶ 1:20:40 And it also kind of shows the categories in which all the money is used and calculated and accounted for. And then it's important to know that all those mutis that we just approved go into all these little categories. So I just wanted people to know where it is for reference. and next year we'll have more money in those categories to use and so it it will be important for us to figure out other than the new hires what we're doing with that money and account for it along the way which i'm sure we'll do yes to uh and thank you for bringing this to everybody's attention miss rosie thomas uh just so that everybody uh is aware uh this also reflects a couple places where we had unexpected expenses we had two long-term absences

▶ 1:21:39 of teachers who you know by contract have the their sick days available to them and they so basically you're paying a double salary and also as you know because we've discussed it here the increase in collaborative tuition also came with an increase in transportation and that's also reflected here and that That was an uptick for us and we probably had a little bit of an uptick in our homeless transportation as well. That seems to rise and fall over the course of the year. We ended last year with 32, we began this year with 23 and I'm not quite sure what we ended with. So sometimes that impacts our transportation line as well. you have to basically transport the fam the students even if they wind up

▶ 1:22:31 somewhere else here right because the stabilizing factor in homeless child's life is school exactly home exactly so we the district that they were originally in if they're able to if they're within 30 minutes third no within more than it's more than 30 minutes within 60 minutes drive they can be bused here and it's the district is responsible for it so thank you thank you any other discussion seeing none all in favor and that carries unanimously with one absent and that concludes our business for finance and facilities today thank you thank you mr. McAndrew and that brings us to the announcements of the chair first up from the consent agenda the school committee regular meeting minutes uh for our meeting on june 25 2019 for purposes of discussion is there emotional

▶ 1:23:34 proof so moved made by miss razzie thomas second seconded by miss mcandrew any discussion seeing none all those in favor opposed abstentions and that passes with four in favor two one absent and two abstentions thank you for the help of the math much appreciate it i got that right thank you very much and that brings us uh to uh the superintendent's evaluation final report and comments this does require a vote uh as per our agreed upon process i did prepare a summary of our respective individual evaluations of the the superintendent's progress and as we all know and as the public should know we engage in this effort in accordance with a rubric that is dictated by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and we evaluate the

▶ 1:24:42 superintendent's progress against the standards within that rubric we decide on the standards that will be applicable and we do that based upon the superintendent's goals for the school year which we she presents and we vote on this year the evaluations were done in the areas of instructional leadership management and operations and professional culture the committee knows and the public may recall that this was last discussed when we last met on June 25th at that time members of the committee submitted that evening and thereafter their individual evaluations and there was an opportunity for discussion and discussion was had that evening so again in the packet I prepared an executive summary as the committee and public will note in the

▶ 1:25:39 area of instructional leadership miss Tame more earned an overall exemplary rating likewise in management and operations and in professional culture I've provided within each area a brief summary of the members comments identifying successes challenges and opportunities for growth and I've also provided the scores and those scores were exemplary and proficient throughout out there were no needs improvement or unsatisfactory ratings and again within each category Miss Tim Moore was rated exemplary and the overall rating not surprisingly was exemplary any comments or questions seeing none a vote is required to approve this and mr. school moves to approve thank you for that mr. school is there a second second seconded by mr obramsky any final discussion seeing none all

▶ 1:26:51 those in favor and that passes with six in favor and one absent thank you for that would you like to comment madam superintendent thank you mr o'connor and thank you all for your generosity and it really is generosity um i i i just want to point out a couple of things and and i to remind the public but a lot of this is about how I not me being personally responsible for some of this work but how I have my people hold my people accountable for their performance and some of you made some very relevant and worthwhile comments about you know the unevenness of some things and you know some schools are making more progress than others and that is the nature of the business and my job is to bring everybody along but what I really want

▶ 1:27:40 to comment on this year this year is is I have to thank not only my administrative team but the teachers this was a difficult year in terms of where I had to focus I had to focus on the override developing two budgets and very long and intense contract negotiations quite frankly none of which is my first love and I had to delegate a lot of what I really like to do to my administrative team and they really kept us going they kept us moving on all the goals we had they kept people engaged when it was necessary you know they pitched hit for me when I was involved in other things because of the other demands especially as you all know I also had some personal demands this year and I really well I thank you for your rating I really have to tell you without

▶ 1:28:42 my team none of this is possible because they really do they're the boots on the ground and they're the ones that do it every day so thank you for that thank you any further comments or questions from committee seeing none thank you all very much and thank you again superintendent and that brings us to the next item on our agenda which is the superintendent salary as the committee knows and is undoubtedly many in the public know as awkward as this can sometimes be we are required by law to discuss deliberate and vote on the superintendent salary in public we do this on an annual basis it would seem like this is something that would as a personnel matter would be an executive session but by law again it is not so here we are and just to provide some

▶ 1:29:31 context I took the opportunity to go back through the superintendent salary history and in this committee's history and in deliberating discussing and voting on the superintendent salary as most of us know the superintendent began employment with the city back in 2012 and was hired at a salary of $160,000 per year during her first year here our city finance officials made a decision that it was appropriate that there be some context and a frame of reference within which the school committee might make further pay increases and or evaluate the superintendent's salary and so a pay scale salary chart call it what you will was created in 2013 that is in the packet that's before us this evening thereafter beginning in that year 2013 the super the school committee followed

▶ 1:30:42 that salary schedule and increased the superintendent salary per the step increases in that chart again the chart that's in the packet the school committee did that again in 2014 and again in 2015 in 2016 at the request of the superintendent the school committee voted not to increase the superintendent salary and then thereafter in 2017 the school committee made a decision to move away from that salary schedule again that was prescribed by our city finance officials largely and people will correct me if I'm wrong but largely it It was about our limited finances and our ability to pay what we could pay. At the same time, at the superintendent's recommendation, if I recall correctly, the decision was to move away from the salary schedule and if there was to be any increase,

▶ 1:31:54 the superintendent recommended that it be in keeping with whatever our teachers were being paid. And that's exactly what the school committee did in 2017, in which year the superintendent was given a 2.5% increase. And likewise, in 2018, last year, again, recognizing our limited finances, recognizing what our teachers were being paid, the school committee voted on August 28th to increase the superintendent's salary by 2.25%. At that time, that brought the superintendent's salary to its current level of $183,238. And let me say this, and this can be seen by comparing that number with what the salary schedule calls for. Had the school committee continued to adhere to that salary structure, the superintendent's

▶ 1:32:55 salary would now be $191,048 with an expected increase, should there be one this year in accordance with that schedule, to $196,780. And again, the superintendent's salary is presently $183,238. So we're at a pace that's on the order of $8,000 less than what we would have been at had we kept to that schedule. So any comments or questions, discussion? And of course, the chair would be happy to entertain a motion. Ms. Driscoll, please. Through the chair to the superintendent, can you clarify what the teachers are receiving as an increase this year? It's a multi-tiered and complicated schedule that varies anywhere from three to three and a half, also with some market adjustments at the upper level, steps six through ten.

▶ 1:34:05 I'm looking at Ms. McAndrews, Mr. O'Connell refreshed my memory exactly, six through ten and masters masters above but at the lower end it's three percent at the upper end for simple simplicity it's 3.5 thank you so a three percent raise would bring uh the superintendent to 188 735 that's correct i have calculated correctly and a three and a half would bring the superintendent salary to 189 651 is that correct yes chairman o'connell that is correct what's the number thank you repeat again for three and a half three and a half one eight nine six five one thank you and again uh a three percent increase uh to 188 735 would be just slightly more than eight thousand dollars uh less than uh the schedule prescribed by the city finance

▶ 1:35:16 officials so thank you i would uh may i continue please oh any any further discussion signan you had a motion mr yes i would like to make a motion um to raise the superintendent's salary by three and a half percent and the reason i'm doing that is for two reasons one is um Because of the fact that she did skip that year and her salary differential is substantive. And the second is that her rating for two years in a row has been exemplary. And the accolades from across the state, the folks who want to come and see our district, see the performance of our students and staff, I think has been a model around the commonwealth. And I think that particular raise is not out of order with the teachers, especially as

▶ 1:36:10 the superintendent spoke to the higher end of the scale, and is certainly in keeping with executive pay for a position in charge of 500, correct me if I'm wrong, 500 staff, 450 staff members. That is 24-7. Thank you, Chairman O'Connell. Second. So the motion, thank you, Mr. Abramski, the motion is to increase the superintendent's salary 3.5% to a new salary of $189,651. That motion was made by Ms. Driscoll. It's been seconded by Mr. Abramski. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? And that passes with six in favor and one absent thank you all very much and thank you superintendent for your patience thank you I'm a little bit surprised but thank you very much I appreciate and I appreciate your recognition of the work

▶ 1:37:16 we're doing here in Melrose absolutely and that brings us to the next item on our announcements of the chair which is selection of committee delegate and alternate to the mass association of school committees as the committee will recall mr. sound currently serves as our delegate and I serve as the alternate if my memory is correct it has been an exhausting duty I can report and so let me ask this if I get over the floor are there any members of the committee wish or who are interested in serving as a delegate to the mass association school committees not everyone at once please you know for those who have done this before what is it involved you have to go to the conference well I mean there

▶ 1:38:22 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: must be if you could speak to this so yes so the delegate portion of the the meeting is I think this year going to be held on Wednesday afternoon and you attend along with all of the other delegates. You must have registered and so Mr. O'Connell as the chairman will register the individual who is ultimately selected. And that notifies the MASC that there is one delegate and you receive identification thereof. And then you attend the meeting. So there is a booklet that includes suggested legislative topics, if you will, or things to be discussed, and motions are made just as they are here. I will say that it is often a lively discussion with a variety of opinions from around the state. So it can be certainly educational in its own right and entertaining.

▶ 1:39:29 I think you're really going to like it, Ms. McCandless. I was trying to be very diplomatic. It's very interesting. Madam Mayor, did you have a question? I was just wondering if Ms. DeSelm made any sort of interest through you to do it again? She has not, although I'm sure if we selected her, she'd be happy to serve. and I know she's served capably in past years when is that conference it is the day after Election Day because from Wednesday afternoon until Saturday at noon although people select different didn't you go down for the training when were first elected oh I went to a training with yeah yeah that was they didn't go to the one of the cars I went down to the training so you know how to

▶ 1:40:37 get there we'd like to see a little more enthusiasm then well we haven't voted yet so thank you I'm sure it's breaking several protocols but thank anyone else that wishes to serve as delegate is there anyone who wishes to serve as alternate. Ms. Razzi-Thomas, thank you very much. So, given that discussion and those folks putting themselves forward, much appreciated. Is there a motion to approve Ms. McAndrew as delegate and Ms. Razzi-Thomas as alternate? So moved. Made by Ms. Driscoll. Second. Second by Mayor Inferna. Any final discussion? Seeing none, all all those in favor we're voting for you as a pack this is a package deal the gents that is a clear six in favor with one absent thank you both truly very

▶ 1:42:02 much and we wish you the best of luck you stay very very healthy mr. Gander next up under announced to the chair the approval of the site council election process madam superintendent so again as required within the first 40 days of the school year we have to hold our elections and each school has to determine how many members of their site council that they need so what you have here is an outline of what they hit currently have what they need for FY 20 sometimes it's they have people whose terms overrun overlap excuse me and sometimes they have people who everybody shares the same start and end date so that's what you have here it needs to be voted by the committee very good for purposes of discussion is there a motion to approve the process is outlined so

▶ 1:42:56 moved made by mr. Ozzie Thomas seconded by miss McAndrew any discussion seeing none all those in favor and that process is approved six in favor with one absent Thank you, Superintendent. Thank you. And last but not least, under announcements of the Chair, liaison reports. Do we have any? Seeing none, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Moved by Mr. Obremski. Second. Seconded by Mayor Inferno. All those in favor? And that passes unanimously with one absent, and we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone, again.

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