School Committee — 2019-10-29

Agenda

1. Superintendent's Update (33:22)
2. MHS Field Trip Request - Spanish Exchange (35:09)
3. Warrants (35:55)
4. METCO Update (15 minutes) (37:03)
5. Mid-cycle Program Review: Wellness (30 minutes) (1:00:46)
6. Beebe School (30 minutes) (1:25:01)
7. FY20 Enrollment (15 minutes) (2:17:45)
8. MHS Girls Hockey User Fee (5 minutes) vote required (2:35:30)
9. Annual Review of Policy IJND and IJNDB (5 minutes) vote required (2:48:50)
10. Beebe School: Review of Plan, Parameters for Public Forum (10 minutes) (2:54:55)
11. Liaison Reports (5 minutes) (2:56:40)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE MELROSE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES● OCTOBER 29, 2019 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Regular Meeting 7:00 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176

(ID # 7567) Announcements - Superintendent Superintendent's Update

(ID # 7571) Consent MHS Field Trip Request - Spanish Exchange Adopted

(ID # 7560) Educational Programs and Personnel METCO Update (15 minutes)

(ID # 7551) Educational Programs and Personnel Mid-cycle Program Review: Wellness (30 minutes)

(ID # 7562) Educational Programs and Personnel Beebe School (30 minutes)

(ID # 7561) Educational Programs and Personnel FY20 Enrollment (15 minutes)

(ID # 7570) Finance and Facilities MHS Girls Hockey User Fee (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 7564) Policy and Planning Annual Review of Policy IJND and IJNDB (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 7565) Announcements - Chair Beebe School: Review of Plan, Parameters for Public Forum (10 minutes)

(ID # 7566) 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 1 Updated 11/4/2019 3:13 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Good evening one and all welcome to this meeting of the Melrose School Committee for this 29th day of October in the year 2019. For the record let me state that this meeting is being recorded. As is our custom let us stand as we are able for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you very much. First up on our agenda is the report of the student representatives. I'm happy to see Miss Donahue and Miss Foley with us. I understand that you don't have a report per se but you'll be participating in the meeting. is that correct? Yes. Great, thank you very much and again welcome nice to have you with us. Next on our agenda is the public comment portion of our meeting. This is the portion of the meeting when members of the public are afforded the

▶ 1:00 opportunity to address the committee on matters that are before the committee or otherwise within the jurisdiction or authority of the committee. We generally afford members of the public five minutes each to address the committee. All of that said and without objection the public comment period is now open. are there any members of the public who wish to address the committee if so please come forward one by one and introduce yourselves and if you could sign in please that would be appreciated mr. Williams welcome my name is Ryan Williams thank you for having me I would like to talk a little bit about the BB school proposal which I have read through and have a few a few questions on so in reading through the proposal I had a few questions on the content and

▶ 2:04 Ryan Williams: the substance of it that I wanted to raise in the hopes that some of the members of the committee could provide some further information to help me understand I'm a parent for some background I'm a parent of a fifth grader at Hoover I also have a three-year-old boy who is that currently at teachable moments, the old Chime Time building. And so for me, the act of maneuvering the kindergarten program has a lot of impact because I could potentially be looking at a split kindergarten enrollment, and I'm also canvassing a lot for my own election, so I've met with a lot of residents who are similarly concerned about some of the changes and just want a little bit more clarity on some points. So the first thing I wanted to ask is I wanted to challenge the enrollment projections just

▶ 2:47 Ryan Williams: a bit um it's not clear to me from reading the uh the background of the studies that these numbers are taking um more than birth rates and survival rates into account certainly in melrose we don't have a birth rate issue right we have a problem in housing turnover where people are moving out of homes and some of the people moving into the single-family housing market bring with them a number of kids so i just would like to to know whether or not the enrollment projections include move-ins um or if they just include birth rates i was a little i noticed that the proposal options seemed to be a little uneven the first proposal presented a lot of challenges and negative language i i review proposals for a living so it's one of the things that i do at my in my day job

▶ 3:34 Ryan Williams: the second cons consisted of more positive language and so i would like to hear more about the cons of the second cheaper option as well as the pros of the first cheaper option it would be nice to have that information laid out kind of sequentially and in parallel so that people who are reading through the two options can understand clearly what the pros and cons are summarized in one place i did notice and i'm sorry to be pedantic about this but i noticed the typo here or there and and as a professional who works with proposals like this all the time especially when they are rich in data seeing a typo anywhere concerns me because it's a question of whether or not there are other typos present in the

▶ 4:14 Ryan Williams: document and when you're dealing with with numbers on this scale and this complexity I just like to know that that everything is has been thoroughly reviewed as far as the substance goes my primary concern is to ensure that the school system in this committee doesn't vote for a proposal that acts as a short-term bandage on what is sure to be a long-term problem certainly what I've heard from my own resume I guess I'm not elected yet what I've heard from my own neighbors is that they have concerns around classroom sizes and while I understand the desire to act on a shorter term option to increase kindergarten enrollment my concern is how that then bubbles up through the grades as people move on to the other elementary schools I'm speaking here as

▶ 5:00 Ryan Williams: a parent i'm not an expert in education so if i'm totally off off base i hope somebody will remind me after the public comment period closes i'm also concerned that splitting up the kindergarten population can increase car adoption in mulrose as a member of the ped bike committee we're always thinking about ways to lessen people's reliance on cars and if i have a five-year-old who is going to be a first grader next year at hoover and then my three-year-old ends up at the bb or the franklin we only have one car and we're proud to only have one car and there's no way that we could make that drop off work by splitting the kindergarten enrollment program uh i understand that the k through five option is more expensive however i think that for the city of melrose maybe

▶ 5:43 Ryan Williams: it's time to start thinking about those more expensive longer term more permanent solutions that can provide lots of capacity not not just in the next few years but in the future i think about the way that a lot of capital projects in the state are shaping up where committees all over are weighing their options and deciding to go for the big ticket if it's the one that meets the goals most effectively and so I would also like to see a projection in here of which how number by number how the school system might fare enrollment wise with classroom sizes based on each option throughout the entire cohort of K through five you know in response to the question of whether or not the bubble in kindergarten will kind of distribute

▶ 6:25 Ryan Williams: into the classrooms and the other schools evenly or whether it will just kind of move up and then you'll have a huge number of people in a first grade program but generally if there's one takeaway I would just like it to be that I think that we really need to honor the the spirit of the override vote put money into good solutions that fix the problem long term and ensure that the Melrose public school system is healthy and sustainable and welcoming not just for kindergartners and not just for the next few years but for the next few decades terrific Thank You mr. Williams we appreciate it are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee this evening welcome sir evening my name is Patrick Baxter I live at 20 Gooch Street parent

▶ 7:19 of a three-year-old and a one-year-old so apologies I guess my contributor to your future kindergarten problem here I have kind of two concerns with the information that was in the presentation one is that the first alternative shows that you need 12 new teachers to handle making it a full K through 5 well the second one doesn't assume 12 new teachers and it's unclear to me why you need all those new teachers in all one but not in all two because you would presumably have the same number of students total just kind of playing around with a math currently you have about 22 students per teacher that would lower it to 19 I mean obviously the enrollments continuing to increase but it seems like the number of students you have is kind of a similar problem no

▶ 7:56 matter what so I would think as you move students if you moved all the K through five into the new school that presumably you can move some number of the teachers as well but maybe there's something in the background there that I'm I'm not aware of and the second is to kind of echo what Ryan said there is the concern about having all the kindergarteners in one or two locations I think does have the substantial chance to increase the number of parents driving to the school not just because of split drop-offs but just because you know with five neighborhood schools or your kindergarten classes the number of people that live within say half a mile or a mile of the school that are able to walk is much higher if you move them all into two central locations there's a lot

▶ 8:37 more people who are just too far to be able to walk to the school and are therefore likely going to drive and especially just having been past the BEEB school there's not really a lot of room for parents to be picking up and drop off there so I'd be concerned that by kind of concentrating activity in one two locations you're going to kind of create these nodes of traffic and additional driving that wouldn't exist if you kept the students spread out in the neighborhood schools so that's why two comments very good Thank You mr. Baxter we appreciate it are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee miss Loveland welcome my name is Lisa Loveland and I live at 188 Florence Street and you can literally throw

▶ 9:32 stone from my front door to the Beebe school I want to speak tonight about two main issues one is that you consider some options other than the two that were proposed in the second is that we allow for a really really robust community conversation about the future of the Beebe school opening the Beebe school is not just an opportunity to address acute issues of our growing elementary age population. It is an opportunity to reset the conversation on how to strengthen our walkable community schools. There's some quick stats that I want to give you. First of all, from 1969 until 2009, the percentage of kids who walked to school nationally dropped from 48 percent to just 13 percent. Walking is a fundamental benefit to living in

▶ 10:35 Melrose. A recent study in Washington, D.C. shows that the top performing schools are the ones in walkable neighborhoods. Kids, especially boys, who walk to school are more active and more physically fit. Kids who walk to school likely have greater opportunities to spend time in social groups and and grow social capital. But that's not all. A 2012 Danish study concluded that kids who walk to school or bike perform measure measurably better on tests demanding concentration for up to four hours after getting to school each day it is really really important that we work toward neighborhood schools and make the BB a neighborhood school similar to what you just heard my question is we have one plan that pulls kindergartners and preschool teachers from a from one

▶ 11:34 location puts them at the BB for a little to no cost we have another one that creates the BB from nothing and costs substantially a lot but there seems to be a middle ground here we significantly increased the size of the this the classes at the Roosevelt and the Lincoln when this bubble began to first hit our schools there seems that there's got to be a way to take some of those classes especially the current third and fourth grade classes where there's four in each of those schools and bring them to the BB that would that would bring the those classes to the BB back to your no cost or low cost but start to fill the BB up with students and the benefit of bringing back those music and and computer classrooms that we lost at both of those schools during

▶ 12:32 this time period I just feel that it is very very important that we look to making our schools more walkable and more neighborhood one of the problems that we've had over the past couple of years is that the school the ranking of how schools are assigned has put parental choice over location of student and that has led to situations where students who live very very close to one school are assigned to a different school and thereby being driven by their parents to the school instead of walking the kindergarten and elementary school situation also as you just heard is going to lead to a situation where we're to have kids who are not walking and they're going to have to be driven to school i'm asking

▶ 13:24 you for the benefit of our students to consider an a different plan and to possibly look at other options but most importantly i'd like to see us have a really robust community conversation around this issue where community import input is taken and considered thank you very much thank you miss loveland much appreciated are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee ms o'leary welcome thank you i was going to wait originally to speak during the public forum but i just want to get sort of another perspective on the issues regarding the Bebe so my family we've lived here in Melrose for ten years we have a son who's currently in the second grade at the Winthrop school and a daughter who's

▶ 14:23 in preschool and our house is located pretty much right between the Roosevelt and the Bebe schools where point four miles from the Roosevelt and point six miles from the Bebe however we were placed at the Winthrop and at first I was a little concerned about not going to the school within our neighborhood and what would my son do with his friends in the neighborhood weren't at the same school but it's turned into the greatest experience for him he loves the winthrop has great friends great relationships with his teachers he's just taken to heart the core values that the winthrop has as far as their reach and he's grown to have friends that are not only just neighborhood friends but friends at his school and my concern is for the families that are located in the bb

▶ 15:09 school community who currently attend school outside of their neighborhood what would happen to us would we get the option to choose if we want to stay within the school that we're at the school that our families love or would we be forced to automatically switch to the BB so that's something that I'm just hoping to get a better understanding of how the process would work very good thank you very much are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee mr. Moroz welcome I do hope we'll have ample opportunity to explore the best ways to use the BB to obtain the best educational outcomes for our children as much as we need to do so many other things in the world like save the planet the job here is to get done for the children what they need

▶ 16:16 I want to jump back to a few issues from the last school committee meeting that were troubling as I heard them you know historically there's always a presentation by the school committee in the schools that everything is wonderful that under your control and the only things that give you any constraints are lack of funding there's often an implication that oh don't don't ask questions about what happens behind the scenes because we're doing all beautifully and wonderfully but at the last meeting a few things stood out to me that we're glaring defects in the analytical tools of this district and even beyond that. Number one, a revolving fund by definition can't go negative, but yet in your revolving

▶ 17:07 fund report you showed a negative balance and it was only for a few days supposedly, but that goes absolutely against the construct of a revolving fund. Revolving funds are supposed to be for typically like, you know, you put on a musical in the the spring and you get lots of receipts from the gate at the musical and then you want to keep that over to pay for the rights and the set materials for the next year something like that it's not that you can just go and you can't even encumber more funds in a revolving fund than are available in them yet that passed by everybody in this room without anybody mentioning that basic function of a revolving account why would we expect that we can trust you with more

▶ 17:47 complicated things when that basic function goes unnoticed. Another basic thing, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The presentation here last week, in my view and I'm going to be blunt, it was miserable. Youth Risk Behavior Surveys aren't comparing this district against this district in the Middlesex League or this district against the state. The value of them is in the longitudinal changes within a community and how you can track what you've done through changes in policy in your community such as education about substance abuse or education about domestic violence and what correlates with the changes in the community versus thing now they're messy things because they're self-reported surveys but still nobody called out the presentation by this person that clearly

▶ 18:33 got $50,000 or so from all these schools to do this we've had for the last three or four times of youth misbehavior survey it's been failure after failure failure after failure. Back in the early 2000s, I remember looking at them very carefully. We were able to look at the longitudinal trends. That's what's important there. I could go on. I'm going to go to something else. The third thing comes to something that repeatedly comes up here as well. The superintendent persists year after year with this politically correct narrative that the administration does wonderful things and that she cares more deeply about the students in the schools than any of us can imagine or even comprehend. She always says she doesn't want to categorize children that she's averse to doing that,

▶ 19:15 yet the entire core of the school system that she manages is all about categorizing children, first by age, then by a whole bunch of other factors. When she talked about the high school AP classes, she makes it seem wonderful. Oh, she's not going to keep any child from taking AP classes. If they want to do the work, they can take the class. Well, you know, this is a school system, and there are certain prerequisites to having a certain level of material. you need to know something before that level of material. If you don't, you're a burden on the rest of that class who might already know the prerequisite material and need to move on and have something else so that they can work within their zone of proximal development.

▶ 19:54 But the hypocrisy that's presented here always is that if you're a third-grade student who's doing wonderfully in math and can do fifth-grade math no problem, what do we do? We stick you in third-grade math. A couple exceptions here and there, but it's done by age. You know, again, I use the word hypocrisy because it is the claim that somehow this school system is looking at every kid and what they need and letting them do what's appropriate for them when it doesn't happen that's false that's a falsehood I have asked for years for this district to look at the kids in the schools to look at the kids in the classrooms to figure out what do you need to learn and what can we give you that's a next step in your sequence of learning but the schools refuse to do

▶ 20:37 that they discriminate against children every day based on age every day it's the core of the system here I'm not saying other people don't do it but it's not authentic it's not complete the narrative that comes from the superintendent and the administration is false in this regard that somehow the administration is pure and is doing wonderful things for kids I come to these meetings I listen to these narratives week after week after week does anybody here in this room care to challenge the narrative and to say what are we doing for these kids two quick things and I'll finish up I've talked for years about the problem of the mixed level foreign language classes in the high school you know you have a group of kids who are supposedly at the honors

▶ 21:24 level and a group of kids who are supposedly at the college prep level and somehow the teachers gonna magically teach to both of them the reality is is neither of them get what they need just like in a seventh grade math class or sixth grade math class where every kid who got every question right in the mcas last year and the ones that got 40 of them right they're hearing the same thing in a seventh grade math class it's wrong it doesn't work the issue of again as i want to go back to the ap thing because the superintendent has used that example multiple times over the course of the last year it is not it is the school department's obligation to find the right match for a kid with the other

▶ 22:04 kids for whom that's the right match and to have them be in the same class to do the same thing to have certain kids in a class who don't know the basic material while you have other kids in the class who've already taken a course in it know the basic material and ready to move on it's not authentic it doesn't work this is an administrative failure it's not a teacher failure it's not anything but administration that puts together these classes these ways and with all the money from the override did anybody do anything or say anything about the mixed level foreign language classes at the high school and you know let alone the whole issue of starting in middle school with foreign language class is the perfectly wrong place to start for foreign languages very few

▶ 22:49 kids that don't have foreign language in their family are going to come out of a foreign language program in Melrose High School fluent in that language why don't we do something authentic for the kids in kindergarten first second grade and expose them to a language when they're much more ready to learn it and hear it and understand it then we are waiting this long but that's more complicated than anybody here wants to talk about ever you want to say oh we're doing wonderfully oh we just need more money and any problems we have are because lack of money this is a narrative that goes on and on and on and you know the whole BB school thing we We knew years ago that the modules were the wrong way to go, despite what kind of creative

▶ 23:29 thinking the superintendent portrays now. We knew that the middle school, high school campus is the most flexible way of taking kids and adapting to changes in enrollment. But no, the school committee, the mayor at the time, had to take the political route and say to the young parents in town what they wanted to hear, rather than be leaders and lead to what our children need, what's best for the children. And I hope that that can actually come out finally in this whole conversation around the BB. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moroz. Are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee? Miss Robbins, welcome. I'm planning on talking, so I look lovely. Megan Robbins. I live at 18 Albion Street.

▶ 24:13 We have a current second grader and a kindergartener at the Roosevelt School. I just wanted to echo Brian's point. i read the presentations and i was a little taken aback by the perceived non-subjectivity of the presentation there was a lot of negative language things such as the bb only has this many classrooms whereas the franklin has this many classrooms so i would just recommend in the future maybe try to have neutral language when you're presenting two options to the community i also think it would be important to include other options that were considered and why those options were ruled out of the discussion in the two options I'm curious to answer the questions of if we move all of the kindergartners to these

▶ 25:05 two schools there will be open classrooms in all of the elementary schools I understand that in some of the schools those classrooms will be taken back for subjects specials but in schools like the Roosevelt we have classrooms for most of our subjects we do there's a couple that we don't but we do so if we are not going to take those classrooms back to the classrooms and we're gonna use them all for specials that option doesn't appear to address class sizes at all we're just shifting the kids to different schools and if that's not the case that's not very clear in the presentation so I think that would be something maybe to address regarding equity I think if the kids were all to move to two different kindergarten schools it would be really

▶ 25:53 really important to reinstate kindergarten paras and obviously as I just mentioned I have a kindergartner so I have no skin in this game I don't have any subsequent children and don't plan on it but I think it would be really hard on the teachers to be in a school where some of the classes had paras some of the classes didn't but you're all kindergarten especially if the preschools there as well I just feel like some of those teachers would probably feel less supported than others I also think that it would be really important to come up with a holistic and comprehensive long-term plan I went to the modular meeting that Jerry talked about my kids weren't even I don't think in school yet that as we know now did not solve the problem and cost way more

▶ 26:34 than we thought it would so there is a little question of what's the assurance that these two options will solve the problem and we won't be doing this again in two years from now I have 12 more years in this district I don't plan on going anywhere but it's really really tiring for the young families to every year wonder where are my kids gonna go what's gonna happen where am I gonna be placed oh wait now we might get redistricted it's been kind of a long and windy road if you have pretty much any kid younger than third grade so I also have concerns about the abruptness of the vote the community input meeting that I my understanding is that it's scheduled for three weeks from now which is two weeks before the vote so I do have some concern about how the input

▶ 27:20 from that meeting can be taken and the plans can be adjusted in that short of a period of time so those are some of the things I'd like to see answered and addressed and I think I don't just speak for myself but other people I've talked to that the parents especially the parents of the younger elementary and kindergarten and preschoolers would love to see a more comprehensive long-term plan about what going to school in Melrose is going to look like for our kids for the next until they graduate from high school because there are definitely concerns that we're just gonna be on this ride for a very long time because there are so many of us and I just want to kind of see how are we gonna fit through elementary school are we gonna fit in the middle school will

▶ 28:05 these kids all fit in high school by the time we get there and if we don't what is the plan to address that and having the plans be made one not even one full year before the next year I feel like we're just never we're never catching up we're never getting ahead we're just every year flying by the seat of our pants and getting things done so I just wanted to kind of bring those things up as things that I would love to see addressed going forward I do appreciate all the work that the committee does on this and I know that everything is done With good intentions and the and the best outcomes at heart But those are things that were concerning just from looking at the two options and I would love to see discussed more thoroughly

▶ 28:47 Great Thank You. Miss Robbins much appreciated, please welcome My name is Jennifer Champagne. I live at 11 Faxon Street My family is new to Melrose. We moved here right before all the talk of the override started I have an upcoming kindergartner and then a youngster for next year. It's been confusing, to say the least, moving here, coming in with the override and finding out that a school system that we'd heard nothing but wonderful things of the teachers and the system as a whole is constantly changing and kind of up for grabs as to what's going to happen next year. First, the kindergartner class is moved to Franklin. Then we don't have enough money. during the override discussion all i heard was there are is a huge student to teacher ratio

▶ 29:42 particularly in the kindergartner class with a lack of paraprofessional support and now the possibility of moving two kindergarten classes or two kindergarten buildings to the bb and the franklin just doesn't make any sense to me in my opinion first kindergarten elementary is the foundation of our educational system. This is where the kids start out. This is where the kids are the most vulnerable, four-, well, five-year-old kids. To have that many transitions in the beginning of their educational career seems very stressful for me, especially when I constantly hear from parents of older children that anxiety and depression is a huge problem amongst elementary children, which is mind-boggling to me.

▶ 30:27 So to have these kids transferring, Most likely from other pre-Ks into kindergarten because I've heard that the ACC scheduling doesn't work for a lot of families. So they're going to move from a private preschool, then to kindergarten, and then to first grade. Just seems like a huge unnecessary stressor for me for the kids. And that's what we're supposed to be doing is putting the kids first. And these are our youngest, most vulnerable students. I don't understand why we're giving them the least support possible. Second, I don't see where it's addressed with the BB school option. how we're going to support the growing student to teacher ratio I don't see any additional paraprofessionals I'm confused as to how more teaching staff

▶ 31:08 and paraprofessionals isn't necessary I'm possibly I missed something but I didn't see whether there'll be an additional need for a principal will there be a shared principal between Franklin and BB because that seems very challenging to me to have a principal going across town to manage two different schools with a large population in each school so I'd like to know how we're going to address the growing class size thirdly I'd like to reiterate what Megan said why don't we take more time and really come up with a plan and think about what the long term is for Melrose because this is an amazing community I cannot tell you how much we love our neighborhood how much we love the town and we've been here for two years and we want to commit and stay

▶ 31:48 but not if education is not going to be a priority this is only going to continue to grow in class size because everyone knows Melrose is an amazing town people are moving here class sizes are growing influx young children are coming in I don't see how turning the BB into a pre-k and kindergarten only addresses the long-term growth plan for the size of the class I'd like to see what other options we have as far as taking more time to officially upgrade the BB and make it large enough add additional three classrooms if that's possible I don't know what state the BB is in three classrooms per grade and and turning it into a full elementary like when Roosevelt and Lincoln were built as far as I

▶ 32:30 understand I'd also like to see what the options are to expanding onto some of the other schools and how much that would cost and whether it's feasible or not so that we could have either the BB as a full elementary or keep it to the five full elementaries K through eight and just expand or I don't know we'd like to see can Horace Mann be expanded can Hoover be expanded can Winthrop be expanded because I assume that running five schools would be less expensive than six very good Thank You miss champagne much appreciated are there any other members of public who wish to address the committee seeing none and without objection the public comment period is now closed and let me say on behalf of the committee thank you all very much

▶ 33:22 for the input we greatly appreciate it and that brings us to the announcements the superintendent of schools madam superintendent thank you mr o'connell i just want to remind the school committee and the public that parent university is set for november 23rd i think this is our third year and it is a wonderful event in which the melrose education foundation puts together a program of very important courses and information for parents in the community many of the elementary and secondary staff present as well as some outside presenters you can register for the parent university at the melrose ed foundation website which is melrose ed foundation 2es in the middle dot org just to inform the school committee we were informed

▶ 34:14 today by desi that we have been accepted to the educator evaluation pilot and that margaret and I will be presenting on it at MASC on November 7th and there'll be a drive-in from DESE and MASS on November 25th for any members of the committee who want to hear about it I can get you additional information on that if you're interested and the last thing is our new business manager began yesterday she is off and running getting to go through all the documents meeting with staff and has already produced some good documents for future packets so if those of you who work with her can contact her directly to set up a meeting very good any comments or questions for the superintendent at this time seeing none thank you superintendent and that

▶ 35:09 brings us to the consent agenda which this evening consists of the following items the school committee regular meeting minutes for october 15 2019 a melrose high school international field trip requests for the 2021 spanish exchange trip and the warrants as follows fy20 school s2 zero zero one one in the amount of seven hundred and fifteen thousand four hundred and fifty five dollars and sixty cents and fy twenty september debit card s two zero zero one two in the amount of one thousand nine hundred ninety four dollars and three cents are there any items which any member of the committee wishes to remove from the consent agenda miss Rosie Thomas very good and those will go to the announcements of the

▶ 35:53 chair are there any other items which any member wishes to remove from the consent agenda seeing none is there a motion to approve the balance of the consent agenda made by mr. Iskel seconded by miss Rosie Thomas all those in favor and that motion to approve the balance of the consent agenda passes unanimously thank you for that and that brings us to the work of our subcommittees this evening beginning with educational programs and personnel with Ms. de Selm good evening and welcome to tonight's portion of the educational programs and personnel subcommittee of the meeting first up we have the METCO update madam superintendent would you like to give the introduction please. Thank you Mr. Selma. I would ask Ms. Jackson, Amy Jackson our

▶ 37:03 METCO director to come forward. Those of you who may remember Ms. Jackson first joined us as an interim director mid-year last year and was appointed to the position this summer. Welcome Amy. Good evening everyone. So I just want to get started with some accomplishments and updates since I've been in the position since the last February so first the current enrollment is 124 students we have 39 students in the elementary level we have 16 at Hoover 2 at Horace Mann 6 at Lincoln 11 at Roosevelt and 4 at Winthrop we currently have 48 students at the middle school 37 students at the high school and 14 current seniors the next piece is Mecco Inc has launched a new enrollment process which is now online so families are welcome to go online and they can

▶ 38:10 download all the new documents this has been in the works for like the last two years because before parents would have to go into the office fill out additional paperwork make several copies and leave them there in the office so we're really excited about the online process. And other changes now, it goes to a lottery process. As in before, it was a wait list. So parents would sign their children up as soon as their child was born. As soon as they get a social security number, they would go down because the wait list would be five to six years long before your child could even enter into the program or get a slot. So now with the lottery process, you can sign your child up maybe five years ago

▶ 38:50 or this year and your child could get a spot currently in this year. So a lot of parents are excited about that, so they don't have to wait the five or six years wait list in order to get their child into the program. And one thing Meckle has really prided itself on is for children entering the program, and you have to be a resident of Boston, and as you know, Boston is changing. The diversity is changing. So a lot of our students are from all nationalities and all backgrounds, and that's something Meckle really priding itself on their market in all the different areas in Boston so there's going to be like a new division of students coming into the Mecco program starting next September one a really huge accomplishment we have a

▶ 39:39 senior who's going to be inducted into the National Honor Society on November 3rd she's really excited about that as well as her mom so we're excited about that we also have a senior who is a finalist for the posse scholarship at Denison University in Ohio and we should know if he gets it at the end of this month so we're excited about that as well next we hired two new staff members we have a medical para at the middle school as well at the high school and we're currently still looking for a para at the elementary school and that person would be placed at Hoover because we have a large number of students at the hoover we have 16 currently now from kindergarten to fifth grade one of the other accomplishments as we as you know we lobby every year at the State House

▶ 40:28 and because of the turnout with the state reps from all the different districts the parents and staff members we were able to increase the funding which was huge for us this year because that allowed us to get additional funding to get a second bus for our elementary students which the parents was so excited and that way there's less time with the students on a bus and less students on the bus which is huge because it cuts down on a lot of extra noise and issues on the bus with the little ones so that was exciting next during the summer we have five students who participated in an academic summer program given by the Mecco program and we also had a student who went to the nexus MIT summer program one of our he's a current senior right now next we were

▶ 41:21 the contract had expired for our bus company so we went up for bid and the current contract that was awarded was North Reading transportation and because they came in significantly lower on the amount we were able to get to late buses for our students which is exciting so the middle school and high school staff members were so ecstatic as well as the families and the late buses take the families take the students excuse me right into Boston so we have one bus that comes at 345 Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday and we also have a sports bus that runs Monday through Friday at 6 o'clock and that bus also takes the students right into Boston which cuts off a lot of time and they don't have to get on the T which from here and to Boston it takes like two hours on the T

▶ 42:09 so the parents were happy about that next thing we started was a middle school girls group and it's going to continue this year and it's by grade level so we meet every Tuesday during flex period so one we could make with sixth grade next week we meet seventh grade and then eighth grade and that's in collaboration with Mecca Inc we have a current social worker who co facilitates the program with me as well as the Mecca para at the middle school and this year where we have a book we're reading is called the state of black girls and then we're also gonna start a boys group in the book we're gonna read it's called dear Martin and so the boys was like what happened to us so we was like we're gonna get you so we're gonna get started in the next couple of weeks

▶ 42:52 with the boys and then we're also gonna invite some professionals to come in and hopefully some Mecca alum to come and talk with the children just about the experience last year I had a Mecca alum she was a Mecca alum from Marblehead where I actually went to Mecco as well and she is a current author she is a lawyer and she has her own company and she came in and she spoke to the girls it's about her experience so when you have someone who come in who already went through what the children are going through they actually pay attention they start to sit up oh you can really relate to me like you remember getting up at five o'clock in the morning so it's really helpful when you bring in the alum and they can say you know what it really paid off so the sacrifice was

▶ 43:33 actually worth it and the girls were really excited about that so we want to definitely continue that as well next I partnered with five other districts Mecca directors to do parent workshops throughout the year so our first workshop we had in September it was on safety and communication we had the Boston police community police officer who came in and talked about safety internet safety social media as you know the Facebook and snapchat and Twitter like you really need to let the parents know the importance of that once you put it up that's it so you need to be mindful you need to check your child's phones and their tablets just to see what they're doing so that was really helpful the parents found that it was like a lot of things they didn't know

▶ 44:16 how to put the privacy labels on the phone as well as a tablet so that was really helpful last week we had the college prep one we had a facilitator to talk about how to apply to college when you go into college visits what questions to ask how far you should go we talked about early action so that was really helpful for the parents it was interactive the parents were able to download the presentation right on their phone technology is unbelievable she even had websites they can click right into go on look at scholarships it's look at other helpful information that parents need to know we actually had a person talk about financial aid how not to take out the parent plus loan I'm sure you parents can relate to that there are other options so that was

▶ 45:01 really helpful for parents as well and then we're also going to have a meeting on IEPs in January we have a special education administrator who's going to administer that because a lot of parents have a lot of questions when the child is on the IEP is it helpful is it not helpful a lot of parents won't sign it because they really don't understand it so we want to make sure they understand that it's gonna help your child it supports and resources that will help your child be successful academically and we'll have like here's the question that you need to ask when you have an IEP meeting so that's gonna be really helpful and then in March we're just gonna have a social to get together with all the families like you made it the year is almost over let's celebrate and

▶ 45:41 then we also had an apple pick in day in January where all the districts we had the families from those particular districts come out as well so that's been really positive and the parents have appreciated that as well and next we also continue to partner with Mecco Inc with Kathleen Lopes she's the director of diversity and inclusion and equity and she's gonna help us facilitate one of the parent university sessions during that time to how to bridge the Mecco families with the Melrose families so we're gonna have a session during that time and we the district also contracted with pathways to restorative communities to continue that work and also do professional developments with the staff as well so those are my updates open for any

▶ 46:28 questions thank you very much committee do you have any questions mr. Essie Thomas please welcome welcome we're so glad to have you and congratulations on your appointment and boy it sounds like it's been a busy year less than a year yes accomplishment so thank you for your work that you're doing and thank you for the the books that you're talking about I'm gonna try to read them this year so that's one thing I can do to try to support the Mecco students that are here and your program I'm wondering I'm also the liaison to this new group that Ed has been trying to get together for the last few years and the Friends of Melrose Mecco program and I just wanted to see what your vision is for that over time and I know this is your first you know

▶ 47:15 year so we know things take time too so yes can you just give us a little heads up on that well I met a few times you know a few people who were on the board and the vision was just to be a support to try to bridge the two families the Mecca families as well as the Merrill's families and try to create like a partnership sort of like a host family a buddy family so identify families and Melrose as well as families in Boston who would be interested so they invited me to a meeting on next month just to really try to start that conversation and how best they can support the efforts of the Mecco families great thank you and once again I really appreciate the work that you're doing thank you madam mayor please thank you very much thank you also for all the

▶ 48:06 Gail Infurna: work that you are doing and the support that you're giving our METCO students. I also want to commend you for the good use of the funds for the late buses. I think that's really important for these kids. Their safety, they're getting home earlier, and yet they're able to participate in the after-school programs or any sort of other educational things. So thank you for, you know, the sage decision to use the extra funds that way. Once again, thank you. Mr. Isco, please. Thank you. I think we're all so proud of the very long-standing relationship we've had with the METCO program. METCO has been in Melrose for a long time and I think it's, I hope that the students and families feel that, speaking just myself and I know many others, METCO families are

▶ 49:00 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: our melrose families this is their school community this is their home it's just like a roosevelt family or a hoover family we're all melrose family and that includes metco students so i hope that the families really believe that we are one school community i think that's very important any further mr o'connell please thank you madam chair um and thank you miss jackson uh for being with us we know it makes for a long day after being at school all day with our students thank you very much so I'm excited to hear about these student groups at the middle school and I'm wondering if you can tell us what it's going to take to get the young men's group up and running sooner rather than later I know you mentioned and in the memo we have you talk about a social

▶ 49:57 worker from I think Metco Inc helping to co-coordinate the young women's group does that mean we're waiting or hoping to get a social worker for the young men's group and I guess ultimately I'm wondering could it be a community member could be someone not necessarily from Metco Inc that helps coordinate with you just so we can get that going do you have any sense of that are there any rules for that no no necessary rules we're actually gonna get it started up in a couple weeks because the boys like we need something I'm like I know I was just looking for just to have someone consistent yeah that's yeah we need to have consistency we just didn't want anyone just to come this week and we don't know if they're gonna come back next week so it was just really hard to

▶ 50:43 find someone just to be consistent and come every single week to be there with the students because they really look forward to that and we know the social worker she's consistent she'll be there every Tuesday with the girls so we're actually just gonna start it myself and miss Castillo who is paraprofessional at middle school so we're just going to do it with the boys and then I'm just going to work and try to get guests to come in so it'd be nice if you could come in and be a guest so that way we could just get rolling guests just to come in and to speak with the boys terrific thank you for that and a separate question if I may I'm sure please you talked about a number of parent workshops that sound

▶ 51:24 terrific I'm assuming these are all in Boston great and then my last question maybe for you and or the superintendent if I may superintendent through the chair could you talk a bit about this relationship that we're striking with pathways to restorative communities and what you're thinking is or what the district's thinking is about how this can help so I've been in conversation with some of my medical parents who we have some fairly honest conversation and they have asked if we could find somebody to facilitate conversation between Melrose families and the Boston families one of the concerns that we have had is regarding many of my Boston families encourage their children to stay over here in Melrose but it's not always reciprocated many of our Melrose

▶ 52:31 families are often reluctant to let the students come into Boston and we want to build bridges and develop a clearer understanding of what is possible and what the benefits of a two-way relationship and I think that's the term I hear most often from my METCO families that everything should be two ways they understand the choices they made by joining METCO these are very savvy caring educated parents who know that for their children coming to school in Melrose is an important step forward for their future but they also want to stay connected to Boston because that's where they have invested their lives and but they would like their Melrose counterparts to understand why that's been important to them so we hired pathways who we with whom we work on

▶ 53:27 other issues to help facilitate those conversations as you can imagine they can be difficult conversations at time so the goal is for pathways to meet first with some Boston parents to gain an understanding of what they're trying to achieve and then for us to facilitate some meetings in Boston and I have spoken to some parents here in Melrose who said they would be more than willing to participate terrific thank you for that thank you for that investment much appreciated and miss Jackson thank you once again for being with us we appreciate it Thank You mr. Abrams key what's the typical travel time for a kid for the day would you say oh yes what's like two to three hours the two to three hours on the bus minimum of two yes like an hour like an hour in the

▶ 54:25 morning like an hour but it depends on their bus stop so like the first bus stop it could be an hour if they're at the last bus stop it's an additional hour just going through the city because the traffic is just unbearable especially in the afternoon it's really bad in Boston now thank you so one of those things that people don't realize is that is the dance we the Metco directors do at the bus stops because it's not just all the Mexico buses with 31 Metco communities it's the charter buses it's it's any parochial private school buses it's the buses for the younger children anybody over seventh grade takes public transportation in Boston so you you have common bus stops in which we're trying

▶ 55:11 to figure out who gets to the bus stop when where and how so it really is the Metco directors work very hard to coordinate their stops and their routes among themselves so that we're not tripping over each other thank you and a lot of times they're like right behind each other it's like deadlocked especially like at the common after-school programs like the Boys and Girls Club in Roxbury that's a huge that's one stop that all the districts make so it's just trying to coordinate that to make sure that all the buses are not arriving around the same time but it's definitely a long day and I know because I've written the bus several times so it is a long day for our students it is and what amy's not telling you is she's had four children in the program yes yeah

▶ 56:00 Jennifer McAndrew: i had two in arlington one of foxborough and one in walpole that's great yeah so i'm very familiar with the program thank you yes miss mcandrew thank you um my colleagues asked all of the questions that i had so i don't have any questions but i did just want to add my thanks to you for for being here for this great update and for all that you do for our METCO students. In particular, to echo the mayor's comments around the late bus, I know that has been a long standing goal of Melrose METCO program and that this change in school start times that we have implemented was an additional pressure on that. And so I'm just, I'm really glad to hear that. And I'm really looking forward to hear more about

▶ 56:45 the ways that we can facilitate and support relationships between Melrose families who live here and Melrose families who are part of the METCO program. So, thank you. Thank you. The bus was an interesting situation. As we've discussed in this chamber before, busing contracts in Massachusetts for school systems are basically monopolies. And when you go out to bid, nobody bids against you. And we took a very big risk. We were unhappy last spring and we took a very big risk and we rejected the bid from our only bidder. And then we worked with METCO, Inc., and lo and behold, we had 10 bids where that is unheard of. And as a result of that bidding process, we probably got the best contract we've had

▶ 57:38 in about six years, and that freed up monies. So that was a really important step going forward. Thank you very much. Ms. Jackson, before you leave, if I may take a moment, I wanted to thank you, one, for coming, but also for the parent support groups that you've initiated. I think that adds real value to the program, not just for us, but also for the students and, of course, the families, providing for the whole child, including the social workers for the women's group and the men's group. I wanted to ask if you anticipate any complications due to incoming lottery system that will be implemented over the course of this year for September of next year. Yes, that's been an ongoing discussion.

▶ 58:32 Yes, because prior we could ask for additional documents, but now we cannot, we only receive the documents that Mecco Inc in the application process asks for the parents to upload so we won't receive the additional documents of from the student until after they register which will cause some problems and questions I feel like there's just the tip of the iceberg here yes it is this was a very heated discussion for two years with superintendents metco directors mecco inc and desi um and i understand they want a streamlined fairer system but there is a lot of concern about districts about unknowns can you can you speculate on what those unknowns might look like please school readiness discipline issues if kids have have gone from school to school why you know the

▶ 59:47 things that you want to know up ahead of time so you can plan accordingly nobody is looking to deny entry but when a student registers in melrose now we can ask for an iep we can ask for the discipline records we can ask for anything else that may exist in the students background we may not get that on this lottery system i think it's going to be a trial and error and we'll see what happens the first round and whether or not metco ink has to rethink what the document packet has to look like certainly nobody wants to underserve a child and we try to plan accordingly very well excellent thank you so much for coming and we appreciate your update thank you next up on the EP&P agenda is the mid-cycle program review for

▶ 1:00:46 wellness at this time Madam Superintendent I believe I saw Mr. Fogarty and Dr. Adams So again, please join us. Thank you, Mr. Selm. As you know, we review every content area in the district on a rotating basis. Reviews overlap, it's a two year process and they overlap. Wellness has just completed year one, and they're about to begin year two with a final report to the committee in June. All right, thank you very much. So I'd like to start by thanking our committee of volunteers. representatives from each level the elementary the middle school and high school wellness department they've given up some afternoons did a little soul searching self-assessment looking at the curriculum and structure instruction

▶ 1:01:37 evaluation how everything's lining up how we serve in the kids and they presented that back to the committee as a whole so that that was the first step in our progress in our state last year so with that we going a little more deeper this year with the surveys of Terrence those went on a couple weeks ago and we're surveying the teachers again this is a more private opportunity for them to express themselves and also student surveys are going out as well so those surveys will be recently went out last week so hopefully we'll have some great responses we'll see how this information lines up with the YRBS we'll see how you know this is going and we look forward to it we're going to measure that with the essential questions we came up with four questions to guide the

▶ 1:02:33 collection and analysis of the data how does the physical education and wellness program impact the social mental and physical well-being of students how are the wellness curriculum instruction assessment aligned vertically and horizontally how well does physical education and wellness instruction curriculum and assessment adapt to the needs of all students how well does the program meet the learning needs how has the physical education wellness curriculum adapted to the changing social landscape of the community so we look forward to getting these results and sharing this information with you you'll see in the packet we provided a timeline of our activities from last year which included as mr fogarty said each grade level presented their

▶ 1:03:25 curriculum instruction and assessments we planned and developed surveys that are going out this fall we also plan in january our site visit we've done this with all of our program reviews where we invite neighboring districts to come for a full day teachers educators administrators to spend a full day with us and they visit all the classrooms get visited as many as possible they meet with students in focus groups they meet with teachers and gather input in it by the end of the day they give us feedback and we write up that feedback as part of our report it's one of the most powerful pieces because it actually provides a check on much of what we've said they then provide us feedback and say oh take a second look at that we're not sure we

▶ 1:04:15 saw that or we saw this and you should celebrate this too so we welcome that opportunity and that group also sees the beginning preliminary draft of our report and the end of the process is an action plan based upon looking at all the all that data that we've collected about the program developing an action plan that will last for the wellness program for two to three years coming about ways that we can address any needs that we found in the report so at this time we have no recommendations or any budget impact when we look forward in June to coming back with a full report or somewhere along there in the summer we also as our practices we end one program review and we're in the middle of one we begin the next one so our last remaining discipline that we have

▶ 1:05:12 not done this program review process with is fine arts so we'll begin that process in january we decided to not start in the middle of the holiday season and the many activities so we're going to start in january and we'll meet once a month through the winter and into the spring to get the process started and we think we can get a good head start enough to get the process going this winter and spring yes please so two things you heard us refer to it at the last minute with the YRBS this coincides with the state's rewriting of the comprehensive health curriculum it's the first time the state has rewritten the comprehensive health curriculum since 1999 and so this is this is just you you know, fortuitous that we will have that hopefully at the same time that we finish this.

▶ 1:06:12 And we can incorporate the changes that will be coming from the new comprehensive health curriculum into whatever action plan we have. The other thing that it has been three years since the Department of Health was able to underwrite the PRIDE survey for us. Some of you may remember the PRIDE survey is a survey that we would do with the city every other year. One year we would do the YRBS, the next year we would do the PRIDE. They had enough money in the grant this year. I met with Kathy Guevara yesterday, and we're going to do the PRIDE survey grades five through 12 again this year. The PRIDE survey is a survey of the parents. The YRBS is a survey of our students. The PRIDE survey is a survey of our parents to see if they know as much as they think they know

▶ 1:07:00 about those issues that are touching our children's lives in terms of substances, behaviors, and other matters. So we will be getting that out within the next couple of weeks. Kathy and I finalized those plans yesterday. And that is also important information. While we're not necessarily responsible for educating the parents, Kathy Guevara and I have talked about how that informs the Department of Health and ability to provide education programs across the city as well so thank you very much at this time i open the floor miss mcandrew thank you so much for being here um and for this update i know that these comprehensive program reviews are very time consuming and i think it's one of it is a very

▶ 1:07:50 Jennifer McAndrew: important thing that we do with this eye to continuous improvement i appreciate all of your work and this update i have two questions you mentioned and it's on the timeline the site visit with other districts that come and sort of assess us and give feedback do we also seek out what other districts are doing in these do we have a way to learn about particularly looking at the yrbs results and what the different responses on some of those sexual health related responses do we go to other districts and see what their programs are like sure there's a whole list serve of all the schools in eastern massachusetts that constantly we're looking to have a focus group in this particular area can you come by they'll give

▶ 1:08:37 dates times opportunities are there people have taken advantage of those as far as ybs i mean certainly we're in constant contact with the other 11 schools within the league and their information is shared as well but there are groups that meet quarterly and we go over all of this information i think we've also tried to take advantage of we belong to the middlesex partnership that provides health related professional development and i think often at those sessions we hear other things that other districts are doing and that are showcased and so we try to take advantage of as many of those opportunities and sending staff to some of those statewide opportunities that allow for some of that exchange and that certainly was part of our discussion

▶ 1:09:27 we also participated we're in the second year of a grant through seam which i can't remember the name of at the moment do you remember the name of the great project here maybe no it's escaping me from it it's a grant from the district attorney about health curriculum for middle school students so we've learned a lot about health at education in the same collaborative districts and models of health programming and have used that information and that came up certainly as part of our review thank you just one more question if i may for now um and given the superintendent's comments especially about the updates coming from the state to the health curriculum health wellness curriculum and the fact that this program review is going on

▶ 1:10:21 how do you anticipate communicating the results of what you recommend and changes that may be coming out to the wider community yeah so we've um we've as we develop the action plan a big part of the action plan will be how do we respond to the health curriculum and how aligned i'm pretty confident as we look at as we even look at our fine arts and we new curriculum standards and our social studies curriculum standards we will have quite a bit of work to do around alignment of curriculum and developing new curriculum to meet the needs meet those standards and we'll have to do certainly that work with the wider community as well to share that information with families thank you I know families will

▶ 1:11:13 be interested in hearing what's coming in this area so thank you mr. Ozzie Thomas please it's exciting you're doing this review I'm also wondering because I I wasn't here at our last meeting, how the review of the YRBS data is impacting what you're going to do with the wellness review. So what jumped out at you? What are you concerned about? What are some targets for resources and supports that are very clear to you from that recent data? So with that, we discussed that at length at the previous meeting, but that data just doesn't sit on a shelf. That's something that we talk about at department meetings on a regular basis, individual meetings with different teachers at the different levels and we want that to be a live

▶ 1:12:04 and breathing document that we're looking at this and using it to project where we're going to be. Where are we missing? Some of the things that may have gone up, you know, individual statistics, what are we looking at? Obviously the vaping was off the charts but something that was, that struck out to me was the texting and driving piece. We spent a lot of time on that four years ago, six years ago, and now that's back up. But we spent more recently a lot of time on vaping. So we've got to stay true to our values and make sure we're hitting all topics to, you know, give great information to all the students in all facets of the health domain. So we're using that information to see where we're spending our time

▶ 1:12:51 and our resources to address the concerns. So again, may I? Please. So again, an update that I received. The state has received a two-year anti-vaping grant from the National Library of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It's $50,000 over two years. And there are two committees of professionals, both educators and in the medical and law enforcement fields. And they are in the process of writing a six to 12 curriculum that will focus on the best practices on anti-vaping. But I don't expect that we will see that for another two years. So in the meanwhile, we will have to continue to work on our own curriculum and those efforts. But there will be a state-issued curriculum coming in that area as well.

▶ 1:13:49 Beyond what Steven mentioned about the vaping and the texting while driving, I think Ms. Driscoll mentioned it when we talked about the YRVS last week, that the ongoing problem in Melrose is with alcohol. And the fact that we are often in a situation where it's sanctioned. And I think that is something that is beyond the schools, and That is something that we need to work with the city on, on how we address that. The city has a rather strong, what's it called, madam, madam? Social. Social host. Host, social host law, but I have not seen much activity around it recently. They have served warning letters. They have served warning letters, good. So, but I think that is another effort that needs to continue to tension.

▶ 1:14:44 you know the vaping problem has become such an issue so quickly I work in high school myself so I know how hard it is I'm wondering how early on you're beginning to try to prevent it from happening because it's happening really really early and often in many places so can you give us some idea of how you're trying to target prevention early on so we talked about that and it came up it's now creeping its way into the elementary and fifth grade curriculum and starting to talk to kids about because the kids are bringing it up they know or know of it and discussing having discussions with children about the dangers and explaining to them as early as fifth grade and definitely it is creeped into our middle school curriculum

▶ 1:15:32 as well it's part of the curriculum I'm also curious about sex education and when you start providing that and whether there's condoms available in schools that kind of thing so we start with fifth grade does discussions around puberty mm-hmm and that starts in fifth grade and that continues into the middle school but really it's it we that begins in earnest in high school tenth grade wellness two is as a whole unit on sexual education that's where they get the most of the information okay I anything else that jumped out those those the things that you're talking about were the things that when I was looking at the YRBS a couple weeks ago the same stuff is jumping out at me were there any other trends that that you are gonna really look hard at with the

▶ 1:16:24 programmatic review no just trying to look at the whole picture and see what our curriculum looks like how it's matching up with the YRBS and that information that it's sharing with us we want to use those numbers bring those into the classroom talk with the kids this is what you shared with us this is what you're telling us is going on and hopefully build the curriculum to make going forward to support those needs and then the last thing that I was when I was reviewing the data from that was a lot there was a uptick in kind of sadness and hopelessness too so I guess I'm wondering about the curriculum that you're already providing but then what you're thinking about moving towards as you are beginning to figure out next steps so we started last year you know a

▶ 1:17:15 couple guest speakers came in for a parent series we brought in the NAN project to address the whole high school staffing when you bring in the hopeless and saddlers that's not just Melrose that is that's all over and those are some steps that we saw coming just due to people seeking out help in our own building people that had needs and we're trying to support the teachers as best we can with great information we're trying to support those students with their own needs and the Dan project will come back and speak to all ninth grade classes this November we look forward to that But we've contracted with a group that's going to come in for an eight-week session of seminars with students who self-select to participate in them.

▶ 1:18:10 And just for the people in the audience and the people at home, the NAN Project is an organization that was created because of a young adult woman who committed suicide. And her family has created this whole nonprofit to try to get people in schools and high schools and college more aware of the risk and try to decrease that tragic outcome. So thank you very much for what you're doing. I really appreciate it. From a social worker to you. Thank you. And we kicked it off with the Mental Health 101. Try to reset it. Get everybody, all of our staff on the same page of where this needle's trending or pointing to. And that was a great start to kick off the year and talk about that, get it in the open.

▶ 1:18:51 And tons of questions came from the faculty. They were very appreciative of having the opportunity be exposed to that conversation where in the past that was typically done with wellness classes alone but we did that we felt was important enough to do that with the entire group and i know also you're doing a lot more circles in all the schools too and learning about that as our year progresses as we're in more school committee meetings hopefully we're going to get to learn more about that maybe demonstrate some of that so i know you're up to a lot of good things and i'm glad you're studying what you're doing that's always good practice thanks any further well I know mental health is addressed a lot in

▶ 1:19:40 ninth grade but I've noticed that a lot of times in like older grades like that's when mental health like starts to decrease in students as a whole so maybe addressing that in older students would be helpful as well thank you miss Foley Mr. O'Connell I saw your hand up. Thanks very much Madam Chair. Thank you both for being here as always. We really appreciate it and appreciate the work and certainly appreciate the update on this program review. You know as we're discussing you know the work that you and your colleagues do in the area of health and wellness clearly tackle a lot of issues that come to us from well beyond the walls of our schools these are very much community issues and so with community outreach and engagement in mind I'm wondering if there is or

▶ 1:20:44 Or might there be an opportunity for our School Wellness Advisory Committee and or our Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition to play a role in our curriculum development or assessment or just in the program review generally? And I ask that not just to get an answer yes or maybe. I mean, it's okay if the answer is no and that that's outside their jurisdiction. and I'm curious if you have any thoughts about that. Yeah, I think that would be, we are always welcome for more audiences for our work. So I think if we can arrange that, that would be a wonderful opportunity for us to hear a different perspective on the folks. We tend to focus on the teacher's work in these program reviews because they're the ones

▶ 1:21:36 who then have to go back and do that work and the implementation of the actions involved, including the outreach to families and coordination. So, but we're welcome to have a conversation about what are other resources or other views of the curriculum and the instruction from the outside. We find that other views really do inform and make us think deeper about some of what we're doing because we see it from our lens because we're doing the work and sometimes other voices are also helpful. Great, thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, I asked because in my opinion, we don't do that enough as a school committee. We have all these resources, some institutional and some less formal, but they're out there in the community

▶ 1:22:33 and they have the ability to bring energy ideas and expertise to the table that we don't necessarily have here in the room so I think it would behoove us all of us to make better use of that and I think particularly with regard to the kind of issues again that we're talking about in the realm of health and wellness that perhaps more than all of our areas of study this is one where there really might be an opportunity for a two-way street both in the classroom but out to the community and back again so I just offer that that notion and thank you again very much appreciate it thank you we're fortunate to be in a community that has the Marlowe's alliance against violence the substance abuse coalition prevention coalition that you speak of

▶ 1:23:23 Maureen Busby is one of the foremost speakers on vaping in the Northeast so we're very fortunate to have these resources here and they're in the building at least once a month if not more and it's it's great to tap into them in their expertise when they are around. Ms. Donahue. To speak more on the mental health issue I know that at the high school and middle school we've implemented those like workshop days where we have opportunities for students to do all kinds of different exploratory activities and etc but I was wondering if maybe that could be an opportunity to focus on mental health or to have discussions about like stress and anxiety in school and ways to combat that because I think that hearing from the students would be effective way to

▶ 1:24:04 look at solutions sure we're always looking for ideas to fill those days I mean that people offer up certain things is certain agenda items that we would like to get across but I mean this is a great opportunity to build in that direction and i know um both mr merrill and mr best are interested in expanding some of those community days um and making even more frequent so i think that's a great idea you're going to take that to mr merrill grace maybe before would you like one of us to take it to mr merrill i think i prefer that we will do that any further comment from the committee seeing them thank you very much for your presentation and all your hard work on the wellness review program I look forward to the conclusion of this as

▶ 1:25:01 well as the initiation of the review of fine arts thank you thank you please fill out those surveys and with that we move on to what appears to be based on public comment the marquee topic for tonight the BB school at this time I see presentation has been prepared and is up on the screen madam superintendent would you please thank you mr. so presentation to the school committee with some background information most of which you know I certainly do not plan on reading slides I don't know how it translated on IQM when I downloaded my IQ man they It got funky, but I think what Dr. Adams has there probably is a cleaner copy. So again, as you know, when we were heading into the override discussion, we had two demographic

▶ 1:26:06 studies done. We had had a demographic study done in 2015 leading up to the modules. Can I bother somebody to close that door, please? Thank you. And we decided to repeat it with two different sources in the fall of 2018 in order to have a second opinion on our numbers. In the chart that you have in these slides is the range with the difference. And at least for 2019-2020, it's holding true to the Collins numbers at this point in time. A question was raised about methodology, and I can do this correctly, and what, just to address that question, in literature from NASDAQ, who probably are the primary providers of demographic information for school systems throughout New England, regarding their methodology

▶ 1:27:14 and reliability for enrollment they tell us that each ratio for grades K through 12 represents the cumulative effect of the following factors migration in or out of the schools changes in school program dropouts transfers retention in the same grade births and deaths housing growth and usually within a one to three year three years in the future so the methodology is a little bit more complicated than it's captured in this blurb current enrollments by class again that is provided for you because it is the school committee policy that we are to balance class size to the best of our abilities at the elementary level it's a bit more difficult at the middle and the high school level with electives and as

▶ 1:28:13 a result as we've discussed the first year I was here 95% of our families got their first choice by last year only 80% of our families got their first choice that's a little bit better than 1819 and which only 76% got their first choice but again it is a struggle to balance class size given the criteria for student placement Margaret move ahead to student placement thank you one more that is the school committee policy and the priority is on siblings but the need for a special education or English as a second language program balancing class size geographic proximities and family choice so having said that we still have some variation and the class size the goal would be no matter what solution we

▶ 1:29:09 have to build the opportunity to lower class size even if it means adding a class on a rolling basis so what does that mean what it means is some years we need 15 grade twos some years we need 14 grade twos I don't know if we'll get to point where we need 16 grade twos but it would give us the flexibility that we need within our space to make those adjustments as we need to make them rolling forward the lowest we've ever had in the district and i believe it precedes me was when we had the typical 12 classes at each grade level then it crept up to 13 14 and as you know now we're pushing 15 16 and that's where we're feeling the um stress um we also know from the demographic study that this is a not a bubble as i refer to it often it's a wave or a trend that will roll its way up

▶ 1:30:17 to the middle school in the high school and eventually drop off somewhat at the elementary level but the prediction from the demographic study was it would not drop below 300 at the elementary level it would drop from 320 330 as we've seen in the past but it will roll its way up for the high school and eventually we would have to address it there which I can talk about in response to questions so So the grade, the two options are, there is not enough space at the BB to take 15 grade fives and put them there, and to have specialty space and everything else we can have. You could have a two-strand elementary school. That is what we typically had in Melrose before we added the modules to Winthrop, Hoover,

▶ 1:31:15 And that was the only thing. We did not get added to the Horace Mann as originally planned because when we went to do that, it would creep onto the park land. The park land belongs to the state. We would have to ask permission from the state. And at that time, the city planner decided that is not a route that we could go down because that could take years. So we only put up five modules, not six, as originally planned. So the reassignment to grades one to five, which would require us to set up a whole other elementary school. The problem is, with that, is it's not I'm going to take 12 teachers among my other five schools and transfer them. What you end up doing is taking students from every school

▶ 1:32:11 to create a class you lower the class sizes at the other buildings to an optimum size maybe 18 19 which I know many of us would love and you build the class at the BB so that means hiring teachers for those classes those of you who were here for the previous BB experience where we closed the BB and And again, I think it's, Madam Mayor, 16 years ago? At least, sure. 16 years ago. That was quite painful to families being taken out of the BB and sent to schools that they may or may not have liked. There were some volunteers, but many people were involuntarily transferred. I would assume the reverse in building up the BB for one through five. you heard tonight from one of our parents very happy where her family is and would like to stay

▶ 1:33:09 there um so that is a real consideration in making it one to five um once the bb would be up and running as a grade one to five i would not necessarily relieve the school committee of of the placement policy. Do I believe the placement policy ought to be revisited? Absolutely. I've had conversations with parents who are much smarter than I, that tell me that they can run a computer program that would fix it for me. I would gladly invite that. Here's the problem within my experience. The growth in the city is not even. In the seven years I've been doing this, one year I had a Winthrop problem. one year I had a Roosevelt problem, one year I had a Lincoln problem, I've had a Horace Mann problem for two years now. It's not predictable growth. When you

▶ 1:34:12 look at the map of the city and where you have your schools, they were not designed equidistant from neighborhoods. Quite honestly, you have more schools on the Lincoln, Beebe, Hoover side of town than you have on the Horace Mann, Winthrop side of town and Roosevelt somewhere in between so you don't have that type of thing and you cannot predict the turnover in your neighborhoods so you would still have to have some sort of placement policy so and what the domino effect would be I don't know at this time to open the BB regardless of whether you open the BB for a one to five or another K building you need a a whole new set of people to run the building you need an administrator you need a secretary you need a nurse you need a custodian those are given we knew

▶ 1:35:09 that when we began this discussion last year about taking back the BB we talked about you would need a operational staff what you would actually need in teaching staff may vary if you move the case there you're basically taking the K teachers and moving them there unlike taking the other grades so that's why there's no teacher impact there when we when I built up this model the closest model I could use for an example was Horace Mann because the Horace Mann is a 12 strand school it has two grades at it has two classrooms at every grade that's That's what makes it a 12-strand. So Beebe would look like the Horace Man. Those of you who know the buildings know that the Beebe looks exactly like the Hoover looked

▶ 1:36:02 before we put the modules on. It's not as big as the Franklin because the Franklin has a bottom floor, and that gives it extra classrooms. So it is a replica of the Hoover with all the restrictions of the Hoover. So whatever solution we decide on, you have this physical configuration, which I think is on the slide, thank you Margaret, 12 classrooms, not enough classrooms for 13-16 strand, okay, and there is work to be done in the BV. I have shared with the city my belief that the work can be done in stages. To open the Beebe in September, we would need appropriate furniture, clean it up, make sure the plumbing and electricity were up to grade, put in some additional wiring so that it could be technologically equivalent to our other buildings, and then we would be able to open

▶ 1:37:04 it. Any other work that needs to be done in the Beebe is no different than the work I have to do in other buildings. We recently met with the capital's improvement program, Mr. O'Connell was on that committee, and we laid out to the city all the repairs that have to be done across all the buildings. You're talking millions of dollars of repairs, okay? Every smart board in the city has to be replaced within the next several years. That's a million dollars alone. I need windows at the Franklin. I need windows at the Beebe. We're looking out to build a double door entry at the Winthrop. We're looking to upgrade the door entry at the high school for security purposes. Almost every building in the school district needs roofs.

▶ 1:38:00 There's lots of financial needs here that are competing. And again, it is up to the city to decide where, when, and how to prioritize those and what monies they want to spend. So what I have focused on alone is what do I have in front of me and what is the educational program that would be feasible for the BB at this point in time. So I also put in front of you criteria for a solution. is very important to us as you know when we did the work on the modules one of the things that we insisted upon with the city was we would do work on the Horace man the Horace man did not have an art and music space it did not have a library it was important to give them the same space as we've given everybody

▶ 1:38:52 else okay so maintaining that space or regaining that space is very important to us as a district for example at the Roosevelt we no longer have a music room. We now use a teacher's room for the music room. At the Lincoln two weeks ago we built a wall in the library to create a music room. We no longer have computer labs but that's okay because technology has changed. Kids don't go down to a computer lab anymore, the carts come to them. So that was space we grabbed for classrooms along the way the other thing that has impacted our buildings when you talk about equity of space is this district works to keep our children with significant special needs in district we only put 47 children out of almost 4,000

▶ 1:39:49 out of district that's quite an accomplishment those programs take space we have built those spaces at the Lincoln and at the Roosevelt that impacts who gets to go to the Lincoln and Roosevelt because I need space at the Lincoln the Roosevelt for students going into those programs so other kids who may live in that neighborhood end up getting moved to this second or third choice we are required by law to provide ESL programs any solution you have has to begin to address this later on tonight when we talk about enrollment I make that important point in the enrollment report when I came here we had one ESL program at the Lincoln we know that our Lincoln is our most diverse neighborhood it has a lot of our English as a second language speakers

▶ 1:40:42 that's where the program was that's where those students got placed we then built out a program at the Roosevelt. Now we've built out a program at the Hoover. For equity's sake, we should have an ESL program at every building, okay? That's a consideration in building out buildings and space in buildings and building out programs. Sustainability, it has to be a plan you can live for seven to ten years. If you look at the demographics, if we go over the demographics, we could live this plan we could live with some other plan for seven to ten years okay because this number is going to roll up to the high school efficacy again at the end of the day it is the program we provide to our kids that matters the most we have

▶ 1:41:39 eight buildings all eight buildings are not certainly equitable in the sense that they're all beautiful buildings like Roosevelt and Lincoln but what What happens in every building is what is equitable and is what is most important. We are providing every one of our students in all six of our elementary schools a quality program. And the last thing, of course, is responsiveness. I don't know how much time we have to wait, and I'm going to talk about that in a little bit in a couple of minutes. So those are your criteria for making a decision. i have an opinion about could we wait could i do other things yes i could could i could add two more k's to the franklin i've already had a conversation with miss maranto and miss st george

▶ 1:42:40 could i add another case there could i add another k to those two buildings where would i find space if i had to add another k to those two buildings so i do have a plan b and a plan c because that's what I need to do but everything has impact you add more classes to the Lincoln and the Roosevelt the Lincoln is at 420 something and the Roosevelt's at 430 something you add another 20 odd kids you can play out in your heads the neighborhoods you add another two classes to the Franklin as a short-term approach, Ms. Rosso then provides two less pre-Ks. The school committee can play out in their heads what that means financially to the operation of the early childhood center. But more importantly, you have heard me say in this chamber many, many times,

▶ 1:43:39 I defend that program to the nth degree because I know the difference it makes when those kids enter K. The 150 to 60 kids that go to RECC and come into K every year are much better prepared than some of the other children we see. That doesn't mean they're all perfect, they're not all going to be A students, they're all going to come with their needs. But they come very well prepared, and it makes a difference for those K teachers. Having said that, we are also seeing a difference in our student body. We're seeing children come into the district with more needs. We work very hard to keep them into our district. I was at the early childhood center today because it was my, I visit every building multiple times during the year.

▶ 1:44:29 It was their turn to have me there. I had a great visit, but I'm seeing our children at three, four, and five who have a wide variety of needs. I'm also in our buildings, our K5 buildings, and I'm seeing kids in K who are still struggling because of their needs. So when I think about this educationally, and we talked about this internally, we thought about what would be the advantage of an early education center that allowed us more time to work with young students to build their ability to do school better. when they go to the big school with the big kids with all the turmoil that was something that entered our mind and so that led to the plan option two so option one was a replicate of another elementary school option two was an

▶ 1:45:28 opportunity to work with early childhood students and to maybe have a different approach a different model that built up their ability and Ms. Rosso can talk to that Ms. White-Lambrey can talk to that as well as can Dr. Adams the decision the decision may or may not be in our hands everything depends on whether or not the same collaborative finds a building to move to they have agreed in principle with us and have voted on it as a board of directors that that as soon as they have another building, they will vacate and turn the building over to us. If they do not have another building by January, I think we have a different set of considerations because we need to get into the BB and do the upgrades to get it ready for our students.

▶ 1:46:37 So that may give you more time, that may force me to plan B or which is another discussion with the school committee. For the purposes of today, I was asked to plan, what would you do with the BB if you could have it tomorrow? These were the two plans we had after the administration spent a lot of time thinking about the different options. In 2016, when we were first faced with this surprise growth in population, we thought it was going to be a bubble, it turned out not to be a bubble. I came up with nine options pros and cons and nine options ultimately the city decide on the modules among those options were all sorts of different things including moving the fifth grade to the middle school rethinking whether

▶ 1:47:30 you should have a k2 three five all there are so many options out there for education it's incredible i am hesitant to say one is better than another i think cities and towns have preferences based on their population their parents and their school committee philosophy i have taught in districts where i've had k-8s i have taught in districts where i've had k-2s three-fives i have taught here where i have k-5s in every one of those districts i will tell you the same thing wonderful teachers committed to the well-being of children that was the common factor regardless of the configuration you have to decide what configuration works for us all right the other thing is I want to say is about the long term because I believe somebody brought this up and again

▶ 1:48:34 forgive me if I don't get my dates right in 2013 or 14 the permanent school building committee which has existed in the city for 20 years I believe madam a are right yes all right they oversaw Lincoln they oversaw Roosevelt they oversaw the middle school they came up with a multi-phase plan for the high school there is a plan on record to build out space in the high school for when we need it okay again that plan involves taking central office and moving it out of central office at that time in 2016 the cost of moving central office out of the high school building out more classrooms plus the third floor those of you who grew up in Melrose the old CAD rooms is approximately 1.5 $5 million, and that's a plan that we're sitting on if we need the space at the high school in the future.

▶ 1:49:40 Where central office will go, that's a different set of problems. But that has been anticipated. Bottom line is, what do we need for the next five to seven years? What is feasible for the city educationally, logistically, and financially, and what is the belief system of this school committee? What do you want to see happen? Thank you, Madam Superintendent. Mr. O'Connell. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sure like everyone sitting here throughout the room, we have lots of questions, but if I may Madam Superintendent you touched upon this in terms of hoping to have the BB back for our use for next school year can you can you talk a little more about that just to share with members of the public the rationale for why we're

▶ 1:50:51 taking what I think rightly has been described or perceived as a somewhat accelerated process we're looking as I understand it at an eight-week review and decision-making process spread over several school committee meetings but ultimately with a vote or a planned vote on December 10th can you just talk a little bit about why we have to do this now so again it has to do with bid process and again this is where it's not the school committee's control it's the city's control so we own the buildings but the city manages our buildings quite well thank you in order to get workmen in there in a timely manner for us to have the building ready for the end of August bids have to go out the beginning

▶ 1:51:47 of January we have to follow the state bid process you have to do the bids they They have to be posted, I want to say six weeks, somebody may have a correction for me. Then you have to open the bids, then you have to contract, and then you have to get people in there. We've done repairs to buildings that fast, those of you who lived through Horace Mann with us, we did it that fast. We did the high school build out for the learning commons and everything else in a little bit more time while the kids were in the building. But Denise Gaffey and I have done this before together and we think with that timeline we could get the basics done. But you have to get those bids out by January 1st, probably.

▶ 1:52:34 Okay, very good. Thank you for that. And if I may, Madam Chair, a couple of follow ups. Starting with the comment, I'm anticipating that going forward this review and decision-making process will be akin to our budget process in many ways in that not only are we planning a public forum on November 19th but we also have a series of or we have two school committee meetings in addition to the tonight and I anticipating that this topic will be on those agendas as well so this is this isn't the end of the story by a long shot moving beyond that Madam Superintendent one of the issues that's been brought up by many people rightly is the issue of traffic and traffic concerns and I know traffic isn't your primary concern this this isn't the

▶ 1:53:31 traffic Commission this is the school committee how do we address that how do Why do we take that on? Are there resources available within the city that we can call upon to assess the traffic implications of whatever educational program we choose or consider? So we work with Sergeant Gawk, who is the traffic officer. We work with the traffic commission. We've been working for the past four years with I want to say it's Healthy Melrose, but it's not Healthy Melrose. It is Healthy Melrose. It is under Healthy Melrose where we've done a number of traffic studies and traffic reworking. The high school, they worked with us. They're working with us on the Hoover right now, because the increase in the Hoover population has resulted in more traffic.

▶ 1:54:24 So they're working with us there. I think we're waiting to hear if we get a grant to build more sidewalks up at the Hoover neighborhood. We are a walking city. I mean, if you are on the high school campus, the middle high school, middle campus every day, granted the older kids drive to the Nolan Park, but the amount of bikes, the amount of kids walking, the kids walking down Main Street, we walk as many places as we can, but it's also parent preference. Part of the greater issue is this. Our schools now run from 7.30 to 6 o'clock every day. Most of our families are two-career families. We provide before school care and after school care. And many of our families drop their kids off on their way to either

▶ 1:55:13 wherever they work or to the train station or wherever it may be. I know that one of the aldermen has tried doing, what does she call them, walking trains? School pools. What? School pools. School pools, thank you. And has had some success with that. But ultimately, I can't tell parents how to get their kids to school, so that's a real issue. The other issue is, we went to late start at the high school because we believed that was in the best interest of adolescents. And that has had an impact on the parkway, as we all know. But it's difficult. It's a very dense city as well. You know, we don't have schools that are on back roads with acres of land around them. We have city schools that are in congested neighborhoods.

▶ 1:56:09 You know, we've done whatever we can with the traffic commission. We put the cut out in Winthrop, and that has had some help, but I don't have an easy answer for you on traffic in the city. Very good. Thank you. And I know we have a lot of other people who want to ask questions. Thank you for your forbearance. The issue of transitions for young students, Madam Superintendent, can you talk a little bit about that? And again, I know this is the first night of a multi-meeting process, but it seems the number of people have brought up that particular concern. I think that you have to choose where you're going to have your transitions. That's the bottom line. And again, I just described umpteen different approaches to school systems that people have.

▶ 1:57:04 Some people have a transition from second to third, some people have it from pre-K to K. There are districts that have total K schools, massive K schools, and those kids go from K to one. Bill Ricker just built an 8 to 12 high school, so their transition's going to be 7 to 8. I think the success of the transition goes with the success of your planning. If you plan for it, you have transition activities, you do it thoughtfully, we can do it successfully. We do a lot of that when the K kids come into us. We do the building base breakfasts, I mean on picnics. We do the big event on Fred Green. Again, all that's part of planning for transition. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. McAndrew?

▶ 1:58:00 Jennifer McAndrew: Thank you, I appreciate the presentation and the questions raised by the community as well as folks who emailed us, talked to us about this in advance. And I, just to echo Chairman O'Connell point, I have a lot of questions in various categories about this. As the superintendent knows, we've talked through some of this, but I think it's still worth talking about it, all of it in public. So I do want to be mindful of time and other opportunities that we'll have. but I do want to sort of, I think, pick up on a couple of things that you mentioned tonight to dig in a little bit on. And the first question is around the K to five option. And I think we could have a little more discussion if you wouldn't mind and clarity around this idea

▶ 1:58:51 Jennifer McAndrew: that 12 additional full-time teachers are definitely needed. Is that, let me just play out a scenario. So is there a scenario where, for example, students are moved from other elementary schools and then at those homeschools, let's call them, just for purposes of the conversation, those classes, the grade level is then combined into a smaller class or two classes, say from three, and then that frees up a classroom teacher to either teach another grade at that same school if we then need to add another first grade, which is gonna be my second set of questions, or maybe move and or move to the Beebe. In other words, is the 12, how firm do you feel that is? Is it an estimate? It's an estimate.

▶ 1:59:38 Again, when I ran these numbers with the previous business manager, we could not assume that we would be reducing classes because we were basing it off of our experience with having closed Beebe and this is in the reverse. So I can't promise you. I try to run a scenario, as somebody suggested, where I had four of a grade. I said, can I move this whole grade? But then again, that means all 21 parents in that class saying, okay, you can pick up the fourth class of grade four at Roosevelt and move it all the way over to the BB. I doubt I'm gonna get that type of cooperation. But to your point, as you know, Often what we do in the district is we move FTEs around, full-time equivalencies around.

▶ 2:00:30 Jennifer McAndrew: So if you had a situation where you were able to combine classes and run better numbers, and you had a FTE filled up, freed up, would that mean I could add a fourth grade two at the Lincoln? Because a lot of people would like to be at the Lincoln and then have that FTE, not that teacher, but that FTE roll up over the years. Yes, that's a possibility. That is one way that you manage staff numbers. Okay, thank you. On the K, sticking with the K to five option, and then I have a question about the pre-K to K option. One of the things that folks have asked, and I just want you to address it if you could, is this idea of having like a roll-in option for the BB where you would have like just put two kindergartens next year and then

▶ 2:01:26 Jennifer McAndrew: kindergartens in first and sort of like build it up over time or put two kindergartens in two first and then and you and I have talked about that the challenges around the feasibility of that and also why it doesn't actually possibly address the overcrowding issue that we actually have but could you please talk about that for the community so if I so I'm trying to wrap my head around it because is it two kindergartens the year sharing space would seem or seem is gone and we have only two classes in a building with 12 classrooms two classes in a building with 12 classrooms and nobody else yeah and we can you just talk about I think that answers itself I get it I mean it's It's expensive and you can, inefficient and a lousy experience for 50 kids and staff that

▶ 2:02:24 Jennifer McAndrew: have nobody to rely on. So that's a difficulty. And I will tell you that we have debated sharing space with SEEM, but the program there is such it would not be in the best interest of either SIEM or the Melrose schools it's a highly specialized special ed program and and it would which is one of the reasons why their construction costs associated with this move to an elementary school whatever model right exactly so similar thought exercise around the K and pre-k to K option two let's sort of think about if that scenario so the kindergartens are moved out of the current elementary school five elementary schools I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about what would then happen there so or might happen so you've meant I've heard

▶ 2:03:23 Jennifer McAndrew: you mention that we could reclaim some of that space for specials or where the library the music room that are now being used as classrooms I you talked about special and the autism program ESL in every building and then you talked about reducing class size I think we can all see how that makes sense won't we also need to add first grades next year potentially or other grades I mean isn't part of the idea that those classrooms will be used for one to five and when and how is that communicated in those decisions made so because I think that is the essential piece to reducing class size would be adding in those buildings would be adding other classrooms right I don't see it reflected in the presentation so I just want to draw it out okay so I'm still not sure what

▶ 2:04:20 you're what you're when what do you anticipate needing and when will we talk about that I think I won't be able to anticipate what I need until I know what my space is and where the families want to go so miss Rosso and miss white lamb I didn't write it here and they will begin the process with the Franklin families patty when we have families want to go so but you have to put those kindergartens in first grade somewhere right so last year when we went to do it we had a number of families who did not get their first choice right because we just simply did not have space um and just one final point on the choice issue most families pick the school near them isn't that right yes um and so one other i've gone too long i just want to raise one other

▶ 2:05:33 Jennifer McAndrew: issue and then table it to talk about another time but just ask you and your team to think about um which is that no matter as has been clear from the discussion so far no matter what scenario we choose there will be many many many decisions thereafter related to implementation and you know we registration process timing logistics is are is the time of the school day shifted um and if so how parking i mean all the things traffic everything we've and i just want us to think about it at some point maybe put formally on to our conversations at epnp how parent feedback will be incorporated into those conversations under either scenario and really think about you know what kind of surveying info sessions you know we're going to have a pto formed if so when

▶ 2:06:26 Gail Infurna: all of that we do have the experience of the families that were at the franklin for kindergarten to draw on with some of that early release days i mean it's just on and on so and those families some of those families i'm sorry have met with me and patty um separately and have given us some great feedback and some great ideas great i'm going forward so yeah great so i just want to put that out in the ether for talking about at a later date yeah thank you madam mayor Thank you very much. I'm feeling really old sitting here. You talked about the closing of the BB school. I was there. You talked about the school building committee 20 years ago. I was on that. but since this is my last meeting, I just want to really just ask a quick question

▶ 2:07:15 Gail Infurna: because someone brought it up in the public and then you had mentioned it about the elementary schools, if they had space for a computer lab, would you still use it for that? Is that model kind of passe? That model's passe. I thought we had heard that somewhere along the line the past 22 months. The city has very generously supported the Chromebooks. right right so that's I just had a quick question I look forward to listening to from home and oh thank you see how this all turns out you can at least Texas during the meetings any further comments mr. Ozzie Thomas please just have a process question so because we're pretty sure this is going to be either an elementary school or a pre-kk school that's what

▶ 2:08:14 it looks like so far is there a way if we needed to have more time before we voted could we push it off and what's the drop dead date because either way we can get bids this is not going to be that different one way or the other it's going to be a school so i know that it has a huge trickle-down effect but we also want to encourage as much thought and input as we can get so process question I'm gonna be real blunt here and may is not gonna be happy with me 11 more days 11 more days I've been asking for bids for six months and the city has not and the city has preferred to wait I don't know I think this is a chicken or an egg but I have been asking for bids for several months now because I am uncomfortable not knowing everything up front because

▶ 2:09:19 that's just how I operate but that's the situation we're in so separate from the final decision you need to get the bid process going right and that's what saying yes and so in terms of what the committee needs to do in terms of making a final decision we need well we need to really study this more obviously and we need to get feedback we so we have time I don't know how much time you would have because the other thing that I want to put in your radar is we register for kindergarten in February right and we want to make sure that we parents know what they're registering for so you really do not have that much more time right because we have the pressure of we want a long-term solution and we want to

▶ 2:10:05 Gail Infurna: soothe everyone's concerns and worries about what's coming up for next September and people have to plan their lives and figure out their budgets and everything so but those are the two things that we're gonna be those are the two pressures right okay well put if i could just intervene here through the chair please we are still having conversations with our administration on this and i think we will have an answer especially after tonight's meeting thank you i think we were i think it was waiting for this point to come public and mr obramsky please uh he's not questions that have to be answered tonight but just stuff that I think we need to be looking at if we're looking at the pre KK model is just maybe possibly I don't know how you would do

▶ 2:10:53 this would stagger times possibly with they would arrive at different times and then like you mean within the pre KK building yes yeah and then the planning for traffic in that area specifically because the train tracks are right now there too so you'd be also dealing with that people coming from the main street side not so much the other side but just considerations that we might want to be talking about so thank you thank you it's just cool nothing for you no I'm making sure that everyone had a chance to go through before I asked any questions she's working off of a double I am working off of a double screen yes I've got two different things going on so I appreciate all of this for my first

▶ 2:11:50 question is if we were to follow the was option one they all came model pre KK model do you do we know if we have sufficient parent interest in having that both schools full of pre-k students another put it a different way and if I may redirect to miss Rosso has our waitlist been so expansive that we will be able to fill all of these spaces that you anticipate pre-k wise please come to microphone yeah it's not adding in preparation for this we have been consolidating the franklin for a couple years still maintaining the same number of children increasing class sizes and consolidating programs so that we are at full capacity right now we would need to if we went forward with the bb plan we have 15 preschool classes we would need to get ourselves down to 12

▶ 2:12:59 preschool classes taking a look at some of our information we have currently 22 students who are not melrose residents so that probably would be the first place that we would take a look at that would eliminate one class we have other configurations that are two day three day classes that we can change some things around to get us down to that 12 is the number that we are looking at if we were going to have 16 k's if you're going to have 16 k's between the franklin and the bb she would have to reduce the pre-k program by x number of classes at three there would not be a growth in the pre-k program no no the the the other thing that uh miss russell and i have talked about is the flexibility this gives us that if you have less k's in any

▶ 2:13:48 given year you can add a pre-k classroom so it gives you flexibility in your pre-k program to go up or down which we've already been doing because when we had to move the two k's into the franklin we had to go down in the amount of pre-k programs we had to accommodate the two k's at the franklin okay that makes sense it does yes thank you um and then uh following up on this model here can you remind uh well i'm sure my colleagues probably know this uh but i have seen forgetful of late can you remind me what percent of our kindergarten students from the franklin last year got their first choice in terms of schools for first grade the franklin by themselves i don't know the number for the franklin families by themselves i know for the whole city it was 80

▶ 2:14:41 got first choice so um the franklin is approximately half of our um we had 165 students from the franklin go into the kindergarten uh forgive me i i was not clear uh i'm talking strictly the franklin kindergarten students going into first grade and what percentage they had okay yeah so i did take a look at it um this morning taking a look at it there were originally when we went out 19 of our 22 families got their first place as we rolled forward four more families moved out of that group four families moved which opened up additional spot so that in addition to that 19 it looks like um one two three four more got a first place because somebody moved out so so we applied the same process to one that grade one that we had

▶ 2:15:45 applied to k what what are your preferences we'll try to give you your first choice when the first time we rolled it out in the spring we were not able to give everybody going into one their first choice we had to wait until there was movement in the district and then we were able to accommodate a few more families i think as late as august with their first even even to not get their first choice yeah of course yeah um and then moving on to uh the k-5 option um do we have any sense of So how many families would be voluntarily willing to move their one through five? No, we have not asked families for that. I think that I really am reluctant to put families through that anxiety of even asking that question prematurely

▶ 2:16:41 before we have more information or more of a decision about where the district wants to go. I appreciate the reluctance but as a data point that would be helpful in guiding our own deliberations I think so then as the chair mentioned we have two additional meetings school committee meetings to discuss this and then and also a public forum the public forum is November 19th in the Learning Commons at high school at 7 p.m. I strongly encourage the public to and all those interested in attending said forum at the Learning Commons. Seeing no further interest or discussion on the BB tonight let's move on to the final topic for the EP&P that being enrollment. So before you you have your Mr. Annual Enrollment Report, again, we continue to grow.

▶ 2:17:53 I think probably what is most important for this committee in face of the possible FRBC revisions and the new funding formulas that may be coming out. FRBC? Sorry, Foundation Budget Review Commission. We will be using 3750 as the chapter 70 number. That is probably the highest chapter 70 calculation number we have used in the past several years. And that is based on the fact that our foundation this year is 3757. As you know, ECC students are not counted in foundation unless they're receiving special ed services. and then they are prorated. To the conversation we were just having, I want to point out some interesting statistics. This year we have 16 Ks, but we have 14 grade 1s. Then we have 15 classes at 2, 3, and 4, and 13 classes at grade 5.

▶ 2:19:00 You can see the trend, and you can see that there is some fluctuation in it. Our ELL population is up to 196. I always remind the committee my first year here it was 82. And that we really need to think about in the budget discussions how we expand ESL services to every building. Our minority population remains steady. We were 20% last year, we're 21% this year. Our special ed numbers are up. They are up as a reflection of a number of matters. First of all, if you have a growing population, you're going to have more students, and more students being referred. As the committee knows, we also have had a number of move-ins, and some of those move-ins have been quite costly, and that has impacted our special ed numbers.

▶ 2:19:56 And to the earlier conversation under Steven and Margaret, We're having more students, especially at the secondary level, with mental health referrals. And that is increasing our SPED numbers. Free and reduced lunch, we're down to 643. I think it reflects the changing socioeconomics of the city. We're waiting on the disadvantaged student category, but Judy Chan, our data specialist, estimates it will be around 425. I'm not quite sure where we will land if the Foundation Budget Review Commission recommendations are passed. Whether we will be counting that population as free and reduced lunch or disadvantaged students. That remains to be seen. And just some other information there about school choice, international students,

▶ 2:20:53 homeless students, and tuition waived in students. As the committee knows, more and more of our staff are asking to have their students go to school here in Melrose. That is a benefit in their contract, and we are up to 13 this year. The new contracts put in strengthened language around maximum class size. It is the recommendation under the contract to reduce class size to 25 or fewer. and at the secondary level to eliminate total student load to 125 when we go into the next piece of information regarding classes over 25 and under 15 you will see where we are having some struggles other than band wellness Orchestra those classes you expect to be big if you certainly don't have a lot of of students in band or orchestra you're not too effective but we are still

▶ 2:21:59 having some classes high classes when you look at the middle school you're seeing classes in some literature classes the physics lab anything that says a in front next to it is an elective so your a classes are running high because kids are choosing those classes your core content classes are falling within the recommendation recommended numbers so your electives are running high at the middle school and then under you again on IQ m2 mine printed funny on IQ m2 this year I try putting in a recommendation that we we We do not run classes under 15, but we are required to schedule every student. Seven periods, seven day waterfall schedule, and sometimes that results in low class sizes. Dr. Best is aware of this, and it's something he's planning on trying to remedy next year.

▶ 2:23:08 The high school, you have a lot of what looks like people one, two, or three. are services those are special ed services ESL services related services you see things like academic support reading lab peer mentoring those are services that are required either in students IEPs or because of where they are in terms of their EL placement other classes we continue to combine so for example 3d art 3 French 5h advanced is a combined class you see things like photography 2 is a combined class biotechnology is a combined class where possible we are trying to combine classes for efficiencies again this is a function of several things in the schedule first of all um we have electives that are every other

▶ 2:24:15 day electives and we do that so that we can have a mirror but sometimes it always doesn't work out where kids have you know something a block monday wednesday friday and something a block tuesday thursday and whatever the next day is in the rotation the other thing that happens is we We still run a large amount of singletons at the high school. Certain advanced placement courses are singletons. Certain upper level language courses are singletons. So what happens is we have to place students in singletons first. When their schedule plays out, sometimes you end up with the remainder of their schedule being in low population classes. So, that's a function of the seven-day double waterfall schedule, which I don't want to

▶ 2:25:15 explain to anybody, unless you are currently in high school, and if the girls were still here, they could explain it to all of you. The high school has a scheduling committee going this year, again, still trying to tackle this problem. How do we get better at scheduling, and how do we work our schedules so that we don't get into these situations? But as long as the Melrose High offers the array of courses it does, and as long as we support students taking those things that not only do they need, but those things they are interested in, you're going to have some classes over 25 and some classes under 15. Again, it's putting students first. And the last part of this presentation is the numbers, and Judy Chan, our data specialist,

▶ 2:26:05 Jennifer McAndrew: does this breakout and breaking it down into subcategories by building, by demographics, by first language, not English, limited English proficiency, low income, and special ed, so that you have a full detail of our population. Questions? Very well. Any questions? mcandrew please um thank you it's always very helpful and particularly helpful this week paired with the bb school presentation thank you um i wanted to ask a couple of questions about the the two documents related to sort of over enrollment and under enrollment um and i i i heard you about the a block classes um versus the core classes but i i would just say it's a little concerning or i'm interested in your thoughts on why there are so many core

▶ 2:27:04 Jennifer McAndrew: classes in six and seven that are over 25 and i'm you know there's multiple english sections there's the seven eight compacted math um and i'm i guess what i'm thinking about is not necessarily that having 26 versus 25 is some revolutionary hurdle but just that what does this portend for our teams going forward when though the current sixth grade is big the current fourth grade is really big and so i guess i'm just you know even with the a block classes being i mean that's still a full class i get isn't it elective um also my experience is that students are assigned that they don't pick anymore um so given that that's happening it's somewhat concerning to see them all a lot of them at 27 28. so i guess i'm just thinking about what that means for the

▶ 2:28:00 Jennifer McAndrew: future and if i could harken back to the previous conversation how that puts um a fine point on the fact that we will eventually need more space at that campus and that adding fifth grade to that campus is not an option given that exactly my view i'm expressing it i know you're expressing your of you and and again you know I emphasize to everybody whatever educational model we decide upon we make work for the benefit of kids so if the fifth grade were to come to the campus we would make it work but the space is the issue so I'm trying to pull back up the BB presentation and for some reason my thing doesn't work as well as I would like so when you look at the current enrollments you see where it's coming to and that and so it's begun to creep up

▶ 2:29:01 so I think the sixth grade is our first bigger class I think our eighth grade is our last very small class and that is a problem we will be facing so part of the Another question that we have to explore with Dr. Best is if you had to add a team or if you had to go to a split team. And split teams are not ideal. We had a split team last year, but neither is it cost efficient to add a whole other team either. So right now we figure that our teams run around 100 and they're beginning to creep up to 105, 110. so that that is a coming problem thank you and just a quick question on the high school the smaller sections when courses are combined for example photography two and photography three or whatever the other option and or tell me is this correct is the other option that we don't offer

▶ 2:30:05 them okay that's all thanks seeing no further discussion oh miss rosie thomas please i just want to thank thank you for all the enrollment data for the last five years I believe and it's really interesting to look at it closely it's you know it's I think it's very important that we keep in mind that we do have minorities in Melrose doesn't always look like it we're not always aware so much as we could be about that and that it's it's really interesting how much the Asian population has grown really that's really really bumped a lot in the last six years and then I think that we don't have socioeconomics here in terms of average income or anything but I think we're gonna see that go up and then

▶ 2:31:06 we're gonna see our homeless numbers go up too so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and that happens everywhere across the united states of america including melrose and so we have to just start you know keeping that in mind in terms of equity and you know being being fair having a trying to level a playing ground for everybody but i think it's really important that the committee pays attention to what's happening with our demographics not just with our enrollment so equally important but oftentimes what we wind up spending the vast majority of our time on is budget and how we're going to fit all these kids in the building and we also need to pay attention to the other stuff too i know i'm preaching to the

▶ 2:31:52 choir but i just wanted to point you i liked your memo it was very helpful um and also the number of first language families that are not english is 537. so there's some diversity in melrose and and I think it's a challenge for us as a committee to figure out how to best bring that up in our community conversations because oftentimes we are the same people speaking the same people and we want to try to include more people to be part of the conversation across the city just a comment it's It's interesting how our EL population shifts. Seven years ago, our primary language, believe it or not, was Turkish. Turkish. We were a large settlement for families from Turkey who were going to university or

▶ 2:32:50 doing residencies, and that has shifted. And now our primary language is Portuguese, followed by French, and we use French because it's Haitian Creole, but most of our Haitian families read and write French. And actually we're having an uptick in Mandarin, which we have not seen in a long time. So it shifts as the population shifts. it's its own set of challenges and it's very it's it's very rewarding I think for students and our staff but it has its own set of challenges and that you know and again as I said earlier I would like our families to have an opportunity to be spread among our buildings just the way any other Melo's family gets a choice but right now we have if they do not speak English the students

▶ 2:33:48 get placed at Hoover Roosevelt or Lincoln seeing no other questions from the floor just remind us two years ago we had a finding that we needed to spend more on translation services for ESL families will we will that be a topic that we see and visit again here shortly you'll see it in the budget so both miss White-Lambright in providing IEPs and IEP services and dr. Adams in providing any student information has to translate those documents that are not readily translated via our website or some other means and so we build those into their budgets to do that I think when we do the did the handbook unfortunately dr. Adams left we've tried to structure the handbook in such a way that the only

▶ 2:34:53 time we have to do the translations is those sections we're changing so we're trying to again think think ahead so if the majority of the handbooks are the same you know like all the laws and stuff that we don't have to change but if we change some other section say discipline we're only translating those section so trying to be a little bit better about it i don't think it's as costly as it was when we first had to get up to speed very well thank you all that concludes epnp tonight thank you mr sell that brings us to finance and facilities with ms mcandrew thank you hello everyone welcome to finance and facilities we have one item this evening um related to the melrose girls ice hockey user fee um just to remind everyone that the melrose girls ice hockey team is

▶ 2:36:01 combined with stonem this year which is something we talked about at a previous meeting and mr fogarty is here to talk to us about this fee recommendation and thank you for being here for our whole meeting thank you so last spring we came to you and asked about a co-op with stonem high school due to our lack of numbers their lack of numbers neither school was able to provide a team of their own so with that stonem is the host school they've taken on much of the financial responsibility they've asked us to share the ice time with them the cost of the ice time They charge $300 for their all or any user fee at Stoneham High School. We have a tiered system. We charge $600. It would be my recommendation to go with their fee.

▶ 2:36:49 They are the host school. Our costs have been cut drastically because of this. They'll take on the expense of game day personnel, transportation, half of the ice time. So we're coming to it. winter season starts in just over a month and that's a question that stone amassed do you want the use of fees to go 300 with them 600 with us we just want to iron out some details before the season does begin thank you for purposes of discussion is there a motion to approve made by mr. skill second second by mr. Salm are there any questions for mr. Fogarty on this I have a couple questions i uh thomas thank you um so how much is the total cost of ice time they're anticipating somewhere between 22 24 000 if the season gets extended with playoffs um

▶ 2:37:48 different factors fall into that but so we'll be we'll be uh picking up 50 of that whatever it winds up correct okay and they have a reduced rate from where we were last year paying at the flinn their cost at stonem is a lot less and it's a good deal i know they're being very generous with us i'm just wondering why we would decrease fees for one class of athletes i know it's because we're partnering with stonem but isn't that being unequitable to other other hockey players the male hockey players for the male hockey players their costs haven't changed yeah they'll still have the full cost of transportation full cost of game day personnel full cost of transportation and uh full cost of ice but the fees aren't going to get anywhere near what we're going to throw in to

▶ 2:38:37 the 50 i'm not following so i know that i know that it's never equitable in terms of the amount of fees that you pay for certain sports so like you know both hockey and football tend to be the most expensive and why would we're still going to be paying out as a district a lot of money for the time on the ice which we should because that's part of the deal but why would we decrease the amount that we're charging if we're still going to be paying a lot of money for this time a couple of things first of all when we calculate the tiered system we did a very thorough analysis we had a very big committee that did it include an ad from another city and it's based on the overall cost estimate of that program so hockey is probably the most expensive sport that you can have

▶ 2:39:26 when you do ice time, referees, coaches, buses, everything else. What's happening here is we're going to Stoneham, and those costs are being removed from the calculation for our girls team. Okay? We no longer have to worry about paying the Flynn rink what they charge. We don't have to worry about the buses. They're absorbing it into their athletic budget. But when Steven came to me, he is very concerned about, I'm a Melrose parent sitting next to a Stoneham parent, our girls are on the same team, you're paying 300 and I'm paying 600, and Stoneham's paying for most of the bill. That's a problem among parents and for the kids, and that's why he's making the recommendation he's making. about what it's costing us for the sport not who's playing the sport what it's costing us for the

▶ 2:40:26 sport no i understand that but what it's costing us for the ice time is much more than the fees whether it's 300 or 600 but all all our all our fees pay contribute about 46 percent yeah at the end of the day that's what we've calculated most of our fees can contribute about 46 percent so is Is the 300 then 46% or is it less or more than that? And is the 600 46%? We're their guest, Jen. We're their guest and they said that in order to do this, they wanna partner with us and invite us and they're going to do the majority of the charges, okay? I don't know how their AD figures their fees. I don't know how the Stone School Committee calculates what they contribute to their athletic budget or not.

▶ 2:41:18 I can't answer those for you. All I can answer is I know how we calculate ours and what we base the 600 on. Now that we no longer have that expense and we're going to be partnering with Stoneham, you know, we're concerned that we're charging our parents double what Stoneham is charging for service that Stoneham is providing. that's that's the dilemma we have in front of us so okay i understand okay i mean i want i want to i know you're uncomfortable because you're you're concerned about the equity um and i and i you know respect that but well i think it's really incredibly generous it's very generous it's like the best deal in hockey probably in the state of massachusetts i understand that yeah but i just think it's it's i don't know if we should make decisions because we're worried

▶ 2:42:15 about parents arguing over who's paying what so some of the game day costs come from the officials comes from the announcer you have to have a site administrator in these cases there'll be security there there'll be ticket takers you're talking 600 to 800 per game on top of ice transportation so it is a significant cost and i'm faced with the fact that they're paying free and and we're asking for six i'm just looking for clarity mr simon um thank you uh through the chair uh if i'm able to um 80 40. uh so um just correct me if i'm wrong this uh uh i'm gonna shift gears but i'll tie it in uh uh please grant me a little leeway if you would madam chair um there's what's the roster for a standard hockey team at the high school 21 22.

▶ 2:43:20 i believe 22. 22 okay um and so i'm sorry i'm impressed you know that and so former ice hockey official um that's how i paid my way through college i refereed ice hockey um and so off the the cuff math 22 players paying 600 per we're talking roughly $13,000 so cutting that in half where you're imagining that would be a discount to the overall budget of $6,600 roughly fair enough my question is in terms of equity and in terms of men's sports women's sports might we not expand this and contend to all hockey players this season one time only as a cost equity because the turn what you said on your on its head Madam Superintendent what we may in fact do is create a situation where we now have a Melrose family who has a son playing

▶ 2:44:40 hockey for Melrose and a daughter playing hockey for this combined Melrose Stoneham team and their bill is now nine hundred dollars versus six hundred or twelve hundred dollars because as I recall we don't have a family cap we do with family cap of a thousand fifteen hundred dollars so why don't we consider extending that one season only to all hockey players and mowers. I would not agree to that without knowing our anticipated cost for the Flynn rink. And I don't know what those anticipated costs are right now for the Flynn rink. Ms. Driscoll. I think that we've passed a budget and I think if we I think we're trying to do what's fair here and i think if we cut it anymore we're um not um going to make our

▶ 2:45:42 budget to the extent that we voted it and that would be a concern for me thank you mr rossi thomas i just would wonder what if we should consult with amy lindquist on it too just because it's a it's a fee change in the middle of the year too right i just i worried about the implic can we change fees like we can change fees anytime okay and we can change fees for one class of athletes okay are there any other comments mr. sound just to redirect we're talking about a decrease combined decrease assuming varsity only we have projected seven to eight hockey players coming from Melrose high school we lost several to private schools several to graduation and therefore we can't feel their own team and that's what prompted this relationship with

▶ 2:46:37 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Stoneham so we're anticipating if I had nine sign up I'd be shocked so we're anticipating a loss from the women's team of $2,100 well 300 times seven players I'm sorry does anybody remember when we did the combined team with watertown did the the girls team pay a different athletic fee than the boys team back then does anybody remember no you don't remember i do not recall i do not believe we did okay i think that i think that they were the same but i don't think the array i think the arrangement with watertown was different financially i'm not sure to what extent they absorbed as much of the cost stone correct so that's the question and um point of clarification mr still madam chair um so i just wanted to um say that i support the motion as it's here and my point about the budget

▶ 2:47:44 Jennifer McAndrew: related to the the men's team or the boys team just to be clear thank you um and also just to harken back to the budget we budget half for the girls team than we do for the men the boys team now in operating funds the boys team has a JV program right for other reasons I'm just saying to your point it's a small number are there any other comments or questions about the motion on the floor seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries 5 in favor 2 opposed thank you and that concludes finance and facilities for today thank you thank you mr. McAndrew and that brings us to policy and planning with miss Driscoll thank you so much this evening we have two policies on our agenda the first is policy I J and D access to digital

▶ 2:48:59 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: resources and you'll note that there is a clause indicating that it's under number five the district will provide the committee with at least one annual report to communicate its digital resources safety measures the committee will review this policy in conjunction with that report so if it is your pleasure I would be interested in starting and taking these one at a time and inviting the superintendent to speak to policy IJ ND so one of the things that we began to do not last not this past some of the summer before the summer of 2018 is we began to work with Neil Ellis the CIO for the city on creating data privacy language to attach to all our software license contracts we are part of we joined the student data privacy consortium where I think there's

▶ 2:50:04 71 communities in Massachusetts that are part of it and it's part of a national movement where every contract we have for software has a clause that the provider will keep student data private and to the point that we have canceled contracts with providers who will not agree to that Amy Lindquist helped us write out that language and that was probably one of the most important things what we've done and we have a list that's available to all staff and they know what what has been what has met the standard and what hasn't the other thing that mr. Ellis and his team have been very proactive on is they have upped our Barracuda which is our spam filter and they've ups blocks on some a lot of unacceptable websites to the point that quite frankly some of the

▶ 2:51:05 teachers are a little bit upset because they can't get that YouTube video where they want to get to share with the kids without clearing it first with Neil but we but he has put in a number of internal mechanism mechanisms to reduce the chances of inappropriate use of the computers the other thing that we are in the process of doing is we are moving to a point where we will eventually split totally the internal net and the external net so if I sign on like I probably right now I'm tied to the fire station it's wide open when you do that in Melrose there'll be two different set of no and within the Melrose schools will be two different set of standards by what you can access and what you can't access.

▶ 2:52:00 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: So again, it's in another internal measure that he's moving towards, we're a little bit away from that. So those are the things that we have been trying to do internally to increase our safety for our students. Are you recommending any policy changes at this time? No, he went through these with me this summer. He went through the policies with me this summer and he felt there was nothing in terms of the policy, what was more important was what we were doing around content filtering was more important to us than the policies themselves. Very good. Any comments from the committee on that policy? Seeing none, our next policy, IJNDB, acceptable use policy for information technology. There is a clause in number three under implementation

▶ 2:52:52 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: of this policies uh policy that indicates the review of this policy will be done annually by the superintendent of schools and the i.t director and any updates will be reviewed and approved by the melrose school committee so superintendent do you have any updates uh to share with us no again we reviewed getting ready for the one-to-one um mr ellis went through all these policies and do not see the need for any any changes mr. Ellis is quite vigilant about making sure that we are complying with COPA requirements and those are the federal requirements that we are attentive to cybersecurity very good any Any comments on IJ and DB? Seeing none, that concludes policy and planning for this evening.

▶ 2:53:48 We need a vote. Oh, sorry, my bad. I would entertain a motion at this time. Mr. Bremski? Move to approve. Move to approve. Both policies? Yes. Okay. Second. Second. Further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Opposed? I think everybody's being the fade. i think everybody's being the fate that put that motion carries unanimously thank you mr and that brings us to the announcements of the chair uh first up from the consent agenda the regular meeting minutes for october 15 2019 is there a motion to approve made by miss triscoll seconded by miss mcandrew discussion seeing none all those in favor Opposed? Abstained? And that motion approved passes with six in favor and one abstention on the part of Ms. Rousey-Thomas. Thank you, Ms. Rousey-Thomas.

▶ 2:55:02 Next up, Beebe School Public Forum. As Mr. Selm noted, we do have a planned public forum on the Beebe School scheduled for Tuesday, November 19th, 7 to 9 p.m. at the Melrose High School Learning Commons. It is anticipated that we will be seeing a fine-tuned presentation by the superintendent followed by a question and answer session to facilitate public input and we will be encouraging members of the public to submit questions in advance any comments or questions in that regard oh yes miss mccandrew um just to clarify um so you said people will submit questions in advance and then we will also be taking questions live correct um second question is there an uh option under consideration or could we get one under

▶ 2:56:01 consideration to record the session for broadcast we can certainly look into that okay thank you since we're at the learning commons absolutely here in this beautiful chamber with overhead cameras indeed thank you thank you for the suggestion any further comments or questions very good liaison reports do we have any mr. sound please once again a reminder that the Melrose Human Rights Commission has sponsored Diwali it is next Saturday the 11th or the 3rd of November it is a free event and open to the public and and they cordially invite each of us individually and wholly to attend. Saturday's November 2nd. Second? Okay, Saturday the 2nd. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Solomon. Any further liaison reports?

▶ 2:57:00 Gail Infurna: Very good. Finally, before we adjourn, are there any members of the committee for whom this is their last meeting? As far as we know, there's only one. Madam Mayor. If I have a point of personal privilege, Mr. Chairman. Please. Thank you. I just want to take a moment since this is my last meeting to say number one, it is a lot easier to watch these from home. I really have been very proud to have had the opportunity to sit here for the past 22 months and especially where we were formulating the question for the override. It was very helpful to be right here and have a lot of the information that we needed that we could formulate that question the work that each of you do on this committee is to be

▶ 2:57:49 Gail Infurna: commended it is a thankless job as school issues are involve our most precious possessions our children and these are emotional issues and you all work so hard to make the best decision for all of our students i am also glad that this is the school committee that will move on and continue to serve our school community for the next two years thank you for your commitment to our children to our schools and to our community and i do look forward to watching the school committees from my couch at home thank you very good and god bless thank you madam and i do just want to say that tomorrow night and remind everybody tomorrow night is my farewell address that i will do for my 22 years of public service here in melrose it's at 7 p.m in the gar room

▶ 2:58:45 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: at memorial hall it's open to the public mr school um madam mayor i would just like to say thank you for um watching us before you were sitting in this chair from home um for um caring about our students so much, for shepherding collaboratively with the community a successful override campaign and fully respecting all of the work that so many volunteers did in getting the message out and listening and working very hard to address a significant budget shortfall that we had. I think that is one of the hallmarks of your time here and I'm very grateful for all that you've done for us. Thank you. any further comments or questions please I just like to personally thank you for supporting me at the very beginning like when I was like should I even do this

▶ 2:59:45 you and you were very helpful to me so thank you for being a role model 22 years is a long time to do anything and a lot of the jobs even as a ward you know as a ward alderman is thankless but you were very dedicated when I was actually in your ward back in the day so I really appreciate your support of women and I know you'll continue to help the newbies out as we emerge and I just really appreciate your courage and your you put it all in the line for the override and we managed to all pull together to do that so it's been a great great thing to see you as the first female mayor of Melrose and I have to tip my hat to you so thank you thank you very much ms mccandrew um i'll just add my thanks for all

▶ 3:00:36 Jennifer McAndrew: of your service to melrose um and i just want to say on your time as mayor that that the mayor's job is clearly all-consuming and all-encompassing of every aspect of your life and i just want to thank you for all the sacrifices and your family too um that you've made um on our behalf as a community um as others have mentioned none more so than your leadership um during the override and i really don't think from at least my perspective and where i sit here on the school committee um that melrose could can thank you enough for your leadership during that time so thank you and continue to watch us and provide feedback thank you mr obrowski thank you and congratulations on 22 years of public service it's a remarkable accomplishment and you know enjoy

▶ 3:01:35 yourself watching from home thank you mr song thank you for everything uh from conversations as a candidate on your porch to where we are today it is my sincere hope that you do not spend all your time on the couch watching us but in fact go out and explore the wide world in your retirement and newly found free time so thank you and enjoy thank you very much madam mayor we're certainly better for your service and we thank you for that and we do have a small token of our gratitude an appreciation we've actually ushered out two mayors while i've been on the school committee i hope it's not anything i've said over the past few years all of that said is there a motion to adjourn madam mayor motion to adjourn seconded by miss driscoll

▶ 3:02:51 discussion seeing none all those in favor 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