School Committee — 2019-11-12

School Committee Regular Meeting

This meeting starts at 0:00 in a recording that covers several meetings.

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE MELROSE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES● NOVEMBER 12, 2019 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Regular Meeting 7:00 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176

(ID # 7587) Executive Session To approve executive session minutes of August 27, 2019

(ID # 7588) Executive Session To approve executive session minutes of September 14, 2019

(ID # 7586) Executive Session To discuss strategy with respect to threatened litigation involving a personnel matter, when an open discussion may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the School Committee

(ID # 7585) Executive Session To discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining regarding a Side Letter of Agreement with MEA Unit B-School Secretaries when an open discussion will have a detrimental effect on the negotiation position of the School Committee

(ID # 7589) Executive Session To conduct contract negotiations with nonunion personnel

(ID # 7583) Announcements - Superintendent Superintendent's Update (5 minutes)

(ID # 7578) Consent Maintenance Report Adopted

(ID # 7577) Consent Personnel Report Adopted

(ID # 7576) Consent Monthly Budget Summary Adopted

(ID # 7575) Consent Warrants Adopted City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 11/19/2019 2:37 PM Minutes Melrose School Committee November 12, 2019

(ID # 7579) Finance and Facilities Dollar Maximums for Student Activity Checking Accounts (5 minutes)

(ID # 7584) Educational Programs and Personnel Beebe School (20 minutes)

(ID # 7580) Policy and Planning Plan for School Committee Evaluation (15 minutes)

(ID # 7582) Announcements - Chair Liaison Reports (5 minutes) Note: The listed agenda items are those that are reasonably anticipated by the Chair to be discussed at the meeting. Not all items, in fact, may be discussed, and other items not listed also may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 11/19/2019 2:37 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Good evening one and all welcome to this meeting the Melrose School Committee for this 12th day of November in the year 2019 for the record let me state that this meeting is being recorded as we begin and as is our custom let us stand as we were able for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you all very much. First up on our agenda this evening is our school committee spotlight series and in the spotlight this evening is the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School Dr. Best please join us welcome your first appearance before the school committee yes thank you for having me I'm realizing here next year when given this opportunity I will bring friends and colleagues with me this being my first I hope you'll excuse that so I I hope to keep my remarks brief tonight I

▶ 1:13 am grateful for the opportunity to come and talk about the good work that's happening at the middle school I was sort of pairing my remarks down so I wouldn't take very long and I was I couldn't figure out how to frame the remarks and I was with a student today who unbeknownst to him helped me do that so I'll open with a brief story I was doing an observation of a teacher sixth grade geography and the kids are used to seeing me in the classroom and I'm in and out all the time but today I had my laptop to record what was happening and I'll follow up with the teacher so the student that I was sitting next to after a couple minutes of me packing away he sort of discreetly leaned over and he said are you here

▶ 1:55 checking up on mr mahoney and before i could answer that no this is just part of what we do he said because i have to tell you he is doing a fantastic job and you don't have to worry about mr mahoney at all and and i sort of laughed and he said and and let me tell you this all of the teachers on this team are doing a great job and you don't have to worry about any one of them so that's my framework i'm here to tell you about some of the great work that our teachers are doing at the middle school and and the reason that stuck out to me by the way um sixth graders are a very honest group um by habit this is the same young man this morning who came into school upset because his mother made him wear fleece lined jeans that were a little uncomfortable for him

▶ 2:39 so with sixth graders you you get the truth and so i was glad to hear that from him so i thought I would just talk about a few of the things that the teachers are working on and then if anybody has any questions I'd certainly be happy to to take those. Mrs. Grillo our sixth grade geography teacher is working on a project that's very interesting to me it's a micro financing project so they are they've read a story about Sub-Saharan Africa it's a children's book called One Hen and And all of the sixth graders are reading this in their geography class. It tells the story of a boy who receives a small loan to buy a hen. Again, this is in sub-Saharan Africa. With this loan, he eventually creates one of the largest farms in Western Africa.

▶ 3:28 So he has a positive impact on the lives of his family, his community, and the entire region. So they're taking that story, and the students have decided that they want to have a similar positive impact. They're using a micro-financing website called Kiva, so they're going to identify a child, a person, a young person in Africa that's worthy of a small loan. When I heard this, I thought, small loan, the kids will bring in some pennies and nickels and dimes, and if we can put together 50 bucks, we'll be doing well. They've already collected over $250. They're going to be counting that. The kids have volunteered to stay after school next week. They're going to count that. they're going to look through this and the students are going to select the applicant

▶ 4:15 that they feel that they want to support so i thought this was a really nice way for the teacher to support the learning that's in the classroom and when i asked the teacher about it she said that the thoughtful contributions of our sixth graders will create a positive impact on others and foster the notion that even a little bit of something can go a long way in eighth grade the english students are working on literature circles literature circles are nothing new but what miss means has put together is an online component to uh to the literature circles so for a pilot this year the eighth grade ela team is running an online literature circle model they're placed into groups of five to seven based on a book that they've chosen from about

▶ 5:01 30 titles and just putting together those 30 titles and making sure there were enough was was quite a bit of work their books of varying reading levels on the list there's fiction and there's nonfiction but the important piece is that all of the books are connected through a message of social activism community building and paying it forward so today they met in their group in person for the first time to create a weekly reading goal plan each week they'll be expected to complete in a certain amount of reading independently and then post that reflection of their reading and comment on other members post in their google classroom they'll be meeting in person two more times but the bulk of the work will happen virtually

▶ 5:44 and and the digital piece of this really took a lot of prep work for the teachers to go in and make sure that the students had the ability to make those comments online some of the benefits that the teachers have highlighted of moving those circles online they're able to cross team student groups so typically when you're working you're working in the teams that you have and and sort of students might run out of their choices, but they found that they were able to give most, if not all, of the students their choice of books by expanding this to the full grade. It really maximizes the schedule that we have in the middle school. They're running this through flex blocks, so the in-meeting times mean that they're not stuck meeting with members of their own team,

▶ 6:25 that they can partner with folks that are on all three of the different teams. The teachers can identify the strengths and weaknesses of student-led discussion, to build lessons around speaking and listening standards it exposes students to the 21st century skills that they'll know that we know they'll need in high school and college and careers and it practices the skill of using formal english writing and academic language when on a digital platform so the students are used to the academic discourse accountable talks for example that they have in class but they're not used to transferring that to a digital environment think about it when students are texting or sending messages they're usually very brief and compact and probably not grammatically

▶ 7:09 correct so this is a really good opportunity for students to have to take those skills that they've learned about communication orally and transfer them to to a digital environment I actually I've taught online using online environments in a graduate course and even in that graduate course I'm was shocked at times by the inability of people to sort of compose their thoughts and transfer them online so that's really intriguing for me is to have students transfer those skills online the last thing I wanted to mention is that the our teachers have really are really working on moving our PBIS program to the next level it's a district strategic objective to deepen the implementation of PBIS at the school and one of the foundational beliefs

▶ 7:57 that drives PBIS is that behavior needs to be taught and not only does behavior need to be taught but we need to acknowledge students when they demonstrate those positive behaviors and hold them accountable when they don't dr. Adams received a grant for our teachers some of our teachers to attend a PBIS Academy I have to tell you that the teachers that went were in their words voluntold that they had to go so there was a bit of reluctance to do that but they came back so energized and so grateful that they had the opportunity and they'll be going to more trainings throughout the year this is really a teacher led initiative I'm sort of stepping back which is not easy to do and really counting on the teachers and they're doing a tremendous job driving

▶ 8:40 this effort we've been using components of PBIS at the middle school for years certainly before I got there but this is really an opportunity to examine what we have that's good and really build and make a stronger foundation for for me it's exciting because most if not all of our students that come to the middle school are exposed to PBIS in the elementary grades and this is a really nice way to soften that transition from the elementary to the middle grades so the the work that they're doing right now they they are working on the core values we've had six they're working on narrowing it to three their draft of that right now is responsibility respect and self-management and the way I pitch

▶ 9:20 to students is you know if we can get those three things right we'll be in good shape the teacher leaders are obtaining input on defining building-wide behavior expectations through that lens of our core values so that we can teach them for all of the common areas the cafeteria the auditorium the hallways those will be taught and reinforced to students and the ideas that will bring a consistency among behavioral expectations to the building so those are just a few things i thought i would conclude by sharing sort of what drives me every day is a new principal and i am a new principal i i joke i still have a box or two to unpack in my office but when i walked in for my my interview and when i walk in every morning there's a banner right in right at the front

▶ 10:06 entrance that said that says melrose veterans memorial middle school a place where everyone belongs and i feel like that's my job right that's that's my purpose to make sure that each of our 820 students knows and feels like they belong which can be tough for 11 to 14 year olds to feel like they belong i started with a story about a student so i'll end with a story as well that i think exemplifies the idea of everyone belonging we had a student the other day i noticed he was sitting on the side of the cafeteria and i happened to know that student and i knew why he was sitting there he was a sixth grader but he because of a scheduling issue that day he i knew he was going to be in seventh grade lunch and and he didn't know any seventh graders and i knew that

▶ 10:49 about that student so i'm walking over to to see him to see what i can do to make him feel more comfortable and before i get there uh two of our our seventh grade students had beat me to the punch and and they had called him by name and invited them to their table when he declined they insisted and they they grabbed him by his hand and walked him back to his seventh grade table so that was a very proud moment for me and i think it exemplifies um the quality of students that that we have and it really is a place where everybody can belong so thank you for allowing me to have a few moments here i appreciate it and if anybody has any questions i'd be happy to answer thank you dr best any comments or questions miss mccandrew

▶ 11:36 Jennifer McAndrew: thank you so much for being here and welcome to the school committee and to melrose we're happy that you're here um i just had two questions one is um i know that this is your first year but i'm sure you know that we did pass an override in april that um restored the middle school to having full team teams at all the grade levels and i'm just wondering if maybe for the benefit of the community you can talk about how you see i know it's you've been here just a few months but what you see as the benefit of having the team model at the middle school level yeah in addition to the teams i think that the director positions as well we've benefited from having um right now i have a director that's housed in our building and she's become a very integral part of the

▶ 12:22 community i think teams are very important as part of what i heard in my interview process it's part of what i've heard when i spoke with teachers and families over the summer and i think it's really boils down to knowing kids right it's about the relationships when we talk about an elementary school that has two or three fifth grades moving to a school that has 820 students one of the ways that we can soften that transition is to create a smaller environment and then and in doing so the four people five people on that grade level team they really get to know the student in a way that they would not be able to right now we're in the middle of parent conferences and they're able to speak directly about that child not because they

▶ 13:10 Jennifer McAndrew: have a written statement or because they found somebody in the hallway to talk to but because they teach that child along with their colleagues every day so for me it's about that relationship building piece and that camaraderie and and really the collaboration among the team thank you um and the other thing i just thought maybe we could give you a chance to talk about and one thing as a middle school parent myself that um just i think is a great part of the middle school community is how busy that building is until like at least 4 p.m so um i think just you and your team are to be commended on all of the after-school options that you offer and keeping the library open and all that and um i just guess i'm interested in your thoughts on how that's

▶ 13:53 going how you support clubs and activities and those sort of things for kids at this age it seems really important yes and i can't take any credit for that i mean i work with some tremendous folks who see the value i think another one of the questions i was asked during my interview is what what does everybody need and and and one of my answers what what is what do all of our students need um and and one of my answers is that people need to feel like they're plugged in somewhere right and so for some of our kids that being plugged in is an academic piece right they they live for math on the one day out of seven the math has dropped they're frustrated you know i don't have my math class today but for a lot of people it's not math I was a

▶ 14:32 theater teacher before I became an administrator and a lot of my kids came to school so that they could stay after and do that work so whether it's theater whether it's sports whether it's activities I've got two kids that are trying to start a camping club and they want nothing more than to set up a tent and chat with the assistant principal and so you know it's it's what's bringing them to school so those after-school activities we have a teacher this year that started a k-pop and and really the kids just needed a place to go and belong so i think it gives students a sense of belonging i think that's one of the important pieces you mentioned the library i'm i'm amazed at the number of students that go and use that time to catch up on their

▶ 15:15 work it is staffed they get help with their work and it's without it it would be difficult to meet all the students needs thank you mr. Thomas please welcome dr. best we're really excited to have you at the middle school for great things and really glad that you're giving us a little bit more information I would love to hear a little bit more about the positive behavioral steps and interventions that you're using at the schools to help us understand and parents understand how you would teach train coach so students would have better behavioral skills and sure so if you give me like one example of a common challenge that doesn't match the values of the school that you're kind of working towards and then how you

▶ 16:03 would address it yes so I think one of the things that the PBIS allows us to do is really recognize the need to teach behavior so when I sort of assessed the situation over the summer and felt tried to get a feeling for where we are and then spoke with dr. Adams about this opportunity we had a lot of building blocks right we have we have some core values we have expectations they weren't necessarily being taught in a concrete manner so one of the things that we did is I opened it to everybody I had a team of about four or five teachers come in over the summer and write lesson plans for three common areas just like you'd write a lesson plan for a plot diagram for ELA for example they wrote lesson

▶ 16:48 plans that were consistent so the first area that you focus in on is building wide expectations and then year two and three of implementation you really move that into the individual classroom but right now we're looking at building wide expectations of how do we expect students to behave in the bathroom right and so we have to teach them and so these lesson plans did just that now Now does that mean that every day always students are following those expectations? No, you have to reteach, retrain, acknowledge when students are doing well. So that's one of the first things we did was in the first two days of school, all of the students heard these lesson plans. They participated in the lesson plans.

▶ 17:30 Moving forward, two of the key areas that the team has identified to work on are the reinforcement system. So when we see a student who's meeting those expectations and those core values, how can we immediately reinforce we've got an every week system right now and we want to make that more immediate and the other thing that they want to do is really get some nice signage up in the hallways in the auditorium in the cafeteria and all these common areas so that when we see a student who's maybe leaving the door open in their locker or maybe they're sort of bumping into everybody as they're running down the hallway right that wouldn't be completely out of the scope of a middle school day we can we can have a common

▶ 18:11 language we can point to that that signage we can talk about the behaviors that have been taught and are expected thank you sure mr. Bransky please I just like to comment on something you said about you know kids having a sense of belonging at the middle school and how teaches I'm making an extra effort to engage students and then use the example of camping and I think sometimes it goes unnoticed by people who are outside of the profession that often teachers are engaging with kids that may not be academic oriented you know like such as math or science or social studies but they're trying to reach the kids in another way and they may not even have the person who you are speaking of may not even have any interest in camping and but they're still willing to go that

▶ 19:01 extra mile to engage those kids and it's extremely important at the middle school level because though those kids are sort of on the cusp of you know they're not always jumping to go home at 2 30 say and as miss McAndrew pointed out at 4 o'clock so I think it you know you it's important that you thank those teachers who make that extra effort and it's it's greatly appreciated and I think that's really the one of the most important things in a middle school and I appreciate your efforts to keep pushing in that way thank you thank you any further comments or questions seeing none dr. best thank you very much thanks for being here and thank you for your work every day we appreciate it okay so the chair would entertain a motion to change the order of business to bring

▶ 20:10 forward the report of the student representatives uh respectfully the student representatives would like to sit in on the conversation later on the discussion very good trying to make sure that they understood that this could run a little late okay grace all right very good thank you mr sum thank you superintendent i'll show you grace's mother that's why understood uh next up on our agenda is executive session the school committee does have need of an executive session this evening and let me say by way of information that the school committee will be returning to public session immediately after our executive session with regard to the executive session for the record let me state that the need is based on the following to approve

▶ 20:58 executive session minutes of August 27 2019 to approve executive session minutes of September 14 2019 to discuss strategy with respect to threatened litigation involving a personnel matter when an open discussion may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining regarding a side letter of agreement with the Melrose Education Association unit B school secretaries when an open discussion may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the school committee and lastly to conduct contract negotiations with non-union personnel. All of that said, is there a motion to adjourn to executive session made by Ms. Driscoll?

▶ 21:41 Second. Seconded by Ms. Razzi-Thomas. Discussion? Roll call. We'll move to that now. Thank you, Ms. DeSalle. Ms. Hogan, would you call the roll, please? Ms. Driscoll? Yes. Ms. McAndrew? Yes. Mr. Obramski? Yes. Ms. DeSalle? Yes. Ms. Razzi-Thomas? Yes. six in favor and one absent and we are so adjourned ladies and gentlemen again we will be returning after our executive session thank you welcome back one and all once again this is a meeting the mellow School Committee for this 12th day of November 2019 we have returned to public session from executive session and for the record let me state the following that in executive session the school committee approved the executive session minutes for October 27 2019 the

▶ 22:33 committee also approved the executive session minutes for September 14 2019 the committee also approved a side letter of agreement with the Melrose Education Association unit B school secretaries and the school committee also voted to approve an amendment to the superintendent's contract next up on agenda is having previously dealt with the report of the student representatives. Next up is the public comment portion of our meeting. This is the portion of the meeting when members of the public are afforded the opportunity to address the committee on matters before the committee this evening or otherwise within the authority and or jurisdiction of the committee. Members of the public are afforded five minutes each to address the committee in the interest

▶ 23:19 of time all of that said and without objection the public comment period is now open if there are any members of the public who wish to address the committee we ask that you come forward one by one and sign in with your name and address on the sheet provided and then introduce yourself to the committee and be heard are there any members of the public who wish to address the committee welcome back mr o'leary nice to see you thank you my name is geraldine o'leary my family and i live at 90 otis street and we're resident 4-3 and currently have a second grader at the winthrop and a child in preschool tonight i want to talk to you regarding the bb school and the proposal to transform it into a k-5 school just today parents of current students received an

▶ 24:23 email asking if they would be willing to voluntarily relocate to the bb school my question for you is what would happen if there are not enough families that volunteer to be reassigned how would this decision be made regarding who was forced to relocate as you can imagine this is a subject of great concern for parents on a personal note my child loves his school he looks forward to attending every day and i can't imagine forcing him away from the school community that he loves so much i ask that you please provide more insight into the plan for how the bb will be populated thank you thank you very much mr leary are there any other members the public who wish to address the committee welcome hi my name is kelly epstein i live at

▶ 25:07 109 mount vernon ave i did submit although rather late a letter earlier today and i'd like to read some of that into the record if that's okay um so i is that okay absolutely please i'm contacting you regarding the upcoming school board meetings where the committee will be discussing two options for using the bb school as early as next september i have several questions and significant concerns regarding these two options additionally given the gravity of the situation and how this would affect so many students teachers staff and parents i think further study and discussion is warranted rather than rushing to a vote in december many parents and teachers have just become aware of these discussions and the committee needs time the community needs time to digest and discuss

▶ 25:54 this major decision given that impact we'll have not only on our current students teachers staff and community but also on parents and young students who are not yet entering into the Melrose School District many of these parents are not aware that this is happening and I feel that they are entitled to more information a great deal of work went into supporting the override with the hope that the school committee would come up with an appropriate option most likely through opening up the Beebe school to tackle the increasing enrollment into our school system many people also voted for this override because they felt our amazing dedicated teachers and school staff deserve to be fairly compensated it became

▶ 26:31 very apparent that melrose has been losing many qualified teachers and staff members over the last few years this significant turnover is not helpful to our students and puts a strain on the higher ups when they should be focused on running the schools additionally it does not appear the kindergarten teachers were consulted regarding the effects of moving kindergarten classes out of their current schools to the ECC and the BB locations. Consulting teachers regarding the impact of this decision on their students seems like a vital part of the process that was overlooked. After reviewing the PowerPoint detailing option one and option two as well as discussing these options on social media it seems that there are a lot a great deal of concerns and dissatisfaction

▶ 27:12 with both of these options. My fear is that presenting just these two flawed out options with will pit parents against each other so they will be scared into accepting the lesser of two evils rather than a better option for our community. I believe our teachers and students deserve better than the current process and proposed plans. Parents understand that there won't be a perfect option and that it is a tough decision for our community which is why there needs to be more thoughtful discussion around multiple options. Making this decision in December feels rushed and could result in us scrambling to correct our initial decision down the road as a result i am asking that the school committee offer more time and information to discuss how the

▶ 27:52 school board chose these options and why other options were not considered it seems imprudent to make this decision without consulting teachers serving parents collecting additional data and or presenting other options parents are also wondering why only two solutions were offered and would like to know why they considered and ruled out others parents and and concerned citizens are asking why the rush to do this as early as 2020 when the same collaborative has one more year on a lease and likely would prefer to stay wouldn't waiting one more year collecting data while the city receives rent from scene be a better option this would allow us to spend the next nine months having a real community conversation about what to do with the building and placement of our students

▶ 28:32 before making a decision that will affect all of us for years to come i have shared many of these concerns and learned of other parents concerns following posts they made on social media many parents on the post also shared reservations about the pace of the process and the lack of information around the different plans proposed several parents myself included were concerned about why other options were not being presented and or considered there has been a great deal of support for a third option or a phased approach i know this idea was raised at the last school committee meeting and was dismissed quickly because of overhead costs however many think it is worth more study and that the positives and negatives of this approach should be presented to

▶ 29:09 the public in a similar fashion to how options one and options two were presented in the earlier powerpoint my strong hope is that the school committee will allow further discussions about the two options offered along the consideration of other viable options before voting to make such a significant decision for our schools and community attached i have some questions and concerns for the two proposed options as well as an alternative phased approach to gradually make the bb school a k-5 facility i'd like to very quickly highlight a few of these concerns and questions for option one which is to have the bbb a k through five parents are rightfully fearful of having to pull out their children from their schools however the school board has not

▶ 29:53 provided any information regarding the criteria for pulling out students if this would even be necessary i'm not aware of any surveys but i realized that you guys just sent the survey so there is a survey out there um do we know if given the option that certain families would not choose this option it is also my opinion that the powerpoint is very skewed towards making the bb in the ecc preschool kindergarten centers as there were very few negatives listed for this option minimizing significant issues including with the kindergarten only school we'd be expecting five and six-year-olds to make this transition twice in two years transitioning from kindergarten to first grade is already a challenging transition in a school kids are familiar with asking them

▶ 30:33 to transition from preschool to a new school for kindergarten and then a year later to transition again is asking a great deal it could negatively affect their confidence and readiness to learn entering first grade kindergarten first grade teachers should be consulted on this other concerns there would be less appropriate child role models research shows that learning through modeling is best done when the role models are similar and or slightly older as a parent of first grader at Roosevelt my daughter benefited greatly from our interactions with fifth grade students during lunchtime and through having a book buddy kids are more motivated and feel more confident when they have attention of older students this option

▶ 31:12 would also remove current kindergarten teachers from current schools in place in these two schools i am worried that this would mean losing invaluable and amazing teachers who have already done so much for our community that they would leave the district for better employment opportunity besides the fact that this is incredibly unfair to those teachers who have invested so much in our schools colleagues and students they work closely with special ed services speech language and so forth special teachers staff and do a fabulous job working with their school's first grade teachers to make our kindergarteners transition to first grade as seamless as possible these relationships and interactive um excuse me integrative coordination

▶ 31:52 could take years to replace and it's just not possible if kindergarten teachers and students are removed and placed at the kindergarten only there are also some concerns that would contribute to major traffic and delays with six kindergarten kids needing to be picked up every single kid having to be released to an individual parent whereas older kids would be walking home potentially reducing the number of cars and lessening parking parents are also rightfully concerned about getting to work on time and doing two drop-offs at opposite ends of the town at the same time also saying option one or what i call option three of a phased approach is not feasible for cost seems to be somewhat misleading it was pointed out that the cheaper plan option two

▶ 32:32 doesn't allow for better class sizes in other schools because it does not add staff to empty classrooms in each school it appears that the school committee might be more in favor of potentially phasing additional teachers for those empty rooms over time but not phasing teachers in the bb school when in fact that could be the best long-term option i'm curious why that's the case so i would also ask for some questions to be answered about why an alternative plan was not offered are there pros and cons of a phased approach or other information available to us how thoroughly was this option studied what or how many classes or students would need to choose the bb school for a phased option to be a feasible option although overhead would be expensive it

▶ 33:12 could be a middle ground of the two options by staggering the cost of hiring 10 teachers over the next few years regardless of these questions i do think that our school and the public deserve more of these answers and some more time to consider these things before we make a decision thank you thank you miss epstein are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee miss mcdonald welcome nice to see you my name is heather mcdonald i don't have a kindergartner but i have a first grader seventh grader and ninth grader and a senior i don't have anything prepared i really just came off the cuff but i just think we did the whole city did such a great job you guys did such a

▶ 34:02 a great job telling us what um the override was going to cover and everything that we were doing to improve our schools i really just do second what she said about geraldine said about taking our time planning a little talking to the teachers involved you know combining it with your knowledge and just slowing down a little bit and maybe assessing other things that are going on in the schools because i do think as the money that we've gotten from the override has been put into the schools there's some problems out there and if you can look at those a little bit and then maybe that will also help us better see what BB needs to be but I agree with the traffic I agree with the timing of things and the transitions for kids I feel like more and more kids have

▶ 34:50 anxieties these days and the less transition you can give a child the better and I think that our biggest resource right now in the schools are the teachers and the administrators and I think they have a lot of knowledge that you guys have but on a different level and we could work together have an open forum of people that want to come forward and talk about what they think about the baby so that we're not revisiting this in a few years and saying you know we need more time so I mean I think it's great that we're on it but I think that we could collaborate a little bit more and see if there's maybe a special needs option that could go in the baby that might help kids out some i don't know i'm

▶ 35:31 just throwing ideas out there but um my i guess my wish would be would be to collaborate a little bit more and to slow down and give it a little more time i appreciate your time with this very good we appreciate being here thank you miss mcdonald thank you hi my name is sarah bezagai um we live on fellsway east here in melrose um so my family is concerned about the k through five option um as it would mean reassignment likely involuntary reassignment i know the survey went out today but um you know it could potentially be 200 plus families throughout our city affected by this in terms of having it having a child reassigned perhaps involuntarily we can't imagine moving our first and third grader away from their elementary school community that they've grown

▶ 36:31 to love their teachers, classmates, school administrators. It's all the fabric that makes the school, you know, that makes your school, your community. So a required or forced reassignment would be disruptive, even disastrous for the one through fifth grade, the first through fifth graders who are fully engaged in their current schools. And so my questions are to seek clarification as to how a reassignment would work. would the criteria be would it be a lottery would it be zoning even though we're school choice so this act this option has a lot of questions and unknowns um it leaves all of us with first through fifth graders at risk of reassignment um that i'm just not comfortable with um and so it's this

▶ 37:16 issue of reassignment and and also um the associated cost um you know it's that showed maybe over a million dollars associated with this option that would make it less desirable in my opinion out of the two options we're presented with but i completely agree i realize this is a really complex and complicated issue and i would support more time to have a thoughtful dialogue about it and so that's my opinion but thank you so much for your time thank you miss bezigai we appreciate you being here are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee this evening mr moroz welcome hi i'm jerry moroz um you know it feels like we've been down this road before and what happened the year that we had the discussion with

▶ 38:17 module classrooms was we ended up with a false dichotomy and again your false dichotomy option one option two there are so many other issues we need to address to incorporate if we're looking at enrollment um i want to jump back to the last meeting when you did the enrollment report what was missing in the enrollment report that has been in every other enrollment report for all the years i've been coming here that you report to the state is how many students are at each grade level it wasn't in your enrollment report last last time and that's a relevant factor as you know i'm known to make spreadsheets about different things and um i'm I'm looking at the rising enrollments moving up to the middle school and high school, and

▶ 38:59 the burden that's going to be placed in that school in a few years, and again, you know, there was a manipulation, political manipulation of young parents a few years ago to scare them into, or scare the community into the modular classrooms when we all knew it wasn't going to be a viable solution down the road. I hope that again this community, I hope this community doesn't again look at some limited idea about the Beebe School this way or the Beebe School that way, and we have to figure out a larger problem here. In a few years, we're talking the high school and middle school campus is going to have over 2,000 students. Where are they going to be? We have the opportunity right now to create some extra space at the middle school and

▶ 39:50 high school campus, move the fifth grade up, relieve the pressures on the elementary school to see where the enrollment will go. Neither the NASDAQ nor Collins, I don't even want to call them studies because frankly rolling the dice is the same as what those are. They just assumed, oh, we're going to have this increasing enrollment year by year all the time. They didn't look at economic pressures. They didn't look at the parameters about housing turnover rates. They haven't looked at other towns and seen what happened in Winchester a few years ago when they had a bubble that came up and when they had a lot of people selling houses and people moving in. There's a lot of factors that weren't looked at, and the assumptions there, I don't think

▶ 40:30 anybody who looks at these issues carefully can accept that any of those numbers are real, whether you take the high or the low or the average. So the issue is that we have space at the middle school, high school complex. We can add some space down there. There's room between the two buildings. The superintendent, the administration's office can be moved to some other place, either there or somewhere else. We can open up that space to be able to make that space be able to accept, for now, the fifth graders. And over time, as those people rise up, we're going to need those space in the middle school and high school campus. I feel the pain of all the parents that are here tonight and other parents that I've talked to about,

▶ 41:14 you don't want to disrupt kids. You know, I mean, the kids form a community, and some kids take transitions well, but others don't. And you don't know who is going to do that well and who's not, and what harm there are to kids, or what attitudes or things are formed long term that are going to affect them for a long time. I worry about the kids when you start to move kids around. I also need to say to maybe to the larger community here that this quaint idea that neighborhood schools are somehow a wonderful thing is just plain wrong. Neighborhood schools don't give you the economy of scale to give good educational opportunity to students as they need them and to make it efficient. I got to say that a two-class strand going through a school

▶ 42:18 doesn't give a critical mass of teachers at the same levels to work together, doesn't give a critical mass of distributing students according to their learning needs so they can each have an appropriate curriculum instruction for what they need. You know, you have 40, 50 kids at a grade. You can't do that. There's a different model. And you know, everybody seems to think the neighborhood school is so wonderful, just like everybody believes that the school that they happen to be in is the best school in the world, and every other school is the worst, right? These are chronic misconceptions or myths that this school committee needs to address. You can't just sit idly by and accept certain things

▶ 43:01 and not plan for the future. Every time we do something in this district over the last dozen years that I've watched, we've done a one-off, oh, let's take care of this problem by spending money this way. Or we have the false dichotomies, whether it's the budgeting years ago about, oh, we You can have another wellness teacher in the middle school or an elementary library media specialist, and you had people battling over this false dichotomy. Let's have a real conversation, as you've heard from some people here. Let's have a real discussion, an open forum. Evaluate some of the larger issues. And I want to say that it's a little bit strange, but I think when we started the ACERA school in 2010,

▶ 43:46 lived in the bb school for basically a year renovating it and then supporting a school there for a year until the scene came in and the bb school is not a wonderful place that nobody should have the idea that the bb school is going to be a place that's going to solve our problems it has a lot of issues it's an old building it will take a lot of dollars to fix up and make into a viable building for this district and even then it doesn't solve the problem so please take a step back let's look at some of the other issues that we need to address here you know the more we put more students on one campus and do it well the better we are for students because we can distribute students based on their learning needs we can

▶ 44:35 you know we're not going to keep discriminating against kids by age forever we're going to start looking at their needs and the more kids you have under one area the more you can distribute kids according to their learning needs and make it work for them the idea that we have to do the lockstep age-based grades just for the convenience of the administrators of the district has to end please you know I come here a lot and I pay attention to a lot of things this is a kind of issue that when When you make a decision, it's not just, well, you made the decision that was bad for this year or good for this year. This is a decision that actually frames education in Melrose for the future. It's not just about option one, option two, or the BB of this or that.

▶ 45:25 Ryan Williams: It's about what are we going to do for our kids, how are we going to do it, how are we going to make the system better? Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Melrose. Much appreciated. Are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee this evening? This is your one chance, Mr. Mayor-elect, as a non-member of this board to speak freely. Welcome, Mr. Williams. Hello. I'm Ryan Williams. You may know me from Patch. I don't want to add anything that's already been said, but something new that came to me and if no one else is going to mention it to mention it would be to have an update on the on the bidding process for this uh thinking about the last meeting when i attended i know that we hadn't yet sent out the renovation to bid and with

▶ 46:21 Ryan Williams: all of the discussion around what the building could be it seems like we're on a pretty tight timeline right now if the vote comes in december and then you know we've got a bid that's just being set up right now to turn this all around so i just would like i think it would benefit everybody if we could also lay out kind of an explicit timeline for what current bids are in play, if there's been costs associated with that, and what the timeline for those bids might look like to avoid what happened with the modulars where we had the members of the teaching community kind of rushing at the last minute to get into their classrooms. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Much appreciated. Are there any other members of the public who wish to address the committee?

▶ 47:09 Seeing none and without objection, the public comment period is now closed. And that brings us to the announcements of the superintendent of schools, Madame Superintendent. Thank you, Mr. O'Connell. Tonight, I inform the school committee that I will be retiring on June 30th, 2020. Those of you who work with me, I'm looking at some of my faces. I love my work and I enjoy working. never a day I come to work where I don't want to be here but as I tell the committee during budget deliberations sometimes there are no right or wrong choices there's just competing choices and similarly in the intersection of my professional and personal lives I find I have competing choices so after much thought and discussion with my family I have decided to retire at the end of

▶ 48:05 this year by announcing now I hope to give the school committee the maximum amount of time they need to conduct a full search and I'm sure they will be coming forward shortly with their plans to do so I just want to thank this committee they've been a fabulous committee to work with we do have seven months to go I continue to I will continue to be my combative impassioned and trying to get everything I can from my kids and my staff but I really really had to make this choice and I'm glad I would have been able to make it under your supervision and having worked with you very good Thank You superintendent as I mentioned when we came out of executive session the school committee did vote to amend the superintendent's contract at her request such that it

▶ 49:00 will end on June 30th, 2020. Any comments or questions from the committee? Seeing none at this time, thank you, Superintendent, for your service. Not crying yet, Mr. O'Connell. It's so comfortable. The beginning of the end of an era. But we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep, so we carry on. Next up on our agenda this evening is the consent agenda, which this evening consists of the following items. School Committee regular meeting minutes for October 29, 2019. The maintenance report, the personnel report, the monthly budget summary, and the warrants as follows. FY20 October Debit Card S20013 in the amount of $1,526.68. FY20 School S20014 in the amount of $255,382.92. FY20 October Meals Tax S20015 in the amount of $103.88 and finally FY20 October High School

▶ 50:11 Wire S20016 in the amount of $11,263.44 are there any items which any member of the committee wishes to remove from the consent agenda seeing none is there a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved seconded by Ms. Driscoll seconded by Ms. Razzi-Thomas all those in favor and that motion to approve the consent agenda passes with six in favor and one absent thank you very much for that and that brings us to the work of our subcommittees beginning this evening with finance and facilities with Ms. McAndrew good evening everyone welcome to the finance and facilities subcommittee tonight we have one item on our agenda which does require a vote annually and this is regard to the allowable maximums on the accounts for student activities at the middle school and high school

▶ 51:26 superintendent tamar do you want to speak to this at all as you know annually and under state regulations you must set the limits for the checking accounts for student activity funds And you have in front of you a updated report from Ms. Secor, our Director of Finance. And we are asking to set the high school at $100,000, the middle school at $15,000. And for your reference, she also gave you a historical accounting of those accounts as of November 1st this year. As you know, the money in these accounts flows in and out in response to student fees, activities, fundraising, and these accounts can only be used to pay for those activities in which students are directly engaged. For the purposes of discussion, is there a motion to approve the maximums at $100,000

▶ 52:28 for the high school and $15,000 for the middle school? Made by Mr. Driscoll, seconded by Mr. Selma. Are there any questions or discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all in favor? Oh, did you have a question, Mr. Ezzi-Thomas? Well, I just have a quick question about the whole process, but I don't know if it goes here or after we vote on this, not in the process of the vote, but the process of how the money goes from one account to another, to another, to another. Okay. Why don't you ask it now? Okay. there's a there's a memo about the record-keeping and documentation which I thought was really helpful and I just wanted to double-check that my understanding is there's the student activity agency account right so all the

▶ 53:14 money goes in there and then it goes to the specific student activity account right so even though there's much more money than those maximums that come in It then goes to the specific account that it should be applied to. It's really one account with subsections with numbers. Just the way we're doing the BB money is all in the rental account with a sub number. And the sub numbers are used to track the individual activity or club or whatever. And there is a new requirement about balancing that student activity checking account on a more regular basis. So where we were doing it annually in the past, we're now doing it monthly. And who does the auditing, because there's an audit every three years, too, right?

▶ 54:08 Carson Allen, what's her name? Clifton Larson Allen. Carson. Clifton. Larson. it last and allen okay thank you that's it thank you thank you any other questions seeing that all in favor and that motion carries unanimously with one absent thank you that concludes our fnf business for tonight see you next time thank you ms mcandrew that brings us to educational programs and personnel with mr selm thank you very much mr chair tonight's educational programs and personnel discussion is the bb school as we had a packet introduced to us last meeting and as we have been receiving numerous questions from the public both concerns suggestions and individually our own conversations with the superintendent on this and as we have a public forum one week from tonight in the learning

▶ 55:25 Commons at 7 o'clock and as no new information has been added to the packet I would like to open up the floor to each of you individually to ask the superintendent questions that and concerns that have spoken to you on behalf of the public to better preface the meeting that we will have the public form we will have in one week so again at this time the floor is open as going against what has been customary is letting the superintendent introduce the topic I believe we all understand the topic I would just open up the floor to actual conversation mr. Abrams key please would it be possible to take a look at the two models that we have and look at an option of saying if we moved the entire kindergarten to the Beebe in the Franklin and then grew it out and

▶ 56:25 and started to return kindergarteners back to their home schools say and what I mean by that is so next year we would go with the model with the kindergarten and then eventually in the following year that it would be a kindergarten grade one and you'd move some kids back at the BB only we're talking right yeah okay yes so again the limitations of the BB is we're currently running actually 16 kindergartens we're running 15 kindergarten plus a special education program that is kindergarten based that we added this year at the Franklin so I need 16 kindergarten rooms okay right at the BB I have 12 classrooms and two specialty rooms so again space is always our problem we looked at so many configurations so again as the committee knows this has been space has been a

▶ 57:30 topic since 2014 the file that is sitting here next to me is the running file I keep of all the meetings and plans and everything else we've done so So beginning in 2014, we began to talk about space. In 2016, it became critical, and we ended up with the module. At that point in time when I presented, I was asked to present by this committee all the options. I presented nine options. Quite frankly, of those nine options, two thirds of them were not viable for a number of reasons, okay? You're in a similar situation again. team has run through many many options it comes down to space economics in time that's what it comes down to right now and I discussed this this morning with the PTO the citywide PTO we had a wonderful conversation about it at the

▶ 58:32 Winthrop we converted a storage space next to the boiler room into the music room there is no music room there okay we converted two years ago we've converted a book closet we ran ventilation and converted it to a special ed room okay their art room is half the size of any other art room and we took part of that to create smaller office spaces because that's the only way we could get an art room it went through all right we we moved a teacher teacher out of an undersized room and moved, I'm looking at the Winthrop teachers to cue me. Two or three sped teachers are now sharing a room, three sped teachers are now sharing a room. That's the Winthrop by itself, and that's with two modules added on, all right?

▶ 59:32 I can run that scenario for every building in the district. Hoover, excuse me, Harvest Man, which is beautiful renovations, library is probably the size of a small office okay when we put 24 fifth graders in there it's not a room you really want to sit in okay we have a combined music art room that when the music teacher comes in we push the tables away Lincoln we just put a wall up to create a music room that is a very funky I want to say it's like a misshapen V that the music teacher does a fabulous job making the best use of that room I was so impressed when I saw what she did the same thing there we are totally out of space in so many aspects because we fix we've had to expand special ed programs at the Lincoln we added two more special ed

▶ 1:00:38 programs we have to take classroom space okay I'm going through my head through my rooms at the Roosevelt the music room is the converted teachers room work room right we had to take all the significant sped rooms put them in one big room move the OTPT equipment to a smaller room and put three teachers in one big room at Roosevelt to share that space. What building am I leaving out? Hoover. We took the oversized kindergarten room three years ago, cut it in half. One half has a semi-wall where two SPED teachers share the room. The other half, again, the size of a small office, is the art music room taking turns. This is with three modules. Anywhere you look, we're out of space so the district can make a choice to do out on a cart music on a

▶ 1:01:42 cart at the Roosevelt and the Lincoln we could take the art rooms and use those for classrooms but that's a choice that this committee would have to make we have currently a 15 stranded K a 15 stranded to a 15 stranded three of 15 all who have to come up through the district, okay? So moving them to as a whole five, a whole K to BB was considered and it's a difficult choice. You could do it, you could have large class sizes, you could have no specialty space if that's what the district chooses, okay? Before I go much further in this questioning with everybody, and I'm very happy to answer your questions. Some of you have discussed some of the stuff with me over the course of the past year and a half.

▶ 1:02:37 At no point do I doubt my teacher's ability to deliver a first class education, no matter what circumstances I put them in, okay? They have lived through construction, they have lived with sharing rooms, they have lived with less than ideal heating crack and drafted windows you know I don't doubt at all their ability okay so again this is not about the teaching and this is not about the actual educational program this is about space money and logistics at this point in time at this point okay does that answer your question thank you miss McAndrew please thank you so I just if I could just take a second I just want to talk about for one minute about how I'm thinking about this issue and the different sort of

▶ 1:03:39 Jennifer McAndrew: categories I'm thinking about I do have questions in each one and I'm not necessarily suggesting that I go through them all tonight I know we have other opportunities but just to put them in this frame so I'm really thinking about four categories of questions and I want to thank everyone who's written to us or spoke tonight or talk to me on the phone email text you know just keep being in touch with us I find it really helpful for myself I'm framing this in sort of four categories of the first one is educational programming and outcomes because I think that that really is what our job is here or main part of our job at the school committee is to decide about what are the best educational models and why are we looking at these models why are these two models and

▶ 1:04:25 Jennifer McAndrew: options before us the best educational models as opposed to say consolidating the fifth grade or consolidating the sixth grade or something like that the second category is what I'm the sort of class size family choice placement group of questions I think we should talk more about how these plans reduce or redistribute class size what would be the impact of moving K out of some buildings for example and also that the impact of consolidating the K on the other classes on the other schools the third category I'm thinking about is cost each of these cat each of these options carry specific costs that we heard about in the presentation but they're also overarching costs to both proposals and I think that placing the options within that wider context is

▶ 1:05:17 Jennifer McAndrew: important and um and then the fourth category i'm thinking about is the transition so whichever option the committee decides there are going to be many decisions after that point which i think are as important as this one um and we need a plan for how we're going to make all those decisions and communicate them to the public so that's just a long-winded intro and i apologize for that but that's how i'm thinking about this so i think actually because we did just talk a lot about space and i think it's clear from your last answer that we all get that there's not enough space in the current buildings for many many reasons um so i wonder if and and i i you and i have talked about this and and i hope that i guess i'll just say i hope at the public forum next week that you

▶ 1:06:01 Jennifer McAndrew: will spend some time talking about the other options that you've looked at i know you've mentioned them here I know they were discussed in 2014 2016 but I do still think it's important to hear about them we may understand why we can't put all the fifth grade in one building because there's too many of them or soon will be but there also may be other reasons why that is was not considered and I think we should hear about it but maybe now I'll ask about class size so how can we talk about how these two plans would reduce or redistribute class size and in particular can you talk about if the under option two if the K removed out of the current buildings would that allow us to add additional strands or bubbles

▶ 1:06:55 Jennifer McAndrew: whatever you want to call them at certain grade levels at certain buildings as we've done in the past i mean that's the case now so some schools have four three three three four or something like that um and i guess related to that how many if any additional teachers or para would be then needed to meaning meaningfully reduce class size at the remaining one to five buildings if we know yeah I know we don't know because we don't have that all of the enrollment for next year but so the school committee policy is for us to try to balance class size to the best as we can as people register for the Melrose public schools okay so you literally know that you have a policy that says siblings first special programs whether they be special ed or ESL proximity

▶ 1:07:57 and then then parents preference okay so sometimes we're successful at that balance and sometimes we're not as we know the Horace man has been in great demand for several years now and the the 2k teachers are looking at me and they have been very gracious to say to us you can maximize us but then just close us down and basically go away superintendent having said that there were 15 children who did not get Horace Mann as their choice this year so using HM as an example so they're running the two teachers that are at Horace Mann as of November 8th both had 24 kids in their case so somebody can do the math that's 48 plus another 15 is 48 is 58 is 66 is my math right 63 thank you somebody out back so if I had space at the Horace Mann I could conceivably have

▶ 1:09:19 three K three grade ones there if I had no case there and I could have three grade ones of 21 that's conceivable all right similarly at Roosevelt 22 families did not get their choice that's a whole class so if you don't have your case there could you put another class there and have a bubble or a whatever a fourth class that is possible the piece that we would have to see how it plays out is what is the impact across the city because those 22 children who did not get their choice at Rosie and the 15 who did not get their choice at Horace Mann went somewhere so then if those families go to their first choice what is the impact as it as it floats across the city but that is one way for people to

▶ 1:10:06 Jennifer McAndrew: get more of their choice and I think I referenced that in one of the slides that this could be possibly big so did that answer your question yeah so you're saying that so at the horse man you could have three first grades right and and then the following year depending on the population you could have three first grades again and three second grades but then eventually those classrooms are full there and you right and then you're into the same situation right and so that would conceivably and this leads a little bit into the cost question that it could be the case that we are hiring additional staff right at those buildings it could also be the case that we are not filling every single one of those classrooms

▶ 1:10:48 Jennifer McAndrew: at those buildings because we're using them for say reclaiming the music room the library etc all of that maybe depending on what it is right could require additional staff as well so i think it's important to to for us to acknowledge i know we don't know the exact cost because we don't necessarily but that those that option does have other costs that might not be captured in the presentation now and i think when we did the presentation we said it was our best estimate at this time based on on what was in front of you there are there are unknowns here but there's unknowns every year right right I mean every year when we make that decision in June whether to add that 15th K we're gambling based on

▶ 1:11:31 Jennifer McAndrew: past trends can you talk this is my last question for now I don't want to take up all the time but um can you talk a little bit more about the kindergarten experience and why the option of the pre-k K is is in your view if it is I'm assuming it is based on what you said previously would be valuable for kindergarten learners okay do you mind if I call forth my K experts no you can do what you want I have my other K experts they are what they all want like which one like not us if any of you want to speak um um so um i'm asking because we have heard a lot of comments tonight and elsewhere that moving the kindergartners out could be detrimental to them in some way because they won't have the mentorship of older students for example or that might be

▶ 1:12:36 Jennifer McAndrew: detrimental to the older students because they don't have opportunities to mentor and i i see that point as an elementary parent myself so I'm just asking I think I'd like to hear about what you see as the benefits to kindergarten kindergartners of keeping them with preschool and pre-k I will say you surprised me I thought you were calling on kindergarten teachers I think the kindergarten teachers would agree with me though that the social emotional needs of our students have certainly changed not just at the pre-k level but at the kindergarten level and I think having them what I have seen in the last year having an opportunity to have some of our students who had gone on to kindergarten and then needed to return to us back into kindergarten it is a

▶ 1:13:29 Jennifer McAndrew: quieter smaller environment with other children who are developmentally in that same age level it reduced it just in and of itself reduced the stress for those students and so they were able to perform I know it's a small sample but we definitely have seen in every one of our buildings an increase particularly at the kindergarten level of students who are having a difficult time with the social-emotional regulation and could sorry just one lesson could you speak to the transition then to first grade and because that's another thing that we've heard uh concerns about from parents is then how and i know i'm not i'm asking you to to imagine yourselves in a scenario that doesn't exist and then predict the future so i get that that's two hard things but um

▶ 1:14:21 Jennifer McAndrew: how you would imagine that um uh both for a student who might be with you for three years or i know you have students who have been with you for three years donna at the ecc going to first um or a student who maybe is only with you for one year for kindergarten and then going to first so we have had all of those experiences i know um last year with our current for the students who went off to first grade this year from the franklin um there were no families who chose last year chose franklin as an option so So they were understandably anxious going into that first year as kindergarten families. Then by the beginning of September, October, they wanted to meet and hear about what were the plans for the district for these students to move on to first grade.

▶ 1:15:20 We met with them in early January and had great conversation. Mr. O'Connell joined us, and we surveyed them early on and made sure that they got the information early in February about what that transition would look like. The elementary team of administrators worked really closely together, and they were very much on board with having the current kindergarten student families at the Franklin going to participate and getting to go through the tours again, even though they had joined as incoming kindergartners they wanted to go through that again this year when I met with the administrative team they want to expand that opportunity where last year they got to join the the families got to join

▶ 1:16:15 in with the kindergarten families they want to have that same opportunity but then also to answer and address their individual questions each principal did something a little different to address the needs of those incoming first grade but they from all reports that i have received from families they were graciously welcomed into the schools and the principals did lots of different things they included them with pto open houses in the during the summer at the end of june they also had welcome back first grade families to be able to get to know other families there and have acclimated i think the superintendent and i met with many families who were not didn't get the choice they wanted until pretty late in the summer

▶ 1:17:09 and they some change made their decision to either stick with the choice that they were given or even make that adjustment and even those families are expressing they were pleased with that transition process thank you it's really helpful thank you miss mcandrew anyone else from the floor mr o'connell please thank you madam chair um superintendent can you talk a bit about if we went with the k-5 at the bb what the reassignment process would look like how that I can release Ms. White-Lambright and Ms. Rousseau. Please, please. Thank you both very much. With thanks. So again, as you know, we, I sent out a reminder letter to families about the forum next week and we included a Google form for families to say if they volunteer, would they volunteer.

▶ 1:18:15 So that's your first step. After that, you begin to do a process very similar to the process that we do for placement. You begin to look at proximity, and you begin to look at special circumstances. If possible, if we have the records, we try to reach out to people who maybe did not get their first choices, but it's not an easy situation. My understanding is when we did it in reverse for when we closed Beebe 17 years ago, that it was a very unpleasant, anguished situation. There's just no easy way to do it. That's the bottom line here. Even if I look at proximity, you cannot take half a class from Roosevelt. Basically what you're looking to do is, so I don't have to find those numbers, when I look at so here it is I have so Rosie and Lincoln are the ones most

▶ 1:19:20 most immediately impacted so when I look at the third grade and this is me the second grade and the third at both Roosevelt and Lincoln I have six classes with 23 kids so ideally you know let's say we want to get down to we start with saying let's get down to 20 kids because one of the objectives here is it gives us an opportunity to lower class size so that gives me nine eighteen kids that immediately can be pulled from Roosevelt and Lincoln to become BB's it would be third grade next year right so how do I make those choices obviously if you have siblings in the building I'm not going to take you out of a building in which have siblings unless I take the whole family out of the building it really

▶ 1:20:14 becomes once you get past the volunteers there is no pleasant way to do this very good and understood a follow-up if I may madam chair on a separate vein people have asked about time and or commented about the timing and the process and what some have described as an accelerated process could you talk a little bit about that why why we're doing this now why we're at least planning at this point to have a vote in December and I guess beyond that how that ties into the bidding process someone asked about the bidding process tonight and as you know and I did mention at the last meeting this has been on the table for a very long time but everything depended on the override vote whether it was a feasible to even talk about BB we've been through it with

▶ 1:21:23 our architect once we have a firm that we've used for many years in the city and John Schenna, Denise Gaffney, and I have been through the building with TAPE, and we have some initial estimates from them. I've asked Ms. Gaffney to see if we can go to a scope of service estimate, but the bid process is very real. If we do not publish the beginning of January, all right, and the bids are usually published for about six weeks, then you have opening your bids and then you begin your work, you're on a very tight schedule. Now, again, I've explained, we've done tight schedules before, Ms. Gaffey and I. Horace Mann was a tight schedule. The windows and doors at Hoover were a tight schedule. The science labs were all a tight schedule.

▶ 1:22:23 We've done tight schedules before. That doesn't mean you're always successful, but thank God we have a good track record. But again, the objective would not be to create a Taj Mahal here. The objective here is to make it as functional as any of my other buildings. What does that mean? Clean, painted, plumbing's working, electricity's working. It's wired for technology. we have the furniture and technology we need in the building. That puts it on par, quite frankly, with my other buildings, with the exception of the Horace Mann, who had its first floor renovated, but not its second. Melrose does not own any Taj Mahals. I mean, the Lincoln and the Roosevelt are 20 years old already, believe it or not,

▶ 1:23:14 20 years old already. The work that needs to be done across all the districts, all the buildings in the district are part of the capital improvement plan. Almost every school in this district needs a roof. Almost every school in this district is looking at a boiler or something similar. Franklin needs windows, who else needed windows? I kept forgetting who else needed windows. Somebody else needed windows, okay? You and I just finished putting together our proposals for the Capital Improvement Committee. They are quite, quite extensive. I will tell you very honestly, I cannot justify making any building in this district a Taj Mahal, knowing how much work is needed in all eight buildings. You know, the resources are the resources of the resources, the pie is only so big.

▶ 1:24:08 You're also working within the confines of a budget, is he still up in the back there? That's good, okay, just want to make sure he's still, thank you, want to make sure you're still listening. Well, it's two different things. Yeah, I know. All right, you're working in the confines of a city budget, which is very proud that we keep our debt to 5% of the city's operating budget. And a city that needs a safety building, a library repaired, memorial hall repaired, and multiple infrastructures. So you have to think about what is realistic to spend in the city. Now I know there are people who say the money shouldn't matter. The money does matter. We function within a city, and a city's limits. And so we have to be fiscally responsible in the choice we make.

▶ 1:25:00 And so that's part of the situation here. So the bid process is coming upon us. But just as realistic is the fact that seam may not be out of there. But whether seam goes in 20 or in 21, we need to have a plan because, gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a whole year to do the repairs? It would be fabulous. If because seam doesn't get out of there till 21, that would be fabulous. But in any way you look at it, you need to know sooner than later what that scope of repairs is going to be. Who are you going to get for contractors, and what the costs are going to be? So as I understand it, at least at present, the goal in an ideal world is to have use of the building for next school year. That is the ideal because of the space issues we're facing.

▶ 1:25:57 And again, somebody had said to me this morning, well, that's going to get to the high school. you look at the demographic studies which is all we can go by it doesn't really hit the high school to 22 23 but the reality is we're out of space at the high school now okay there are people doubled up on classes you know thank God we had some extra office space so when people they don't somebody doesn't have to sit in their room while somebody else is using it for teaching that's the worst thing you could do to another teacher but we've had a plan for that building since 2014 in 2014 before we knew about this as I refer to it this wave the permanent school building committee did a three okay thank you

▶ 1:26:49 Steph we did a three phase did a three phase plan for the high school we were We're only able to afford one phase. I have the other two phases sitting right here with what were the estimates back then. My concern about those estimates is those were in a down market and we had good bids. In this current market, I am concerned about what we are going to get for our dollar as opposed to what we got for our dollar two years ago, four years ago, five years ago. But the plans for the high school are here, and they do include getting my offices out of there. But at that time, to move my offices elsewhere was $1.5 million. It's not, you know, it's not packing up a bunch of desks and moving them somewhere.

▶ 1:27:44 It was $1.5 million to move my offices to another space. And that didn't include the cost of the space, is that right? And that didn't include the cost of the space. I hate to tell you where they were moving us. Right. be a domino effect across the city so in again not to beat this to death in terms of the timing i mean basically you work back from you know your end date right as i understand this so using september 1st as as the ideal end date in terms of getting back into the building we work back from that we have to have time for the bid process we have to have time for the work to be done and the planning for that work would have to consider that best case scenario at this point seen would still be in the building until June so

▶ 1:28:32 you know really that leaves us in terms of chunks of time really the summer maybe vacation if you can get a contractor to work in that basis and maybe weekends if we can get a contractor and or DBW to get into the building so that's what gets us back to December just in terms of the timing of this am I right about that okay and we've done that before we've worked during vacations we've worked on weekends we worked after hours I mean we we did two huge projects in the high school while the kids were in the high school and the contractors had to work around the kids being in the high school they had to make sure that the heaviest work which was during school vacations didn't want blasting it was a very interesting experience about what they

▶ 1:29:19 could do during MCAS and couldn't do during MCAS but we we've done this so we know it's doable the problem is when do you want to do it very good and now I'm sure I just have two more questions at this point so all of that said now I'm Superintendent is it fair to say that if you had more time to do this that might be well it's clearly fair to say it would be a different process this might be out of our control if we do not have an answer from seeing within the next couple of weeks I don't we will have the time frame in which to do this seem has an RFP out looking for more space they've had one bid that they have rejected because it was so astronomical that the trickle-down effect of that bid

▶ 1:30:14 would be to triple our and it doesn't add excuse me add $2,000 to each of our tuitions that we paid a seam so it was you know and I do not vote on any of this when I'm at the seam boy I abstain from everything but so they are out to bid until November 15th and if they don't have somebody within the next week or so I don't know what to tell the committee I will say to you I still think you need to make a decision about what the program is going to be so that you can do the planning I think miss McAndrew said it she said regardless of what you decide for the plan all you've done is decide for the plan there are so many decisions secondary to that decision that will then have to be made okay so it sounds like that we'll have more information in terms of a seam

▶ 1:31:15 update for the November 19th forum because that's beyond November 15 and then I think I've heard you say that if we don't have a fixed answer from seam by next month then this is all move is that right all right thank you appreciate it thank you mr. Thomas I'm just curious about another option so there's a lot of space at the Franklin in comparison to the amount of space at the BB there's 18 classrooms so just for the sake of discussion the Franklin would be large enough to hold an entire class across the district for instance the upcoming fifth graders could all go to the Franklin then all the students that are at the Franklin could go to the BB or we could shrink the people who are tuitioned in right so there's is that a plausible proposal no we rejected that

▶ 1:32:20 proposal first of all I have to tell you how reluctant I am to move the fifth graders if I'm a fifth grader and I've spent six years waiting you get to the top of the heap in my building I can't do that to them I mean there is nothing like being the big man on campus in your building when you're in the fifth grade and there's all these traditions we have associated with each building with being a fifth grader that that's that's not an easy thing to do for those kids so So that's a consideration. The other consideration is the Franklin lot is not a good lot for big kids. We really don't have any fields. We use a common field out on Greenleaf that we share with the public. The playground is, you know the playground, which was purposely designed and built for

▶ 1:33:15 OT and PT needs of little learners and I and you know everything we put forward there is going to be somebody who objects to it that's the reality of the situation of being a decision-maker and one of the objections I have heard on the Franklin is there are there are parents who have said to me I don't want fifth graders on the corner of Maine and Franklin you know that's their perception that's their concern and I have heard it as well you know but like I said whatever decision we make we are not going to be able to please everyone but it's physically viable to do that basically is viable but it's not a great place for fifth graders I also have a sneaky suspicion and I really I have to ask and wait to measure it I have a feeling that that Franklin's

▶ 1:34:12 multipurpose room is the smallest one we have when I was in there the other day with Donna I just kept thinking this is this seems smaller to me in my other multi-purpose rooms and again that's gym space and lunch space okay thank you any further comment from the floor could I ask a follow-up please related to what Mr. Razzi-Thomas just asked. So, again, to clarify, all of the fifth grades could fit in the Franklin School, space-wise? Number of classrooms-wise. Mm-hmm. OK. And? So let me just throw the other kink in that. Right now, the Franklin is on a later start time my other buildings and we did that on purpose because parents said to us when we went to later start can you make an adjustment so we have more travel time

▶ 1:35:21 and we did that can't do that with the fifth grade that would be a harder thing to do because of after-school programs lessons things like that and so I think about Franklin you know again as we talked about in this chamber two weeks ago if you do an aerial view of Melrose your schools are not evenly spaced that's the reality you got Hoover up there on the hill all right then all of a sudden you've got Lincoln BB Roosevelt then you swing around to Franklin Horace Mann and then you've got Winthrop not too bad between Horace Mann and Hoover but they're not evenly spaced so now all my fifth graders are at franklin miss mcandrew please can i just ask another follow-up on this question because i've heard this suggestion as well please

▶ 1:36:27 Jennifer McAndrew: would to my mind there would be detriments to having any one grade level all at one school because of accessibility needs is that another concern with the franklin thank you because even Even with the option two, which I share the concern for that option for the same reason, you would be at, have all the K, at least it would be at two buildings with more first floor access, for example. The Franklin does not have an elevator? No, the only two buildings in the city that have, elementary buildings in the city that have elevators are Lincoln and Roosevelt, so there is an accessibility issue. As you know, at the Winthrop, we had two kids with broken legs last year, and the teachers were phenomenal.

▶ 1:37:13 In the middle of the year, we flipped one of the classrooms because we had no way for the student to get up and down the stairs. The other student chose to go up and down the stairs on his own. So accessibility is always an issue. at the franklin we have that first floor entry um and uh on their main floor their handicap accessible ramps and things like that bb bb we will we will have to build ramps seam has a ramp but dpw has told me um they don't think it's um appropriate please miss donahue so you mentioned the um like taking students from like for example the second or third grade from the roosevelt and the lincoln and putting them into a class at the bb but um how would that impact class sizes or

▶ 1:38:23 like space issues of the one threat or the hoover or so would kids from that school not be moved to the bb or would they not be affected or how that works it's a it's a good question grace so um that was just an easy example so there's a domino effect here so if you went to if we take kids out of the lincoln and the roosevelt let's say we try to get those classes down to 18. and we have kids we our obligation is to even class size then we would begin to think about okay can we take kids from the winthrop who wanted to go to roosevelt but didn't get into the roosevelt could we take like two from each grade and then move them over to the Roosevelt bring the Roosevelt class size up to 20 so you have this constant domino effect

▶ 1:39:10 around the city as you try to even the class size and try to respond to people who say well gee I never got my first choice two years ago three years ago four years ago maybe that's where I want to be so there's a lot of unforeseen here that we just can't predict right and so then you you would well then you would see kids who maybe have been at a certain school for a couple years and then they would get moved to a school that they initially wanted but maybe they had already spent time at this the school their place at so it the domino effect would then you know there'd be more and more kids who are being relocated then just those that's a possibility the other possibility is to leave the schools on even and let it and let it

▶ 1:39:55 Might it sort itself out naturally over time? Those are the choices the committee will have to make because they have a policy here that says we are directed to balance class size to the best of our ability. I also have a second set of rules I operate under the teacher's contract requires us to keep class size below 25 to the best of our ability. Mr. Abramski, please. the superintendent i think you hit it on the head when you said you know it's going to be a difficult decision no matter what decision we make and uh you know in the district i work in there's pretty much two transitions i work in a i work in a k-8 building and then they go nine to twelve and that was specifically designed because of land space because there's no land space where i am and then

▶ 1:40:49 my wife's district they have a k building and they have a one to three building and they have a four to five building and they have a six seven eight building and a nine to twelve building but they have a lot of space so they're able to do that and that district works very well as does the one that i'm in and um there's there's no perfect scenario it's really what what is available to us as a district as the district of melrose and uh my my son's option was well why don't you just turn it into a giant amici's dad and then everybody would be happy sort of explaining and this space is available yeah and i had to explain to him that's really not what we're going to be discussing but thank you for your help uh but i just wanted to point out and thank you for uh

▶ 1:41:38 coming up with these scenarios and for um presenting to the public uh next week on this issue thank you we've talked about it in this chamber and you've sometimes heard from members of the audience about it there there is no compelling research on any one model districts make choices for a variety of reasons often it's space density philosophy of the school committee philosophy of the community but there is really no compelling research on any one model Bill Ricker just opened an 8 to 12 high school all right when we talked about bringing the fifth grade to the middle school in 2016 I mean I parents were very upset with us they could not understand that but as you say there are school districts that

▶ 1:42:38 that have five through eight middle schools. There are school districts that have K-4 buildings, five, six buildings, seven, eight buildings, nine, 12 buildings. Why were those decisions made? Those decisions were made, quite frankly, about space, not because of any educational design. I've worked in a district that was a very traditional district. I've worked in a district that was K-8 buildings, nine, 12, like you. I worked in a district that was K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and then I'm here, which is a more traditional model. But there is no compelling research saying that one is superior to the other. At the end of the day, it's the support from our families, and it's what these people do. That's what counts at the end of the day.

▶ 1:43:36 Thank you. Mr. O'Connell, please. last one madam chair thank you and i know we're you know we've got meetings to go i know it's getting late and i know we've got a forum next week and we can delve into all of this much more deeply as a community if you could talk just a little bit uh superintendent about the again the transitions there's been a lot of concern raised about the impact on our young children our young students owing to multiple transitions um at the same time i've heard other people say that it's not a negative impact do you in your experience in my experience it's not in general let me say it is not a negative impact but as ms rosso referenced every child is different and we have to plan for that child accordingly I have kids who go

▶ 1:44:41 from five to six who have a prior time when I worked in a district that was a k-2 3-5 and of course you had transition to K you had a transition to three you had a transition to six you had a transition to nine you had four transitions it was very individual also sometimes I would get surprised by the kid who flew through the k2 and then they hit grade three I'd go whoa where where did this little one come from all of a sudden? Never saw that coming. I think if we plan well and we do the things that we do, that we currently do, where we have introductions to the buildings, where kids meet teachers, teachers send letters to kids, we do that as they come into K. We do that when they come up to six.

▶ 1:45:30 Even for the eighth graders, we have shadowing day, We have days they come over. We do a lot of activities along the way to help kids transition. Those kids that we know that are going to be particularly challenged by it, we work with those families, we work with those teachers, the teachers are prepared. I'll tell you, I had three kids move in last week and I saw an email from a principal to his staff about what those teachers did to make those kids feel welcome walking in in November to a strange city, a strange school. The extent they went to to make those kids feel welcome. That's what they do. That's being a teacher. So I don't know what to tell you about that. And as you know, you and I have seen the same emails.

▶ 1:46:19 We have some parents who say, I don't think it's a problem. We have other parents who say, I think it's a problem. And very last thing, Madam Chair, to the superintendent, people have commented that you haven't met with kindergarten teachers about this. I don't know if you have or haven't to date, but it's my understanding that you do have a meeting scheduled with kindergarten teachers prior to the forum. Is that right? Yeah. I'll tell you very honestly, I'm concerned about getting ahead of ourselves. I'm concerned, you know, it's a fine balance. If the school committee hasn't made a decision, I worry about raising people's anxiety without us having made a decision, yet it's a no-win situation.

▶ 1:47:10 I mean, I can be raising anxiety for one through five teachers, because you're setting up a building with one through five, that doesn't mean we're going to stock it, or K through five, It doesn't mean we're going to man it with all new teachers. The obvious choice would be to take senior teachers or teachers with experience and say, I want to move you to this building because I need your expertise so that this building can be up and running as fast as possible. Certainly would not want to open a building, with no offense to anybody listening out there with a bunch of 24 year olds. you know so there's anxiety there as well very good thank you thank you so seeing no further discussion from the floor just a few comments on my end for

▶ 1:48:13 the audience as the chair of a committee it's my job to moderate the discussion and not to weigh in until after everyone else has so that's why I've held my tongue I see this I particularly like Thomas McAndrew laid out how she in this in terms of how she viewed the challenges that we face with this and and I too see it as a cost bin and a timeline bin I'm also concerned with disruption and not just for the students or the families but also the teachers and I thank you mr. O'Connell for mentioning that I was going to bring that up if it hadn't or even if it had as is the case um i also have uh see this as a communication concern throughout the district and with the parents um in some ways we have tried very hard

▶ 1:49:11 to get this out to the community and in other ways um there are always going to be parents that are not going to have heard about it until the last minute and so trying to reach all comers as best as possible is always a challenge and that's something i see that we are trying to do madam superintendent you had mentioned that we had moved the franklin times start times to compensate for those families who are dropping off at elementary schools across the district and perhaps maybe even middle schools as well on the instance that we consider a pre-k k model between the two schools the bb and the franklin i wonder if you could speak to the possibility of the family that would have to drop off a first and third grader at winthrop or hoover for instance

▶ 1:50:16 and a kindergartener or a pre-k at bb we have those families um and uh the elementaries open at 803 and the b in the franklin opens at 8 37 8 30 8 30 and 8 30 and so there's a half an hour difference between the buildings kids can get come into the buildings five minutes before start time and so really kids get dropped off about five with eight at most buildings those kids that don't go to early bird and in the Franklin they can be dropped off at 825 again not including children who go to early bird we have quite a few kids who go to early bird thank you and and we have touched on tonight that you have that we have been sitting on plans for the Mowers High School with regards to expansion of further classrooms to ease

▶ 1:51:20 class size there I don't believe we touched on the middle school in terms of easing those class sizes as we see this increased population move into the middle school can you touch on those okay so at the middle school we have We have some spaces available. We have the project rooms, and we have a couple of specialty rooms that we can use for other purposes, about five rooms. The worst case scenario that we're anticipating right now is having to do a split team as the bubble rolls up through the middle school. So a 6-7 team, a 7-8 team. I don't think, looking at the numbers, we would have enough for a complete extra team at each grade level. So we are anticipating possibly a split team. Don't forget the teams are running approximately 100,

▶ 1:52:24 110 kids on a team, and that's spread out among pretty much four to five teachers, depending on the grade level. get into the older grades you have the foreign language teachers as well calculated into that so when you look at their home rooms their home rooms are not pushing the limit so um you have some flexibility there with the middle school excellent and then uh just again one more time to reiterate uh the seam collaborative is actively seeking a new site right and and all of this discussion could be postponed for one may not postpone but could be pushed back a year should they not be able to find a space is that correct the work on the building could be postponed a year I wouldn't say that your decision should

▶ 1:53:22 be postponed a year because as we talked about once your decision is made there all sorts of secondary decisions that have to be made sure very well any final questions from the floor thank you everyone for your robust discussion I look forward to continuing this next week at the Learning Commons at seven o'clock Learning Commons our second floor of a high school thank you everyone this concludes educational programs and personnel Thank You Mr. Selm next up policy and planning with Ms. Driscoll Thank You Mr. O'Connell very briefly what you have before you is a memo detailing the process that we have followed in the past and that we would expect to follow in the future as well as the self-evaluation grid so please bring a copy of the self-evaluation grid

▶ 1:54:20 Jennifer McAndrew: completed to our next meeting and follow the process as depicted any questions seeing none that concludes policy and planning thank you mr. school that brings us to the announcements of the chair. Do we have any liaison reports? Ms. McAndrew. I'm gonna put it in this category, if that's okay. Fair enough. I just wanted to mention to everyone that I attended the Massachusetts Association of School Committees annual meeting as the Melrose delegate. Thank you. Proudly representing you all. It was great experience, and I know others on the committee have had that experience before. Sarah Silver, We did, I know all of you have seen the packet with all the resolutions that were being considered, but we did.

▶ 1:55:22 Jennifer McAndrew: Sarah Silver, At the intermediate consider and pass nine resolutions, this is basically agenda setting for the association it's essentially their lobbying agenda for the year at the statehouse. Sarah Silver, So they were I can you know send you the link to the full resolutions, if you haven't seen them, but just to mention there. um couple of resolutions related to climate change and banning polystyrene which melrose has also discussed as a city um related to um uh promoting greater competition in bus contracts which i know is a perennial issue on this committee i think it got the loudest yay vote of all of the resolutions um encouraging the legislature to move toward fully funding and supporting universal pre-k for all students and provision related to providing additional

▶ 1:56:14 Jennifer McAndrew: funding at the state level to provide free access to menstrual products from the school nurse and in all restrooms and locker rooms so those are just a few in addition to the usual i understand annual vote on charter schools that's taken at that meeting so it was a great meeting and if anyone has any questions about it or wants to participate next year feel free to let me know thanks enjoyed that experience i did know i i did they really did mistress please and just a follow-on to ms mccandrew's excellent report the superintendent and i had the great privilege to present on on superintendent evaluation at the conference on a panel with Ms. Presser and a representative from the Department of Ed and another

▶ 1:57:07 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: school committee member and given that we have a goal this year around piloting a new superintendent evaluation, that's something that aligns with that goal and so it was, we were appreciative to have that consistency and that ability to contribute to the goal while we were in attendance. It was fascinating to hear the questions from the audience and to hear about some of the practices in the other districts. And we were a little bit grateful that we are here as we currently are. Can we just leave it at that? Fair enough, thank you for that. Are there any further liaison reports or other reports of note? Seeing none, thank you all very much. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Made by Mr. Obramski, seconded by Ms. Driscoll.

▶ 1:58:00 Discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? And that passes with six in favor, and we are adjourned.

School Committee — 2019-11-12

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