School Committee — 2021-10-26

School Committee Regular Meeting

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

Also recorded: Melrose City Council October 26th 2021

Agenda

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE MELROSE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES● OCTOBER 26, 2021 Council Chamber, First Floor, Melrose City Hall Regular Meeting 7:00 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176

(ID # 9378) Announcements - Superintendent Melrose Kind Update (5 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9382) Announcements - Superintendent Culture Climate Survey (5 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9389) Announcements - Superintendent MSBA 2021 Accelerated Repair Program Statement of Interests (10 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9372) Consent Policy JBD: Gender Identity Support Adopted

(ID # 9373) Educational Programs and Personnel METCO Update (15 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9385) Educational Programs and Personnel YRBS and Programmatic Updates (20 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9370) Finance and Facilities Student Activity Account - Checking Account Dollar Maximums (5 minutes) vote required Passed

(ID # 9367) Finance and Facilities Revolving Accounts (5 minutes) No Action Taken City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 11/3/2021 3:34 PM Minutes Melrose School Committee October 26, 2021

(ID # 9388) Finance and Facilities End of Year Report (15 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9376) Policy and Planning Annual Review of Policy IJND: Access to Digital Resources and Policy IJNDB: Acceptable Use Policy for Information Technologies (5 minutes) vote required Passed

(ID # 9379) Policy and Planning Policies for Informational Review (5 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9377) Announcements - Chair Outreach Reports (5 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9383) Announcements - Chair Items for Future Discussion (5 minutes) No Action Taken

(ID # 9386) Executive Session Executive Session Minutes October 12, 2021 No Action Taken

(ID # 9384) Executive Session To discuss strategy with respect to negotiating a Side Letter of Agreement with the Melrose Education Association, Unit C- Paraprofessionals regarding paraprofessionals who work at Education Stations on early release days for the 2021-2022 school year as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the School Committee No Action Taken 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 11/3/2021 3:34 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Jennifer McAndrew: Good evening everyone and welcome to this meeting of the Melrose School Committee. The date is October 26th, 2021. The time is 7 p.m. My name is Jen McAndrew. I'm the chair of the committee. This meeting is being recorded and broadcast by our friends at MMTV with our thanks. And Ms. Hogan, will you please call the roll? Mr. Obremski? Yeah. Mayor Broder is late. Ms. Driscoll? Here. Mr. O'Connell? Here. Ms. Rozzi-Thomas? Here. Ms. DeSelma is absent. Ms. McAndrew? Here. And a quorum is present and we are ready to proceed. Let us stand as we are able for the pledge. to the flag of the united states thank you all very much um first up tonight is the report of our student representatives ruby robichaux and morgan kirby hello to you both and thank you for

▶ 1:16 being with us tonight do you have any uh things to report to us from melrose high school um so Hello. And so right now our volleyball team is 16-2. Our football team won on Friday, so everyone's pretty happy about that. There's a fundraiser tomorrow at Betty and Bo's for the Grace Zink Scholarship. We want to tell people to attend that. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Oh, and our unified basketball team is undefeated right now. Awesome. Thank you. Additionally, Sunday was the Melrose Alliance Against Violence Walk, where a lot of teams, athletics teams participated in that. Sunday was the Senior Halloween Dance, and we're currently deciding on a new mascot, and Vice Principal Corrigan dressed up as a Wookiee from Star Wars suggesting that one

▶ 2:11 Jennifer McAndrew: as our mascot. uh yes we do and then monday was picture day and coming up for november 1st and 15th are senior college early deadlines and then the quarter closes on the 3rd excellent thank you are there any questions from the committee for the student representatives Mayor Bruder quick chance to um to hype something and that is correct me if I'm wrong the unified basketball team is having senior day I think Thursday at 3 30 and that is something that the public is welcome and encouraged to attend it's really an amazing thing to go see thank you and I assume that's at the uh at the main gym okay great thank you thanks Mayor Bruder thanks you guys thank you both for being with us as always good to see you next up is

▶ 3:11 Jennifer McAndrew: public comment and now we move to the portion of our meeting where the public may comment for up to three minutes each on matters before the committee during this time of transition we are offering a remote public meeting comment option as well no one signed up for the remote option tonight but we do have I believe several folks who have signed up to comment here in person um just a few reminders if i could that comments are limited to up to three minutes each and let me also say before we begin that we have received several emails this week and the committee has closely read and considered all of those views as well we thank everyone who shares their comments with us and we take them seriously

▶ 3:59 Jennifer McAndrew: and so without objection the public comment portion of the meeting is now open first up is uh scarlett raj banshee scarlett and if i could just remind everyone including committee members to speak right into the mic this helps the folks watching at home hear um all of our comments so if you can even pull it a little bit closer to you that'd be great thank you so much go ahead you're recognized for three minutes good evening everyone it's it's nice to see people in person in a very long time my name is scarlett raj banshee i'm a parent at the winthrop i have a fourth grader there i imagine the emails you alluded to had to do with halloween my comments are broader than just halloween i consider myself a very liberal person who values our multicultural

▶ 4:46 democracy greatly but i'm having a really hard time with how the district is approaching equity and inclusion it started with the district's approach to covid testing instead of mandating it which would make the schools safer the district decided to go to sign up the the sign up route citing equity thus we have less safe schools in the name of equity and i'll be honest i don't understand how a covid testing mandate that would make the school safer is not equitable the letter the superintendent sent earlier this week did little to alleviate my concerns i'm very concerned about how the district will review our past events and traditions not everyone celebrates thanksgiving is the turkey trot at winthrop going to be on the chopping block valentine's day no

▶ 5:31 more cheap cards from cvs i'm joking but these traditions are what many children remember and are their favorite memories of school it's almost as if it's a race to the bottom where we're eliminating any color any tradition that perhaps not everyone engages in um i asked you dr kuchenberger early earlier this week you didn't respond that's fine i know you're busy um you know some people have a sincerely held belief that meat is murder eating meat is murder that's a sincerely held belief if someone approached you in our community and said you know i'm not comfortable eating the cafeteria because my fellow students are eating meat would you ban the consumption of meat in order to make that person feel more comfortable

▶ 6:19 i don't know what the answer to that is but it seems like that's the approach the district is taking um if there are just adjustments we can be we can make to our traditions and these events that we hold in order to make them more inclusive i'm all in favor of that but i just caution the district to be to be careful not to eliminate the color the flavor that um you know makes these traditions that that our children you know enjoy and make our community special thank you thank you so much for your comment next up is tara pope miss pope you're recognized for three minutes hi thank you all um i know there's been a lot a debate over the subject of halloween this past week and although we may all be sick of it i just

▶ 7:15 want to share my opinion on this as i know there are many opinions out there but as i got involved in this discussion all i hoped for was the return of some normalcy for my son and all of our children at the winthrop elementary and all the elementaries across town and though i understand that halloween isn't celebrated by all children i think for most children in this community it is a day where they can have treats maybe dressing silly costumes maybe not and just have fun over the past two years there have been so many devastating things happening in this world and because of this i know some people think this argument might be silly but for our kids especially in elementary school their lives have been turned upside down and the question of why does everything have to be

▶ 7:52 different mama has come to me a lot and since i haven't always been great at handling this isolation and changes myself that we've all felt over the past couple of years it's a hard question to answer hence again why i went into this to get some normalcy back for my only child son who has has gone from feeling very alone in quarantine and all the emotions as we have all felt lately and mostly just misses his friends and his traditions with them nothing about this argument for me is non-inclusive as i've said many times but i just wish we could all listen to each other and come to an agreement that lets everyone celebrate what they all enjoy together there will always be things that some don't celebrate and others do hence this culturally diverse

▶ 8:30 community we have built and there will always be someone who inadvertently gets left out or families that can't afford the same as others, but let's teach our children how to deal with these situations and make them feel good about what they can do to celebrate everything and how to always include others in that. I will leave it on this note. My son happens to be one of a few kids in his class or in his group of friends, at least, that doesn't like to play soccer. And this may seem silly, but in particular, he doesn't want to be part of it. He doesn't want to watch it. And a lot of days he comes home upset, feeling left out because he says he has no friends at recess. Now if we go with the idea that we can't exclude anyone from anything during

▶ 9:06 the school day then you would think I should be able to ask that soccer be removed from recess because my son feels left out. However I would never do that. Instead I explained to my son that everyone has a right to do and celebrate or believe what they want but it wouldn't be fair to the hundreds of kids who do enjoy soccer to take that away from them and I see it as an opportunity to teach him that things are not always going to be easy and not everything can be centered around him or one or a few i tell him he can play soccer and try to enjoy the time with his friends or he can choose something else and know that he might always have to play with other he might have to play with other kids at recess that day this is a life lesson as we all have

▶ 9:42 Jennifer McAndrew: learned more than ever recently life is not always fair but if you are nice to people teach them what you enjoy maybe you will all find something new to do together sometimes you will sometimes you won't but that is another strong lesson itself thank you thank you very much Ms. Pope that is everyone who has signed up this evening for public comment and so without objection public comment is now closed thank you all next up we have announcements of the superintendent of schools Dr. Kuchenberger thank you Chair McAndrew I have a couple of announcements tonight but I wanted to start first by recognizing our assistant superintendent of people and pupil and personnel services who is retiring in just a few days

▶ 10:29 our colleague donna rosso and others are joining us tonight and inviting patty forward so that we can acknowledge you one final time i know you have to present tonight but we wanted to start by just acknowledging your years of service and although i've only been here in melrose for about a year and three months i have learned much from patty and about patty's strengths and the many contributions she has provided our students and our families so donna if you would the mic is yours to say a few words thank you patty made me i promise i would not cry and i would not make her cry so i will not do that but there's much to recognize in september when patty announced that she was retiring she came over to see me at the franklin with a bouquet of flowers for me

▶ 11:20 as is the case with all things patty she is always looking out for and considering the needs of others i have had the absolute pleasure of working with patty since september 2001 we started together in another district i started after her in that other district in that time patty has served alongside four superintendents other than patty and the fact that they were all superintendents the four could not have been more different yet patty was a confidant and go-to person during the best of times and during the challenging times for each one of these four people before heading to melrose in 2007 patty served with then superintendent of georgetown public schools mr larry boren patty often described how in her work with mr boren she was able to begin

▶ 12:20 to see for the first time the possibilities of what including all students could really mean for families students and for a community her efforts to start the first integrated preschool program designed to meet the needs of students with an autism spectrum diagnosis in georgetown is what ultimately brought her to melrose seven years later along with her groundbreaking work to include all students patty was an educational leader known for long hours and a total commitment my very first memory with patty was actually on 9 11 our very first day of school in in georgetown my first day in this integrated preschool classroom as Mr. Boren's confidant Patty was the person who was chosen to walk from classroom to classroom to share the news of

▶ 13:16 the devastating disaster which would have a profound personal impact on each person she met with that morning forever the rock Patty was composed and knew just the right words to share to bring comfort and courage to all she spoke to in 2007 then superintendent mr joseph casey called upon patty to come to melrose and to again break ground on an inclusion project beginning for the first time in melrose the program program again was to be focused on developing programs of inclusion for students on the autism spectrum which today is known as the tlc at the roosevelt and franklin mr casey like mr boren also saw patty as a confidant her responsibility was often to keep mr casey focused and not stopping at too many bakeries

▶ 14:12 to purchase snacks for every person he would meet with this focused attention patty and mr casey saw the vision for an early childhood center now known as the franklin they saw that come to life Together, Mr. Casey and Patty took Jenny Kordach and me out for ice cream and then to tour the Franklin. Patty was very convincing as she shared a vision for turning what was at the time an old, worn-out building filled with leftover junk from the Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Middle School building project into what today is a shining example of all that Melrose Public Schools has to offer all students and families. In our time with Mr. Casey, Patty was a true visionary, bringing together supports to develop programming for students with cochlear implants and a newly redesigned postgraduate

▶ 15:08 program. We moved from each elementary school following their own curriculum to, for the very first time purchase and implement a consistent general education curriculum for english language arts and math along with common assessments across all schools mr casey's retirement patty welcomed miss cindy taymor mr casey and miss taymor could not have been more different yet again patty became a close dependable confidant to miss taymor where joe joe was about connecting with people and nosh cindy had a great deal of critical work that needed to be accomplished at a record speed we were already behind the eight ball with the implementation of the curriculum standards and the teacher evaluation this was a time of significant change in education and much

▶ 16:07 work was to be done i can remember pat i can remember hearing cindy call from her office down the hall patty patty would quietly and confidently walk into the meeting and suddenly we were back on track and we had a clear vision for the direction we needed to head during the years of cindy's leadership with nationwide accountability and significant educational change patty was often the calm in the storm for teachers administrators and community members she developed strong relationships with melrose alliance against violence our cpac and melrose educational foundation she sat on many hiring committees and saw the growth of educational services at the franklin and across the elementary schools with our before and after

▶ 17:01 school program and our summer offering for middle schoolers bringing community members into the conversation and the work of supporting our schools budget challenges and finally the passing of a budget override is a legacy cindy and now patty and many others can be very proud of with cindy's retirement last year patty again stood strong as an educational leader and confidant to dr julie kuchenberger as together they began to navigate not just a national crisis but a worldwide wide pandemic in june of 2020 it was patty who bravely stood alongside dr kuchenberger and others to reopen the schools for our extended school year program before any other districts were willing to do the same what is remarkable to me is that these amazing accomplishments represent

▶ 17:57 only 20 of the half of half of patty's career of 40 years those of us who have who have looked to patty for strength and courage will forever see her as our confidant a true champion for inclusion and for least restrictive environment for all children on behalf of more than 100 of her colleagues i share with you this gift not only is this legacy chair meant as a legacy to your time here in melrose but as a legacy for every seed of knowledge you have planted on behalf of each child and each educator you have mentored you truly have planted the seeds of knowledge that will last all of us a lifetime i just want to thank donna i want to thank all the members of the school committee present and past all of the administrators present past

▶ 19:35 and truly most importantly our students and their families who have given me the opportunity to make a difference for kids here in melrose so thank you all so much it's been an honor to be part of the melrose public schools thank you patty and i also want to thank your children and your husband for all that they have sacrificed in your 40 years as an educator thank you we all know what to do without the support of our families as well so thank you absolutely thank you patty's not done yet though we're going to ask her to do a presentation later moving on i did want to invite some members of our community up to talk to us about melrose kind we're looking forward to melrose kind day on november 20th of this year and i know that

▶ 20:56 there's many ideas already being generated to celebrate across the city and within the schools thank you for having me my name is stephanie nelson and i'm the co-founder of melrose kind a new non-profit here in town i've been told i have five minutes so let me get right to the point kindness that's it you don't need me to sit here and tell you that there are going to be disagreements the electricity around this current halloween topic is palpable and i can assure you that every person here every person watching has a valid opinion and an interesting perspective perhaps even a story that illustrates something that we don't know or we haven't covered but here's the thing without kindness that passion and that conviction it's lost

▶ 21:46 and it can be destructive. Once we start the name calling, no one hears anything else. November 20th is Melrose Random Acts of Kindness Day. This is our sixth annual citywide celebration. My partner and friend Mary Beth Darwin started this mission and I'm proud to be part of something that continues to evolve and thankfully has no ceiling. Now more than ever, and I mean even tonight today this week we could benefit from starting with kindness as i mentioned we have exciting news to announce we're an official non-profit we hope to fund kindness initiatives throughout the year pen pal projects between seniors and students adopt a sites more and so many more ideas we welcome ideas and collaborations so please reach out but i am getting ahead of

▶ 22:42 myself. I'm here today to ask you to start to get excited about it. Think about ways you can participate. We've got many projects that need kindness warriors to own. Showing love to our police, showering appreciation to the fire department, the DPW, the post office, the hospital, and so many more. Do you want one of those projects? Please email us. We'll give you an assignment, something that will make you feel good. And before you naysayers and keyboard warriors are typing SMH, shaking my head, I ask you to just give kindness a try. Not sugary sweet lip service, but tangible actions done simply to make someone smile. You might be surprised at how good it makes you feel. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 23:40 A couple other things I wanted to share with the community tonight. We will be conducting a culture and climate survey district-wide. We have a team of folks in the Melrose Public Schools that have been working on this internally for the past several weeks. We've tested it out with our leadership team. There's an elementary survey for students in grades three to five. There's also a secondary survey that will be shared with students, a staff survey, and a survey for families. This is a practice that we have been talking about for a number of months and really wanting to make sure that we're not only looking at student learning data but that we're or demographic data but that we're also looking at perceptions data and we know that the only way for us to get

▶ 24:22 that information is to ask so in the next coming weeks we'll finalize those surveys taking the feedback from our leadership team to refine them further and then we'll be disseminating disseminating them out to the community there will be reminders to encourage high levels of participation and we'll start with with staff probably as soon as next week and then work our way out to the community through students and families as well additionally i'm excited to announce that two of our accelerated repair program applications have been tentatively approved we have a meeting tomorrow morning with the msba board to find out specifically but the two projects that are eligible for approval are the hoover replacement of the

▶ 25:07 hoover roof and replacement of the horse man roof these are two projects that are desperately needed and we're excited to have the support and additional funding that may come along with the accelerated repair program today we learned from Commissioner Riley that the mask mandate has been extended through January 15th we're also in eagerly anticipating vaccination approval for our youngest students ages 5 to 11. not sure if that happened today or not it did they did approve it awesome haven't had a chance to look and so the idea behind the extension of the mandate is to get us through the holidays allow for our youngest learners to access the vaccine if that's the choice that families are making and then also get us through the winter holidays with a few

▶ 25:53 weeks back in school and then it'll be revisited again so it's official today the mask mandate is extended through january 15th and then lastly i just wanted to say a few words about halloween i have received tons of emails and media requests i've been doing my best to reply to as many as possible but i know that i haven't had a chance to reach everyone the one thing i wanted to say is that we're not canceling halloween we're not saying that halloween's not a valid celebration for families i myself celebrate halloween outside of school with my family as do many of our educators our intent here is just to make sure that we're not centering everything that we do during the fall season around halloween alone we're trying to allow our staff to think critically

▶ 26:44 about what we celebrate in our schools and why how we utilize our school day to its maximum potential and also how we celebrate and have joyful activities with our students we know that all of those things are important as we work to build community so halloween's not banned we're not saying you can't say halloween or read books about halloween or even do halloween crafts but we are saying is that we're not going to center everything that we do during the fall around one particular holiday and that concludes my superintendent's report thank you very much dr kukenberger are there any questions from the committee for the superintendent on her report mr obramsky please just um on the topic of halloween i'm not going to belabor it i'm just

▶ 27:26 going to speak to the more to the communication of it and the transparency of it and i think that's really um part of it it's not the only part but for some people it's the subject itself but for a lot of people it was the communication and the lack of involvement of those schools where it was impacted and i think that's really what the administration has to focus on is the transparency and the inclusion of families in these decisions and i know that not every decision within the school can involve families all the time you have to make administrative decisions but i think that when you have traditions and rituals and routines and then those are suddenly removed that's what upsets families and i think that's what we heard this week and i think that's really what we have to

▶ 28:32 Paul Brodeur: communicate to people that we will be more transparent and we will communicate better thank you absolutely thank you thank you mayor bruder uh not on the topic of halloween but um stephanie if you're still here kind of inspired me to talk about this a little bit and it's the roof because when we hear about you know some of the things that we do some of the stuff is really interesting and cool we're building a new middle school or we're doing a playground or whatever the case may be um the government wonk in me feels like i gotta say doing the roofs is a big deal it is a very very expensive proposition and to be able to take advantage of some of these sba funds in addition to the way the city's financially planned to be able to do the match that we need

▶ 29:22 Paul Brodeur: to pull this off is really a big deal and i know you know within a within a year of buying our house the hot water heater blew and we had to do the whole roof and that is not as you might imagine what we had in mind but you got to do it and i'm very very excited that we're doing that very boring but very important thing fixing those roofs thank you any other questions or comments mr azzy thomas please um when if and when will we get to look at the climate survey like the the actual questions and there i know we'll get the responses eventually but could we get a sample of some of the questions absolutely we're still refining them but i'm happy to include that in the next agenda okay great thank you thank you any other questions

▶ 30:09 Jennifer McAndrew: or comments from the committee seeing then i just had a couple things to mention on your report thank you first of all let me just express i know we'll have continued opportunities to do this throughout the meeting but the committee's appreciation gratitude and thanks to miss white lambright for her tremendous service to the district and her 40 years as an educator and also thank you to principal rosso and all of her colleagues who participated in that beautiful tribute thank you all and and thank you to patty's family as well for being here and please do not be a stranger to us in Melrose in fact I already asked Patty if I could give her a call if I want needed to talk to her so thank you thank you to

▶ 30:54 Jennifer McAndrew: Stephanie and Melrose kind as well Stephanie if you send me a website an email address I'll make sure those are in the minutes so that folks can reference that if they want to get in touch with you thank you for that and finally on the topic of Halloween thank you for addressing that superintendent um and um to the folks who who emailed us um and who spoke tonight i think um i would just add to what mr obramsky and others have said that um i think we um you know i'm looking forward to the the review that you're going to be conducting with the principals i think it's important that that review is very transparent that the entire community gets to provide input and thought around that and that that and i also think that um as we move forward thinking about not just how we

▶ 31:41 Jennifer McAndrew: communicate these decisions but the timing this is something that you and i have talked about that the timing of these decisions is really important that you know a decision regarding even um a broadening of the fall festivities um which i support um during the month of october is it lands a little hard for folks who are trying to plan and room parents and all that so just the timing is really important the transparency and um and you know i think also um just um more opportunities for all of us to continue to learn about um about holidays and also as you're working through that process if there is are changes that need to come before the committee for consideration in the student handbook which is where our holiday policy currently lies we would be interested in

▶ 32:33 Jennifer McAndrew: seeing those changes and talking with you or if we need a policy in our policy manual around celebrations and holidays we should consider that so just so the community understands that that's where where the committee's role is is in the policy and the superintendent and her team implement those policies so we're looking forward to this not being the end of the discussion and thank you so much for that absolutely excellent any other final comments this time seeing none moving forward to our consent agenda which tonight includes the school committee regular meeting minutes of october 12 2021 policy jbd gender identity support and the warrants as follows fiscal 22 s 22017 in the amount of seven dollars and 35 cents

▶ 33:24 Jennifer McAndrew: Warrant S-22018 in the amount of $1,063.36. Warrant S-22019 in the amount of $747,564.57. The September debit credit card number two in the amount of $91.56. And warrant S-22021 in the amount of $4,800. Are there any items that any member wants to remove from the consent agenda. Mr. Obramski, please. You removed the minutes from the October 12th. The minutes will go to announcements of the chair. Thank you. Any other items? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the balance of the consent agenda made by Mr. O'Connell, seconded by Ms. Razzi-Thomas. All in favor? And that carries unanimously with one absent. Thank you all. Next up is the work of our subcommittees. And up first is educational programs and personnel

▶ 34:21 with Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Obramski. Thank you. Superintendent. Good evening. Nice to see you. Hello folks. Welcome to the educational programs and personnel portion of our program. First up, we have a METCO update and I see Ms. Amy Jackson in the audience. Ms. Jackson, if you could come forward. Superintendent, do you want to introduce this or are we just going to hand this over to Ms. Jackson? We're ready to roll. We're ready to roll. Ms. Jackson, welcome. Thanks for being with us. Good evening, everyone. My name is Amy Jackson. I'm the MECL director. I'm here to provide just an overview of the program for this past year. So first I'll start with the enrollment. We currently have 116 students in the program,

▶ 35:28 33 are in elementary school, 33 in the middle school, and 50 at the high school, which we have six seniors this year. We have currently have 16 at Hoover, eight students at Lincoln, three at Roosevelt and six at Winthrop. And enrollment at the elementary schools are depending on available seats. In this past year, we added seven new students from kindergarten through eighth grade. Next, we just wanna start off with the highlights of the year. We started off with a fabulous summer program with 25 of our lovely middle school students, sixth, seventh and eighth graders. We had a five week program will be focused on ELA and math and also enrichments in the afternoon. The students read two fabulous books,

▶ 36:14 Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds, Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, which was a part of the ELO curriculum and students focused on completing their summer math work, which included math IXL lessons. During enrichment time, we invited a local artist with the students who worked on a art project was focused on the two books they read and we also had a presenter to come in to work with students on self-awareness, medication techniques, and life skills. And that presenter was actually one of our Meckle parents. It was a phenomenal session. The students loved it. The students had such a great time in the five weeks. They can't wait to come back this summer. thing i submitted a grant to mecca inc to bring in a presenter from dialogues of diversity his name

▶ 37:06 was ron jones he um he ran two sessions with our high school students in the sessions called get out of our bubble it's the game show that talks about the introduced students on new and open ways just to talk about cultural differences it was really fun because it was sort of a game show student won prizes and the students were really into it and it was two fun sessions and the students were able to either go online and they could chime in in the chat they can answer the questions they could ask some questions it was really fun and entertaining and the students had a really good time next in collaboration with the friends of Melrose Mecco we continue to meet with the boston families as well as the melrose families we had a fabulous event this past may

▶ 37:59 we're in partnership with follow your arts community studio and circus up circus up had many workshops that the students who were able to get on stilt they were able to see different circus activities and the kids and families had a really good time we had our local artist steven elders who worked with all the families they um presented parklets they were actually after everyone completed them they were hung on main street in melrose which was really nice that the families would come in melrose they can see all the little art designs actually saw mines which was really cool and this past sunday we had double header it was a game day we had several of the boston families come out we had mayor broda ashley join us and some other our school committee

▶ 38:49 members it was so nice to see you there and the families enjoyed themselves and other families after that they walked over for the melrose alliance against violence visuals and a lot of families went over and they said they had a really good time and they were excited about it and i'm just so excited to continue to work with friends of melrose mecca and when the process planning event in boston this coming may and the families are very excited and can't wait to come to boston we have a lot of fun activities for them next i partnered with new generations consultant and associates to start a melrose mecca parent support group and this group is just for parents it's a confidential safe face for parents just to talk about issues they're faced with their children

▶ 39:34 just learning about just how our children are in boston they live in boston they go to school in a different town and the students and the parents deal with a lot of things so it's a safe face for parents just to really talk because a lot of parents feel like it's just my child but once they talk to other parents they really understand that it's not and they feel a lot better and this we had our first meeting a couple of weeks ago it was really nice the parents were really just open just having really good dialogue sonya patton she's the counselor and life coach and the fun thing about her is she is an alumni of mecca she's also a parent so she really understands and she gets it and the parents can really relate to her we had a

▶ 40:17 really good discussion it was only supposed to go an hour we were on the phone for two hours so it went really well the parents are really excited and they were like we got to tell more parents so we can get more parents on the call for the next one and we're going to do this every single month next i'm excited to report that i'm still in the diversity equity task force we're in our second year we've been meeting on a monthly basis excited to share the four drafts of our goals and we're also working on infinity groups for our middle school and high school students as well as our staff and that's coming and we had a meeting with the high school principal and the middle school principal and we're going to partner with some teachers and we're going to start those

▶ 41:04 groups soon and that's what i have for you right now terrific thank you mr action this is really great stuff uh any comments or questions from the committee mr thomas please um this is i i'm really amazed at how much you've gotten done in such a short amount of time since you became the director and also during a pandemic and so thank you so much for your service to to our to our district and for um doing such a great job with the mecco program i'm really curious just about how the students within the mecco program have done through the pandemic just kind of curious about how they're doing how the families are doing because it's just been such a hard time for everyone so well the students are definitely happy to be back in the building yeah very excited a lot

▶ 41:51 of students did not participate when they were able to come back just even in the hybrid so the families are excited to have the students back in the building a lot of the students lost family members during this time so it was a very very difficult time so that was the whole point of having a support group for the families to help them and also support their children through this but other than that everyone's happy to be back in the building their parents are excited to have the students back so it's going really well and the summer program was a huge success from the oh we had such a good time so i was the coordinator of the program i really enjoyed just spending the time with the kids especially with all the students not being in the building so i spent

▶ 42:33 like two hours with them every single day and i loved it i learned so much about them they learned so much about me we had a really good time and they were already asking me justin are you going do it again absolutely i can't wait thank you for your leadership oh thank you any further comments or questions i actually have a question and maybe it's a superintendent question more than a miss jackson question perhaps both of you um how does enrollment work um you know i'm i'm and i'm sure that's that's a big question with a complicated answer but i see hoover lincoln roosevelt winthrop i obviously don't see horace mann or franklin i know space is beyond tight um but how do we get that how does it ever start do we just have to wait until enrollment goes down and the reason

▶ 43:23 i ask is because i think there's a huge benefit to our schools to be participants active participants in this program and i i feel some regret that horace mann and franklin at least at present doesn't have that benefit how will that play out over time is there an answer to that so space is definitely part of the equation amy could talk about the whole process from the perspective of our families who live in boston but here in the district we actually wanted to apply for a metco expansion grant but as we looked at our available space we looked at our projected enrollment numbers we didn't feel that we had the capacity to really apply for that grant and and reap the full benefits of it but we try to fill as many seats as we can each year and we do look at not

▶ 44:10 only where's their space but we also want to make sure that we're not putting one student in one school where they're feeling alone or don't have that other students that they can relate to collaborate with connect with be in the same class with but space is definitely a big driver for us amy yeah and amy just so you know i don't need to know about the process okay by which which students get into METCO or get assigned here. It's really, you know, our piece of it. And ultimately the question is, when are we going to see students at Horace Mann? And I hear what you're saying, Superintendent, I don't want to see one student by him, her, or their self at Horace Mann, but looking at it makes me wonder,

▶ 44:53 how do you ever get there? How do you get that started? There's obviously no siblings there. There's no one there. so perhaps food for further thought and discussion absolutely great any further or final comments from the committee mr. Jackson you're doing a great job keep it up and thank you so much for being with us tonight we appreciate it thank you Amy thank you and next up under educational programs and personnel the youth risk behavior survey and programmatic updates and I see we have Miss White Lambright Miss Berman and Mr. Fogarty with us any introduction to this superintendent are we just going right at it we're gonna jump right in obviously this is a little bit of passing of the torch here with Miss

▶ 45:43 Berman joining Miss Lambright on her final school committee presentation Steven and and Patty have been working with our SWAC which is our oh I'm gonna forget what that stands for but our health advice our wellness and advisory committee and looking at the data you're going to see the data presented a little bit differently this year but that's because we have some projects in the pipeline that they will speak about tonight so with that i'll turn it over to you steven patty and carrie excellent so thank you and yes this is a historic presentation. This is the only presentation that you will have that includes two assistant superintendents for pupil personnel services. So I am honored to present some information

▶ 46:49 tonight and be joined by Stephen Fogarty and I welcome Carrie Berman as the assistant incoming. are you still we were like feeling we should wear t-shirts or something tonight but in training no you're you're it i'm in you're it okay um so i i'm but i really am privileged to have um carrie here presenting with us this evening um and if we could keep those microphones close that would be great thanks thank you okay um so we will i just wanted to frame it a little bit it for you this evening so really what we're providing to you this evening is kind of an update on where we are with the YRBS process as you know we participate with having the YRBS every two years within the district and this time and I think we look back when we head back to 1997 maybe we have many

▶ 47:59 years of data around the YRBS and we've had an opportunity thanks to work through our School Wellness Advisory Council Jess Hoffman has offered to support us with some of her work with PhD students and they will be we're going to share with them some data so that we can get some a longitudinal kind of look at why our BS data over several years so this evening we wanted to provide you with some just a little bit of information because this is typically the time we do share information with you around YRBS. And we've chosen to kind of focus on mental health and provide you with some key information around that and also how we are using YRBS data to help drive the decisions that we do. addition there are some questions that we were able to include as part of the

▶ 49:15 Middlesex League specific to COVID so we don't have longitudinal data on those so we thought we would share that information with you so we were able to add on a few questions specific to COVID and again thinking about topics that we have talked about here many times the impact on our students coming back to school and specifically how it's been impacting mental health so that that's our presentation for this evening with more information to come and we will also share with you the entire YRBS information thank you so the CDC continues to create the YRBS, the biennial administration of it. This particular version was created by John Snow Incorporated. It was administered by the Melrose Public Schools as well as the Middlesex League and it was funded

▶ 50:18 entirely by the Lahey Clinic. Our 9th through 12th graders took the YRBS as well as our 6th, 7th and 8th graders in the middle school. The core of the survey is based on risk behaviors and protective behaviors. Alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, unintentional injuries, mental health, unhealthy dietary behaviors, sexual behavior, bullying and violence, and some of the more protective behaviors are trusted relationships, academics, sleep, screen time, physical activity and overall perception of these behaviors so again as I I talked we want to focus if you want to go to the next slide I wanted to focus our attention on some of the mental health questions that were posed can we go back? Maybe not. I'm not sure that I can. Okay. All right. Okay. So

▶ 51:27 that's okay. One more. Perfect. Thank you so much. So again, focusing on mental health of our students. And so one of the issues that we have talked about here before is the idea of um suicide and i have said before you you know one student thinking about um harming themselves is one too many and so what are those efforts that we can put in place and the yrbs is a good consistent kind of check-in to see what that data is looking like and again we'll be providing that longitudinal kind of look at at this issue but the numbers um again in a particularly stressful time thinking about how students are considering committing suicide ever for middle school or over the past 12 months that 13 to 21 percent of melrose students did something to purposely

▶ 52:57 hurt themselves without wanting to die but thinking about that is a significant piece and is a a step in that kind of overall process if you're thinking about you know harming yourself in some way and and certainly not within this presentation but but part of that is then our job is thinking of what are those underlying causes you know what's the the reason behind kids feeling like that so this is important information for us to think about and then to think about what we need to do as a school district and quite frankly as a community to support our students. And just again this is in a broad stroke that 10th grade students are more likely to report purposely hurting themselves without wanting to die and 7th graders were more likely to consider

▶ 54:02 suicide and I think if you go on to the next slide gives you more of the breakdown and these numbers are not comfortable numbers I believe to be looking at and again wanting to have an understanding of what how we take this this information and what plans we make. Next slide. So again, this is made a plan or attempted suicide in the past 12 months. And overall 7% of Melrose students report having made a suicide attempt. And the results of this survey indicate eight high school attempts resulted in an injury these are serious numbers to be looking at and important for us to consider as we think about how we can support our students this slide what I want to highlight in particular so this is a breakdown more specifically of the information and I think the startling

▶ 55:35 number in this slide is the percentage of gender queer students is significantly higher than any other group again thinking about how do we support our students who are transitioning who identify as genderqueer is an important consideration for our planning at the secondary level this slide is actual attempts of suicide and again pointing out the highest group is gender queer so highlights not only the mental health issue around the struggle of suicide but the specific groups that may be more impacted and require a higher need of support from us so part of the yrbs also asks how do students seek support because you look at those numbers and i think they're pretty concerning and startling and so we want to also get information about how

▶ 56:55 students are accessing support so on the positive side most melrose students report that they have coping strategies to relieve stress the majority of Melrose students and again those numbers aren't 51 to 63 percent have at least one teacher or other adult at school that they can talk to but conversely although that's more than half again thinking about then who are the kids who don't feel that way I also think this is an interesting point to think about and have discussion particularly given that this survey was done during a pandemic and considering how students who were particularly sixth graders and ninth graders had been in that building for the first time in a very non-traditional manner

▶ 57:57 and may, in fact, have been in a remote learning environment for the entire school year. So what was the impact of that in this kind of reporting? A high percentage of our students report that they feel comfortable talking to at least one of their parents. As we know, support for students is not just about what happens in school, clearly, but what happens at home and what happens within the community. Six to 18% of Melrose students are taking medication or receiving some type of counseling treatment to address some of their concerns. And these are just the breakdown of their way to access treatment. All right. So just going to quick overview of, I believe, some of the coronavirus specific questions

▶ 59:05 that were part of the YRBS this year, or last year, last spring. So as we stated before, these were added by the Middlesex League schools and the consultant that worked with them. Interesting question here, during the coronavirus pandemic, how often was a student's mental health not good? Tough way, I think, to categorize that. But again, I think when we look at the visuals that we can present, we can see those certain populations of students within, again, that LGBTQ community. Some of our other are very concerning within that group of students. And they self-identified during this. So continued trend that we're seeing across most of the questions. This was for the high school. and then if we look again pretty similar in terms of the middle school stats that come out

▶ 1:00:13 so we're really trying to think about as and we're going to talk about some of the next steps that came out of the yrbs but some of the things that we're really concentrating and thinking about as we look at this data so a pretty interesting question here as well during the past 12 months did any of these things happen to you again i think the visual really does this justice but the one that's almost you know furthest to the right or second in the students family member or a close friend died we're looking at again a high school student or a middle school student pretty large part of our population lost someone that they considered who was very very close to them and that's certainly very concerning some of those other numbers

▶ 1:01:05 maybe some of our students in Melrose weren't as affected as other area communities but certainly you know there was a lot of serious illness and a lot of loss that happened during this time so some of the things that we're doing the decision-making and moving forward and how we can support our students and families best so we have Melrose Public Schools has done some work with the NAN project before we did mental health 101 with them two years ago i believe it was a pre-pandemic on one of the early release days where people were invited in that is one of those opportunities that's presented to teachers that they can take advantage of paraprofessionals different people but it was not mandatory so to speak but this is going to be

▶ 1:01:55 all secondary staff are going to attend this training next week on the second and qpr is all about question persuade and refer so it's not clinical but it's a suicide prevention tool and it's something that all of our teachers educators staff members are going to become familiar with so that we can really support the people who may be dealing with these mental health challenges i'm going to turn it over to stephen for our next opportunity so in addition to the nan project we've worked with sos and signs of suicide within the middle school but we're going to expand that program into the high school this year we want to thank miss dobbins and for securing a grant to make sure that will happen for our students and

▶ 1:02:46 staff and you know that all staff will be trained on this instrument and we feel it's important because these students have relationships with various people various capacities and we're excited to bring that program to the high school the uh there's a question that the great dr wolf our school physician talks about every year is is there an adult in the building or a teacher that you feel you have a relationship that's trusted that you can have a serious conversation with and we found this year this past spring that about 63 of the high schoolers have that relationship and we found about half of the middle schoolers have that relationship some of these answers are obvious some of them are not so obvious as to why that's going on with the pandemic and a major

▶ 1:03:34 focus what we're doing is trying to build better relationships better community and that that's a major focus for what we're doing the discussion started this summer with the leadership retreat we had many faculty staff school nurses there as well this information was shared it was discussed and for some people it was the first time seeing data like this and for others you know you deal with this every day and that was the first step the wellness department has been looking at this data since the school year began we spent two department meetings broken up by grade level and cross the grades to discuss this how can we create better opportunities for our students to meet more people to have more trusted relationships so in the middle school project impact slash world of

▶ 1:04:25 difference is a program that we had we're kind of revitalized with the anti-deformation league with extended team time a major focus is to build community and relationships during that time school counselors are meeting with students more regularly the guidance department in the middle school has social emotional learning grade based lessons that will be rolled out shortly and then there's just other opportunities for student interests such as all the clubs and activities that go on in the middle school and then intramurals and working in conjunction with our partners at the melrose recreation department to provide opportunity and healthy alternatives to what's going on maybe less screen time screen time and certainly more exercise and activity

▶ 1:05:13 At the high school, it kind of mirrors some of this, and again, the focus is to build better connections and relationships to improve community. Project Impact, student peer mentors, okay, doing the right thing and giving the students the tools necessary to lead their friends, their peers, in the right direction. Crew is something new at the high school. We're a month and a half into that right now. It's a grade-based community of students learning from one another and experiencing. specific opportunities school councils again small group and one-on-one opportunities to meet with students we currently have about 80 different clubs and activities and many of these are student driven where they latch on to a

▶ 1:06:00 faculty member that will guide them in the right directions and of course you know we have a robust athletic program that we want to see grow and flourish with with more opportunity as well so there is more information to come we're looking at some of the longitudinal data that we have and you know we look forward to sharing that with you but this is just a snapshot of what's going on you know it's been hard times for many and we're looking for ways to make it better very good thank you very much much appreciated any comments or questions from the committee mr. Ozzie Thomas then miss McAndrew thank you so much this is really critical to discuss this issue of suicidal thought suicidal action and it's so important for us to be able to talk about this with our

▶ 1:06:51 children with students and make this not a we have to get rid of it as a taboo subject it is not true that if you talk about suicide that you're going to cause someone to become suicidal and that's like it's really great that you guys are willing to come up here and start to talk about the data from the YRBS, especially since we, you know, know that mental health problems are at a huge, enormous tidal wave level. And that's just as true for the adults as it is for our students. So I really appreciate that you have the NAND project coming in. I just at my school did the SOS program with my students on Monday. They're both great resources, and I think it's just as important to pay attention to

▶ 1:07:39 the adults as it is to the students. So if you're training the staff, they know that they can also help each other. We can't help each other enough right now. The pandemic has gone on way too long, and people are really worn out. So I just have a couple of questions. So thank you, first of all. Second of all, I'm just checking, you have one category of genderqueer students. Do you mean lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and questioning students, or do you mean students who are non-binary and, you know, transgender or non-binary? Just curious about that one category, and then a couple other questions, too. Yeah, so this is the categories that were developed by CDC. And I think it, the gender queer was, the description behind it was to be as expansive

▶ 1:08:40 as possible. DR. The umbrella term for LGBTQ? DR. Yes. DR. Okay. DR. Yep. DR. Just checking that. I'm really curious because I know that there is also this very big problem within the mental health world for outpatient providers being completely maxed out and there's not enough outpatient providers how are you doing providing linkages from school to mental health providers how's that going so i i would say that i have heard from many districts first of all our staffing even within the district challenges of people being able to have enough school psychologists social workers adjustment counselors all of those pieces we're fortunate that we have been able to maintain and hire and secure our staffing within the district so that's a good piece and it is we are hearing from

▶ 1:09:40 families that they're having challenges if they're seeking you know we certainly have families who already have established relationships with providers outside of school but families seeking to establish a new relationship unfortunately some are meeting with more success than others but there's definitely a challenge and families are waiting we also have students who have have been hospitalized and may require a higher level of support following the hospitalization and they are waiting extended period of times in the hospitals waiting to access the supports because there just is not room in programs and i think there's this whole trickle effect that the programs don't have enough staff to provide what they

▶ 1:10:40 typically have done so it's it's again you know certainly supporting and providing parents and helping them to make those connections but i think our best pieces are again one of the proactive supports that we can do pieces like putting in sos providing crew having kids feel connected with each other i think those are all the supports that help people to feel part of the community and that they have people that they can talk to thank you the other question i had is how different are these numbers the suicidality and numbers in this data set in comparison to previous years pre-pandemic So, that will be part of the information that you get, but I did, I mean, part of why we talked about and chose, you know, the numbers are higher this year, and in some cases double

▶ 1:11:47 what they had been pre-pandemic the last time we did the YRBS. And so, again, you know, I think that's why it's important to actually take even kind that broader look so what piece of the impact of the pandemic has this had on the results of the yrbs um but you know getting that big longer term picture and then moving on stephen and carrie will be looking at what's the impact i'm hoping that the numbers are looking different the next time Melrose does the YRBS. Thank you so much. Ms. McAndrew and then Mr. Obronski. Thank you all. Thank you for being here with us and for this report and I have a couple of comments and one question. I'll do my question first which is on the slide with the trusted

▶ 1:12:47 Jennifer McAndrew: adult numbers which showed and that's asking about a trusted adult at school right showed a pretty lower number at the middle school than the high school I guess I'm interested in your thoughts on what you attribute that to that gap if anything what what you're thinking about in terms of um you know increasing that percentage and if how that compares to previous years if you've asked that question in the past the question has been asked in the past and it is down and some of the things that come off the top of the head right away these students started remotely so a third of that building you know was not in person and then when they finally did arrive you know you're seeing half their face like all the

▶ 1:13:42 other buildings and most of the world so challenges for sure and we're trying to get over that hurdle and create better relationships you know it hasn't it's been hard everything is and what can we do to make it better and those are the things that we've been bouncing around the room for a long time and trying to create more positive opportunities and experiences that work to make those connections sure i i was thinking about this piece particularly how there's so many factors that contribute but i was also thinking about how we were not able to provide our typical summer programming so one of the pieces that i i particularly have enjoyed in the past is our students without border program where i think it's an excellent opportunity for incoming

▶ 1:14:42 sixth graders so students who were fifth graders that summer before participating in in that summer programming gives them an opportunity to become familiar with the program to start making connections with peers to start making connections with adults start feeling connected as part of the middle school that didn't happen you know we were not able to provide that kind of transition support that we typically do from fifth grade to sixth grade i think those are steps that again we can think about the importance of providing that for our incoming students and again digging into some of those data is that a higher number also and i'm not a statistician by any means but i'm also interested that i did want to highlight we also included the sixth graders

▶ 1:15:43 if you look to our past wire bs we had not included sixth graders before but quite frankly this information is important for us to know for all of our secondary students can i add just one more thing so i was actually surprised during the summer when we looked at those numbers and i was shocked especially at the high school but that only 60 almost 63 of our students felt close to one adult i was shocked because i felt like that was something i thought we did a good job on so i'm not sure how the pandemic impacted that i will also just want to add for at the middle school that their electives or off-team classes were virtual i think for the entire year so oftentimes a chorus a band an art teacher those are who pull out in

▶ 1:16:35 Jennifer McAndrew: students and have some of those different conversations when we can get them you know into something that they may be more interested in and they may be able to form a better relationship with so i'm wondering if by not having those in person if that impacted how students also responded to this because their virtual experience remained longer than both our elementary students and our high school students so excellent thank you and extracurriculars as well probably same point right um thank you um i'm interested in the um i'm so glad to hear that all secondary staff are going to be um trained on the the nan project um and you know what i'm thinking about and i'm interested in your thoughts on when i'm looking at that is that you know especially these these

▶ 1:17:24 Jennifer McAndrew: issues these concerns they don't just magically start at sixth grade so i'm interested in thinking about you know what are we doing in the elementary around some of this age appropriate of course but are we thinking about training any of our elementary staff maybe fifth grade or instructional coaches or others mental health staff or is there another program that we should be doing for elementary students and also how and if what sort of information do we provide to parents and opportunities for parents to be either trained or at least to get information about some of these programs just so they can reinforce the messaging that you're um you know that you're that you're putting forward at school i could take some of that the um

▶ 1:18:15 it was interesting we have not presented this information to the elementary principals before and the some of the many of the elementary nurses were there and they ate this up they were really highly engaged in this activity and had a lot of interest so i'm sure they're seeing much of this and you know they didn't really have access to it at a prior date so we had a lot of great breakout conversations about this and strength um talking about strengthening those relationships so i think you will see more work going that direction um in the wellness classes in the elementary certainly the conversations in second grade are very different than the conversations going on in fifth grade and you know they're working on this material as well the wellness

▶ 1:19:03 teachers and you'll see more pointed discussions lessons involved to try to bridge that gap a little bit and I would just add that our support staff our social workers our school psychologists our adjustment counselors and our counselors you know work as a professional learning community and so have opportunities within across the district to discuss and share resources and information part Part of that conversation of even doing the YRBS for sixth graders was, again, I think our lens from 10 years ago might have been, oh, sixth graders, we don't want to ask some of these questions or we don't want to get some of this information there. No, I think we need to. And I think we, you know, again, more proactive, not just at the secondary level, but at the

▶ 1:20:17 Jennifer McAndrew: elementary level as well. And we had talked about, actually, should we include elementary in this training as well, those group. And we actually thought we would break that out for another time because some of it may be a bit different of a presentation of how you would do um like the training that they're going to have at the elementary versus the secondary great thank you and just finally to reinforce a point that we talked about at one of our previous meetings recently actually related more to covet response but we do have funds available through the sr3 grant and we i think um maybe others would agree on the committee that if there are additional resources staff i completely appreciate the points about and have talked with the superintendent about the hiring situation and

▶ 1:21:14 Jennifer McAndrew: the availability of staff right now but if there are things that we can do that we need to use those funds we can use them over the next three years to deploy additional staff resources i think i would like to hear as one committee member about those opportunities because i'm very concerned about some of what we're finding here as i know you and your colleagues are as well so thank you and just please know that as you move forward in your work mr obramsky uh yeah no it's extremely concerning i'm actually extremely surprised um so in terms of the we're doing a school climate survey uh soon is it possible to include um stuff in there on student engagement and i guess it would have to be wouldn't have well you'd have to have it it couldn't be anonymous at that point so

▶ 1:22:13 is there a way to survey the students on their engagement within the school and see if they're actually involved in activities within the school and uh if they're not uh is it possible to like we we've we've added crew which is fantastic like i think that's phenomenal somebody brought up to me like boys volleyball uh recently um i know like prep schools they do like a freshman a jv and then they have the varsity but then they have like a three team they call it like the third like is it possible to like through the essa funds like why can't we increase the amount of activities and increase student engagement in order to get these kids in front of adults and off the phones and out of the house like i mean we have to re-engage the kids like at some point

▶ 1:23:04 and i'm sure like these results aren't just in melrose like we're um i mean once we do compare comparison data i'm sure we're going to see it in other communities as well but it is extremely concerning and i'm a big believer in engagement student engagement and you know trying to get the kids involved within the community but it has to start early and it has to start in middle school and i really think like increasing the amount of activities even if we have to increase the amount of teams you have an a team a b team a c team in order to get kids supported and increase drama activities if we have to if there's one play and not everybody made it add another play like at this point like i because it's definitely concerning and um you know it's something to think

▶ 1:23:51 about thank you yeah i think that's a very um it's a good point um and um you know when we we do sometimes look at problems you do want to look at what are those kind of root pieces and what are those underlying steps that we can take so although we're having challenges you know finding and maybe like if we said oh yes I want to hire X amount of social workers or school psychologists I'd probably have a challenge trying to to accomplish that but maybe there's some ways to expand some of that engagement student engagement in different ways and we certainly will continue that train of thought and engagement right it's not like i don't want to you know i don't want to increase the workload dramatically but i also think that you know under the circumstances there there is some

▶ 1:24:54 room where we can work and is it is it even possible to engage like ask the students you know what what activities are you engaged in and if they're not engaged in any is it possible for the guidance councils to connect with them and say what would you like to see here and what can we do to make this place you know we did do some of that um i was just thinking of the survey i know that they had done at the high school during their crew time around resiliency and part of that i don't know all of the questions but we certainly can take a look at are we getting that information about student engagement because that is one of those under having people kids feel connected kid is a really important strategy in helping kids to develop healthy ways of dealing with

▶ 1:25:49 their stress, of feeling that they can speak to somebody, that they're connected with an adult. It's critical work. So thank you, John, for that. Thank you. And I'll just add, I know that the NEASC team was just out at the high school at the beginning of october um and through the quick kind of one page piece that i don't know i don't think it's been disseminated not finalized yet but the chair and the visiting team in sharing with us the kind of our recap was very impressed by the the students and how they did feel connected to the high school so although that's anecdotal evidence at this exact moment in time i think that we will see some evidence come out of that niasc report that's going to look much better than the evidence

▶ 1:26:33 that we had during the pandemic so i'm happy that we can hopefully see some of that and i think that's why this is so surprising because it does like it seems like there's so much off it and i was shocked right it's just right shocked right thank you reframe it slightly yeah i mean this was given last spring and then we started that school year remote and we started drawing them back in it it took a while there's a complete different vibe down there right now as to what's going on it's certainly i would say a much more normal much more traditional school year and uh there is a different feeling all right thank you thank you that's important thanks for pointing that out and bringing us back a little bit because i think it is important to recognize

▶ 1:27:15 Paul Brodeur: that this was done you know at the height of uh you know the pandemic thank you mr mayor let's follow up a little bit on what mr obramsky was talking about um i got two thoughts in my head And one is that there is part of the trick, I shouldn't say trick, that kind of dismisses it, part of the way to make this work is meeting the kids where they live, I assume. And that means, I mean, there might not be an activity for some kids. That might not be the way they work. Does that make sense? Because when Mr. Ruben is talking about connection with the guidance counselor, that's kind of an alternative or just kind of a check along the way that that makes a lot of sense to me because there might be other things going on in the

▶ 1:28:02 Paul Brodeur: background that it's not really a an in-school thing necessarily but you know how do how do you mind that stuff probably more importantly is that as we're talking about this and this is kind of a unique snapshot in time and we do it the the yrbs is once every two years yes is that right How do we, given we're in a particularly challenging, unusual time, how can we, if at all, figure out how we're doing better without waiting for the next play RBS, right? Because I assume this is going to, like, the anecdotal evidence looks good. There's a different feel to this year. But I think all of us, you know, these are very, very shocking numbers. and you know they're a little bit dated but how do how can we get assurance before the next yrbs

▶ 1:28:56 that we are trending in the right direction yeah and i i think that um you know the yrbs is a good data collection point that we get consistently every two years and we ask the same questions it's it's a well-developed tool and provides us with that piece but in the interim how do we know that we're making progress and they'll there I mean there's definitely concrete pieces so we know when kids are referred we know when kids are hospitalized we know when kids are struggling you know we have that information we you know we can we have critical case management at the secondary level and and know who those students are so we will know if those numbers are increasing and hopefully those numbers are decreasing we know that those numbers have increased

▶ 1:30:00 we we were already concerned about the impact that the pandemic was having on our students we We were already concerned about how we were going to help kids transition. That was part of our thought process in developing CRWU, trying to make sure breaking down a larger building and making sure every kid felt connected to an adult. The YRBS data supported that we were making the right decision to go along with that. But we weren't waiting, we don't wait for the YRBS data, but It helps us to reinforce. And certainly when we get information that looks more concerning than typical, we can think about the pandemic and know that that's part of the impact, but this is the information we have at this moment in time.

▶ 1:30:56 And so we wanna make sure we're appropriately responding and hopefully those actions of being proactive, making connections with kids will help us be trending in the direction that we want to, which is going way down. Thank you. And thank you for this. It's a, you know, it's very eye-opening. I appreciate it. And Mr. Chairman, my apologies for moving back and forth. I hear a little bit better when I'm closer to the speaker. Mr. Obronski, please. Yeah, I already, I know the answer to my own question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Is it possible to give the YRBS again this spring? Would they, would the, is that something that would corrupt the data or? That's an interesting question. So we, if we were to give the YRBS, you know, the exact same question, we definitely would

▶ 1:31:55 have to think about how we would do that. And it would be only something Melrose was doing as in comparison to, you know, the state, country that's when it's given every two years so it wouldn't be given in a standard manner that we typically do i don't know what the impact of doing something like that on our own i don't know if it's necessary to give the entire yrbs but there could be something where we think about um how can we do some additional data collection doesn't have to be specifically the yrbs but similar kind of pieces to kind of check in um that we're on the right track yeah i think it's something to think about you know yeah that looks looking at them looking at the numbers lindsay

▶ 1:32:48 dobbins um the director of student service and counseling is working really hard to on those SEL screeners for students to do consistently and the middle school is doing that during team time and the high school is doing that during crew to make sure that we can kind of see the baseline for where specific students are at a given time great thank you Mr. Acetonis this is just a comment based on what what Mr. Obrunsky was just raising if you're doing the signs of suicide the sos if If you do that work with students this year, you're going to basically be asking them very specific targeted questions around depression and suicidality. So it sounds like you're going to bake it into what you're doing this year anyway.

▶ 1:33:34 Yes. So either through NAN or through SOS. So you're right there with it, which is good. Thank you. So thank you. anything further from the committee at this point seeing nothing further much thanks to each of you for your work in this regard for the presentation we look forward to further work and further discussion and with that said that concludes educational programs and personnel for this evening thank you mr o'connell and thank you miss white lambright for your final presentation to us as an assistant superintendent and thank you all Next up is Finance and Facilities with Ms. Driscoll and Ms. Razuchano. Thank you. First on our agenda this evening is the student activity checking account maximums and I'm

▶ 1:34:35 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: going to invite Ms. Secor to speak to that and it will require a vote this evening. So the student activity checking account maximums we retain the same as we have over the past couple of years. not change anything from the past you know during the pandemic we kept them at the same levels regardless of the spending we were doing and we do recommend that you keep the same maximums at this time mr. O'Connell Thank You madam chair I would make a motion to approve by mr. O'Connell seconded by ms. McAndrew is there discussion on this motion seeing none all in favor opposed and that motion carries six in favor with one absent next in our agenda is the revolving account summary and if you would like to

▶ 1:35:37 give a brief overview miss Secor so in your packet you'll find the memo on the revolving account funds and I gave a brief description of all the revolving account funds that we currently use as offsets a revolve just to you know a high-level overview or revolving fund is a fund or account that remains available to finance and organizations continuing operations without any fiscal year limitation sources of funding vary and include fees tuitions state appropriations and reimbursements and this just means that these are almost like savings accounts they they go on the books they bring in deposits and they roll over every year and we do not lose funding as of June 30th for these accounts thank you for that overview are there any questions on how revolving

▶ 1:36:31 accounts work or what they mean from the committee mr. O'Connor just very briefly madam chair this is something that we have fairly regularly talked about over years um and uh there's been much speculation about it what they are what the amount is uh why is it changing um and miss secor you've done a great job in uh putting to rest all of uh those concerns and fears and misconceptions about this so thank you for that much appreciated thank you manager thank you so much any other comments or questions mr candero yes thank you very much always this is very helpful for us to see um you and i have talked about this before and i appreciate it very much um i do um did want to give you a chance if you wanted to to comment

▶ 1:37:24 Jennifer McAndrew: on um the ecc revolving fund because just because um it is a negative balance right now and i just wanted to understand it um i think i know some of the reasons for that and also i know we sometimes hit these reports you know when things have been paid out but tuition hasn't come in and there's sort of the natural up-and-down of the account but did you want to comment at all on that balance and what you anticipate for maybe year-end there yes so sure the Franklin revolving account is tuitions for the preschool the preschool this year the the teachers and paras got paid the first week in September and for us to pay out the payroll almost the first day of school it takes a little while for the tuitions and the expenses

▶ 1:38:13 and the payrolls to hit each other so we do look to have a $250,000 to the positive as of June 30th excellent thank you very much very good any other questions or comments thank you that was an excellent summary and a good review the community to review to know that their funds are being managed well and watched closely last on our agenda is the end of year summary if you'd like to share with us some information about that sure so this is the end of year report from the department of elementary and secondary education this is an annual report that is done by the finance departments of all school departments and this is a summary of all expenditures from school committee municipal offices as well as

▶ 1:39:06 grants and revolving accounts and so i've just given you a high level overview of where we landed on expenditures on points one and two and i do look forward to being audited again in february around february um and then i can give you the hard numbers then as to where we landed very good any questions on either the memo or miss secor's comments mayor broder did you say you look forward to the audit i do i know it's crazy all right that's why school business administrators are awesome better you than me miss secor very good thank you so much for that and for all of your work um for the benefit of our students and families and that concludes our financing facilities thank you mr still um next up and thank you miss secor next up is policy and planning with

▶ 1:40:07 miss razzy thomas this evening thank you welcome to policy and planning uh first on our agenda is our annual review of our access to digital resources, which is policy IJND, and our acceptable use policy for information technologies, and that's IJNBD, or DB, sorry, IJNDB. So we are just going to vote on this, and then we're going to do another vote at our next meeting, have to do this annually so do i have a motion on the floor motion to approve motion from mr driscoll to approve approve okay thank you um and i'm happy to second that i'm assuming it's a motion to approve both is that right to to approve both yes thank you thanks and i'd like to second that madam chair thank you so we have a motion to approve in a second and uh can we do

▶ 1:41:16 a vote so oh no wait a minute is there a discussion any discussion no discussion okay can we get a vote now on whether we're going to continue these policies for now as is motion to vote no wait a minute all in favor all in favor thank you very much okay that's unanimous with one not here okay and then um the rest of the policies that are here on the agenda access to digital resources acceptable use policy for information technologies i'm sorry no policies for informational review only school committee staff communications use of electronic messaging by member new member orientation conferences committees and workshops member compensation and expenses committee legislative program and committee memberships

▶ 1:42:10 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: those one two three four five six seven policies are for informational review not for vote but does anyone want have any concerns or comments that they want to make about these today mr yeah so i just had a um a question um i believe it's policy bhc and there's a section on visits visit you know visiting schools yep and um it indicates that the committee needs authorization to visit schools and I would just throw it out to the committee for us to maybe think about that. I'm not sure how that works or what that means. I don't think we've ever taken a vote to have a visitation to a school or to have, you know, to allow a member to go visit a school. So I'm just, I know that's in the MASC template policy, you know, their policy manual, but

▶ 1:43:01 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: I'm just wondering how that would work in practice. So I don't have an answer right now or a solution or a proposal. more um something i wonder about and maybe it stays or maybe there's something better so i'm inviting us all to think about how to do that to make it fair um and also respect our staff members at the same time i also think there's the reality of us as parents that we go to schools sometimes to see you know our our students there are kids there and talk to their teachers so while we're not in official committee mode during that time we are you know we have to go to the schools at times anyway so i think maybe we should talk to uh amy lindquist about this as well as the superintendent to see if there's a slight adjustment to that language thank you

▶ 1:43:46 mr school for bringing that up any other comments questions for any of those policies yes sorry i think i'm understanding correctly that the only one that's changing is bid if i got this right in this slate of proposed policies and in BID member compensation expenses we're changing from Board of Aldermen to City Council I get that right is that that's essentially it the others are remaining the same understanding that they're on for review that is correct we are looking at all of these again and we can make any changes to update them to the correct current language or to really how the policy should work so it's the opportunity for us to review all of them and this is just informational review we're not voting

▶ 1:44:39 so we have plenty of time between now and the next time they come up to us in front of us to change or draft changes good and just to drive my point home we get nothing for being on the school committee right unless I'm missing the checks we don't get paid for this work uh and it's the city council does get paid is that right i believe that's true yes what do they get five thousand bucks a year four thousand plus one thousand four thousand plus one thousand all right complicated four thousand plus one thousand we get zero plus zero is that right and we both you know in a tremendous twist of fate we get thirty dollars a year for expenses if i got that right okay we get 30 a year for expenses so don't spend that

▶ 1:45:27 Jennifer McAndrew: all in one place i guess is the advice i would would offer very good thank you madam chair i appreciate that oh my pleasure any other comments questions thoughts okay so we'll we'll bring back the annual review for another vote but the rest of these we're going to look again the next time we meet they will go to a regular vote thank you that concludes policy and planning for tonight thank you mr ozzy thomas all righty hello again everyone um next up we have announcements of the chair first we have from the consent agenda the minutes of the october 12 2021 regular committee meeting for purposes of discussion is there a motion to approve made by mr o'connell seconded by miss razzie thomas any questions comments discussion seeing none all in favor opposed

▶ 1:46:48 Jennifer McAndrew: abstain abstain and that motion carries with four in favor two abstentions and one absent thank you all very much next up are the outreach reports any outreach reports this evening from the committee seeing none we did hear about a couple of things during the meeting and just wanted to mention the friends of melrose metco event on sunday and which was an excellent and fun event and thank miss jackson for her work on that and all the community members and the friends of melrose metco who supported that next on our agenda is items for future discussion this is something that we put on the agenda about once a quarter as just an opportunity for any member to raise a topic that they would like to see on a future agenda perhaps or hear more about at some point

▶ 1:47:47 Jennifer McAndrew: this is not a debate or a time for discussion of those topics just an open opportunity when we're all together for any committee member to raise a topic that they might be interested in do we have any items for future discussion tonight seeing none um we do have need for an executive session this evening before we close i did just want to take a quick moment of personal privilege if i could from the chair and this is not something i planned but i just want to speak sort of just to the community through the committee and say that that there has been a lot of sad news struggle and some fairly vehement debate in the community over the past couple of weeks since we last met. We are, of course, all thinking about a beloved staff member

▶ 1:48:47 Jennifer McAndrew: who is in, Matt Rapucci, who is in critical condition and Mass General Hospital. we have had other concerns and the school community that i won't mention but i just wanted to say that speaking as the chair how much i value and appreciate the superintendent and her leadership team and all that they are going through right now and i just want to thank her i know that she had to leave the meeting unexpectedly and thank her family as well and the families of all of our principals and all of our educators for everything that they that they're struggling with and carrying for all of us and for our students right now and i know that i speak for the committee when i say how much we appreciate the superintendent

▶ 1:49:41 Jennifer McAndrew: and her leadership and how much we support the work that she is doing and i hope that the commit that the community sees and appreciates that hard work as well and will stand with her even when they disagree with a decision that she might make so um thank you all for indulging that and with that we do have need for an executive session this evening for the following reasons to approve the executive session meeting minutes of october 12 2021 and to discuss strategy with with respect to negotiating a side letter of agreement with the Melrose Education Association. Unit C, the paraprofessionals regarding paraprofessionals who work at education stations on early release days for the 21-22 school year as an open meeting

▶ 1:50:30 Jennifer McAndrew: may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the school committee. We will not be returning to public session this evening. And with that, is there a motion to adjourn to executive session made by Mr. O'Connell, seconded by Mayor Broder. Ms. Hogan, will you please call the roll? Mr. Obremski? Yes. Mayor Broder? Yes. Mr. Iskell? Yes. Mr. O'Connell? Yes. Ms. Rozzi-Thomas? Yes. Ms. DeSelma is absent. Ms. McAndrew? Yes. And we are adjourned to executive session. Thank you all.

School Committee — 2021-10-26

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