School Committee Meeting - October 19, 2026

All right, good evening. 7.02 p.m., welcome to this October 19th, 2026 meeting of the Somerville School Committee pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2025. This meeting of The School Committee will be conducted via hybrid participation We will post an audio recording, video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Superintendent can you please call the roll?

Through the chair, Council Davis? Here. Rep. Pitone? Here Rep. Lippens? Here Reb. Eldridge? Present Rep. Green? Here Mayor Wilson? Present. Vice Chair Biton? Here. And Dr. Ackman? Present With nine present and zero absent, we have quorum.

There it is. Thank you. All right, we are going to go to a moment of silence and salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice. Thank you. I see our student reps are here. Are you ready to do your report out? Awesome, glad you're here. Go ahead.

All right, I'll just jump right into it. The senior trip that will occur next summer is in the planning phase. I know it's being advertised I believe it is a trip to the Bahamas and people are starting to sign up to that. Also, the football team has been given the opportunity to play against the Cambridge football team at Fenway Park. and a lot of people are just really looking forward to that the SHS chorus band and drumline will be performing at that game and yeah over to Ben

Also the Somerville Action Climate Fund Grant applications were due on October 13th and you can find more information about that on the Somerville website.

Yeah, we had two of our own student council members, Layla and Selena who work on the School Improvement Council submit a grant proposal. So we're excited to see where that goes Also, the theater season is in full swing with rehearsals going on for Our Town which will be performing November 19th through the 21st with a total of four shows. Also in the arts department, the evening of song slash Halloween Cabaret is next Thursday the 29th at 6 30 in the auditorium. It is open to the public and it will feature solo performances small group performances and full chorus performances

Also, homecoming tickets are close to selling out and they're being sold during lunch across school days. and more opportunities for job activities are being advertised to students such as the writer's den, and the city school year jobs program. And the cities snow shovel winter shoveling job. Thank you.

All right, thank you so much. My colleagues have questions? Rep Pitone.

Thank you. My question is just a confirmation with the administration. The senior trip to the Bahamas Ron Tripp, correct. It is not a district sponsored I just want to make sure everybody knows that and understands it and students know that and parents know that so this is something that the students and some families put together which is great but it's not something that is endorsed or supervised or managed by the district.

That is correct, this is a not a school sponsored trip.

Totally fine that you bring it up. I just want to make sure we're very clear about that.

Agreed. Thank you. I also want to note that the football game against Cambridge, I think it is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving if I'm correct? My understanding is the city has free tickets that they're giving away and for those who have paid for Fenway prices, the face value of the tickets we can buy are $20 which to me is unbelievable. All right, thank you. All right we are moving on to oh I'm sorry Mayor Wilson

Yeah, through you chair. I was curious if you might want to tell us a little about the Somerville High School's evening of song on October 29th?

Sure, so yeah the Evening of Song is a yearly event that the Somerville High School Chorus Holds, I'm usually led by the chorus director Mr. Everard and normally do a little later in the year this time we're doing it near Halloween or making it Halloween team calling Halloween Cabaret and the chorus is going to perform a song from The Nightmare Before Christmas called This Is Halloween as I'm sure Most of you have heard of. And then there's also a lot of little solo performances that Somerville High School students have put together in small groups and stuff like that, yeah.

The date is?

It's Thursday, October 29th. It conveniently comes after Truck or Treat here at City Hall so I'd encourage people to come to that wander over the high school in a real stretch chair I'll be playing the role of Are we going to hear your chops? Yeah.

Great, all right thank you Thanks so much, exciting updates. We are going to move on to public comment. We have three people here and two people online Welcome and thank you to those who have signed up for public comment. We really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your opinions. Speakers will be allowed three minutes to present their material Speakers should begin their comments by stating your name and address in Somerville or, in the case of a district employee, your role within the district. The chair of the meeting after a warning reserves the right to terminate speech which is not constitutionally protected because it constitutes true threats that are likely to provoke a violent reaction and cause a breach of the peace or incitement to imminent lawless conduct. Conduct. Public comment is not a discussion, debate or dialogue between the public and the committee.

Members of the committee will not reply to public comment in the course of the meeting though individual members may follow up and items from public comment may be taken up in future meetings. The school committee will not hear personal complaints of school personnel nor against any member of the school community in public session. Individuals may address topics on the agenda or items within the school committee's scope of responsibility, such as the district budget goals and policies or the role of the superintendent. The public is encouraged to submit comments in writing for inclusion in the public record. We're going to go with the individuals who are here first, I see and please have grace for me if I mispronounce your name. I see Emily Lilienthal, then Sarah Campbell, then Ksenia. I still struggle with your last name, I apologize. Thank you, I really appreciate it.

Emily Cavanaugh? Good evening, my name is Emily Ruddick-Lillienthal. I live at 29 Whitfield Road and I am the president of the West Somerville Neighborhood School PTA. Thank you so much, Chair Ackman, Superintendent Carmona, Assistant Superintendent Boston Davis, members of the school committee and Mayor Wilson. So this morning we submitted a letter to both the superintendent and the mayor with 130 signatures of parents and caregivers of students at West. I want to start just by saying that we are enormously grateful that within 24 hours our students were back in the classroom, in a classroom after the flood that occurred. at the West Somerville Neighborhood School. We know that took an enormous amount of dedication, focus, logistics and strategy from the city and the school department in order to make that happen and to make sure our kids

lost one day and were back with their classmates and teachers. We really appreciate that. Where we are struggling is the distribution of information We are parents, we are caregivers and our primary eyes and ears are our students who are coming home and are reporting back what they are hearing and seeing and Feeling during the school day. And we don't have a lot of information to help them make sense out of what is happening, when they hear one teacher tell them about a deadline that they won't be back in the building until Thursday, when they're told they will never have a specialist for the rest of the year because of how they are in which rooms they are. When they aren't sure about the state of the room that they're going to be in and we're not able to say to them, hey this is temporary for a week We know that they're working on things. We're trying to give grace, or surely those specialists will be back in your classroom soon. Just give us all a minute.

So what we're asking for is consistent, transparent and clear communication that reaches every parent and caregiver not just ones who have the phone numbers of city employees and elected officials. We're asking that that happen twice a week. We're also asking and we're inviting the mayor and superintendent to join us on Thursday for our coffee hour, to share what's going on, to give us some updates, to hear directly from parents and caregivers. The final ask is that within the next three weeks, a full community meeting is held with a virtual option that is available for any parent or caregiver of a West Somerville neighborhood school student so they can hear more. We've included in the letter that we shared some basic questions that we are hearing from our parents and caregivers, that would be helpful to have answers too.

We get that you are not going to be able to give us all the answers and that timelines are fluid, but having clear consistent transparent unified communication is really what we're asking for. Thank you so much!

Thank you. Next is Sarah Campbell, and after that is Ksenia.

Hello, my name is Sarah Campbell. I live at 18 Trill Street and I'm the parent of a fourth grader at Brown and a seventh grader Kennedy I'm here today to talk about MCAS scores. I want to recognize the time and effort that students and teachers take to prepare and take the MCAS exam and in particular I want to call out the Brown School for achieving both an 80% meet or exceeding rate for their students on the test, and a average student growth percentile of 50%. In particular, I want to call out the performance of high needs students at Brown. High needs is a group that consists of students with disabilities, low income English language learners and those with English as a first A first language that's non-English. This is a population that's growing at the Brown School and I expect citywide, but I don't know that exactly.

There is a gap in the meeting and exceeding percentage across the city between high needs students and non-high need students. But what's striking in the most recent MCAS results is that gap has narrowed to a remarkable degree at the Brown School, where many of the high needs students at Brown are outperforming. and non-high needs students at other schools in the district. These results are seen in both math and ELA, and are particularly strong in math where the spread has shrunk to 14% with 68% of high-need students metering or exceeding the standard. This is a stark difference from neighborhood schools with similar demographic data to Brown and even compared to Brown's historical performance. I cannot stress enough these results are not due solely to demographics.

I know a lot of time the success of Brown is attributed to demographics and here in this sample it's clearly not the case. There is something working very well here, we should learn from it. It is my opinion that this is due in large part to Principal Ames' school improvement plan where he has used a targeted data-centric approach with DIBELS and iReady scores to early address gaps in learning, and help encourage students to grow quickly to get up to standard. I would like to know what the school board is doing to incorporate this success across the city and to recognize what differences between schools make this difficult, and try to resolve those differences. Thank you for your time

Thanks so much.

Hi, my name is Ksenia Samakhvalova I live at 75 Irving Street, and I'm a mom of an eighth grader at West and a fourth grader the Brown. I'd like to start with echoing what our PTA president of the West has said and say that it is surprising to me that you learn what's happening at my child school. I need to come here or dial into a school committee meeting because I believe that what you guys are all gonna see is the first time I will actually hear about what's happening at this school. All I know is that He is doing classes in the TAB building which is amazing and I'm so grateful that we have this resource. I would say, in light of the fact that this body is essentially

condemned Brown to be closed without much discussion about that specific decision. The building where he is Thank you very much. I hope that you will keep us, the West School parents praised of what's happening and what is the timeline because I've heard everything, and the rumors are wild circulating around. I also wanted to bring to your attention that the brown has been recognized by this, the Department of Education of Massachusetts as a school of recognition.

This is something that only 50 or so schools this year got out of 1,800 schools It's not elementary, it's all the schools including high schools and charter schools. This is the honor they got for incredible results they got from improving Test scores for kids, especially in the high needs bucket and it Frankly, it blows my mind that we're going to close the school and not actually understand what exactly is going on there. And I think in big part These results are because of incredible focus of our principal aims and incredible teachers we have who were able to come up with plan and know every child in the building, and know what they need, know what kind of interventions

They could have and it's impossible to do that in a Thank you so much for your time

Thanks so much. That is all we have for in-person today. We're moving to Zoom. We have Samantha Steiner and then Abby Hare. Samantha, you should be unmuted. Please start whenever you're ready.

Hi, I'm Sam Steiner and I live at 50 Whitfield Road in Somerville. I'm asking that community schools aftercare include three-year-olds As you hear about out of school time tonight, please consider these children. At Capuano preschool ends at 1 45 p.m and noon on Wednesdays but three-year-olds cannot access community schools after care I feel like many community members may not even realize that three-year-olds with IEPs attend public school. I didn't know until I was the parent of one Navigating disability-related services is already difficult and confusing. These children have identified disabilities, programs like ECIP and AIM provide services through their IEPs after early intervention ends at age three. Beyond classroom support, those services may include speech therapy occupational therapy physical therapy counseling and access to essential assistive technology Finding separate afternoon care can be difficult and costly, especially when children need disability-related support.

That gap can prevent families from accessing these educational and therapeutic Services and programs. Children's access to needed services should not depend on their family's ability to arrange or afford afternoon care. So please tonight support these children and their families by making affordable, inclusive aftercare available to three-year-olds. Thank you.

Thanks so much. Next is Abby Hare. You are unmuted, Abby whenever you're ready.

Hi, my name is Abby Hare. I live at 18 Wesley Park here in Somerville and I have kids at East and Capuano. I am also speaking tonight about aftercare access for three-year-olds with IEPs at Capuana Thank you so much for joining us. For a working family, a program that ends at 1 45 or noon on Wednesdays without an aftercare option may not really be accessible. Families can have their child bust home or back to daycare, but that requires someone to be at home or a daycare willing to take a child starting at 2 p.m., which many are unable to accommodate.

or the families can turn down the placement and bring their child to Capuano for walk-in services like speech, OT that sort of thing which still requires a caregiver to transport them back and forth sometimes multiple times a week. I would really like SBS to take a look at the data here. How many three-year-olds qualify for these programs but then turn them down? How many families are declining because of the 145 dismissal? What happens to those children instead? And are they actually accessing all of the services they're entitled to? Most importantly, I'd like the district to look seriously at what it would take to extend community schools or another aftercare option to these children. If SPS offers a three-year-old with an IEP program that ends at 145, there needs to be a realistic way for working families to access that program.

We should not have families turning down an appropriate program for their three-year-old because they cannot make a 1.45 p.m. pickup work I hope SPS and the school committee will make solving this a priority as you look at out of school time programming for next year

Thank you Thanks so much. And with that, we are concluding public comment. Next is approval of minutes but I'm going to move on to the report of the superintendent.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight and I'm going to use the slide deck to walk through my talking points I'm going to make a couple of changes in the order of the sequence of events because we are having a celebration as well. A student from the Brown who is joining us today. So if you go to next four slides, please. Next one. One more. Slide 11. Thank you. Almost there. Yeah, we have a young author next. There you are. We're celebrating someone among us, we have a young author and again from the Brown School. We want to make sure that We share that experience.

It is not often you have a self-published author in the midst of our students, especially in fifth grade. And so with that I'm going to bring Suriza Day to the podium and please come to the Podium. Again, we heard that she published her own novel is a great story I'm always on page 25 but I am really excited about the characters, about the The celebration and also the adventures that all these characters go into. I also believe there is a lot of The story and the plot that comes from your own experience. So we wanna celebrate you, we want also to hear a little bit about your story as an author. So with that, why don't you tell us what school do you go to? Your full name and then a little bit about your story.

I'm Zuri Sadeh Manikarnika Sri Raman, and I go to the Brown School, which is one of the best schools I've ever been to. and the Binley girls started from a drawing. I drew them first And then my mom, I showed them to my mom and she told me to write a book about them.

Great.

And then I did.

So as soon as the day, I know that the story of these three girls is full of excitement. When I was reading part of the story, I could not believe that a fifth grader was telling this story. Thank you so much for being here.

Well, I've always loved reading and when I went to my mom's camp I finally realized that i could actually write even when i was this old And that made me want to. So when my mom told me to write a book, it felt like the right thing to do. because I wanted to anyway. And well, I've always wanted to go on an adventure 2. So I wrote a book about an adventure. Sometimes when I'm going to bed, I come up

With stories in my head that I know I would never publish, but some of them were kind of similar to the Binley Girls in that they're an adventure where some kids sneak off. But that's not the root of this story. I mean, the theme, I think is the bond of friendship and how deep that goes and how you should always be true to yourself no matter how hard it is.

Wow, how inspiring! How inspiring! And just two things one is For all of us, the adults here that always want to write a book. We haven't had the courage or the way to do it so that's an inspiration but more importantly for your friends and for every Somerville student to know that we have an author that did it through You don't have a major publisher, is that right? You did it through some form of Amazon.com or something like that. That idea of all of us becoming authors is such a powerful thing, so I really thank you for that. And now I'm just gonna give it to the chair right now but we need a round of applause.

Thank you so much for coming. Do you want a photo with like your family in the school committee? Do you wanna photo of just your family, do you want to photo of you standing here? Like what can we do to make this feel a little more special for you?

I want a photo with my family.

Yes, please. And just before you do that I do want to let you know that Principal Ames is not feeling well and so he couldn't be here this evening But he made sure to text well over an hour ago to just say how proud he is and how proud the whole Brown School community is of you. So I just want to make sure we lift Principal Angel's voice.

declaring like a three minute recess to take a photo.

All right. Thank you, Zurisa Day. I hope I pronounced it right and to your family. This is why we get into this and this isn't often What we end up doing so we are deeply, deeply appreciative of your hard work in writing a gorgeous book and taking the time to come see us. Rep Green has a question for her or just a compliment?

Well, a question actually. Can we take a two-minute recess because we're all getting books? Yes, alright.

We're going to take another short recess to get books signed.

Yes. Yeah.

On that presentation, Chair, thank you through you. I want to just acknowledge what an excellent job of parenting I just saw. To encourage your student, your child and to push them to produce something wonderful is so inspiring to me. I take a lesson from that, so I just wanted to thank you for sharing this wonderful gift with us.

Rep Green.

And building on that, I know that we talk about this a lot in passing, but I know Several of those schools is full of artists and actors, and more authors, and all sorts of people doing all sorts talent. And it is so great that we were able to take this moment to acknowledge one and I would love to make a habit of that. I know we have a lot of talent that, you know this is a show even some of our traditional academic And so anytime we can really take a moment to really highlight just the vast depth of talent within our schools and our students, I would encourage us to do more of this.

Beautifully stated. All right, we are going on to back to the report of the superintendent.

Great, thank you through the chair. So for today we have three topics that we want to discuss with you one was obviously a celebration of our young author that was one of the things We also want to talk about the updates and some information in regards to the West Somerville School. And a quick update on our professional development that we're part of as part of the Barr Foundation. And then we have two district reports, one by our out of school time director and also by our equity department director who will be sharing a plan. So let's go back again to the West Somerville. I know there was a question around updates and a question about the context, so I'm going to try to do that and we also have Rich Rice here, the Director of Asset Management who will actually give us Some information around timelines and other important details. So I just wanted to give you a quick reference basically on Sunday we had

A 1.5 inches of rain, so it was a significant amount of rain. Some of that rain made its way into the West Somerville because again the roof was being repaired and that is the work that has been assessed right now how we ended up with that rain but The bottom line is that intrusion of the water impacted pretty much most of the classrooms in the building. We knew that right early morning, early Sunday, early Monday. And then as soon as we knew, we actually have the entire department of... DPW, as well as asset management and multiple district members at the west assessing the damage. and also we right on that same day, we actually had to determine that we needed to have a plan

We had to actually call the day off. The next day we met with the teachers to determine what were the next steps And we, as a result of that, created a plan to address the needs of the students. In the next slide, you can see that some of the damage was significant. The water intrusion actually Thank you very much. I am not suited to explain that but I think I will let Mr. Rich Raj shared with us a little bit of the details around what was the technical work that had to happen.

And so, with that I'm gonna have Rich Raj join us to share a little about the work as well as a potential timeline to address some Thank you.

After almost 10 years of coming up to this podium, I finally was able to lift the microphone up so I would really like fifth graders to precede me. Anyway, for your record, Richard Reich, Director of Infrastructure. Let's start with what has been going on at the West anyway to answer some of the questions that I know have been going around in the community. As committee members and city councilors who have been following the jointly meeting committees on school buildings and facilities know, After about a century of ignoring all of our assets in the past nine years, we've really been focusing on proactively addressing our infrastructure needs. We've got a large number of projects in the pipeline, specifically for schools.

Well, really schools are the only thing that the city has built since 1950 when the DPW building was constructed. Those buildings are 25 to 30 years old and the systems in those buildings are essentially reaching the end of their life. So in our pipeline, we've got roofs at the West, the Healy, the JFK. We've got HVAC systems at the Argenziano, West and Healy. All of these are in the pipeline and we're working as quickly as we can in terms of our city's capacity, both in terms staff capacity, consultant capacity, and financial capacity to address all of these things. The two priorities that we had this year, which were systems that were ready to fail, which would cause impacts to the schools and likely result in displacement of students.

For this year was the boilers at the Argenziano and the roof at the West. The Healy roof and HVAC system will follow those. It is however difficult to get those projects off the ground. We have to design them, we have to plan the work, and bid that under Massachusetts public procurement laws which for a building construction project like this is difficult. We've got filed sub-bids, there's a lot of technicalities to getting these projects off the ground and even after we have a bidder lined up, we have to execute the contract Before work can start, pre-construction submittals need to be approved. All of that is to say whilst we had wanted to start this work over summer It was not lined up that we could actually physically begin construction until September.

We did have a judgment call to make at that point in time. Do we proceed? Knowing that, you know it's coincident with the school year or do we wait until next summer? We made the decision that the roof at The West was in bad enough condition that we didn't want to risk This winter, particularly knowing it's an El Nino winter and likely to be wet. And so we proceeded with the work. One of the things that I guess wasn't surprising was just how disruptive that noise was up on the roof to the classrooms. I think as the committee or at least award members are aware, we shifted a lot of that work to the weekends. We were able to negotiate a fair price with that contractor to shift a lot more noisy work over the classrooms to the weekends. And we were leveraging the long Indigenous Peoples Day weekend, a three-day weekend.

We actually basically did a surge. They were able to bring in additional laborers over those three days and we were going to knock out what we called the red zone which was the area above all of the classrooms leaving just sort of the hallways and gym for later. So that work was progressing over the weekend. A lot of work was done on Saturday and Sunday. They left Sunday night, and that's when we had A decent-sized rain caused a number of combined sewer overflows. For anyone who's following that project, please comment on that. and it caused a roof drain to fail, and rain went into the third floor. The roof crews returned early on Monday morning to continue with their work and oddly enough Luckily, they tripped the building alarm when they started that work.

So DPW responded to the building being tripped first thing on Monday morning and once he shut off the alarm, Butchie from DPW decided just to walk the hallways as he typically does and found a bunch of standing water. So he made calls So, in a way it was fortuitous that we caught it early because one of the things with water intrusion and potential mold is catching it early and removing the waterlogged materials before they can seep in, and the conditions can arise for molt to grow. So Monday, our contractor working on the roof brought in a subcontractor that specializes in this sort of thing. They immediately began cutting out affected drywall. So in the room immediately below the roof drain that failed, 306

You know, the walls were completely waterlogged from top to bottom. And then as that followed down that interior wall to 206 and 106, those walls were So the entirety of those walls were removed. Those walls were also coincident with sort of wood casework, like cubbies and closets so all that had to be removed. Luckily the wood was resilient enough and we caught it fast enough that none of the wood was damaged, so all that casing could be saved. But all the drywall and insulation behind that was pulled out. As it hit each floor, it also sort of followed out to the adjacent rooms at a shallow depth, half an inch to an inch. but it did impact the walls in those areas. So you can see on the wall, the picture to the right

How the response to that is to cut out about a foot and a half to two feet at the bottom of the wall on one side, and remove the insulation. So that was the strategy in all those adjoining rooms. All of that was happening very quickly. The specialty contractor that they brought in had an industrial hygienist on staff. These are people who specialize in worksite safety and general environmental impact safety. They were the ones directing the initial removal of what drywall and insulation needed to be removed. We wanted to leave nothing to chance or just leave one party in charge of this. Following the Winter Hill... You know, it occurred to me if I had some time I was going to get a wolf to add to the menagerie.

I might still do that at some point. We have an environmental specialist with an industrial hygienist on-call contract to us. So we called them and brought them in immediately so that we had two industrial hygienists to confirm. One essentially directing the work, Concurring with it and our hygienist found some additional areas that were cut and pulled out. You know, it was at that point on Monday that Mayor Wilson and Superintendent Carmona joined us We walked the site, obvious that we could not have school there. We also went over to the TAB and walked the tab and realized that our continuity of operations plan that had been put in place could be exercised particularly with the number of rooms displaced. and so we immediately started mobilizing everything that we needed to for that.

DPW called Sterling Movers, their moving contractor lined them up first thing Notices went out to parents and faculty that school would be closed, but faculty were to show up on Tuesday morning. So on Tuesday morning, the activities were continuing. We were continuing to remove drywall and remove insulation testing areas for moisture DPW was there with a fleet of custodians cleaning, scrubbing the whole area and teachers immediately went to work packing their classrooms because everything Not just the rooms moving to the tab, but to keep the younger grades clustered in the building they had to relocate to rooms that weren't impacted by the water. There were very few rooms that didn't get moved.

So, the West was a flurry of activity on Tuesday. I'd have to say from my own observations everyone was professional, everyone was dedicated It was mission-oriented. Generally, folks were in good spirits despite the fact that this was a massively disruptive thing to everyone's day I'll also speculate that this is where a lot of the rumors may have started. So if anyone has had a plumbing issue in their house or an electrician, the very first thing that that tradesperson says when they come into your house, this is going to be a really big job. uh we're going to be here for a month so teachers were overhearing you know guys removing drywall who were opining on how long this was going to take Devoid of any part of the actual plan.

So I'm positive it wasn't from any malice or any bad intent, but I think that was the genesis of some of the rumors and it's unfortunate we weren't able to get a contrary message out sooner so that particularly parents could have some solace on what the actual path is. Which brings us now to the actual Path. Over the weekend we had crews, let me back up for a second. On Friday after the removal of the waterlogged materials the next thing is to dry out and the rest of the building, because we don't want to gut the building. We just have to remove the most impacted stuff and let the rest dry out. The general rule of thumb is 48 hours. So the removal efforts had essentially completed by the end of the day on Tuesday, That gave us Wednesday, Thursday.

On Friday our industrial hygienist came back to test all the materials for moisture they've got this like really neat thing which I'm going to put in my budget because i want one for myself And most of the classrooms, save the three classrooms on the first floor and one corner of room 206 were cleared for restoration. Those other three just needed, three and one quarter, needed additional time to dry out. So contractors came in over the weekend and started replacing the insulation and started hanging drywall Those activities continued today, and in addition to the drywall hangers, the tapers and plasterers have started working on sort of the finish coat.

Our industrial hydrogenists came back today and cleared those last three-and-a-quarter rooms, so we're now clear for full restoration of every room. We've got drywall crews, both hangers and tapers coming in tomorrow. Don't think they're going to finish tomorrow. I think the drywall work will extend into Wednesday. I could be wrong, but I suspect it's going to extend into Then the plaster just needs to set, which would free us up by the end of this week to replace the casing work that was pulled out of the 06 rooms. The next activity after that will be painting and putting back the baseboards, vinyl baseboards. We need to once we know that all the drywall is up, we did have a conversation on the timing and how we go about the painting because

as anyone who's painted themselves knows, there are odors associated with it. Not necessarily hazardous odors or anything that is We do realize that there are a lot of faculty and students who may have sensitivity to those odors. So the viability of all that painting happening during school hours is something we have to discuss and if we can mitigate that. So, which is to say that essentially the heavy work, the heavy construction work will be done by the end of this week. Then we have painting ahead of us So we're on a very good path to have all the rooms restored and turned back over for occupancy, certainly by early to mid-November. ironing out the last bits of logistics. Of course, with the caveat that it is sort of construction related and anything can go sideways at any given time

But that's our time frame, and we're looking to beat that. We're bringing in as many laborers as we can to get this done because we certainly want to reoccupy as soon as possible.

Thank you. Superintendent, do you have anything to add?

I do but it's not in relationship to the construction piece so we should probably get the construction pieces out of the way and then I'll continue with the timeline internally of how that is impacting the work

I would like to, before we go on colleagues, on behalf of the body reiterate our thanks to Director Raish The teams you have pulled together, to the contractors you have gone, to our union partners, to educators, caregivers. This has been a lot and there has been, a lot of grace but there has just monumental amount of hard work. Director Raish was kind enough to walk me through The West Today showed me the work that was done. The rooms that were hardest hit are very, very hot because they're keeping them very, My understanding is great, but they were very hot and on a cool day that was actually kind of lovely. And so I just... I want to reiterate like deep, deep appreciation to the superintendent, to the mayor and your staffs who gave up your Monday holiday.

You know, we really thank you. With that I see Vice Chair Biton, Rep Green and we'll keep going after that.

Thank you, Chair. Through you to Director Raish, to the Mayor, Superintendent just pile on what the chair said I also just want to add to that Director Raisch what you indicated the perseverance and resilience that we've seen from the educators. Not just our district leaders, although especially the district leaders. But I know that The school community has really pulled together. Our PTA was really supportive of all the educators and I'm really grateful for that effort. So, alright, construction. I have a lot of questions. I will just ask one right now and then get back in line, as is our custom.

So top of mind for me is the roof and where we currently stand What happens at the next rainstorm? If it rains tomorrow night, all this great work that you've done in the 06 rooms and the other adjacent rooms is that vulnerable.

To the chair, it's interesting that you bring this up because there was a highlight that I wanted to bring to everyone's attention is that on Friday as we were in there executing all of the work and the first grade, both first grades had been relocated to the library. Everyone had a sort of heightened sensitivity and had their eyes out and someone noticed that one of the ceiling tiles in the library which is above an area that we haven't gotten to yet, that the contractor hasn't gotten too yet was wet. So he did some investigation and it turns out that it was one of the pre-existing leaks that we are seeking to solve with this So I do feel slightly vindicated in making the call to move forward with this project and not wait until next year. But to answer the question, all the work in the red zone is now complete. The drain connection is still temporary.

The contractor has made triple sure that the temporary Connection to that drain is secure. So interestingly enough, the drain that caused the water to intrude They sent a scope down it, which I'm not quite sure why it hadn't been done earlier in the sequence but they sent the scope down on Saturday I think. and found that that drain is itself clogged, and it has been clogged. So I will also point out It wasn't that the drainpipe failed. What happens is, you know, the drain pipe penetrates the roof and of course there's area around that so the pipe itself wasn't draining

and all the water came in from the perimeter of that pipe and came through the roof penetration. So, that roof penetration is now sealed So barring something really going wrong, we will not have an additional incident like this.

Thank you. Rep Green?

Thank you through to Mr. Raish and perhaps to the mayor. Again, I want to echo all of the thanks for how quickly everyone jumped to life and how everyone's been working. I want recognize that, of course even in Perfectly laid out, perfectly designed construction plan. And if everyone's working at 100% maximum efficiency things will still go wrong so I want to recognize all of that and I want to remind anyone who may be watching at home that Ultimately speaking, there's not much we as a school committee can do about construction projects. But I do think in terms of systems and I was wondering when I first heard this news and you sort of talked about this Given a July 1st fiscal year start,

Are there procedural procurement funding changes we can make so that we're not making the decision in July if we're going to try to start a project this summer or not? So we can better use summers for construction projects. and this is a question I've asked you know under three administrations countless projects but i think the question still stands are there ways in which we can handle school and so on.

Chair, it's a good question. It's also important to understand that most of the projects that the division called capital projects in engineering for that matter Execute aren't necessarily tied to the fiscal calendar. Most of the things that we do either Leverage Borrowing or various stabilization accounts. And so they are appropriations that are made when we've advanced the bid packages to a level of sophistication that gives us a confidence in the cost estimate. So we're not really tied to the fiscal year as much as we're tied to The execution of the work both in terms of city staff and our army of consultants

So one of the short delays that we got on the launch of this was the coincidence of getting that bid package and that cost estimate to the ready point. which happened to be coincident this year with budget. So it was very hard for us to schedule a finance committee meeting in June, so we did lose a week or two there

Just to clarify on that point, you mean a city council finance committee meeting? Correct? You mean a City Council Finance Committee meeting?

Thank you, I'll rep the tone.

Thank you through the chair to Director Raish thank you for being here all the thanks to everyone who has been involved and turned this around so quickly and unfortunately we have a little too much experience and having to turn around tricky facility situations but it also results in being able to have a quick response so I very much appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for that. We never really wanted to have to use it, but here we are and it gave me great relief to know that there was something in place which everybody may not have been aware of I had a specific question and I apologize this is a little bit too much minutiae but I just want to try to understand the repair or, no sorry let me correct myself. The cause of the leakage and how that reflects on other buildings.

So for example, I hear that it was a failure of a drain pipe you explained that it kind of overfilled and went over in this the seal underneath it leaked Is, is it was it the fact that you know what kind of maintenance do we do on drain pipes meaning like I know it's not like a gutter but it is kind of like a cutter from a from how it get how it works and and, you know, are we doing some kind of preventative maintenance on these drain pipes? And do we have other buildings that were worried about that could happen or was it just an issue associated with the general roof deterioration that you were trying to solve. Or the third option, Part of the fact that the roof repair was in progress. So I'm just trying to understand the source of the problem, but most importantly related to all of our other buildings and the kind of work that the city is doing to make sure that doesn't happen

Through the Chair, it's an excellent question. We will be doing a bunch of research on this. I do want to highlight that In accordance with the contract and in accordance with their right, the contractor has filed a formal communication to us denying any wrongdoing or fault. They are proceeding with the restoration in good faith with the city because it's a valued contract. They have the intention of causing this pre-existing condition. that this project was going to remedy and their intention will be to submit a change order for the additional effort. As with any change order or claim like this, we'll evaluate it as well as our own records both from capital project staff and our consultants.

So given that this will be the subject of that negotiation, I don't want to opine too much on what we know or don't know. But the short answer is that yes, this condition could happen elsewhere prior to the initiation of construction. And so it's one of the things that I think we need to add to our routine checklist of inspections, both Capital and DPW routinely inspect our systems. and you know frankly that's why we've got the Healey roof and the Kennedy roof in the pipeline. So as We're readying for those projects. We'll continue to be vigilant, as we will at the other schools that aren't quite in dire need.

I do a quick yeah through the chair just a quick follow-up so it sounds like because it's in this negotiation contract question There isn't an answer just yet in terms of the source, but do we bring in our own third party to do an investigation or do we do our own investigation? Because obviously we don't just take the contractor's word that it was a pre-consistent

Yeah, through the chair. We have our designer that prepared the bid package in this case is Stantec. Our architects for that project and so they'll be the ones Leading that from a technical perspective, they are on site regularly as well. Capital Projects personnel are onsite every day and we document as part of our SOPs so we've got a ton of photos to sift through.

Just a quick follow-up. Can I request that once all this stuff susses out, can the school committee get some kind of memo with kind of the root cause and then what actions are gonna happen to be preventative in the other buildings, in the event that it was something we can do maintenance to make sure. That would be great. And I don't know, maybe in the winter or spring when you have a place to do that?

Or after we've been deposed five years from now.

But if the chair and the superintendent can make note that the school committee would like some kind of formal documentation when it's appropriate, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Through you. Director Raish, you mentioned in your initial comments Some of the rumors that were flying around about how long, bye reps. Thanks for coming. So you know I've heard them too. I've heard, you know we're gonna be there till Christmas or you know and thank goodness it sounds like that's not true. So yeah, I'm not intending to start a rumor right? I'm just squashing one. Squashing a rumor as I hear it. As you know when there's a vacuum of information around a particular topic Rumor fills the gap. And I'm glad that here we are, it's October 19th and we have

A timeline in front of us around when we will be back fully occupying the West and out of the tab. Hopefully, I heard that correctly. That represents, I think a very laudable and noteworthy quick turnaround of we have a firm grasp on this. But a lot of the questions that I think myself and many of my colleagues may have been fielding over the last week, have been fueled by these rumors. And so I'm not sure What question I have, it's really more in the line of can we get I think families, teachers and students are all very forgiving when there's an evolving situation.

And so we recognize that timelines can change as we get better information. But, as soon as possible if we can have A ballpark, maybe when we have it from contractors because I assume again that you were talking with contractors about how right? When you bid a job, you have to have a timeline associated with it. Again, through you Chair. If you can speak Director Raish to when we knew that approximate timeline and what the considerations were or are for communicating that with families, and again just underscoring the importance of doing that.

To the Chair, it's a good question. And there are a lot of aspects that I think go into reoccupying Clearly the first prerequisite is the building construction stuff. And for that we have to line up a number of things, right? So first The selective demo had to complete. We had to have concurrence on where the limits of that were. We needed at least 48 hours to dry, we needed a test on that before we could start restoration And then to start restoration, we also needed commitment of crews. We had the concept that we would be coming in this past weekend but there were some serious questions as to whether we could get laborers

We got two crews on Saturday and we got no laborers on Sunday because I think the Patriots were playing at one, and we couldn't get labor in on Sunday. So there are a whole bunch of unknowns on lining up that labor. I'm pretty clear with everyone in the room on what we can commit to, where the unknowns are, how the dominos line up. and sort of bracketing what would be optimistic and pessimistic. And then even after that is complete, there are other aspects that have to The physical move, to bring stuff back from the tab. Can the movers be lined up?

What are the impacts to teachers and how do teachers prep? So as everything was swirling around last week in preparation for an end-of-week communication, I am of the mind that a range could have been communicated, but I'm not the only one to make that decision. and I think given the breadth of the uncertainties last week, there was a decision to not publicize this schedule.

Sure.

Thank you, Chair. Just in follow-up to that, may I just... So I understand that there are a range of stakeholders here who informed that decision and I heard the decision was made. I don't know who the decision maker was there, so your boss is sitting next to me. I'll just say, Mr. Mayor through you Chair and Superintendent, communication is critical for our families, for our teachers and the range of dates would really, you know we learned this lesson with the Winter Hill. Again, I value all the work you've all done.

But just reinforcing that, the timeline on communicating a timeline is critically important. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Wilson?

Thanks, Sharon, on that point, yeah. Always a big fan of communicating timelines.

Thank you Rep Green

Thank you. Through you, building actually on especially Mr. Pitone's last point This is a lesson we've learned as a community several times. COVID reopening, Winter Hill, etc., We know that in the absence of even saying a clear I don't know, people will assume we do know and then stop telling them. We've seen this happen on multiple occasions and that's when the rumors come in. And once rumors come out, it's almost impossible to put them back So even if the email had said, we can't tell you anything. We can't even pretend to guess at a timeline yet and here are all the reasons why. That is an improvement on what happened. And I know we in Somerville love to be right and therefore hate to say, uh-uh.

But because we in Samarville love to write and hate to stand on no when we don't say it Somerville assumes everyone knows and just whatever we think it is must be the case. And as you said, and we know there's two, there's nothing contractors love more than saying oh this is gonna be six months before they've even looked at a thing And so we can't be passive in the face of misinformation because we know what happens. and that mistake, whoever decided it was a mistake. Unfortunately for a lot of families, more than blots out all the immense good we did. In a lot ways this has been probably the best performance of our disaster systems I've seen in 10 years and no one's going to ever believe that. because the story is we mess with communications.

It's unfortunate that you can say good, better, best and this is the best. So that applies to we've had three or more disasters so I'll take the compliment but

You know I wouldn't give it if I didn't believe it. We've gone through so many times to know that.

Oh, Rep Lippens and Rep Pitone?

Thank you through your chair, to you and possibly the superintendent. I know that you said classrooms were mostly disrupted Does this include, can you tell me the condition of like specialist areas like art gym music library and also if any of our like special educators or specialists OTPT if their offices were Damaged, and then I'll have a follow-up.

Yeah yeah good question so the music room was impacted it's third floor across the hall from sort of the epicenter The good news there again is that if you don't already know, the music room is one of the only ones that has carpet tile in it. Everything else is linoleum tile. But we caught it fast enough and got the dehumidifiers and fans in there that the carpet dried out quickly, so there's no concern there. We didn't have to rip that up. We did have to do the low cuts on one of the walls and then two of the closets where the instruments are. The other good news is that none of the instruments were impacted. They're all up on stands, thankfully. So the music room was impacted. There were three specialist rooms that were impacted

and the mitigation there is the same. They were cut out on the low areas, and dehumidifiers dried out, they've been cleared for Rehabilitation.

Yes, so my follow up is I mean this was a question for students who need individualized services Was there an impact or what is the plan for getting kids who are moved their services if some of the specialists are impacted?

So that's part of the next two phases that I want to talk about, so I'm going to wait until Rich's part is completed.

All right we have repitone and then reputone and

Thank you through the chair. I just want to thank publicly, I'm sure all my colleagues agree and appreciate the parents who did their advocacy and wrote this memo If this is part of your follow-up report, great. But I am curious at a bare minimum anything that was collected in this meeting I hope is going to be collected into a letter and sent to families who cannot participate in this. What can the district do in terms of communication specifically? They're requesting two times a week. Is that reasonable? They are requesting an in-person community meeting to happen In the next three weeks, so if you can and if you're not ready to report on that I understand But that would be something there would be great to hear about the specific requests from this letter from families and PTA

Do you want me to respond to that? Chair?

Yes, go for it.

Again, I had a conversation with the PTA director and totally anytime that anyone says I need more information if we miss the target definitely I'm open to the feedback. We had a meeting today. We opened this space for families who needed to come and visit. There's also a coffee hour on Thursday, I believe the mayor is going to join me for that as well. And I haven't fully got into all the questions. I think that one of the pieces that I have to make sure We also run all this information through the building leaders because they're at the center of what happens in terms of distributional resources, assignments. And so I want to make sure that they are part of this conversation but I can speak to some of the two phases that we had

Once again, Mr. Director Reich is... Yeah, in terms of building updates we're prepared to give at least twice weekly updates on progress and I've already talked with City Communications on their support. Basically, I give my technical report to Denise Taylor. She turns it into English and then can pass it along.

Thank you. We're going to go to Dr. Stellman, and then Rep Biton, and the Rep Green.

Thank you through the chair. And this is playing off of Rep. Pitone, and I wanted to also just express appreciation to the PTA from the West School, this document that they put together It really outlines very clearly for our district, for our superintendent and the school committee to understand what are these key questions that we want to answer. Wondering about our, as Rep. Pitone pointed out we have a great contingency evacuation, contingency plan in place

And so what I'm wondering is if Dr. Carmona and team and whomever else could look through some of these bullet points, not all of them but Select some of these bullet points to put into the contingency plan, which is the communication part of it. Because we're learning... I mean some of it's not new learning but how do we introduce into our contingency planning ways to avoid the Non-helpful, not accurate... Things that get heard, but how do we help our families know which channels

How do we make that accessible so it's not just folks who have the right phone number or contact? In a nutshell, I'd love to see communication planning that draws from some of these ideas here as part of our contingency plans.

Thank you. We're going back to Rep Biton and then Rep Green.

Last one, I promise through your chair. To Director Raish, do you have a revised estimate on when the roof work will be completed?

This year based on the you know, yes through the chair what we call the red zone Which is the area above that? The classrooms is complete So that's all done. We're moving on to The sort of western end of the building which is the area adjacent to or around the library and The gym and the bathrooms. That work is ongoing, there's There is some HVAC mechanical equipment that needs to get relocated to finish that work, which is crane lifts that we can only do on Wednesdays. on Saturdays, which is a long way of saying I think we're pretty well clear to have the bulk of the roof work done by the end of the month.

We'll likely get into the first couple of weeks in November for punch list work, but we're progressing and wrapping that up rapidly.

Thank you, Rep Green.

I think this is my last question. As a financial matter, I'm assuming that the extra work will take that on its end. But I also imagine that there was property damage and water damage, staff members, families, whatever. People's personal items were damaged. How does that get made whole? Is that insurance? How do we pay for any educator or any family's property that was damaged in the water?

So as water damaged materials like that were thrown, everything was cataloged. We took photos of everything. There's a database of what was thrown away Both personal and district owned. And the district is proceeding with procurement of the items. Most of the items that needed to be tossed were books, but there were some other supplies like that. For expediency, because we want to replace those things immediately it will simply be purchased through the budget. How that then gets reimbursed is yet to be seen. I suppose we will have to get to the bottom of the liability on it

which may take a while and whatever insurance claims there may be on the city or district side so those are a lot of words to say I don't know

What I'm hearing here is that November or December, I'm going to have to have a finance committee meeting where we figure out where this money comes from. I mean, at least in the short term. These are unbudgeted expenses that's hopefully not a lot but it's not zero. So is that what I'm hearing, that we have to figure out at least in the short term how to pay for it?

Can I understand, you're requesting an earlier than typical finance meeting of the whole?

No, I'm just asking procedurally if we are going to pay for the damages and stuff. We're probably going to have a finance committee meeting. to discuss how the district absorbs the unexpected cost, which hopefully again is short money but might not be.

So what else is from my end before turning it over to the superintendent? It seems reasonable that that would be an item on your agenda. I would also suggest that once in the new calendar year when we Turn to a meeting of the whole that we revisit it then again. Superintendent?

Yeah, I think the costs that we're talking about are not that large that we couldn't address through the efficiencies that we have. As you know at the end of the school year we often return money because we always have to have a contingency plan so most likely this will be addressed through the contingency dollars that we set aside. So I anticipate that that's going to be the case. But you know, that is one thing that we work in collaboration with SEU to make sure that we actually provide a replacement to the lost materials for teachers.

I will note the union has mentioned generously, and make eye contact with the president. He will correct me if I'm mistaken that they have up to $2,500 in grant money for books are making available uh you know they're I think technically available to all SCU members but i think we will focus on the west for you know These reasons. And the hope is that much like when the city and the district is made whole, The union can get paid back for those so that they can, that money can go to other students and other educators for other books but for now that is where they are targeting their the grants. All right, thank you.

So that is something as well that our SEU partner is investing. With that, I would like to remind the body that we do still have a full agenda including more from the district. So unless there are pressing items that we want to provide to Director Raish, I'd like to thank him again for his time and commitment. We really appreciate it.

Shout out to the staff and DPW staff too, and the West faculty. I mean it was an absolute group effort and everyone was outstanding.

Yes and I my understanding is we now Somerville now has an emergency management department that was activated so that's also Great to learn and understand that they're doing great work. And we're still with the superintendent.

And I am going to describe the two phases that we encounter as we did this work, that it will in some degree explain some of the changes that we have faced, as well as some other questions that have come up. So as you know, the first week we actually had to respond to the crisis if you will. The main goal around that was basically to limit the number of instructional days that we lost because again, any day that a student doesn't go to school is the day we actually have to provide our students with instruction. And for that week basically what we did is we had to offer a certain amount of specials and it wasn't really a very We also minimized the movement that teachers had across the sites. Every classroom that moved had a cascading impact.

We ended up with two classes of almost 40 students in the library, that's not ideal so that was a response, a quick response but that wasn't the plan That was a mitigating factor. We actually had to act quickly to respond to that as we also moved to the tab The offers that we have in regards to food was, we were trying to mimic what we had at the West. So by Wednesday afternoon is when we actually were able to have a full warmer and provide all the food services that we provided at The West. And again, we tried to minimize the disruption so we try to keep the students together. That's why we moved the middle school seven and eight to the actual tub as a group. We want to make sure also that the locations where students were could also be contained. Next slide? So the second phase of the work was around this week basically, the week of the 19 in which we were able to normalize some things.

We separated basically locations between the west and the top I think that the fluidity, someone mentioned the word fluidity. Fifth grade was not included in the first breakdown of the first phase because the water was not an issue there but then We realized that there was some water at the intrusion and so those two classes became offline. And again, internally there were shifts throughout the building So we also, specialists have been already normalized. We actually have within the week students will be able to receive the four specials as well as our services for IEP's and 504's so students have already an assigned distribution both at the west and at the top. The same thing around the outdoor spaces, we are fortunate that West was not impacted by that and we have a small park outside of our TOPS offices. There is a beautiful courtyard as well as a basketball court

that is well contained so students actually benefit from being in a space in which they are safe and they can have great outdoor activity. And out of school time and services both at the west and at the top are provided. We actually, educators will score students at the end to bring them back again to the west to receive their services for out-of-school time. So I think all in all, we are able to provide similar services that they have at both sides. Next slide. and you know again our focus is to maintain instruction at both locations but one of the things that I wanted to highlight next slide is that this has had a significant impact throughout the district, and I have to start by thanking our teachers. You know that sometimes teaching

The idea of being an effective teacher sometimes is the space itself, like how familiar you are and how adept you become to utilize this space I don't want to underestimate that. So for some teachers, that has been a significant pain and I wanna on behalf of the district acknowledge that, that's definitely very upsetting part of this process. The same thing has happened at the spaces in which we are coming into the tub. Scale basically has had to disrupt pretty much all of their classes and The district has taken priority over the space. But as a result of that, multiple programs have been impacted and I know there are some programmatic Decisions that have to be taken into account for scale, they also depend on grants. And that means we actually have to make sure the spaces that we take away, we need to provide them again for them.

That means that we need to disrupt entire space to provide a space to the scale folks. The same thing has happened with the city department, you know, the recreation team has actually been very accommodating Make sure that they move out of the conference spaces and we create classrooms in those spaces. Families who join us today were able to see how that worked. And, you know, this Council on Aging who is a very vulnerable population also has had to give up its space for two days and so we are really Touched by the amount of commitment to the work that we're doing as well as to provide us this space. Our teachers and our city partners have really been graceful with their time. And so, with that I wanted to just highlight that there is information in our website at the West website

on both the feedback that we got from the PTA as well as the city. We are in collaboration to make sure that information is more fluid and again part of that is the changes that have happened have actually changed the trajectory of some of the planning that we have. It's that idea that there is no perfect plan that survives the battlefield, that is very true. Even our new system of emergency preparedness We have everything prepared. And then we found out that the firefighter marshal said, there are some things you need to adjust here so we have to reshift some assignments. And again, the last thing we wanna is to disrupt the arrangements that we have for teachers that already had something set up. So there's probably some families will say oh my student has said this and now it has changed so we did have to make multiple arrangements because of that. So hopefully right now where we are is more stable.

We now have a lunch space, we also know that we're still looking for a location to make sure that we provide indoor recess. At least, we're buying four days of good time and that is still in the works but I have spoken to the building leadership We're working with the city to make sure that our comps are much more robust and also that, again you heard from Director Reich that there is a timeline. Hopefully Earlier November, if not middle of November. But again those are things that are dependent on multiple factors but at least we have a date in which we can actually somewhat rely on So that is that in regards to the component of the west end tab. Transition. Again, I really want to thank the SEU, our partners, our educators. Scale again has been significantly impacted. They are still utilizing some of our sites

and that's something that is an ongoing pain for them. And again, our students and families that actually are dealing with some of the non-ideal locations but we are still acting in somewhat of a crisis mode. But thank you. and I just quickly wanted to highlight, again there's a reference to our website at the West. You can actually get some of the updates in regards to where we are It doesn't have as much information as what I relayed today, but that is a work in progress. The last part of my presentation is around the work that we did over this weekend. We actually, as you know, were working with the Barr Foundation on strengthening our feedback processes and so that's the work that we're doing. We're working with Relay to strengthen our muscle, if you will.

We have some principal supervisors who are working on Becoming better at identifying ways in which we can support better instruction through the lens of the principle. And that is that, in regards to my report and The next part of the report is the two departments that are here to share some information with us.

Thank you, I'm gonna pause and double check make sure colleagues don't have any other follow-ups. Mayor Wilson?

Chair, I'll be quick because the hour is growing late. I just want to point out on Monday when I was at the school with Dr. Carmona and we talked about the idea that we might only have to call off School for the West on Tuesday I was skeptical. It seemed really ambitious, but it's a testament to the work that was put in by SPS on the city side and really by the teachers to make sure that only one day of school was canceled. I'm still kind of in awe of that, it was the first test of our continuity plan and yeah we identified some areas where it needed to be revisited and that will help us you know god forbid we ever have to go to this again but at least we'll know we'll have a better plan sitting there if we need it. but yeah just full of appreciation for the work that went into that and yeah it's been something to behold from behind the scenes.

Thank you Rep Green.

I was going to make a similar point to the mayor. It is, as Director Raich pointed out, unfortunate that we've done this enough times that I can compare and contrast but here we are. and this you know for all the things that we could still improve upon I do want to ensure that takeaway people have is that this was a better response to disaster than we've had in the past. By contrast, when we had to close the building at Eskimoor students were out for three days maybe even four if I remember correctly. And so one day, especially coming back from a long weekend, that's a lot of people doing a lot work in a very short period of time. It took way too long to get one, but the fact that we do have a plan for Swing Space is a marked improvement than what we've done in the past. So, you know...

While this may only be a kind of B, that is substantially higher than some of those average these kinds of situations and we should make sure people Get the credit they deserve for what was a really marked improvement on our history.

Rep. Biton?

Thank you, Chair. Through you building on my colleague Rep Green's points I had the opportunity to take the tour today It was good to see you there Superintendent and Miss King, the school liaison took us around. It's amazing to see what in the short time educators have been able to do with this space, what the district has been able put together. So, I guess just kudos. There are some questions and parents asked some great questions about I don't know, the bathroom spaces and what to do in a case of a fire drill. And I think that's sort of an open question about when are we going to have a fire They are moving forward with picture day, which is this Friday. So there's things to look forward to.

and questions around traffic safety and additional crossings, which I know the superintendent and the mayor and all the teams are working to answer these questions as they come up. So I guess If you have questions, bring it to your school committee member or ask the district and we can elevate these concerns because stuff's going to... We won't necessarily have thought through all the permutations. I just want to reinforce that.

Thank you. All right, we have much more to move on to.

Thank you, yes the next part of our presentation is our out-of-school Time, and we have Director Parabello and Adriana Waraki who are going to be sharing the plan for the out-of-school time.

Good evening. Thank you for having us back again. My name is Rosanna Parabella, I'm the director of Outta School Time Tonight you will hear from myself and the Assistant Director of Out-of-School Time, Adriana Gorecki regarding the network of programming we offer to students and families. Next slide. Our mission is to support the academic, social and emotional development of our students through equitable access to high quality programming. We are always striving to increase access capacity and academic opportunities, and carry out the goals of the district strategic plan. Next slide. Somerville offers a wide variety of amazing community partners offering OST opportunities, both full-time and part-time. I think we're missing some of the other options on this. Yep, there we go.

Summer programs, full-time after school care, out of school time enrichment and middle and high school programming. Next slide. Highlights for this year include increased capacity in our full-time programs, the continued growth of the Arbiter registration system for OST and partner programs increased opportunities for our middle school students with more district-wide programs, more consistent options across schools and making improvements around communication so we ensure equitable access. Next slide. We offer programming through contracted providers. These programs are funded through the OST budget. We collaborate with different organizations that prioritize academic improvement, cultural competence and student-centered practice. Next slide.

Oh, I think we jumped one slide. Sorry. Back to middle school programming Yep. Middle school programming has been growing and thriving. Robotics has expanded, Calculus Project continues to support mathematical skills with an increase in enrollment and Soccer Without Borders continues to offer students newcomer support both on the field and off. A middle school, college and career readiness program will continue into its second year. Also funded by the OST budget are our OST enrichment clubs. OST clubs provide another layer of enrichment to families who do not need a traditional five-day program. Clubs are one hour long and students can choose clubs on three trimesters, with the first beginning October 5th

Club offerings are changing as we hear feedback from families. For example, keeping offerings at schools on particular days through the year so parents can plan for care ahead of time. These are the demographics for OST clubs by school for Session 1. A key takeaway from this slide is that clubs as a district are pretty similar to K-8 enrollment. Next slide. This slide represents economic levels for students enrolled in our OST clubs. The low income cap used was a little over $106,000 per year which does represent the majority who registered for OSD clubs. 107 students did not provide information so were excluded from this count Now I introduce Assistant Director Adriana Gorecki to give us some highlights on community schools.

Good evening. Good evening, everybody. My name is Adriana Guareque. I'm the assistant director for the out-of-school time. I am here to talk about...to talk to you guys about community schools program So, community school program is an in-house program staffed by trained educators that creates high quality curriculum and fosters strong connections with our schools. As our longest running program, it enables us to build meaningful relationships with students and understand them better as learners and individuals. We serve students in pre-K through sixth grade across eight elementary schools. A site director and an assistant site director lead each site. A clinical consultant, and a student service coordinator provides additional support. Next slide please.

Enrollment across our community school programs increased from 940 students to 974 students. We also added Apollo and El Sistema numbers, which also experienced enrollment growth. This year we expanded our waitlist to include all students whose preferred program is community schools, including some families currently participating in other programs such as the YMCA and Apollo. The way this reflects requests collected after the March registration period and help us better track childcare needs, understand demands for our program, and identify opportunities to enroll additional families as the space become available. Next slide. This is the ethnicity race compared to district DESE data by schools. Somerville Community Schools has highest Hispanic Latino representation at about 61%.

Substantially above the Somerville DESI rate of 38.4%. Capuano has the highest multi-race representation at about 21%. Winter Hill is also notably High in multi-race representation and about 18%. Next slide, please. Our new sliding scale fee structure adjusts weekly payments based on family income and household size, making community schools more accessible to families. Weekly fee ranges from $5 to $169 a week, allowing us to accommodate families with different financial needs and provide scholarships to more families who need assistance. Next slide, please. Distribution of weekly tuition fees

Out of all our students, 346 students received some form of financial assistance including full scholarships, subsidized rates and sliding scale tuition. This reflects our commitment to supporting families with diverse financial circumstances while providing consistent high quality after school programming. Next slide please where we are now. Committed Schools continues to grow with enrollment increasing as shown in the chart, financial assistance has also expanded allowing us to support more families who need access to our program We have also increased staff salaries helping us retain high quality educators and encourage them to stay with our program longer. In terms of staffing, we recognize the challenges of relying on employees who could only work A few days per week.

To address this, we eliminate redundant positions and restructure staffing to provide more consistent schedules allowing more staff members to work additional days and providing greater stability for our program. Thank you for your time. I'm going to pass it to Ms. Parabella.

Our goal is always to sustain changes to the program due to growth, so we can accommodate all students who apply. The first chart represents the amount of students receiving some form of financial aid or a state-issued voucher for childcare. The second chart represents revenue produced by each school. Revenue supports all the programs as a whole and does not particularly target on one school. Next slide. I'm going to move through this chart quickly since the budget as a whole will be presented at a subcommittee. This represents a year over year comparison of the CS budget. During FY24 and FY25, the program was spending down a large carryover that was maintained from pre-COVID. And then revenue post-COVID decreased as we tried to rebuild. Salaries increased and the programs are necessary to start to increase tuition rates. We also addressed expenses by decreasing the amount spent on vendors in redundant positions,

This year we will move Apollo to the revolving so we will see a slight rise in contracted services on that line item. We will continue to implement a minimal increase yearly to account for increases in salaries, supplies and contracted services. Next slide. The Steering Committee. The steering committee was launched in school year 23 to 24, to address both school and city out of school time topics. We are a committee of district and city directors and coordinators who meet weekly to discuss current trends, issues, and data concerning OSD needs. The goal is always to increase access and affordability to OSD programming in the community.

The work of the OST program entails understanding barriers, looking at district-wide systems, developing shared quality standards and identifying financial strategies. This committee has been such a welcome addition to the work in after school. And that is all and ready to take any questions.

Colleagues. Rep Lippens?

Thank you so much through you, Chair. Just a quick comment. Thank you for the work that you do. My daughter is now in high school and I've really seen such an Amazing growth in the availability of after school programs and also the communication. So I am excited about the direction you're headed. and I'm just thinking about, I know you said you value feedback from families and it's helped to improve your programs. Could you give us maybe a preview of what you hope and how the program will grow, thinking about enrichment clubs and how we might attract new partners?

So, new partners are always welcome. The challenge is holding on to the programs that we value and also having enough time during the week to offer it all So I think this year we worked on dividing up age groups and focusing certain activities for particular groups so that was a way to sort of spread out different providers. We hope to just be able to get fair feedback from the schools because we're finding that every school is different in terms of needs and you really do have to evaluate that feedback. and we also work really hard with the family liaisons and the site directors at each school because they know their families best so we don't try to Thank you, Mayor Wilson.

Thanks, Chair. In the slide that showed the staffing levels look like it went from 125 down to 117 if I understand you correctly you basically yes we have Fewer staff, but they're working typically more. You don't have any FTE full-time equivalent numbers you might be able to offer on that just to show In sort of firmer numbers, what the staffing actually looks like?

We do have that information. Like I said, I didn't share all of it because it's being presented at another meeting but we do have...we have that data but we definitely reduced a lot We had assistant teachers and some high school students only working one or two days a week, and that doesn't help. We heard the feedback of the site directors It doesn't help with relationships of students and behavior and all these things. And it projects that we're spending more than we actually are when we're trying to budget out

Chair, thanks for letting me ask. I just want to make the point here that if someone saw that and thought oh we're dropping staffing levels you know we're not hitting the ratios we're supposed to be at you know huge if true not true thank you.

Thank you Rep Green

So thank you for this, and I'm going to think in advance of the presentation that you're gonna do before the finance committee. I've already got some questions so I'm gonna ask a question now and it might be complicated so I understand if you want to save the answer for the committee meeting, but I wanna make sure you're prepared. So... It was the first time I've ever seen this data point, so it's really interesting. I was looking at the average tuition by school and the demographics of community schools And I know that we have, I want to say twice in my time on the school committee, raised the top level of tuition because we have been in our expansion very intentionally trying to make our after school programming accessible to people who don't have other options.

And so I was kind of disappointed to realize that it's still the case that two-thirds of the students at community schools are paying top rate, and we're only subsidizing about a third of our students. Even though when you look at things like our enrichment clubs, 60% of those students are low income and of course 43% of the district is low income. And so my question, and it's in part a question for the data but also part of the body is is our thinking that community schools should be a program that caters towards the higher income band? And if so, I'm inclined to raise tuition even more. Or do we think we need to do more to get community schools to better reflect the population of our district. Especially since even though the top rate is still below market rate,

So it's still a subsidy to those families. You know, the cheapest alternative around is still the Y or the Pee-Bee House both of whom are $20 a week less than even our increased rates So I just want to make sure we are thinking through, especially if our next budget is going to be light, tighter than this one. And especially if correctly, we're looking at wanting to figure out how do we expand access to three-year-olds and four-year old students How we are resourcing our out-of-school programming in continuous of our stated goals of trying to make those more equitable and more accessible for low income families, which I think data says we're not hitting the mark on at least with community schools.

Rep. Biton and then Dr. Stellman.

Thank you, Chair. Through you just on that point I'm curious if we have data That indicate that cost is the driver for non-participation in after school. I mean, it's a good hypothesis but there may be other factors driving you know other after school activities or cultural after school clubs that kids may be involved in. So just curious if we have those data and if we don't, if there's a way for us to survey parents or families who do not participate.

There was a survey done last year by Summer Promise where we collected that data and We used that information moving forward to address some of the gaps that we saw. I think from parent feedback there was a large need for after-school care at Healy, However, when we do registration year after year it's significantly one of the lowest enrolled programs. The same for Winter Hill. We continue to try to address what surveys we can do and what input we can get. And from what we learned from the OST clubs, it sounds like There's a lot of recruitment done at the school level to offer specific targeted with family liaison calling home, trying We did see an increase this year. We think that the use of Arbiter has been helpful in that case as well

Thank you, Dr. Stellman and then Rep Green.

I thank you through the chair. Can we take a quick look at slide 19 just before from the end? I think the one right after this one. Yeah, and this may be what you were referring to. I'm not sure but can we just... This is like the first time I'm, as a school committee member wrapping my head around this data. So I'm seeing these you know we've got the community schools revolving right and then we the shift from Apollo From OST to CS Revolving. So what I'm wondering is there's this huge drop-off, right?

And so I'm trying to understand what is this, if you can give me a bigger context about the significant change. I know you talked about it but it hasn't congealed yet

You mean regards from year to year?

Yeah, or just looking at our FY27 to present.

So FY27 is present. This is real time? Yes, I didn't add the projections because again that's in a subcommittee meeting. So this is a snapshot of what exists right now for FY27.

And in general, you're expecting it to just follow the current trends that we have?

Yes, well I mean we're striving to ensure that we end the fiscal year with enough money to support summer programming and then start off the school year because we have a loss in revenue over the summer and then September. Okay, all right. For community schools. Thank you.

Thank You. Rep Green? Oh sorry sorry Rep Eldridge then Rep Green and then Rep. Bittone.

Thank you, through the chair I really appreciated your presentation and also the focus specifically stated at the end of focusing on equity and increased access. I know it was a topic of conversation that came up last year during one of the out-of-school time listening sessions And I'm wondering if you've heard any feedback from families in regard to access for students with disabilities. I didn't see that touched upon here, but has there been any feedback A or B improvements made to ensure that students Navigating disabilities within our school system have access to after-school opportunities.

Yep, so in terms of community schools there's a pretty big support system for students who are on IEPs 504s or even behavioral challenges So any families that enroll gain that access to supports for after school. We haven't had any negative feedback around this topic for the school year or in terms of the OST clubs. This has not come to my attention any now. I did hear that feedback before and again we always strive to include, to ensure there's inclusive practices so that all students can participate. And there's a lot of We have a clinical consultant and student services coordinator for OST, and they frequently have meetings.

with the site directors, with the parents. They create behavior plans. They meet with the school day staff around behavior plans and follow that through the year because a lot of these students start in pre-k and we have them until sixth seventh grade so

Quick follow-up. If there is a family that's interested in some of the offerings and doesn't know how to proceed or maybe is concerned about whether there's barriers because of disability, how do they go about navigating that process? Who do they reach out to? How do they begin the process of trying to get the supports in place to be able to participate

So if they're not enrolled?

If they're currently, yeah. Or maybe interested or maybe just haven't taken that leave because they didn't think it would be a good fit or there wasn't the proper supports like How does the family begin?

That's a good question. I know that when we advertise for registration, during the registration process when they're registering we ask that if they have any behavioral needs that they will have a meeting with our student services coordinator ahead of time to review information and make sure there's We do offer that and then the student services director once everyone is enrolled will review information with the site director on needs of the students.

Okay, do you have a follow-up? Okay. Am I wrong with him? Chair sorry I have a second question it's not a follow-up to what oh then if it's put me back in the stack yeah sorry then you're going back in and then we're going Pitone and then Green and then Wilson thank you

Thank you through the chair to the team. I'm just so appreciative of the level of data every time we have this presentation it's more and more thoughtful, more and targeted particularly around access which I think as other members including Representative Green spoke to is that's one of our, for many of us, one of concerns is how do we make sure that we're providing as much out-of-school time support to the people who need it most. and I know you're doing some head scratching, how do we get this to happen? I appreciate what's going on at the East. There's clearly a much higher adoption of getting these sliding scales and scholarships, and I don't know if there are families or The liaison that's doing the recruiting to make this be successful, but kudos to that.

I also always scratch my head about what's going on at the Healy with the number of students are there and I don't know if anybody knows historically but we used to have was it Boys & Girls Clubs that used to be at the healy? And when we had the Choice Program. Yeah, I mean there's a demographic change but there was a Boys and Girls Club instance and families paid like thirty to five dollars for the entire year. to have full access. And granted, that was kind of a fantasy situation for... I mean, I'm not making any comments on what was going on in the programming. I just, like I said, I wanted to compliment. There's still a lot of head scratching and this is hard work. I hope that my understanding is there's a new initiation of the Children's Cabinet. We have our friends from Summer Promise sitting here and I hope High on the list of that work, of what the Children's Cabinet or whatever it's gonna be called. Just so people know that's a collaboration space between the city and schools

and it used to exist maybe five or six years ago, and it was a space where we made a lot of progress particularly for early childhood education. A lot of work together to get grants, budgeting really successful. And now it's being reinitiated and I hope that this is on the higher part of the list because I'm their representative and I'd love to be a part of this work. So thank you.

Thank you, we're going Rep Green and then Rep Wilson.

Thank You I'm going to build on Ms. Pitone's points because she said some of mine, particularly at the Healy and Warner Hill. I'm actually going to reach back a little bit where they've also been on by Terry Patone's point, So I do believe we all have anecdata that suggest some of the cultural differences, but I am surprised. To hear that your own data suggests that Lahuli and the Winter Hill are calling for more child care options. Not adopting them. But to the extent that is true, and I can see why those are also our two poorest schools, I also want to remind people that if we are doing that work and not getting pick up

That we not do the thing that Somerville loves to do, which is that we build something for one population then ask a population to join really badly and when they don't say yes we just ask harder. To the extent that we have any data suggesting there are cultural differences, that might be preventing some groups from taking up services. What can we do to change to be more welcoming and more suitable to those cultural norms, right? I'm gonna ask that we not do what we often do which is like and we do at the Helio too, I'm guilty. We're guilty of it but where we ask people to join this thing because we think it'd be really good for them if they did our thing rather than building a thing they want So like, if the Healy community is saying hey we need more childcare and not taking advantage of childcare that we're giving them then we're givin' them wrong childcare. And we need to figure out how to fix that.

Thank you Mayor Wilson?

Thanks, Chair. Obviously last year there was the whole discussion around adjusting the rates mid-year in response to a burn rate that was not sustainable. Looking here month and a half into the school year. We're seeing that carry forward balance dropping. How are we feeling about that sustainability with the burn rate that we're seeing right now, what the revenues were bringing in?

We've done, like I said in the different meeting we're going to show the projections based on our projections and then actual revenue that were collecting out to the end of the fiscal year. and we're not looking at a deficit if that's the question. However, we realize that for years there was no substantial increase and we were increasing costs for programming, including cost for salaries in educators. That's the biggest part of our program and we weren't raising costs to match what we were paying out in expenses. And that the biggest, The majority of the budget are salaries. Very little in supplies, we're talking 10,000 a year even in contracted providers usually only about 300,000. The majority goes to the educators

To ensure that we can pay out in salaries, we have to continuously implement some type of increase. We're evaluating this year what that should be but if Cost of living is 2%, 3% then that has to raise at the same time. Thank you.

All right, thanks so much for being here and a great presentation.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you, Director Parabello and Assistant Director Kureike. Now to finish this part of the report I am having Dr. Michelle Chanin she is The director of our equity system in Somerville. I am thrilled to have her spearhead that work. Part of what I always have said is that equity and excellence live in the same space, Dr. Shannon has been really doing that work so far, so I'm really excited to see your presentation today and share it with the school committee

Thank you, Superintendent. Good evening everyone to the chair, to the mayor, everyone here on the committee. I am Dr. Michelle Shannon and I'm the Director of Equity and Excellence for Somerville Public Schools I bring with me, I stand here with 30 plus years of experience in public education both at the classroom level, at the school level and at the district level. as well as experience with higher ed and working with districts across the country and internationally, as well. So it really is an honor to be here at home in Somerville and to do well. I want to start a little bit, and I'm going to be mindful of time because the hour is late. But this is not new for you. The vision is for us to have every single student

Get what they deserve and what they need to thrive, not just survive school but to thrive in school and to thrive life. As the superintendent said, equity and excellence they go hand in hand because you can't be excellent if we don't have equity. So I'm a department of one, so you know it seems. My job is to partner with folks. So I am partnering with school leaders, educators, students, families and the community at large to help our district realize our vision for equity and equitable education for all. Next slide. So what have I been doing? You know, I started on July 1st. I think I was the only one in the office that day. Everyone was resting from last year. And so for me, the game really just started six weeks ago. So how have I spent these six weeks?

The first piece is around being present being ever present. In our schools, I've visited 100% of our schools at least once. Actually some of them several times. I'm participating in principals meetings and common planning time meeting and professional development opportunities My whole focus is about building relational trust because when we want to talk about equity, we have to trust one another to have the hard conversations. When I'm in schools, you can go to the next piece. I'm really laser-like focused on the most important work that we do which is teaching and learning what is happening with students and teachers in the presence of content in the classroom and so that has been my focus I've visited over 50 classrooms so far and I'm building a baseline of

What does the quality tier one instruction look like, feel like and sound like? The second thing that I've been spending time on is our multi-tiered systems of support. It's late so don't ask me 50 questions about this later. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about it, but I've really been trying to understand how our child study teams work How do we identify our students? How did they come before Child Study Team? What's the communication like with families, with students themselves and with educators? How do know and strengthen the opportunities that we have? In addition to In addition to being present, I'm being a partner and a support to our leaders. Principals called come can you consult with me? Help me think about this. Help me to strategize solutions. And I'm cultivating partnerships With Harvard Graduate School of Education.

With Youth Guidance, our BAM and WOW partners. And with the Boston Children's Hospital in looking to have additional partnerships as we move through. I think most importantly, I've been using my systems level leadership lens. The experience that I brought with me to help make sure that equity is at the forefront of the conversations that we're having You can go to the next slide. So I wanna double click on two points and then I'm gonna take my seat. First of all, being a team of one is a setup for failure No one person can be responsible for bringing equity to an entire system. And so I'm building the team, you can go to the next slide the team of equity specialists. We're so fortunate in our district you have made the decision to invest in educational leaders

Teachers, paraprofessionals who stand with me as equity specialists. I actually left them to come here this evening and they are working with their teams at the school level to help to address the equity challenges that they face every day in their work. I'm not saying that we're not going to focus on celebrations and initiatives, but it's less about one-off initiatives and more about bringing this idea of equitably I want to introduce, if you go A framework that I'm using to help ground the work that i'm doing with our equity specialists. We're using a research-based continuous improvement process it's called leading through spirals of inquiry And what I love about this process is that it is student-centered.

It starts with the learner, what is going on with our learners? How do we know and why does it matter? and all afternoon when I was meeting with them, I could just bring them back to these three questions to ground an anchor. What are we doing? And why are we it? And how our students experiencing what we do because what we think is often happening What they're experiencing is not always the same. And so I'm really excited to bring this framework to our work, to really anchor and drive the work towards continuous improvement for equity. All right, here's your favorite topic I know. MTSS. M-T-S-S. Multi Tiered Systems of Support So first of all, why do these two things even go together? Why is equity and MTSS in the same sentence? Well, equity and mtss are the same thing. It says

MTSS is equity work because it's about ensuring that every student has access to what they need to thrive. Period. They go hand in hand. So as the Director of Equity and Excellence, I don't own all of MTSS because MTS is all about work. It's your work, it's my work, every educator's work in this system because it starts with high quality, strong tier one instruction. What I'm doing is examining who is and isn't experiencing success in our classrooms My job is to help us identify patterns of disproportionality. It is to focus and center our ears on what the students say is happening for them.

and then to use that data in our continuous improvement process to drive us towards educational equity. I want to highlight a couple of priorities So number one, really trying to bring some coherence to the work of multi-tiered systems of support. I know that that's very important. One of the ways that we're doing that is going to be to foster some cross collaboration across schools. Every single school is engaged in multi-tiered systems of support. That is happening everywhere, every day. What it looks like on the ground is not always the same because our schools are not the same. and what I'm not trying to create a cookie cutter approach, but what we do want is coherence so that students have similar experiences regardless of the school that they attend. So we're going to foster some cross-school observation and collaboration.

Implementing a monthly check-in with our principals, MTSS is on the top of the list of things that we talk about. First I'm like what equity challenges are you having in your school? Second tell me what's happening with MTSs and then you know on to the next one in the next really want to focus in on strengthening the district infrastructure. One of things that I'm playing around with is, with each school having their own sort of way of doing it and not doing it poorly, just doing it their way. What that does is it makes it hard for us to have a systems view of what's really going on. And so that's one of the things I'm focused on The other thing is really trying to ensure that we have consistent practices for the ways that we engage our students and families. I will say that in the child study team meetings that I've been to so far, families have been engaged.

It just depends on where and when in the process For some, you might get a form that's like tell me about your child's strengths. For others, you may get a memo coming home here is what we talked about in terms of your child and what we're planning to do to support them. We want some consistency across those experiences, across our schools. And most importantly we wanna hear from our students. How do they feel supported by the systems that we put in place? Lastly, it says it's my first quarter plan but it's probably a little bit longer than that because I think we're close to the end of the first quarter. So I've spent these first few weeks really honing in on tier one instruction which is that first bucket.

I'm deeply embedded now in our child study teams because I really wanna try to understand what these processes are, how they use data? How are we setting goals for our young people How are we monitoring their progress towards those goals, deciding when they need to continue support and when they move on to the next thing? And then when I'm done with the child study team focus, I will move into our X block or win blocks. and I know that there's been some study of that in the past, but we've recently put out some new guidance for schools around how they should be using that time. And it's my job to go in and inspect and observe How that time is being used because that's where the majority of our tier two and our tier three interventions and supports are happening. So, that's all I have for you this evening thank you for your time And I'm happy to take a couple questions.

To my colleagues, we're going Rep Stellman and then Rep Green.

Thank you. And through the chair, thank you Dr. Shannon.

You can call me Michelle.

Thank you Michelle. I wanted to ask you about the concept of thrive because it's a very compelling and critical I'm wondering what does that look like? How do you know when students are thriving?

That's a great question. And there's not one answer for that, because to thrive is a very personal experience. So what brings you joy? When are you experiencing a sense of clear purpose? You know what you're doing and why you're it. You're curious, you can ask questions and know that there are people around with resources to help you find your own answers. When you're thinking deeply about something, and really doing the cognitive work That's what I think of when I think about students thriving, having joy, curiosity, purpose and rigor.

All up, come. Thank you to the chair. So that's an inspiring description and I'm wondering from a systems perspective How does that manifest itself so that educators have a way to gauge that for individuals and their groups?

I think the best way for, first of all, the most important thing that I want to say about this is we have to have this idea of symmetry. If we want our young people to thrive, our teachers have to feel a sense that they are thriving as well. We can't ask teachers to produce something for students that we aren't helping them to produce for themselves. And so once we are in, and I'm not saying that we don't have educators who are thriving because we do If you came to the TAB today, despite everything that was happening around them teachers were thriving and students were learning. So despite the obstacles and challenges It's hard to quantify, right? How do we measure thriving? And so I'm not gonna give you a hard statistic around it but what I think is a system that is focused in and I think we are very much focused on

Teachers, Building, Teachers. Our whole common planning time structure which is around teacher-led learning It's not coming from the top down, it's coming from ground up. That is how we help our teachers thrive.

Thank you through you. So, Dr. Shannon and I will call you that because we're in a formal meeting. I call all the other doctors doctors in these meetings so my mother would have helped me if I didn't do it if I So you are the third person to hold this position, or a variation of this position since it was created six, seven years ago? I don't remember how long you've been here. Nine years ago! And it's always good to have a new set of experienced eyes looking at what's been done when you got here. So I'd be curious to know, When you got here, can you name some things you thought the district was doing well and some things that you were like oh these are places I need to focus my efforts on change in my first year or two? Just that gut check.

I'm not going to talk about change yet because it's too soon. I'm still learning and with all of my 30 plus years of experience, I stand here as a learner first and foremost at all times. I think that we have the infrastructure in place. There are a lot of systems and structures that have been set up to support the work of educational equity moving forward and I'll really speak to common planning time. I've not ever worked in a district that had such a robust system for teachers developing one another and being developed on a regular, weekly consistent basis. That system we should be super proud of.

Even with all of the potential inconsistencies, having all of our K-8 and K-5 schools have an X block, have an actual block built into the master schedule for students to get their tier two and tier three supports without having to be pulled out of core instruction. Can I just say that doesn't happen in most districts? The ways in which that we are bringing our principals together and having our principals drive their own learning, and not have it just be a sit-and-get from on high. Principals literally leading the learning and being the lead learner That doesn't happen in most districts. I could go on and on, but I think that we have a solid foundation from which we can build on and give me a little bit of time. I promise, I'll give you some answers to the second part of your question.

Thank you.

Rep Biton and then Rep Pitone? Okay. Pitone and then Rep Biton?

Thank you. Through the chair to Dr. Shannon, I want to thank you for being here so late. I wanted to compliment you on your learning first focus and your systemic focus 2-1, MTSS, Child Study Team and Xblock. I just really appreciate how you're framing this and how you're naming the partnerships in the collaborations that you have to pursue to do this work as a leader, but without its own expanded team. Your team is all embedded in all of these schools and it's clear One of the risks of creating roles in teams like this is everyone says, well equity is doing that and that's not how we intend to do the work. between you and the superintendent, assistant superintendent are all aligned on how to move forward.

So I just really wanted to compliment and appreciate how this work moves forward and I look forward to hearing what you find and what you learn Thank you. So thank you. Thank you Rep Bittone?

Thank You chair through you To Dr. Shannon, thank you for being here for the presentation and for sort of walking us through your work what your vision is I think it's all I disagree. I think we are all aligned around this value of equity in If there's anyone who's situated in this district as a team of maybe 1,000 it's you. We are all on the same team here so I just like I want to sort of...I know you are Connecting all of us in that work. So I think that's really important. I also think it's important the way you framed MTSS as a way of implementing equity, and I think

The recent DESE review of the district highlighted many of our strengths and it also said that we We should look toward Thank you. Thank you very much. Boosting us across this important area. One thing that I'm not asking for an answer tonight, because again you're still synthesizing also the great work that Dr. Beretta did before your tenure here but I'm looking forward to and curious about what you see as

When do you envision coherence in this district around that? I mean, it's a big question. How do we know when we're there? I'll just plant that seed for you and welcome any thoughts you have now or later.

Thank you, that's a great question. I don't have an answer yet but thank you for that.

Thank You Rep Eldridge

Thank you so much to the chair. I really appreciate you being here. I know how passionate you are about this kind of stuff and we've already had some really fantastic conversations, so thank you for taking the time to put this together for us. I hope that we get the opportunity to hear more from you. I know you're just kind of getting your feet wet and getting oriented, and I'd love personally the next time that we could maybe hear a little bit about how were taking some of the feedback from our EmpowerEd report and how we're taking some work that we've done with Children's Hospital, kind of putting some of that to work here. I'd love to just understand like the larger context of what we're putting in place and how it's benefiting our teachers and our students. And I love what you said earlier, diving into trying to understand the child study team as well as like the life cycle of what it's like to participate or being a student in child study or being students MTSS is something I'm always really curious about too and I'd love to like

really understand what that looks like and the rates of how our students are coming in, then going out, and how we're doing that work. I'm just so curious and I would love to hear more sometime. Thank you so much.

Thank you. We appreciate the work you've done in the few months that you've been here and are really excited to see what you continue to do. Thank you so much.

Thank You have a good evening

That concludes the superintendent report.

Okay. I'm going to go back to room and numeral four in our agenda, the approval of September 14th's minutes seeking motion.

Motion to approve September 14th, 2026 minutes. Second.

All right, I have a motion by Rep Lippen, seconded by Rep Green. All in favor? Aye. Aye. There we go. All opposed? Any abstentions? Okay.

Just a comment, if I may? I know it's late so I'll just be brief but the The minutes that we just approved include a full statement by public comment that unfortunately due to the length I think is worth the read and highlights The framework that under a human rights view of engagement with our educational process and with The broader civic structure that we have around this public comment is actually very fitting, so I encourage my colleagues and the public to take a look at that public comment if you get a moment.

Just to reinforce that we don't... We don't Execute our rules to limit people's speech, but really to conduct an effective meeting. But that said, we do value the input and I thought there was a lot of good food for thought in this that may be worth taking up at a later meeting. Thank you

Thank you through you chair to the superintendent. I just we didn't mention the memo that we received on the annual school building walkthroughs That was from Daniel Berry, who is our coordinator for transportation and facilities. I just wanted to compliment and appreciate that memo Danielle has been a fantastic resource and incredibly responsive I sent her an email about some blacktop stuff at the Kennedy and she was like bam right on it so uh and i also just wanted to name a couple things that were in here one The request, and I'm going to name it from the mayor, for more bike racks at the high school. Apparently they've been asking for years and this is on the list so I hope that gets bumped up and I was asked to bring it up publicly if I could and I think the Brown is also asking for them too but... So anyone else that wanted to. And I also wanted to compliment, I am beyond thrilled that we're moving forward with the acoustical upgrades at the Healey. This is something that's been on my list for a decade So, bravo for that.

So clearly between the investment that the city's making, the work of the combined school committee City Council Committee that elevates these school buildings. I'm just really appreciative of how we continue to move forward and make incredible progress on our buildings, even though there's a lot more work still to be done These things are moving and happening, and there's a lot of talent within DPW and capital projects in our district doing this work. So thank you.

I'll go Rep Green then Rep Wilson

So I want to thank Rep. Patel for bringing this up, because I was going to ask if we could just table it for next meeting so that we can actually share it. Because I think some of the highlights should be shared publicly And I want people to hear some of the work that was done over the summer and where things are in a way that's actually productive. And I think that's probably best done at our next meeting if we can table it one week or two weeks or...

I will say this much given that we don't know what's coming down the pike. That will definitely be a goal, but I am not ready to commit to it. But yes, that's a definite goal and I'm happy to... Put that on the list. Mayor Wilson?

I just wanted to pass credit along to DPW Commissioner Eric Wiseman and the culture they've established there. Eric likes to call it a culture of how, which is a shortened version of how do we get to a yes? When I get approached by principals, it's not uncommon for them to mention a noticeable A real appreciation for DPW looking for ways to come through and get things done. And it's a real credit to the leadership in DPW, as well as just an overall commitment to collaboration Trying to get trying to get to a yes culture of how.

Thank you all right minutes are approved so we're going to reports from subcommittees I think we have received all of these reports, that's correct? All right.

Motion to approve the ed programs from June 16th. The ed programs for September 29th, the school building facilities and maintenance from September 8th, and the rules subcommittee report from September 28th. Second.

All right, I have a motion by Rep Pitone, seconded by Rep Biton. Any comments? Rep Bitone?

I'm sorry, through you chair. I just wanted to point out a discussion we had at the school building facilities and maintenance subcommittee back in September, September 8th We talked about, and we had some discussion here at a later regular school committee meeting around work on the coming school. and I just thought it was timely with the flooding situation that we had at The West around our investment schedule with our buildings, recognizing Limits that we have with how much we can spend at any one moment, I'll just note again

The city is not planning at this time to put the Cummings School building project in the next five year cycle. So that's in the report and I just thought it was timely.

Thank you. All right, I have a motion by Rep. Pitone seconded by Rep Biton for the report from subcommittees or approval of reports from sub-committees all those in favor aye all opposed any abstentions We have unfinished business. MSBA

We received feedback on the preferred schematic report that we submitted last time, and we have probably close to eight items that need to be addressed. The mayor and I received that email today around 2 p.m., so we have up to 14 days to respond to that. There's one piece around special education that has to be really fleshed out, and there are some other things that are more kind of detailed, nitty gritty descriptions that they gave us feedback on. But that's where we are. We also are in the process of collecting some focus groups information from both the Winterhill and the Brown School. So those are the two things that are pending right now

Thank you. All right, we are also moving on to our policy manual. We're gonna call it a second reading but I think we've looked at it more than once, section C. Vice Chair Biton, are there comments, updates? Thank you, Chair.

Through you I think this might be our fourth viewing of this policy Gratitude to my colleagues who have been very patient as we work through our policy review. I finally got my head around section C and I enumerated the What the policies are, what the recommended changes are from the subcommittee and what we're seeking to do. There was no additional conversation that needed to be had after our January 26th Meeting. So I bring this back to you all today with a recommendation for passage, the memo explains all the changes again and I hope everyone had a chance to look at it. And if we need more time, you know, I certainly...I just want to get it done so we're hoping

Blaze forward and I will continue to bring to you sections as they are completed.

Thank you, repitone.

Thank you, through you chair. I've gone through it all there was only one policy that had some issues with which was CBC the superintendent's power and responsibilities it feels like there's components of it that feel super dated so it references An authorized list of textbooks. It talks about course, well it's a course of study is something we do look at but like classification of pupils in terms of which schools they go to versus programming. Like there's something about it that didn't feel like It was necessarily up to date. It doesn't reference curriculum so I would like to make a motion to approve everything but that one and ask that the subcommittee take that one back and maybe take a little glance and for reference This is not a policy that is currently recommended by MASC, it's a policy we have only in Somerville. I'm not anti having that policy, and I can give you more feedback.

Representative Biton first is belaboring this but my motion is to approve everything but that one. So exclude CBC, Superintendent Powers and Responsibilities.

Second.

All right I have a motion by Rep Pitone seconded by Rep Green, I'll say this our policies are quite cumbersome so if there's something that there's a chance that we can take out that's exciting. We're up green?

Thank you. That was actually going to be my comment. I'm not sure why we have this policy. I would love to hear a reason, but from my reading of it, I would also be happy to just not have that one viewer policy.

All right, so I have a motion by Rep. Pitone seconded by Rep Green to pass the comprehensive policy manual that Vice Chair Biton has been working quite diligently at with the support of the rules subcommittee except for policy CBC. All right, do I have any further comments? All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? That passes. Thank you for your great work on that. All right, I'm going to bounce a little bit because I think the conference resolution might take a minute. Let's go to high school diplomas. Is there anyone who is looking at the agenda and wants to give me?

I have it open. Motion to approve, correct? SY 26 Somerville High School diploma for Michael Cochran.

Second. I have a motion by Rep Lippens seconded by Rep Pitone All those in favor? Aye. All opposed, any abstentions? Congrats Michael! I also would like to bring up our side letter with SEU Unit ACE. Can I have a motion before we discuss?

Motion to approve the SCU unit A, C and E side letter to authorize the chair to sign the SCUs. Second.

All right, I have a motion by Rep. Lippens seconded by Rep Green. This side letter is to ensure that the educators who were displaced from the West because they legally or by DESE policy have to make up the day it is going to be my understanding a half-day on January 4th that The educators will be in the school to make up with their students. Just to give an overview of what this letter is, I talked with the union chair who I think we'll waive if I'm incorrect Just making sure we have the, okay. And there will be a noon dismissal for families and that will be very clearly communicated much later down the line. Repetone?

Thank you through your chair. I just wanted to have thanks to our union leadership and the educators and administration that made quick work of this so that This was behind us as we moved forward with the building changes, so thank you

All right. I have a motion by, I didn't make a note, Rep Lippens, seconded by Rep Green, to authorize the chair to sign this unit ACE side letter. All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Okay now I'm going to MASC conference resolutions if i remember correctly Rep Stelman is our is going to be our representative, Rep. Pitone is our alternate. Is there any specific feedback on the conference resolutions that we want to be sure Our body is represented and our feedback is represented through our reps. You know, we usually trust them to use their best judgment. They understand our body or culture. Rep Green.

Yeah, Resolution 2 I think is great. It's fine but it further draws a bead on what I think has probably The board's biggest weakness, which is that by law forbids active school community representation on it. So I would not be amiss if our representative were to try to push the amendment adding that conversation to this thing because I agree. There should be people with expertise, with vocational technical expertise as someone who has that on the board but there should also be people of expertise in the actual governing school districts so yeah.

Rep. Stellman To piggyback on Resolution 2, I did like that I just think that there's some lack of clarity in some of the language and so that's my hold up on that.

Make sense? Anything else? Just to be clear, this is not our only opportunity to provide the feedback. This was just our public opportunity

Dr. Stellman. Just as a point of clarification for me, again, as new to this process, I'm just wondering are It was easier for me to sort of look at things and ask questions but not be totally sure about how this is working with I guess it's a process clarification between in our discussion are we sort of trying to arrive at a single, at something that we have consensus on.

So I'm going to attempt to answer that, and Rep Green and Rep Pitone who are you know have also been around for a minute can support. Um so what i would say is you know Much like you are the elected representative of Ward 6, therefore you're going to bring forward Ward 6 concerns. I would say that is on behalf of the body and on behalf at MASC. And so I would say to that, if we felt very strongly cohesively about something and made sure you are aware, made sure the public is aware then That would be something. Otherwise, for the most part, we trust our colleagues to make thoughtful representations of the body. Rev Green?

I would just say that if a majority of the body is so inclined, we could direct you explicitly. That has never happened on my time on school committee. I would oppose it vehemently if someone were to try to do so. Only in part because I've done it so many times that like giving someone instructions that explicit and that also locks them in in case these are amended or any of those things. So... I encourage members to share their opinions if they think their opinions, like I think for most of you this year these are pretty straightforward and I don't think there's much to it. But if there was a situation where a member felt strongly or I would encourage them to say it, I would oppose our efforts to bind your hands though.

Thank you, through your chair. Just I'm gonna urge everyone on the school committee to read them. Read the resolutions if you don't understand anything reach out to Emma and I and we're there to ask the questions that are relevant to Somerville as Dr. Ackman so eloquently said, like we're representing what our needs and desires are But really do take the time. It should be thoughtful and it should be helpful to you as your work on the school committee. And P.S., Somerville can submit resolutions. I don't know if we've ever done it in my tenure, but just so you know, if there's something that you feel incredibly passionate about, you think that we should be doing at a state level and that the full body of all the school committees should be advocating for this is something that we can bring forward. Thank you

Thank you. Rep Stellman.

I just wanted to note that it, I found it interesting that there is a Massachusetts School Building Authority Assistance Programs. It's the last one. Where is this? It's the very last. If you have this booklet, it's on page 28. and I just think it's given that we are in the throes of an MSBA Rupp-Green

Yeah, that's just for the people who aren't at home or are at home and can't see. That is one of the three that is up for renewal. It's been in the position of MSC for three years. I believe they do renewals every three years, so... There are three resolutions of renewal. To Dr. Ackman's point, I think... I was too late to do this here, but I think especially in light of reports by groups like Brown's Promise and Mass Inc. about the deep inequities of MSBA How facility differences is one of the main drivers of some of the intra-district Inequities and segregation we see in Massachusetts that I would be deeply interested in submitting for next year proposals to radically rethink MSPA. And as I'm working on it over the next year, I'd love people's help.

Fantastic. All right, we are on to field trips. I am seeking an approval for November 13th

Motion to approve the field trip on November 13, 2026 for 40 students from the SHS chorus who will travel to Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island at the Providence Bruins game, travel via bus student cost 22.

Second.

All right I have a motion by Rep Lippen seconded by Rep Biton All those in favor, sorry any comment? All those is in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you! All right, donations.

Motion to accept with gratitude the following donation which was from Bristol Myers Squibb from Cambridge for $7000 for 700 Museum of Science theater districts for all fifth and eighth grade students.

Second, how wonderful.

I have a motion by Rep. Pitone, seconded by Rep Lippens. Do we have any comments? All right, all those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you to Bristol Myers Squibb. We are moving on to community or calendar items from committee members.

Rep. Pitone? Thank you, through you chair. This is a request I think to the superintendent as well as to the city. I'd like to know if there are plans or recommendations regarding applying for the accelerated repair program with MSBA for the many buildings that have roof and or window and or interest in heat pumps. Those are three of the categories So the request is to come back to the school committee and say, what might you suggest putting into that program? And make sure we have it in the timeline to do the work appropriately to get the application on time. they I think last year they almost gave every single person that asked even districts that were already had buildings being built they gave them accelerated repair money so never assume that we're not going to get money. I think we should always request it if we have a need

Thank you. Rupp, Biton?

Thank you I just wanted to Boost, the PTA-hosted coffee hour at The Tab this Thursday. It was in their letter that they sent In the morning on Thursday, the 22nd from 8.10 to 9.10 I will be there in the... I'm putting this under the list of coffee hour office hours So I know that's still an in-process item, but I will be there for that.

Thank you. I would like to remind all of us that there is early voting available at City Hall. Is that correct? And I would anyone who's still listening but all of us that there are nine ballot questions and I would highly recommend that you know it is our civic duty to do our due diligence before we Make the choice to step into the voting booth or vote from home, or early here. Rep Green?

On that note, because we only have one more meeting until that election I remind families that Election Day is a day off of school

Yes, in Somerville election day is a day off from school. If your kids go to aftercare programs I know there's available coverage through that. Dr. Selman?

Earlier we had a person from the election department who was printing out and testing these ballots. And he showed me that if you go in-person, you will have three Three sheets of paper that are front and back, I believe he showed me. I am a person who really likes to go vote in-person and I enjoy doing that but one of the things he just, he did warn me and I'd love anyone who's continuing to listen in my colleagues He is pretty sure that there's going to be longer lines. So if there is an opportunity to vote early, he recommends that. I don't know if Mayor Wilson is nodding his head for people who are not watching this.

Yeah? All right, with that I want to move on to Roman numeral 10 our upcoming meetings. On November 2nd, which is the day before Election Day, we will have a health update and MLE presentation. And I presume we'll be hearing more about what's happening at The West. Vice Chair do we have condolences?

Somerville School Committee offers our deepest condolences to the family of Edward Albert Brewster, retired metal fabrication teacher at Somerville Public Schools and father of Lisa Brewster Cook, retired SHS English teacher.

We are adjourned.