School Committee Meeting - October 20, 2025

Thank you.

Thank you.

Recording in progress

All right, good evening everyone and welcome to this October 20th meeting of the Somerville School Committee. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of the School Committee will be conducted by a hybrid participation. We will post an audio recording, audio-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. With that, Dr. Carmona, will you please call the roll?

Through the Chair, Ms. Pitone. Dr. Ackman, Mr. Green, Mr. Biton, President Davis, Mayor Ballantyne, Ms. Barish, Dr. Phillips, Chair Krepchin, we have a quorum.

Okay, with that, we will start with a moment of silence and a 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, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we will start with our school committee student advisory committee representatives. If you wouldn't mind just saying your name and your grade before you let us know what you have to say.

My name is Magnus Snell. I'm a senior at SHS.

My name is Aiden Becker. I am a senior at SHS as well.

All right. So first we have that last Wednesday we had our Hispanic slash Latinx Heritage Month celebrations. which included a soccer game, a volleyball game, and also the watching of the Selena movie. There was lots of turnout and we considered it very successful.

Last Friday we also hosted a Massachusetts State Student Advisory Council Greater Boston Regional Advisory Council meeting. which is a new opportunity at SHS for students to demonstrate student leadership on a statewide scale. We hosted the first meeting of the year for our regional division and myself and our other representative Ava Piscico helped lead the meeting and we analyzed data from DESE to Preface are the rest of our work this coming year. And that leads me into we also have some new statistics from a class assembly that also happened last Friday.

which include that the chronic absenteeism rate has gone down over the past year from 31% in the 2024 school year to 25% in the 2025 school year. We've had zero out-of-school suspensions compared to last school year where we had already had five by September and we have had and more negative news, almost 30% of 11th grade students failing at least one course. So these are all the statistics that we went over at a recent assembly.

During XBlock this week, students will be giving feedback on new courses that might be available next year, which includes some AP art classes, like AP drawing and AP 3D art plus design. There will also be votes on new music classes, which includes music tech, music production, and also a new PE class, which will be dance too. Another class that will be voted on is AP Business and X block will be turned into a pass fail course. and that leads me into that on October 29th, there will be a first generation college mentoring program. That is what we have today.

Okay, thank you so much. Are there questions from my colleagues? Mr. Green.

First of all, in general, thank you for that. I'm super curious to hear what comes from your future conversations on the data points. But I wanted to highlight that in part because For people who don't know, although student reps to school committees are non-voting, there's a voting student member to the State Board of Education. And that is done through the advisory councils. And for the last 10 years, that I've been doing this. That footing representative has always represented a wealthier suburban district because the urban districts have not been as active. So the fact that this is getting started, the fact that Greater Boston is getting together and doing this is fantastic news for some of our high school students, for sure. But for urban education as a whole and therefore for the majority of students in Massachusetts public education. So I'm super thrilled. I hope you guys

Champion yourself, champion Somerville, Ohio, and champion all the people who will not be in that room and have certainly not been in that room. And if there's anything we can do to support you both in that work and as you're digging into the data and coming with suggestions, which we, by the way, can't wait to hear, please let us know.

Are there other questions? Yep, Mr. Biton.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Welcome to both. I'm curious to hear more about the X Block turning into a pass-fail course. I'm actually surprised to hear that it wasn't. Was this a graded course before?

How are students feeling about that? So before, actually since I guess they introduced it, it has always just been a non-graded period in your day. I think, I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the reason that they are considering introducing it as a pass fail course is because A significant amount of the students decide to just leave early because there is no repercussions, especially because it happens at the end of the day on Wednesday. We're leaving early by an hour, and a lot of teachers are kind of shaken up by the schedule. It doesn't really make sense to stick around unless you have a teacher you need to stay behind for or something else because there's also professional development that happens after school, so a lot of teachers aren't going to be around anyways. Yeah, that's all I know about it.

More than I knew, thank you.

Great, thank you. Are there other questions for our student reps? Seeing none, thank you again for being here. All right, that brings us to approval of some minutes. I will entertain a motion.

So moved.

It is for September 8th, September 29th, and October 6th.

So moved.

I have a motion by Mr. Green, seconded by... Dr. Phillips, is there any discussion? Yes, Mr. Biton.

I apologize. I should have mentioned something before the meeting through you, Chair. Since these materials were not posted before today, I'd like to request a just delay in approval so I can review them.

We can put this on our agenda at our next meeting.

No problem.

All right, so we will table that until our next meeting. That brings us to public comment.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

Can we take the theater department out of order so they can go about their business?

Sure, although I believe we don't have any public comment, so I don't think it's going to, am I correct? There's no public comment, okay. So that brings us to the report of the superintendent.

Great, thank you and good evening to everyone. Happy Diwali. I know this is a celebration of light, hope, and renewal, and it's very tightly connected to our strengthening of our programs. As well as enriching the opportunities for all our students. So before I get going into the work that is happening tonight, I wanted just to make a connection from what happened last time. We were here. We have Ildefonso presented information around MCAS and around the programs, the special ed programs. And I wanted just to give you a perspective about I'll be brief because we discussed this in some degree last time, but I just want to make sure that I can bring other perspective into the conversation about our performance. What you have in front of you is the MCAS growth percentile. By Adrian and by Magnus, welcome to the space.

And I just wanted to just briefly show the trajectory of the growth that we have both in ELA as well as in math. I also have to... Let's start by saying that our data remains flat around special education and MLE, so I don't want to also I know the MCAS was centered in the discussion last time. But I also wanted to bring both I Ready and Devils. Next slide. Just to give you a reference of how our data is moving, inching up in positive ways. If you look at it, the 23, 24, 25, 26, and 26, 27, This is starting data for the year. It shows how our baseline is moving up.

and incrementally, so from 54% to 60%. That means that students begin that grade level in a few percentages higher than the prior year. and the same is corroborated through the I-Ready data in the next slide, both in reading as well as in math. In terms of math, there's a little bit of a gap in fourth grade and eighth grade, but nevertheless, it does show a upward trajectory. And the same happens in mathematics. If you look at the MCAS data, in some degree correlates to some of the increases that we have here. Again, eighth grade continues to have, doesn't seem to be having in that steady trajectory as the other grades. The other point of reference that I wanted to share with you, and that's it for the slides, is the anecdotal evidence that we see in our visits through every school.

and I am really excited to share with you that it is not only us, principals, educators, TNTP, other research groups that come into the school, But also the street data that we collect as we visit schools. And I wanted to also have Dr. Jessica Boston-Davis share one of those data points that we encountered the other day.

Thank you, Dr. Carmona. This was one of the highlights of our fish tank walkthrough. So as you might recall, we're doing walkthroughs to monitor implementation. of our new curricular rollout in this case we were walking through we did all of our schools for fish tank and At the end of one of our classroom visits, and this is a classroom where the student population is diverse among many measures, including multilingual learners and students in special education, and at the end of one of our visits, There was a group of students reading with the teacher. The rest of the students were either partner reading or reading independently and in this case the teacher needed to read the text aloud but this was A text that's really, really engaging in our middle grades. And the student said,

One of the students said, oh, it's time to go. Well, are all the sixth graders across the district reading this book? And the teacher said, they are. Yep, they are. And another student said, can we read ahead? And the teacher said, I don't want you to ruin it. I don't want you to spoil it for yourselves. And one of the other students reading in that small group where the teacher had to read the text to them said, At soccer they keep on spoiling it for me. The kids in the other classes keep spoiling it for me. I had chills. It was a funny moment. We kind of chuckled. The people who were in the classroom together, we looked at each other and kind of chuckled, but I had chills. Because we had a group of students who were so excited to read a book, a teacher who had built such a warm, safe, and engaging classroom culture around a rich text and the students so eager to read that they're talking about it at soccer after school.

So when we talk about the impact of a high quality curriculum along with a skilled educator who has We see kids who are eager to read, who want to talk about reading after school with kids who are not even in their school, but are in the district at And so that was just something that was so special that we wanted to share in context with the data points that we see because we get to see these small moments regularly and we wanted to bring that to life here as well.

Can you just tell us the name of the book? Because I kind of want to read it now. It was The Watsons Go to Birmingham. Oh, okay. All right. Yes, Mr. Green?

As someone whose kid is reading the Watson's Code of Birmingham, and I can attest that my child, who had never thought of himself as much of a reader before this year, I don't really like historical fiction, which was still to be a victory because the fact that they had opinions on genres was more thinking about reading than they'd done in the past. and then we had a conversation about actually just to be clear your grandmother would have been in Louisiana and would have been two years older than the main character of the story which gave her a whole new spin for them. but like my kid had never been a reader asked for books for their birthday last week as one of their gifts. Anecdotally, that change feels real to me. That story resonates with my experience as a parent.

Ms. Pitone? Thank you, through you. Thank you, Dr. Boston Davis, for sharing that story. I used to do reading conferences with the seventh and eighth graders at the Healy. Have conversations with kids about books that they have read and what excites them and what they don't like and what's challenging about them. I always really enjoyed that and so I'm loving hearing that these students are coming to each other. and sharing I did want to also comment I wanted to thank Dr. Carmona for sharing additional data this is one of the reasons why I find in I know we're going to relook at our school committee goals, but the fact that we had the report out in June, it was one of the first times that the formative assessments were shared publicly. And I think they really tell a much more timely story than MCAS. I'm not saying that MCAS are not relevant. I do think that we need to share that kind of information and make it public. Obviously, it's public from DESE.

I really do think from a school committee member's perspective for me personally, seeing that type of growth and change for our students really better reflects what's going on each year than only the MCAS. Basically, I'm just going to urge my colleagues that I don't know what our goals are going to look like as we move forward, but I really do hope that we take some of what we had in our former goals regarding using formative assessments and making them public, and we continue to do that. and maybe if it's possible include some of that in the dashboard because right now the dashboard is primarily MCAS data and I don't think it really tells a story. of what's going on and giving this opportunity to reflect and learn on the improvements we're having. So thank you so much for sharing that.

Yeah, the reason for sharing is also I don't want the joy of the learning to be lost in these numbers, and I thought that was a great story. and also it just highlights the fact that we will not be able to get to better outcomes unless we have alignment across the district. We won't be able to get alignment until we have high quality instructional materials that are being implemented with fidelity. So it's a sequence of cascading events that will be reinforcing the work, but I just didn't want to lose and the side of enjoyment of kids. So that's great. And I just wanted to highlight that because last time we highlighted the challenges that we are facing and they are real. I don't wanna minimize the fact that We need to make sure that our specialized groups perform better in different metrics. And with that, I am going to introduce... Before you jump in, Mr.

Tone just wanted to... I apologize, I have a quick follow-up through the chair. I just want to, I think this is something we've discussed before, but I just want to put it out there. My understanding is that obviously we're implementing all these new materials, new curriculum, but I still think my understanding is there's also still some level of choice for students so some students are you know students going to be reading some of the same books but there's also going to be some level of choice so it's not all the same books for every kid and I think we've talked about this before, but I'm just curious.

Thank you, Dr. Chair. Generally speaking, it's the same core text. However, there are opportunities for students to select books and, you know, at a separate time within our ELA block. But for our curriculum, it's the same core texts or texts. You know, there's units with short stories, for example, where there'll be multiple texts.

Great, thank you. Now I'm going to ask both Melanie Kessler as well as Juliana Harrinson to come up to the microphone. I know that we're debating who comes first, but Juliana, come over. So we have great news. We recently attended a, we took part of something called Historical Black Colleges and Universities Building Bridge event in Boston. We had a wonderful experience that I'm going to have Juliana share with us what was that about and also the good news that are worth celebrating right now.

Hi, my name is Juliana. I am so grateful for this opportunity and this journey throughout high school really took me to a path where I I have a lot of happiness and a lot of grace and a lot of peers to guide me through high school and stuff like that. I got a scholarship to Livingstone, Salisbury, North Carolina, an all-black school. and I had recently talked like a day before I think I had talked to them because I was really interested in the school along with a lot of extracurricular activities and also sports They gave me a scholarship and I'm really, really excited.

I have so many other scholarships to apply to also, but this one really stood out to me because it was my first one. I would also like to say I want to thank you to like my mom and She's been gone for four years and she's watching above me and she knows that she wanted to see her daughter succeed along with my other family so I thank you and give me This opportunity to communicate this to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Juliana. Melanie, do you want to give us a little bit of context around the HBCU commitment?

So we had the opportunity this year to go to the HBCU Building Bridges College Fair, which is held in Boston. As folks likely know, there are not HBCUs around here, and so they hold this event every year. at the Reggie Lewis Center for folks in the Boston area to be able to interact with HBCUs. And so the first day was a fair where students could just go around and learn about the different schools. and we brought 27 students to that fair juniors and seniors and then a handful of students opted to come back the next day where they were offering admissions interviews and sometimes on the spot admissions so it actually wasn't just that Juliana was accepted it was that you know just based on you know her grades they saw her grades they saw her hard work but also just based on the conversation that they had with her and the interest that they had right on the spot she was accepted and given a scholarship so it's pretty special.

We also had one other student who similarly received acceptance. So Nancy Namako also got accepted to Claflin University. So that was also very exciting. She couldn't make it tonight.

And of course, our very own graduate from NHBCU program. So can you share some of the experiences?

I'm bursting over here. This is the most excited I've been to speak up in a meeting. First of all, we are just so, so proud of you. I cannot wait to talk to you more. I cannot wait to tell you which sorority to pledge. All of those things. Cannot wait. But if you don't know, I am also a graduate of a historically black college and university, Spelman College, which is located in Atlanta, Georgia. It's an all black college for women. And I just cannot describe to you how important these institutions are. So I'm just so proud of our students who have received acceptances. I'm so grateful for the leadership at the high school for making this happen. and I have some stats here and I've tried to you know kind of confirm with UNC at United Eagle College Fund and the White House and there's a bunch of organizations that compile but I have it here and I'm gonna read it

that HBCUs play a huge role in producing black professionals across the United States. And I'm reading this because in Massachusetts, They're not as familiar, but for those of us who have family in the south or even just a little further south, there's something that is very much a part of the fabric. Some stats state that 50% of all black lawyers, 40% of all black engineers, 70% of all black doctors, 80% of all black judges and 50% of all black teachers, myself included, attended an HBCU at one point in their educational journey. So these are just the commitment that we have as a district to these institutions is critical and ultimately for in this moment we are just so very proud of you and we will wrap our arms around you to make sure you get the support you need. So congratulations.

Thank you, thank you.

Well, that was lovely. Okay, what's next?

Can we do more of this in the future? Yeah, I couldn't pass that great opportunity to showcase the strengths of our programs as well as the fact that we have outstanding scholars here. Unfortunately we didn't have Nancy here. Hopefully at some point she will be able to come in front of us. I'm going to switch a little bit of the gears here. You have a facilities memo, walkthrough memo that was given to you. So we will briefly discuss the memo. but it's included in your packet so this memo was developed by our facilities safety and transportation coordinator daniel berry and our chief of staff and strategy amara nosike and both Danielle and Amara will be here at the next meeting to walk you through the memo in more detail and provide facilities updates and highlight key areas of progress and need as well.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our very own Dr. Jessica Boston-Davies, HBCU alum, who is going to introduce the field trip presentation.

Excellent. So I'm excited to welcome up our music department who's going to share a little bit about so at our last meeting there was a field trip for up for approval going to Chicago and so Here's the fabulous team that has joined us to share a little bit about the field trip and all of the details and the kind of plans that they have in place to ensure our students have a wonderful and safe time.

Thank you for having us tonight. Very exciting to be here. My name is Max Everard. I'm the choir director at SHS.

I'm Joanne Sadler. I'm the orchestra director in the public schools and high school.

And I am Beverly Mosby. I'm the music supervisor district-wide.

So I am the trip planner for this trip, and I am very thrilled about this opportunity to go to Chicago. As you can see here, these are two of the things that we're going to do. We're going to go on the architectural river cruise and eat some deep dish, which, yes, it's pizza. So our TRIP objective is to give SHS mutants, students, is this your turn? Do you want to do this one?

Yeah, you go for it. No, no, no, no, no, no, you go. It's fine, no problem. Yes, our true objective is to give SHS music students an opportunity to see themselves as citizens of the world, build community and connect to the arts in the real world.

As you can see on this slide, the Music Department has taken a number of different trips. And these are trips that we've taken, our most recent trips that we've taken out of state. and you can see that there are varying prices that students have had to pay. Our most expensive trip that we've had to take per price per student is the trip that I took with the students that we were planning to New Orleans. We were planning on going to New Orleans in 2020. We had all of the funds raised, $1,350 per student, and COVID came. So we were able to reimburse everyone for the trip, but we had raised all of the funds and everything to take those students on that trip.

Our next most expensive trip was with the chorus again to Orlando, Florida where we competed and that was $1,100 per student. and then you can see all the other prices and as you know this trip is $1,000 per student. but a much larger group of students going on this trip. But we do love to take our students out of state because we want our students to see other parts of our country and to see the culture as well as the music Thank you.

Yeah, so we are committed to making sure that every student is able to attend the trip regardless of how much they are able to pay. You guys can see that in 2024, we raised $12,000. and we fully funded eight student trips and we also partially funded 11 more. This is a similar number to what we're seeing this year. We have about, as of right now, about five to eight students who needed a fully funded trip. and the good news is that we already have enough money to pay for those trips so no student again will be left behind as of right now. We have raised over $10,000 from the Fluff Festival alone, and we also have another $10,000 in our student activity account, so that's $20,000 already raised for these students. We are not concerned about students not being able to go. We do have need, but we always meet that need, and no student will be denied an opportunity because of funds.

and we are very proud of that fact and we will continue to work towards that. You can see our beautiful graph here, the road to New York City. We have a similar graph right now in the chorus room that students make. They make a new one every time we go on a trip. and we always we that is the number one thing that we that we try to bring home to our students that we are that everybody can go on these trips there might be other trips that you know folks can't go because of money but not a music trip with every ensemble You'll also notice that our previous trips were just chorus and orchestra trips, but we also have multiple ensembles. We have jazz band, we have band, we have guitar classes, etc. We're trying to take the four major ensembles, jazz band, band, orchestra, and chorus on a trip together. And we are excited to do that this year. This is a video of the travel company that we are using, Guardian Music and Group Travel.

and they have been really really good so far.

This is just a short a little slide to show you some of our fundraising ideas for this year. So far we have already had the Farr Festival and as Max mentioned we were We have some busking planned, especially coming up to the holidays. We have some caroling with the choral students. We have Singing Valentines, we have the orchestra students planning to go out maybe on election day and certainly in December in the lead up to We always have a lot of bake sales. We are looking into local businesses to to hold events and then they donate some of the products to us. So the students very, very involved in their fundraising, but we have a lot of fun doing it.

So we have a safety plan. We have a variety of pre-trip preparation that we do. The school district requires that for every 10 students, there's one chaperone. We have a communication and supervision plan. We have some emergency procedures and compliance with TSA and school safety standards. We have the next slide. So the pre-trip preparation looks like written parent and guardian permission which is provided by the district and emergency medical release which is also provided by the district. None of this stuff comes from Guardian Travel. This is all district mandated and district supplied materials. Our student packets that we're going to create, we're going to have a copy of the front and back of the student ID. They'll actually need to have their student ID. They're consenting their medical release and an emergency contact list. And there's our 1 to 10 ratio for chaperone groups.

So required documentation for every leader. We're going to have copies of everything. Consent forms, medical information, master roster. with a full student name, date of birth, parent-guardian names, two emergency phone numbers, and the contact for a hotel. And the leaders will also carry the airline itinerary and boarding passes. Our communication plan is we have used the Remind app for many years. It is a very reliable piece of text Communication Software. Every student, parent, and teacher can be on this group app. And it is very useful for we're getting off at the next stop. We even use it when we go to the BSO every year. We sign up all these students and go, you know, make sure we all know we're getting up at symphony. Yeah, like so it works really, really well and we use it all the time. Everyone's really used to it. We have an emergency backup phone tree in case the internet goes down or whatever. We can still call.

We have communication leads and we have people calling a tree of people that will then get all the information they need. All contact info for all of our parent and guardians will be shared with every chaperone digitally and also printed out just in case something happens. Our hotel and supervision will be staying at a hotel, I believe, outside of O'Hare. Room curfews will be enforced by a security guard there that roams the halls. and our chaperones. Students will always be traveling in their chaperone groups and on the trip, school rules apply. So our travel safety is, do you want to talk about this, Jo? Okay, yeah, go ahead.

So the identification that students need if they're under 18, they can travel on a school ID. If they're 18 or over, they'll need a real ID or a passport to travel. The roles of each chaperone, we will have an airport head in Boston handling the airline counter and boarding will have an airport head in Chicago organizing arrival baggage ground transport, a medical lead who'll be carrying the medications, EpiPens, medical forms, and then the communications lead who'll be kind of in charge of the phone tree that Max was mentioning and the remind group chat. If it happens that people are separated at TSA in the airport, we'll have a secure area. all meet in, we will be visible. Chaperones will be in charge of their groups and they can notify the airline desk, meet at a prearranged spot. If for some reason the student was to interact with law enforcement or airport officials, We would notify school administration immediately.

We'd request to speak to the officer or an officer or airline rep. We'd produce our field trip form. We'd obviously stay calm and document all the details and contact Parent Guard immediately.

So our contingency plans, you know, if luggage or meds or medications is lost, we're not going to be checking any bags. This is just a two-day trip to Chicago, two-night trip, three days. So checking bags also saves us 80 bucks. So, and I'm not going to sit there at the carousel waiting for our kids' bags. We're going to file the airline report and use document copies for temporary proof. If safety rifts arise, we'll have pivot activities to avoid protests or activity. There's a lot of things to do in Chicago. Wonderful city. I lived there for eight years. I know this. There's a ton of stuff to do there that we not on our itinerary. and then we're going to maintain our contingency plan and our connection with Ruth Santos and Regina Bertoldo for on the ground resources in Chicago. Those are our people in Somerville that will help us take care of those things.

is and that's it okay great first i just want to say that's an impressive number of fluffernutter sandwiches that you got 2234 yeah yeah

500 Rice Krispie Treats, too. Oh yeah, we sold out with an hour to go. So we, I, listen, I had, last year I made 1,500, we made 1,500, I'm sorry, and I perfected this. I said next year we're going bigger and better and we made almost a thousand more and we sold out an hour earlier than we did last year so I don't know where the top is for fluffer nutter profits but it's really high I'm going to find it.

That is amazing. Thank you. Okay, I have Mr. Green, Mr. Biton, Mr. Davis, Dr. Phillips, Mr. Green.

All right, I have several questions, so I'm going to do them and get back in the loop. and I'm going to phrase this one very intentionally because I don't actually want to know what the plan is. And I certainly don't want you saying it On live television? But I just want to make sure, be clear, that if an immigrant family comes to you and says, have you thought about how to keep my kids safe with all the federal activity, that you have an answer for them. Yeah. Right. Don't say it. For obvious reasons. Yes. All right. I'll get back in the queue.

Mr. Biton?

Thank you, Chair. Through you, I also just want to elevate that you made the world's largest Fluffernutter sandwich. We certainly did. Yes, we did. I just wanted to, there was a standing ovation for this sandwich. 400,000 views on TikTok. Amazing. Thank you.

Mr. Davis.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to also commend that I remember those days when my daughter was part of that And I actually think she was going to be part of that New Orleans trip. And I remember how sad she was. So I'm glad that you're back to doing these trips. I know she was super excited about it. I just wanted to ask, and maybe I missed it because we were going through quickly. There's no wrong answer here. I'm just curious. Is there also like a performance aspect to this? Or is it like just, hey, let's see?

Yes. Yeah, there is. So my alma mater, DePaul University, my undergraduate, has agreed to host us Friday afternoon when we're there. and I think it's Friday, I have to double check. But they are going to have a clinic and my choir is going to perform with some of my colleagues that I have in Chicago. We're going to get together and do a big sing. and the instrumental students will go to a jazz or an orchestra clinic. I believe it might be a jazz or orchestra clinic. And then we will all meet together, have a performance, and go out to, I think, Giordano's afterwards. So it should be actually a pretty really, and there is performance aspect, absolutely. We are not bringing instruments with us. So this is, again, the cost prohibitive in some ways. But choral students don't have instruments. So I'm like, well, we do. Well, they're here.

I'll say sorry our bodies are our instruments I'll say that so but we we so I there is a performance aspect for one of our ensembles and there is a clinic aspect and a responsive we're seeing Hamilton We're seeing some other music opportunities as well. So there's a lot of things for everyone to digest artistically, but the performance will rely on the chorus. Fantastic. Thank you.

Dr. Phillips. Thanks so much for this presentation and more importantly for all the work that you do for our kids. This is an amazing trip. And in normal times, I would be like, great, go, go again. and this year I have questions. I appreciate everything that you have been able to share and I know that there's more that you have in your heads that you can't share. The question at the top of my mind is though, is have you checked in with the Chicago Public Schools yet? Have you talked to them about this plan and gotten their feedback?

So Chicago Public Schools, we aren't going to be working with them directly, but I do have colleagues in the Chicagoland area that work in the Chicago Public Schools. and they have said again it's a similar situation to here where you know There is a lot of talk about how quote unquote dangerous these cities are, but these are very isolated incidents in very far away parts of the city where we are not going to. In terms of the plan, I've had no indication from any of my colleagues in Chicago that it's unsafe.

So the Chicago Public Schools has the ICE command center. They're monitoring all the ICE activity.

Oh, interesting.

I can approve this field trip if you guys can promise to me that you're going to check in with them now and you're going to check in with them along the way to see what they have to say. Sure.

Okay.

Thank you. We'll do that. All right, so this question is a two-part question that's two different things. I think I'm going to ask you for the district, not for you, but I'll start through the chair to you. I appreciate that you have a fundraising plan and that was what I wanted to know because As you've mentioned, this is a more ambitious show than you've played in the past, which to me says more ambitious than it is in goal. So I'm really glad to see that you're on it. I'm excited for what I see from that point. And... I'm curious because when I looked up the demographics of Somerville High, according to our numbers, 67% of Somerville High schools identify as high needs. So,

To my head, the goal was probably somewhere around $100,000 if you assume that two-thirds of students who'd want to go on this trip identified as high needs. And so my first question is, what are you thinking and why? What do you think the goal is and why do you think that is?

Well, we did send out a fundraising form to all the families and parents to see what kind of need we would have. So on that response, Joe, do you remember the numbers exactly?

I don't know exactly. I think that part of the answer to your question is that we have a very small subsection of the high school in the music program. What the need that we are seeing reflects the students who are in our program, students across the entire district and the high school. But yes, we ask very directly, you know, what can you pay, including nothing. and what they tell us is what we will cover, what they need. And our fundraising goals are based around that.

And just out of curiosity, what is that?

Our fundraising goal, I would love to raise $50,000 because then we could actually pay for a portion of everybody's trip. But we already, like Max said, we can actually pay for everyone who needs their fully funded trip at this point, who has indicated they'd like to attend.

Ms. Pichot. Thank you for being here. Thank you for going above and beyond and making these opportunities happen. I think that sometimes as a parent, people sort of just part and parcel expect things and expect trips. and I don't think they understand how much work that you do to make this happen and you do this because you love this. and you love your students and I just wanted to name it because it really moves me all the trips that we do but this is one of the bigger ones and I'm just so grateful and appreciative as well as appreciate that you're willing to come and speak to us because we feel accountable for the safety and the being able to financially support all the kids and I want to make Make sure you understand it's not that we were questioning your intention or your ability to do that. We just wanted to make that information public and make sure that we as a body are, you know, walking the walk and talking the walk.

Whatever. Walking the walk and talking the talk.

We want to make sure we are walking and talking all the time. No, I'm kidding. I guess my not for you but my question I guess through the chair to the chair of rules is do we have a particular policy or or should we consider a policy around what our expectations are for trips like this and whether or not regarding funding in particular and it's just a question mark I don't know what the answer is to it I also don't want to like impede the process for people to do this but we don't want people that always have to come back to us and say okay well this is how we did the funding so it's just a question if you want to think about it or you and the chair can discuss and whether or not that's something that like you know we expect you know a process like this that you're going through and that we're not putting on things that we can't help fund so thank you

I think I had Mr. Green have another question.

All right, so this question is for the district. I think it's the harder question, the one we have to spend some real time on, which is, as was pointed out actually I think accurately all of our discussion of making sure that all these opportunities are available to people without pay There's only empty talk if only people who sign up for these things are people who can afford to pay, right? So I think we need to do some, you know, we've heard talk about from parents about field trip equity. and I think it's probably from the deeper questions really elective equity. It's are we doing the things that ensure that all of our activities reflect The true interest in them and the true ability of people to access them. And again, that's not on any individual teacher organizations.

It's something we need to look at as a district and requires probably way more data than we have because I think we don't know if we're doing that or not. and so I think that's my charge to the district is as we're thinking about like We've done a lot of what I call the low-honing equity fruit. Now we have to dig into something that actually hurts. And I think one of them is gonna be figuring out things like, are we actually providing access to the same level of opportunity for all of our students?

Thank you for that. I absolutely agree. Certainly, I don't have the date off the top of my head for, you know, The courses across the diversity of programs at our high school and kind of the populations of students through different I will say, what I can say is that we have, we are hearing, we hear from the committee and also from the community and have started some very deep dives into field trip We can say equity, but just digging in to have a deeper understanding of field trips and funding and which schools and which programs and all of that. I had a long meeting just today to think through it, but we talked about it last week at our principals meeting.

In our central office team, we've been talking about it. Director for Equity and Excellence, Kaylee Galitano, is leading on this as well. So we are really thinking through the complexities and kind of the deeper dive around access that you've named and do agree with you and see the need for some structure and guidance at the very least to help ensure that access is is across our district. So I'll say that the work has certainly started in a deep and meaningful way and we can get back to about those programs.

Yeah, absolutely. I expect this is actually going to be a lot of work over a long period of time. The reason I'm doing this is because it's hard, so I'm not expecting you to have any answers right now, but I want to flag that. And with that, I move to approve this field trip.

I can't.

I'm sorry I just want to reiterate the thanks and I was also curious have you worked with Guardian before is this

Yeah, this is one of our new teachers, Hillary Lewis. She came to us from California, and she took her students with this group a couple times. She worked in the Bay Area, took them down to Los Angeles a few times. So she came with a very, very positive recommendation. They're also a minority-owned, female-owned business, so we wanted to prioritize that as well. And so far, they've been nothing but great.

Great to hear, thanks. And the New York trip was great.

Oh, it was, yeah. And yeah, yeah, it was. Thank you.

Thanks to you, Chair. Sorry, you guys are juggling a lot of interests and you're doing it very well. I have one more safety question for you all. And I think I missed it when my colleague talked about the extent to which the students going on this trip are similar or different from our broader high school group of students. But I guess I can see a world where a parent would think, oh, my kid's going on a field trip with their school and they're going with this travel agency, everything's gonna be fine. My friends on the ground in Chicago are telling me everything is clearly not fine. And I'm just wondering what's in those consent forms in terms of... What are we saying about how... What is our commitment to student safety in those forms?

In the district's forms?

In the forms of parents are signing that saying you can take my child with you to Chicago.

That's linked in the slide. Yeah, you can look at that. Whatever the district provides, I haven't honestly memorized the slide form yet. And the form gets sent, you know, I fill out the form, then I give it to Ms. Mosby, and then Ms. Mosby gives it to Alicia, and then Alicia gives it to Jess Boston-Davis, then it comes to you. That's what I know.

Yes, Dr. Phillips. Maybe I'm the only one who's really worried about this. I'm reading this permission form and thinking that for this trip, We might want to have another info sheet for families when they're saying, yes, take my kid with you to Chicago. I just want to be honest with families about what's happening. And maybe, I get it, there's like, we don't want to freak people out unnecessarily, things... Thanks for watching! are fluid and yet just signing something that says I hereby release all employees and agents of the Somerville Public Schools from liability and assign harm doesn't seem to quite get into what I am saying when I sign it in this situation to me.

So I appreciate Dr. Phillips' concern. And that's why I asked my first question was, do you have a plan to speak to Perspective Families. Again, I don't think I want that plan to be super publicly discussed, and if privileged families never know it exists, I'm okay with that, as long as it exists and it's being talked to the families who are on the line.

Phillips. Sorry, respectfully, through you, Chair, I disagree. I think as a parent, you sign your kid up for something with their school, they're going with an agency, you think everything's going to be fine. and maybe it will be but to kind of react when someone comes to you with a question is different than proactively saying here are the risks and my perspective

Respectfully, I don't think that's what I said. I think the conversation we had publicly and the conversation we had with all families is different from the conversations we had with the families who are on the line. and I'm okay with that private conversation being just that private. I agree, I'm hoping that you're being proactive about it, but being proactive with the families is not the same as being proactive with everyone.

Thank you through you. I appreciate this conversation and and the concern about safety I do I am curious I mean I hope this is never something that we have to consider but if the trip has to be cancelled because if something Thank you. Thank you. and obviously if something crisis happens the day before you're going to make a different call but that would that that would be helpful to me to understand that unless that's something that you don't want to make public whatever um that's fine yeah yeah we absolutely have insurance and for that reason

We need to cancel the trip for any reason at all. And we've all been through COVID, so we know that can happen. But I also want to reassure you that student safety is our absolute top priority. There's nothing that we are not talking about right now. and we are having conversations that you're asking about already and these as much as can be done we will do so you know I think there's a lot of unknown about it and in the end you have to make a decision But yeah, if we have to cancel, we cancel. If we have to change what we're doing in the moment we're doing it, of course we will change that. So yeah, I don't know. I think as much as we can, we will be doing.

I'm just going to pivot a little bit. It occurred to me on the slide that mentioned travel documents. Students under 18 can use their IDs, and students over 18 will need your A passport or a real ID. And I just wanted to suggest, if you haven't already done it, that that we let families know that that some of the money can pay for that too like because the passport costs money I don't I don't know if that's possible but um I just wanted to Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea.

I mean, I'm more than happy to, I think a real ID would cover domestic travel, but if they need to get a passport, that feels like international. But I mean, I agree. Yes, absolutely.

And I think until we have the filter absolutely confirmed and approved, we're not sure. We will then have conversations with anyone who will be 18. and directly ask them what they have and what they need. So if they're in more needs then we, yeah, absolutely appreciate that thought for sure.

Actually, I'll talk to you offline about that. There's some legal niceties that might make life a little easier, but I'll talk about them offline.

Okay. All right. With that, we had a motion by Mr. Green, seconded by Ms. Pitone to approve this field trip. So all in favor. All opposed? Motion carries. Thank you again for coming tonight. Thank you.

Yes, so the next conversation is about out of school time. And before we kick it off to the team, I wanted to, So frame the reason why we are having that conversation right now. That conversation about out of school time programming was supposed to be scheduled, I believe, in the next following meetings. Given the fact that we are somewhat at an inflection point, we needed to get your feedback. During the last meeting with the subcommittee, finance subcommittee, our CFO, We have some financial issues. Thank you. Thank you. This is a program that has grown significantly over the years, and we'll get a little bit into that data.

Also, that has increased in the number of teachers that work in the program. That also has had an increase in salary because we were committed to making sure that we raised salaries based on the needs as well as the market rate that allow us to recruit more teachers. And so I think the landscape of the out-of-school time is complex, and I want to make sure that it's not missed. But I will have some of my team members here. Rosanna Parabello was supposed to be here but she had a personal matter that she has to deal with and we have both Adriana and Ruth Santos as part of that presentation. So I just want to be clear again, the focus tonight is not about the program itself, but it's about the inflection point around finances that we want to We want your feedback.

And before we switch into that, before I pass the microphone to the team, I also wanted to do a final brief preview and as part of our RFP process to continue the services that once breakthrough provided in our system, we have a new provider. The name is Nova Academy. and they have a new structure project based after school program that is called Future Lab. And this program will extend hours and connect directly to what students are learning during the school day. I just want to make sure that I share that with you because there has been a lot of anticipation around this program. and we will have a more in-depth discussion around that at the next time when the director of the program comes in.

So with that, I'm going to move, I'm going to have Ruth Santos and Adriana come up to the podium, and also at some point, Dr. Barretta, Bobby Barretta, to share the finances of the OSTC.

Can I just ask quickly before we start if the information about the new program has gone out to the Breakthrough families yet?

Through you, I believe that they're still finalizing space. Okay. And it's going to be confirmed once the details are a little bit more fixed. I think that's supposed to happen this week. Okay, great.

Thank you. Yes, please.

Go ahead.

Good evening, everybody. I'm Ruth Santos, standing in for Rosanna tonight, who couldn't be here. I'm here with Adriana Gereke, the Director of Community Schools, and Bobby Barretta, our CFO. And we're here to talk a little bit about community schools. Next slide please. So as you know community schools functions a little bit differently in our district than it does in other districts. We're actually a school department and as such we're really part of the school family. We're part of the community and we're really proud of our commitments to support. Children and Families. On here we have some of our commitments. We increase access to meet the needs of the community. Where we hear there's been a need to grow, we've grown, and you'll see a little bit more about that on the next slide. We enhance quality. We bring in outside providers to provide specialty clubs. We do some really good training for our own staff. and we're really proud of the quality that we offer students in our program.

We work to provide academic outcomes. We align our curriculum with state standards. We've begun to do great information sharing between morning and afternoon staff. We're able to offer tutoring where needed and help kids that may have been struggling in the morning with some additional support in the afternoons. and we increase joy and wellness by providing opportunities for creativity, for science and for physical education in all of our programs. And next slide, please. Oh, you got it. So as I mentioned about the growth, in a five year period, community schools have shown a steady increase in multiple areas. Enrollment has almost doubled, and the number of staff has grown steadily to meet those enrollment needs. And as you can see, financial aid numbers have also doubled, reflecting our commitment to equity and access. However, over the last five years, the cost for families has remained pretty constant over that time period, and it is time to do some reassessments.

I'm going to hand over to Bobby now to talk a little bit more about what that looks like.

Good evening, everybody. I'm Dr. Beretta, interim CFO. Next slide, Erica. So the next couple of slides are numbers heavy so I wanted to start with a slide that really just drives home a couple of headlines here because I want to be very explicit around the current situation and what I think we need to do in order to resolve it. So first and foremost, to be really clear, community schools has operated with what we would call a structural deficit for the last several years. Again, you'll see what this looks like numbers-wise on the next few slides, but I want to make sure the headlines stick. This structural deficit that it's been operating with over the last few years has taken what was once a fairly large cash balance and sort of eroded it. Slowly, such that it hit zero and at several points during this fiscal year has dipped into the negative, dipped into the red.

To be extra clear, the way we run community schools is through a revolving account, which is different from the vast majority of our accounts, which are an appropriated budget. We get a number set there at the beginning of the fiscal year and we just sort of spend down. This is a revolving account. Almost like a personal checking account, money comes in, money goes out. And revolving accounts cannot operate with a deficit at the end of the fiscal year. currently this account if we continue to run it the way it is currently structured will end this year with a deficit and that's what brings us here tonight Our short-term goal tonight is to make some immediate changes so that we can increase revenue, ideally through a tuition increase, to bring this community schools account back to a projected surplus at the end of the year, ideally as quickly as possible.

With the understanding that we have to really dig in and make some changes in how the revenue and expense side of this account is structured. and also just to take some ownership you know I've been in this role for five months I think that one of the things that is really clear is our office of the fin team as I like to call us really needs to be supporting all of our All of our departments with finances, but particularly some of these revolving accounts that have really large numbers in them through yearly projections, through yearly budgets, so that folks can operate their accounts in perpetuity in fiscal health. So let's dig into some of the numbers. So just to orient you to this table here, this is a sort of backwards looking three year review of the community schools revolving account. On the left side I've broken it down into revenue at the top, expenses just underneath that, and then totals down at the bottom.

So you can see our biggest source of revenue for this account is tuition, right? Many families that use this pay tuition. We have a small number of families that get vouchers through the state, but that's a relatively small amount of the sort of revenue that this account brings in. And similarly on the expense side, the vast majority of the expenses for the community school account is in salary. It's in the human resources that we use to staff the program, all of those folks who do a really fantastic job. We also have a relatively small amount, given the size of the account, of contracted services. These are outside providers that we use to come in and provide additional clubs and additional resources. Additional programming, I should say, for the after-school program. Notice, though, and really key is I want to point out the bottom line, For the last two years, this account has operated with a fairly large, several hundred thousand dollars of an annual deficit. So just last year, the account expended

and a few others. And just to be clear, lots of numbers on here, but the key point, the key takeaway here is that those annual deficits from the last few years have eroded this large cash balance. At one point at the end of fiscal year 23, it was about $1.29 million. But because this summer the account was already expending more in this fiscal year than it was bringing in, that's what brought this account into a deficit. So the next slide is, so that last slide was looking in the past. This slide is looking forward. So this is a three year forecast. I presented a version of this a couple weeks ago at the finance subcommittee meeting. We're mostly focused on fiscal year 26 for the intents and purposes of tonight.

But I highlighted three cells because those have changed a little bit based on some new data that I've gotten from the community schools team. So first, up at the top, you see, again, this table is structured similar to the last one. Revenues at the top, expenses, totals on the bottom. Notice that the tuition for fiscal year 26 is highlighted in green, and that is because when I first ran these projections, we were looking at data, tuition collections that we've gotten in early September and late August. And actually in the subsequent weeks, our tuition revenues have been healthier. We've actually collected more money than we were anticipating back in August and September. So I revised the tuition forecast for this year upwards. I also had to do some revising of salaries just based on the talk with the community schools team. We did a more in-depth staffing report for them and we wanted to make sure that there was enough in there to account for some vacancies that currently exist.

and then I also revised downward on the expense side the contracted services this was according to director Parabello they're going to consolidate some clubs and some classrooms that weren't you know highly utilized to sort of We were projecting a couple hundred thousand dollars of a deficit a few weeks ago if we ran this account just as it currently stands, but as of today, better news, we're only forecasting a $32,000 and so on. So again key point here is the community schools account If we just leave things as is on the revenue and expense side, this account will continue to have a deficit, and that deficit will actually grow in the coming years as salary expenses sort of outpace revenue growth.

So we have a couple of options for how we can solve this, and I'm going to pass it off to my colleague, Ruth Santos, and she's going to talk through those. Oh, actually, sorry, I have one more slide just to sort of recap this. I forgot. Thank you, Erica. Okay, so just want to make sure that I'm very clear about what I was talking about and just to sort of highlight the starkness of this situation. On Friday, October 6th, this account had a deficit, a negative balance of about $213,000. As of today, On October 20th, the account is back in the positive, which is good, but only sitting with $84,000 in cash. That is a problem because tomorrow we will post our biweekly payroll for community schools. which is around $125,000 a week that is going to take that account back into a deficit. We're working with the city. The finance folks at the city have been fantastic and very supportive. They're allowing us to run this account currently with payroll in a deficit. because they know, they trust that we're going to get the situation solved.

But we cannot continue to charge goods or services which means we have a couple of requisitions from community schools that are currently on pause. Because I need to make sure that we actually have the cash in that account to fund it. We have a couple of stopgap options to fund goods and services that are really, really critical, but it is really urgent that we get this account cash flow fixed immediately. And so just to underscore that we really have to raise revenues in order to meet the growing expenses of community schools. We have a couple of options. We've laid them out and I think Ruth is going to present those now.

Next slide, please. So as I shared, we have doubled enrollment and doubled financial aid over the last five years. And as Bobby shared, this has left us with a situation that we need to rectify. and what I wanted to highlight that anytime we've been talking about so anytime we've had conversations on how we could rectify this family's well-being has been front and center We are well aware, for example, December and January and November are financially challenging months. We made a commitment to not raise any fees before the second half of the year, which would be the 23rd of January as we go into the second semester. That also allows us to give families sufficient time for a heads up to be able to plan for any changes in fees and to make sure that communication goes out clearly

and that they have time to come to community schools if they're concerned about the fees or if there's anything that they would like to address. and we're going to propose a couple of possible solutions that we think support the financial needs of community schools, will minimize hardship, but also reflect the equity that we have of Equity of Access that we've been trying to operate under in community schools. Next slide. So the first option is to raise prices for full-cost tuition by $20 a week. Just to reiterate that would be for the full cost tuition and anybody on a sliding scale their costs will be raised proportionally and anybody who is not paying would continue to not pay. If we did that we would not have to borrow anything from local budget to close out the year. It would bring us closer to what our partners in the city are charging.

At the moment we're below what partners charge and we're below the average state cost for It would allow us to finish the year with a projected surplus of $286,000 and give us a good projection of revenue for next year if we were to continue at that same cost. The cost of families works out at about $4 a day, and for the remainder of the school year, if we were to start on January 23rd, it would be a total of $360 for somebody who's paying full cost. And the next slide, please. The second option is to raise costs by $15 a week. Again, that's proportional if you're paying on a sliding scale. If we were going to do that, we would need to borrow around $100,000 or a little less from local out of school time budget to cover immediate costs. It still brings us up closer to being in line with what other partner programs are charging.

They also offer really great scholarships and sliding scale for families. and it may need us to trim some of our free programs maybe on a temporary basis. It does allow us to finish our year with projected surplus of 203,000 so we still have a buffer zone but not as much as we would with the 20 It adds up to about $3 a day for families. Bobby prepared a slide for us that has, it's the last slide, I believe, Erica. that has the incomes and expenses predicted for FY26 and where that would leave us at the end with the two different options that we're proposing of an additional $20 a week and an additional $15 a week. and we're happy to hear any thoughts or answer any questions that you might have.

Okay, thank you for that. I have Mr. Green and then Dr. Ackman.

First of all, thank you for this thorough explanation of the challenge for us. And so my first question is a pretty informational one. And the numbers seem to bring this out. If I remember correctly, we haven't raised tuition since 2018?

Through you, I believe Adriana can speak to this. It's very minimal.

So good evening to everybody. It's been like a couple of dollars every year, so it's very minimal what we have raised every year.

So the last real adjustment, because parents were upset about it and I had to deal with it, was I think 2018 when we created the current sliding scale. And so my question that I don't answer right now is, the 2018 adjustment made the scale, raised the top end of the scale and made it more progressive. Have we considered something along those lines again where we might just Especially if we're still below other subsidized, intentionally low-poverty programs, have we considered raising even more and increasing the subsidies and the scholarships to compensate?

Can I answer that? Yeah.

So it's a great question. I think that one of the things that I mentioned in there is that I think we really have to dig in and do a deeper analysis of every aspect of the program, but particularly around the financials. I'm not involved in the day-to-day operation of community schools, so it's really difficult for me to say this is the number that will get us to where we need to be, but I think things like that are all part of this deeper financial analysis that we're hoping to do.

Dr. Ackman? Thank you. Through the chair, I think this is to the district, not to the people presenting. If I remember correctly, The administration came to us last academic year asking about a raise for community school staff. Is that correct? Okay, so I remember point blank asking this question, whether we were concerned that this would lead to a need to raise tuition. And I recall receiving reassurances that this was not a concern. you know I understand that you know historically we haven't raised these rates for a while I am I'm concerned with a dramatic mid-year adjustment for families.

I appreciate doing it thoughtfully, but I approach this with trepidation and I'll admit frustration because I'm I have looked and haven't found the presentation yet, but I'm pretty confident that less than a year ago, I was assured that this wouldn't happen.

Through the chair. So, yes. And I think that the last time that we show a surplus of a million dollars, that was my first year. We had the infrastructure that we had. We had a CFO who never got into the revolving accounts. And that was part of the gap. If you look at how The numbers were also carryover from year to year. It basically masked the fact that there was a running deficit. And then on top of that, You have increases of $300,000, no, close to $700,000 year after year in salaries. I totally agree with you. There's no world in which we don't see a gap like that without having some questions about what happened. So I share your frustration.

I also hear the question around is this going to have an impact on families at this point? Yes, and we have an immediate challenge in front of us. Again, we have a new CFO. The question about revolving accounts has never been managed at this level. and I am confident that moving forward this is a total different conversation that we're having. There is a second conversation about what is the future of our out-of-school time and how do we reconfigure the entire thing. I think that that's not for tonight. But yes, I share your frustration.

If I could respond to that, I also appreciate that frustration. One of the first things that I did was to try to dig into the historical nature of this. and we did find some old presentations and again I don't think it's helpful to throw blame at any particular person but you know the district can only I think make decisions based on the information the best information that they're provided we did find some old sort of financial reports from community schools that We're sort of inaccurately counting a carry forward balance as new revenue each year. So when you're looking at those statements, it does look like each year revenues far exceed expenses. But when you dig a little closer and you sort of really get into the nitty gritty of the account, you recognize that like we actually should not have been accounting for that carry forward as new revenue. So I think that's part of the reason why maybe we didn't have all the information necessary to make the best decisions. Barish.

I echo Dr. Atkins' frustration and also want to express gratitude that we are getting to the bottom of it and that we're looking for solutions. I am concerned about the impact on families and I'm also just curious about what our contracts with families say. Can we, in fact, increase tuition in the middle of the year?

Hector, Sol.

and the registration it doesn't really says anything about increasing but it doesn't say that it will not be you know so it's kind of not in there at all in my understanding.

Thank you, Chair, through you. I want to echo the appreciation to Dr. Barretta and the FIN team for bringing Some clarity and a spotlight onto this issue before it became an absolute emergency. I also want to share Thank you to the mayor and the city for working with the district to make sure that we have the resources that we need to be whole. The reality is that our district is very socioeconomically diverse and that community schools is an excellent value at the current rate families are paying. and at $20 more a week.

I am positive that we will approach the fee raise as you described it, pushing it to January I think is a really that's different I think than what we had heard earlier in in subcommittee and I'm grateful for You postponing that because I think a January timeline allows families to get a better glide path and is this going to be reasonable for us? So I'm appreciative of that effort. And if we are going to increase the fees, and I support doing that for the fiscal health of the community schools program, that we aggressively

I really think we need to be mindful about Finding those families that may need that additional help. So my personal preference is to do the $20 a week increase. and those families essentially what we're saying with that is those families that can afford it will be subsidizing those that can't. I am also really leery of Cuts to Programming, especially free programming that benefit mostly or most benefit those who rely on free programming. That's where my mind is leading me at the moment. So it's not a question, it's a statement, thanks.

Okay, I had Mr. Davis, then Mr. Green, and then Ms. Barish. Mr. Davis.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just echo everything that my colleague just said. That's pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Doing some quick back-of-the-envelope math, and I won't cite my numbers because then you'll all know that I probably did the math wrong, which is usually what How it goes when I try and do math. But looking at the numbers on the slide, looking at what I came up with on back of the envelope, This still seems like relatively really small dollars for what we're providing and I completely agree with the with the feeling that My initial sense is that there probably is very, very likely the capacity for folks to be able to pay that extra $20 a week. It's an excellent question about the legality and I hope that we'll have someone with a lot of grief look at the

Let me just say more generally, this, you know, Increasing funding for after school specifically and for out of school time generally has been one of the most commonly raised budget priorities by my colleagues on the City Council for years. And that has happened, in fairness. You know, credit to the administration, that has happened to a degree. I understand, you know, sounds like there was just some Some circumstances that led us to this point. But as one of 11 councillors, to the extent that there's, not that we've got a lot of extra money floating around in the budget these days, no municipality has, This is a very important resource that we provide the community.

It's very important to, and I'll speak for my colleagues, based on our budget priorities that have been submitted in the past few years, So, you know, to the extent going forward, you know, please don't hesitate to consider that in the analysis too for how to, you know, how to plug these holes long term. I, through you, Madam Chair, want to, well, I'm not asking a question, but I'll also just I want to echo what Mr. Green noted, which is that it strikes me that there may well be, and I understand your desire to want to sort of dig in a little deeper first, There may well be room to increase the top end even more. You noted that the $20 per week increase on option one would then be sort of There would be a corresponding proportional increase for folks who had subsidized tuitions.

At some point, it gets harder for the folks, even if it's proportional, right, as you work your way through that list. Looking at the raw numbers and particularly given the community partners numbers, I would definitely encourage you to take a look at and consider whether there's maybe more maybe not and maybe it isn't this year because right it's the middle of the year but I you know my sense is if someone came and said we're gonna continue this great after-school program but we're gonna need to ask a little more on the top end so that everybody can participate That is not only the right thing to do for our community, and I think reflects our community values generally, and I would hope that my constituents and others in the city would fully understand and be on board with that. It also makes the experience richer for everybody there, that we could have everybody in the community participating. You know, it's...

Hopefully there's a way to do that and continue to make this available for everyone because it is a really, really important and valuable asset or experience that we provide for folks, for the kids, for families. Particularly for folks who really, really depend on it during the school year. So I would lean towards option one, and then if there's an option one plus, then encourage you to come ask us for that too. Thank you.

Green, and then Ms. Barish, and then Ms. Stone, and then Dr. Phillips. Mr. Green.

I'll keep it short because President Davis hit basically in his last comment what I was going to say, which was We should be looking for every possibility and every way we can to make the permanent fee structure as progressive as possible, raise the top end, put in more subsidies,

I had this bearish. I'm just wondering if any of this has already been communicated to families in any way or if the sort of finance and facilities meeting and now this meeting is the only way that families would have heard about it at this point.

Yes, that's correct. We haven't discussed it with families. purposefully built in this timeline so that we could do some clear communications in November and allow time as well for families who may have concerns or may not be able to meet the price raises to be able to come to community schools and talk about that which they can always do. at any time. Yeah, go ahead.

The Chair and I just want to give a lot of credit to my colleagues right because I'm looking at the numbers a couple weeks ago and I'm like we need to raise tuition immediately like November 1st like two weeks ago tuition and everybody was like Take a deep breath, Bobby. Recognize we have a lot of families in this district that could experience some financial hardship. So I just want to give the team a ton of credit for instilling that sort of equity mindset and trying to really prioritize families. So this, to your point, this is the opportunity to sort of raise this issue and communicate it to folks well in advance of that.

Ms. Patel. Thank you, through you. Just quickly echoing, we saw this at finance and facilities. You've evolved the presentation, had more updated data, which is super helpful. I don't want to minimize the fact that we're talking about I know it's $20 a week but it's like a 13% increase like that is something so I just want to name it at the same time I also believe that with my colleagues that there's going to be many families that will comfortably absorb it. Not every family will be able to do that. And I guess what I'm, and I also love the idea of sort of expanding and thinking bigger picture about what the model could look like and is there a higher end I don't necessarily think that's a January solution that might be for next school year but I would trust you guys to make that choice because the bottom line is whether it's 15 or 20 dollars I would trust

I think we should do something for January but what that number is I think I would trust you to do that because you'll be able to make the judgment about what we might have to lose or take away and whether or not that's you know a loss we don't want to have It almost goes without saying, but I will say, is that I hope that through this process the goal is that no family unenrolls due to cost. like that should be the and I know that is and I just want to because I know this team and so I just wanted to name that is that you know there should be no family that says I can't do this anymore because of this cost change and you know obviously that's gonna be a lot of work for the team and I just also want to name that and appreciate that you're gonna spend a lot of time fielding a lot of phone calls receiving a lot of emails and and there's an administrative cost to this change so I trust you also to decide again if you want to make a

considering the model like bigger picture based on President Davis and Mr. Green of saying hey we're going to charge some other people more I would support that as well but again I think maybe that's a September thing but I trust you so thank you it's so unfortunate this is the situation I know that wasn't anybody's intention or you know to to hide this and I'm really glad that it's public and we can move forward with it and solve the problem thank you

I just wanted to quickly flag and then I have Dr. Phillips, Dr. Ackman, and Ms. Barish. that whatever decisions get made when we're communicating it to make sure we're highlighting that part of the reason this happened is because we did increase salaries. and I think it's important that we're naming that because that's a good thing and that's something people in the community have talked to us about a lot is the need to do that so I just think it's important as we're communicating that that we keep that in mind okay so I had Dr. Phillips

Thanks through you chair um so i guess right Like many of you, I feel responsible for this deficit, right? We're the people who voted to increase salaries without realizing what it was going to do to the bottom line budget. And I guess I don't feel good about saying to our community, we screwed up and now you pay. Now, I am okay having everyone pay a little bit, but this feels like a big burden to me when every cost that every family pays for seems to be rising. and I guess we are here debating between the two options and the district has done a great job of presenting these two options to us and I think we haven't talked about our Free, a couple times a week, programming that we offer at schools.

I know we talked in here a little bit about polling Some from that in the option at $15 a week. But I guess I'm wondering, like, what are the trade-offs? How much money is allocated to programs that are not fully running? Like I guess where I sit is that I Don't know what that one-off sometimes during the week programming does for our kids. Thank you for watching! who at the end of the day are responsible for this deficit. So that's my position, lower than $15 a week. Dr. Ackman?

Thank you through the chair. I hope this isn't getting too far into the weeds, but sort of keeping in mind, especially Ms. Pitone's comment made me think of There may not be families who unenroll, but there may be families who go from a full week down to three or four days potentially for cost reasons, you know, if they can cover one or two days. I say that because I assume, you know, should we vote to raise that we all hope that doesn't happen. But I guess my question is like how conservatively Are you accounting? Because like, Let's just say that 20% of families with that raise go from full-time to part-time.

Are you accounting for those things, or is this just a one-to-one analysis, assuming that all families are going to keep going? you know we've talked about 15 and 20 but maybe we consider 18 or like the district does I agree with Ms. Pitone's point that like you know you can consider what's best and I asked because like, I know this wasn't you, but this administration has come to us and told us that like, The finances for community schools were secure and so I personally am skittish. So I just want to understand sort of like The $20 mark, the $15 mark, how conservatively are you analyzing it so that we know where the wiggle room is, I guess, for lack of a better way of putting it?

Yeah, that's a great question through the chair. So when we first did this analysis, I think we were trying to, like, You know, we uncovered this and I was like, oh, we got to move pretty quickly on this. So I was trying to use some, you know, what did we collect in a week and then use that to forecast forward. More time that I've had, the more data that I've gotten from the community schools team, I've been able to dig in. We were able to disaggregate all, I want to say, 998 students into all of the sort of various tiers that folks are paying. and Truthfully, the vast majority of families are paying the full tuition price. There are some four day, there are some three day, but the vast majority of people are paying the full tuition price. So when we tried to forecast the revenues and even the salaries, we tried to do so I don't know if I have a barometer for how conservative, but we tried to bake in some cushion there. That's why best practice is to really have two or three months of cash reserves. and many more. We are very proud to be accrued in an account like this because the revenues are a little wonky.

When we're on break we don't bring money in. Over the summer we bring much less money in but the costs are fairly consistent all year. I think we feel I feel confident about the way we projected the revenue increases and what they would do and you know even if a certain percentage of families decided to Well, actually, we can't afford this. We're going to drop down to three or four a day. I think the way we have it, the way we have the analysis structure, we would still have enough wiggle room to get through this year without any deficit.

I had Ms. Barish. Thank you through you I just want to point out I guess that if That we need to plan really soon for next year too because we need to be able to tell families when they're enrolling what it's going to look like. I'm sure that's on your radar. I'm sure you're already working on it, but I just wanted to remind all of us that we're talking about I think as Mr. Green and others have pointed out, maybe it's a different plan for September of 2026. I mean, we're basically there. I feel like it's November, right?

And I had another question, if I may. Do we need to vote on something? What's the depth that the district needs from us here?

Through the chair. So the price adjustment is one that we wanted the school committee to be part of that discussion and vote on that.

But we don't have to vote on it tonight? I mean, can we have it on the agenda for our next meeting?

So two things. One is through the chair. I just wanted to highlight that we wanted to be as transparent as possible as soon as we found out. As soon as Dr. Breda brought this to my attention and said, we'll bring it to the finance team, we don't have all the facts, but I'd rather err on the side of being too early. So that's the premise of this. The second piece is, I think as a community, we have significantly increased the number of non-paying accounts, more than double them. We have also increased the number of, we eliminated a lot of the waiting list and we also engaged in a contract that we provided more fair paying wages to folks. And we are much lower than our district providers. So I think we cannot have it all.

And I think that I wanted you to be confronted with the fact that actually someone said to me, well, let's go to the city and ask the city. And that's an option as well. But I think that we have to be honest about the fact that there are many things that we're offering and it has to come from somewhere. Now, I hear the question about can we actually use a scalpel to identify what is the right cost that someone can pay in an ideal world that will be magnificent. But we have some constraints around that. And I know many families who have come to me and said, listen, I can pay more. And many families who have said, like the Padres Latinos have been a strong advocate and say, Whoa, let's work on that. So it's not like we are working in a vacuum. We will definitely go and identify what are the places where we can actually identify What is the right balance of that? But in the aggregate, the number that we're looking for that would allow us to have a balance is that. Back to the question, are we voting tonight?

I think we wanted just to share the challenge that is in front of us and the number that would bring us to kind of a balance, a surplus. We can think about other options in terms of the possible universe of the right target for each group, but that's going to require time.

Mr. Davis and then Mr. Green.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So my first question, I think the Superintendent just answered it, but just to be clear, Has there been a discussion with the administration, with the mayor's administration, about assistance to help fill the gap for this year? To Ms. Phillips' sort of point, there's, you know, We, the city, made a mistake, and so there might be some logic that we, the city, collectively could help fill that gap rather than putting it directly on the families. I don't want to put words into this fellow's mouth, but that's... that's what I was thinking when I was hearing that and so you know is that sounds like that hasn't happened if that's correct through you and if not you know I mean I think you kind of already spoke to that but you know to me that sounds like I sort of spoke to that concept generally in my first comment, but let me be more direct about it. I would vote yes if there was a way to find the money for this as a city council member.

Through the Chair, so that is a good question and one that you know I discussed with the Mayor. She was also as surprised and as unhappy that you are is what's going on here. We have showed a commitment to out of a school time we have provided money and why is this happening and i said yes you're right however I think we need to make sure that this body grapples with the challenge that we have even if at the end we decide we're going to go back to the city and ask for more money. But I just want to make sure that the community knows that we have made significant investments and we need to be clear about the fact that something has to give. Whether is the city provides money, but it's not a question that I have raised to the mayor yet on that, or we discuss what is the right pricing for this program that we are offering.

So in my mind, I think we also have to make sure that the community understands that we have made significant adjustments and we have basically raised our fees very minimal. and in a period of close to seven years.

Mr. Rehm. Thank you. I want to start actually by acknowledging that this is not actually a new policy. When I first came on the school committee, community schools, after much pushing and prodding, revealed a multi-million dollar surplus which is equally inappropriate for a revolving account. So they were instructed at the time It was a small program that really only served people who know. So we instructed them to expand the program and expand the subsidies. They did that. That being said, In 2018, when we last realized the schedule, it's because we noticed that really, in fact, it was still over a middle class subsidy.

It is still, in a lot of ways, overwhelmingly a middle class subsidy. ESH, and IMCA, both of whom also run at a loss. Both those programs make their profit up by fundraising. So, If we are committed to this being a revenue-neutral program, prices have to go up. I don't see how we can avoid that reality. I'm okay with that, and the same way I was okay with it when we did it last time, because again, over a majority of the recipients are paying the top of the scale. So, And what we found from the last time was there were people who chose not to because they were only doing us opposed to private options because of our price.

But there were very few that at the top of the scale couldn't absorb it. I firmly believe we should do everything we can to make sure that if people exist this time, we take care of them. but I want to be clear that we are not talking about a program that overwhelmingly serves our most vulnerable students. I also want to be clear that we don't make the mistake that student organizations make of blaming the people in the seats for problems they inherited. I want to commend Dr. Carmona actually for his commitment to making sure the problem stopped with him. But the decisions we made based on faulty information were still the right decisions. It is right that we pay. We have the highest standards for community school employees of any District around us. We require BAs.

We require all these things. It's right then that we pay them adequately. I'm not going to apologize for paying people what they're worth. We have the lowest tuition of comparable programs around us. If that's a problem we need to fix, we should fix it, but let's not pretend that we are trying to gouge people, we're not. So again, I would support whatever plan you come up with at our next meeting. I do believe in coming out with a vote on that plan. I think we need to own any tuition increases politically. and I am desperately hoping that in our commitment to stopping this problem going forward that we really look at What we can expect people for whom market rate isn't a problem to pay and build a subsidy system accordingly.

And if that means that people who can choose private options, some of them choose private options, maybe that's okay. Maybe we need to think about what that means for us as a program.

Through you chair so that would be us voting on this on November 3rd and is that gonna cause you guys big headaches or problems to wait another two weeks before a decision is made?

I think it allows after tonight the community will know a little bit what we're talking about so the conversations start happening and I think if we have the communication all ready to go with the final numbers immediately after that day that would

I think we would all feel more comfortable waiting a few weeks so that we can hear from constituents as well. Okay, so if there's nothing further, this will be on our agenda again in two weeks. Okay, thank you. Dr. Carmona.

Thank you. Through the chair. So as you all know, I'm going to switch to the work of the competency determination that is, I believe, is in your packets.

Dr. Hahn, before you continue, do you want to take things out of order so that in case people have questions for Dr. Barreto while he's still here? Yes. We can do this. If that's okay with you.

Absolutely.

Okay, so we will take things out of order if no one objects and do the, it's the first item under new business. which is approval to pay outstanding FY25 special education, FY24 student services invoices using FY26 funds. And since we have Dr. Baratta here, I thought we would take that up now. Do you wanna give us a quick... F.Y.I. as to why we're doing this?

Sure. So briefly, I think with the special ed outstanding invoices from last year, what happened I think in this situation P.O.s were open for these services, but they were closed prematurely, such that services were being billed after the P.O. was closed, and so The money that would typically have been allocated and then carried forward to pay these invoices in the current fiscal year just wasn't there. This happens frequently. We get invoices. At the end of the school year, sometimes even into the next fiscal year, but when the PO is kept open because we know we're expecting those invoices, we're still able to pay them with the prior year's carry forward balance. In this situation, it seems like maybe the POs were closed prematurely. and so you know the money that should have been encumbered from last year was not encumbered and we have to find another way to pay for it so we were looking at we have a I'm trying to recuse myself from this item

So we have a... Okay, so we have a... I think I presented this in the last subcommittee meeting. We have a dormant special ed account in our revolving accounts that had some funds remaining from a prior... Actually, I forget exactly what it was for, but we have money in there that we can use to pay these invoices. Certainly not ideal, but given the circumstance, probably our best option. The student services outstanding invoice from fiscal year 24. This was actually an email chain that just popped into my inbox. We basically got an email from BPS saying, hey, this student attended one of our schools. In fiscal year 24, but we actually never sent you all the bill for it. Not great. I was like, well, you're not gonna get paid, but I don't think that's actually an option. We have money in our current student services account.

that just in talking with the student services director that you know she thinks she has space to account for this in there so we feel comfortable paying for it from that and just you know again to take some ownership of this I think that one of the other things that I realized in the five and a half months that I've been on the been in the role is that we have to improve some of our processes for closing out POS all throughout the year I'm not sure that we were doing it in a really systematic and thoughtful way in prior years, so that's something that I've been talking with the team about and talking with various departments, especially the special ed department because they open up such a large number of POs throughout the course of the year. So something that, you know, we intend on doing a better job of this year.

I will entertain a motion and then also questions. I have a motion by Mr. Green, seconded by Dr. Phillips.

Mr. Green. When I saw this, and when you said now, it sounds like, and I appreciate, you know, needing to tighten up systems, we strongly do that, I'm really... you know without without comments in too much in the past I'm really glad to have CFOs committed to that um but it also sounds like this is one of those places where in our and this administration's push to be more transparent on fiscal financial moves this kind of thing probably happened in the past and the district just paid it without telling the school committee. So I appreciate More transparency. I appreciate the commitment to systems. I look forward to part of the season where I'm sure you'll tell us what those new systems will be so we don't ever have to do this again. Unless, of course, BPS just pops up and says, hey, we didn't bill you, but we're billing you now. And actually, to my question, can we say, nah, we're good?

Is that actually an option?

I haven't entertained that as an option, but I think, you know, in the best interest of being a good partner. And truthfully, the... Well, truthfully, too, the school where the student attended is a really great program. I think they do a great job for students, so we would want to support them financially.

Dr. Ackman? Thank you to the chair to build on what Mr. Green said. I would request that the district sort of Find out what our legal culpabilities are in situations like this. There's two years out is one thing, but they could come to us with something eight years old. You're doing great work. It is deeply appreciated. you know I I know we lean on our legal team a lot but I would like to know like what our legal culpabilities are so that you know should a similar situation with something that is eight years old comes in front of us we we know what what we have the right to say and Yeah.

Okay. if there are no further questions I have a motion by Mr. Green seconded by Dr. Phillips all in favor all opposed motion carries thank you for being here Now, Dr. Hamona, continue with your report.

Thank you. Thank you for the pause there. Makes sense. Thank you, Dr. Barrera. I will be kicking it over to Dr. Jessica Boston-Davies in a minute. I know that there is a policy discussion that is taking place around competency determination and so I will let her explain what is at the ask tonight, but she will give us a context for that as well.

Excellent, thank you through the chair. Okay, so last big thing, I think, is around competency determination. So the purpose of... My presentation tonight is just to go over what the requirements of our policy are. I'm not gonna yet share, I'm not yet going to share a policy, a draft with you and instead I'll share with you kind of The overview because it's a little bit complex. The timeline by which we learned everything because that was very tight and we're moving very quickly. and here any questions that you may have or thoughts that you hope we consider as we draft this policy together. So this is just to be a brief overview with more time over the course of the next four meetings if we need to. Okay? Thank you. Next slide please.

So just a quick background of what competency determination is. So this is the state level requirement for high school graduation that ensures all students have mastered A core set of skills and knowledge aligned to 10th grade standards. Following the passage of ballot question two, MCAS can no longer be used for competency determination. So because of MCAS, because of ballot two passing, we are no longer using MCAS. And last year, as you may recall, The school committee did pass a temporary one-year CD requirement while we waited for more guidance from the state. That was something that every district in the Commonwealth had to do. We had to pass a one-year policy in order to make it through the rest of the year and then we would wait for more guidance and we received guidance in July.

One more click please. Thank you. So in July we received guidance from DESE towards the end of July. In August There was a call with Rob Curtin, Mr. Rob Curtin, who is the head of data and accountability at DESE. And he talked to all superintendents and folks in roles like mine. We shared an overview at the end of August with the District, SHS, and Full Circle Administrators that would help us collaborate on the policy. So just to give you a quick timeline. So that happened at the end of August when everyone got back. In September, we had our first kind of call just to go through what is the ask in the same way that I'm doing right now. In October, here we are in October, just like two weeks ago, Rob Curtin joined the Urban Soups Network meeting from the state, from DESE,

and went over a question and answer session. There were a lot of questions from most of the urban districts that he went over and so now I am here before you sharing an overview. So I share that kind of timeline to say that this has been a very quick process. We have not been waiting around. We've been working on kind of Talking to the administration, getting some questions, getting some initial ideas, sharing with colleagues in other districts, and waiting for guidance from DESE and even its most recent guidance that we received two weeks ago. and as a reminder as I've already mentioned all districts are required to do this and the policy indicates that it needs to be approved by the school committee by December 31st. That's the language of the policy. Okay, so that's all overview background. This is a visual that we used last year just as a reminder. So the high school diploma has two criteria.

The first is the competency determination and the second are the local high school graduation requirements. They can neatly fit in one another, but those are the two things. One is the state requirement and the other are the local requirements. And this is something that you'll have in your packet just if you are curious to see the shift in language, which I have updated since last year. So here are the updated competency determination requirements. There are two requirements that students must demonstrate. Again, this is up to 10th grade standards. So the first is demonstration of mastery. and the outline of courses that I will present in just a minute.

Students must satisfactorily complete coursework. So I'll talk through in the subject areas indicated in just a moment. So I'll talk through what that means according to the language from DESE. So to show mastery, a student must successfully complete in accordance with the district's grading policy either final assessment for a course, A capstone or portfolio project or an equivalent measure as identified by the district's CD policy. It could be a combination of these things, it could look like a number of different Different ways to show mastery, and we've discussed them as a team, and essentially it will be decided locally. But we must have a demonstration of mastery. Thank you, Erica.

and to satisfactorily complete coursework, students must earn full credit for the following courses. Next slide please. It's the same, this is a table that comes straight from the DESE guidance. It's the same coursework that was measured by MCAS with the addition of US history. and these categories were also the same courses that we passed in our temporary policy last year with the addition of U.S. history. So two years of high school ELA, Two years of high school mathematics and they want it to be Algebra 1 or Geometry or its equivalent. One year of any one of the following sciences or technology and engineering.

And then starting for the class of 2027, there's also one year of U.S. history that is required. As I mentioned, this is one piece of the criteria and all of these things are already local graduation requirements. Just in case that's a question, we already require these courses for our local requirements MCAS at one time was meant to measure the competency in these coursework and so now we have to pass a local policy that does that demonstrates the same thing, even though these courses are already required in our local graduation requirements. Just some additional considerations. These are the things that the policy must have. Again, these were things that we did consider already and we are working as a team right now.

So obviously making considerations for students with disabilities and English learners. Considerations for students who may enroll late. A description of the limited instances by which MCAS can be used for graduation. The process by which a student needs to use to appeal. and the process by which a student may request a transcript or request a review and an appeal. And finally, just some points to consider. Students who met the CD standard prior to January 3rd, 2025, that is students who earned their CD by passing the MCAS. Retain that benefit. So they won't have to do anything different if they've already earned their CD.

Our goal, we've talked about this internally, our goal is to draft a policy that meets the requirements and meets the true spirit of the requirements. not trying to you know kind of cut corners here but meets the requirements but also allows for appropriate adaptability in the future. If needed. So we want to make a policy that meets the criteria but also allows for decision making at the school level as we believe is appropriate. We are also thinking about progression that is a different CD potentially for the class of 2026 as they are in their senior year right now. So we don't We want to make changes that would impact a senior in December or January of their senior year. So we are looking, and this is something that some local districts, I've seen some policies that have already passed or in draft form,

have already made, you know, a different policy or a different progression for class of 26, class of 27, and then class of 28 and beyond. And you will likely see that when we present a draft to you. and you may have heard this is recent news and so I just wanted to kind of put it on the radar in fact I heard it this morning on the news is that the state is considering revising graduation requirements so state kind of mandated graduation requirements that is different then thus then what we're working on for our competency determination so it may impact our practice in future years and we're we're not quite sure how but it was named even at the urban supes meeting So... That's it. That's the overview. Our next step is that at our next meeting on November 3rd, we, the district, in collaboration with many administrators, will present

will share a drafted policy for you with all of those considerations. But because this can be a little bit dense, even though I think the policy will kind of simplify things a bit, we wanted to just kind of get a first Take and hear any thoughts, questions, concerns before we go into our kind of full drafting mode. So that's it.

Great.

Thank you for that.

Ms. Piton? Thank you through the chair, Dr. Boston-Davis, for sharing this. I'm curious, is this a policy at the district level? I'm assuming it is. It's not a school committee policy.

This is a policy that the district will draft, but it needs to be passed by the school committee.

So it will be added to the school committee policies?

Yes. The language from the state guidance, if I may, through the chair, the language from the state guidance, I pretty much copied and pasted. It says the policy must be approved by the governing... Committee by December 31st. So it must be approved by the committee. And that's the language from the state. I will say that I have seen from neighboring or very close districts, I've seen memos go before the committee similar to how we did last year and then the committee has approved them.

Um, Dr. Atkins? Thank you to the chair and forgive me if I'm putting words in your mouth. My understanding is not do we have to approve the policy is that does it become part of like like the you know the letter like LBJ You know numbers like is it is that going to be part of our policies that then need to be revisited? Like is that what you're asking? Does that make sense? That may be a question for our lawyers.

Through the chair, yes, that does make sense. My assumption was that it would be, though there are other things that are approved by the committee that are not necessarily found in that index. So I do understand the question and I can find some clarity. Given that the entire state is doing this, I'm curious what some other districts are doing as well. So I will find that clarity very easily before our next meeting.

Dr. Phelps?

Through you, Chair. I think you all are the most innovative educators I know, so I know this is going to be a great policy, but I know the folks at MCIEA, the Massachusetts Consortium of Innovative Educational Assessment, are psyched to talk about competency determinations and how to do it. So I would hope that we are using our membership with them in this process.

Yes, thank you. I would just say yes, we are continuing to tap into all of our partners for support with this. Thank you.

Other questions? If there are none, we look forward to this being on our next agenda. So thank you again for that update. Dr. Carmona.

Thank you through the chair and I'm almost finished with my report. I have a couple of positive things to share. You have in front of you an orange t-shirt that was provided through the We are going to be celebrating Unity Day across the district on Wednesday, October 22nd. Unity Day is part of Bullying Prevention Month across the nation. and the goal is to foster an inclusive and welcoming environment for all. So make sure that you wear your orange on Wednesday to show your support. and also there was a question last time I was here about the donation that was given to the high school for the boots, the working boots. So I just wanted to share a little bit of that information. I was given a pair just to test them. They are wonderful. They are recycled, by the way. And it's quite a gift. So I wanted to acknowledge our friends at Brandt Workwear.

who provided an incredible gift of 700 pairs of high quality work boots donated to our CTE students. A big thank you to Brands Boots and kudos to our CTE team director Jim Hatchie and his collaborators for helping facilitate this tremendous gift. You know he's part of the regional CTE program and actually he's advocating for boots to be given to different, the entire CTE programs in the state. So he's working hard on that as well. So it's really an amazing gift and these are real working booths. They are quite impressive. So Bekurusu, The folks from this team as well as the CT program for pushing for this great gift. And that's the end of my report.

And just to clarify the facilities update, Danielle is going to come at our next meeting to talk about that.

Yes, they both will be coming, Daniil and our chief of staff, Amara Nozike.

Great. Dr. Ackman? Can I make a request that with facilities updates, we also get rodent mitigation

That brings us to a personnel report.

Is there anything you want to update us on? I do, thank you, through the chair. So we have a few retirements and a few promotions and new hires. So Andrea Pease, occupational therapist, after 30 years of service, she will be retiring. Sharon Levesque, she is the academic evaluator as well, 28 years of service, and we are very thankful for their service to our community. Also, we have a resignation after over 30 years of hard work. Mary Baxter will be resigning as the substitute coordinator for the district. Just the substitute coordinator, okay? I know, I know. She runs the building, yeah. And so just for that position.

We also have a promotion, Claudia Irieta Cerna, she is promoted to assistant director of El Sistema. She was formerly the administrative assistant for the same program. Parbari Rai, promoted to operations supervisor for food and nutrition. She was the former cafeteria manager at the high school. And we have a few new hires. We continue to hire substitutes, 19 in the month of September. And we also, yes... Really, given the nature of our contract, we really depend highly on substitutes to make sure that there's no loss in the continuity of services for students. We also have a new dean of students in the Elm community at the high school, Ella Quinn-Gonnell, so great new hire.

New Special Education Department Coordinator Jared Wickman and new Principal Clerk in the Guidance Office at the High School, Natalie Reacher. So congratulations to all these folks who are joining our team.

If there are no questions on the personnel report, I will move on to an approval of a subcommittee report to entertain a motion.

I move to approve the minutes from the Finance and Facilities Subcommittee meeting for October 8th, 2025.

Second. The motion by Mr. Biton, seconded by Ms. Barish. If there is no discussion, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That means we also need to approve the bill rolls for September, correct? All right, I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve the bureaus for September.

Motion by Mr. Green, seconded by Dr. Phillips. If there is no discussion, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to the MASC conference delegate and resolution. I did look it up and it's happening Friday afternoon of the conference. I am not sure I will still be there. I don't know if my colleagues who are also attending have any thoughts on whether they can be our delegate?

I can be.

OK. OK, great.

to name Mr. Green as the delegate and Ms. Pitone as the alternate. Great, I have a motion by Dr. Ackman.

Is there a second? seconded by Dr. Phillips. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. So the actual resolutions are in our packet if anyone has any thoughts on them. You can share them now. We can also have them on our agenda again at our next meeting to give Mr. Green and perhaps Ms. Fatone any guidance. So if there are any thoughts now. Yes, Mr. Biton.

Thank you, Chair. Through you, I was broadly supportive of the resolutions that were in the document. First one, removing BMI testing from schools. There are two... Therefore be it resolved. The first is urging the removal of the BMI screening requirement from all public schools. which I thought was well supported by what was included there. The second, be it resolved, urges the express banning of BMI screening in all public schools. and I felt that that might be more left open to the public schools so not something I felt The need to impose our judgment on, but I'm certainly open to other people's perspectives on that. Just giving my feedback.

So is that a, are you going to be moving to authorize an action or are you just giving that for consideration? Consideration. Okay, thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you for that. If there is no further discussion, again, we can have this on our agenda at our next meeting as well. So if anyone has any further thoughts, okay. That brings us to... and Superintendent of Summative Evaluation. Dr. Phillips, did you wanna start us off with that or?

Yeah, let me start you off and just share the process and then I'll turn it over to Dr. Carmona to react to it. First of all, Huge appreciations to all of you. It is a beast to fill out any performance evaluation and I really appreciate all the hard work that everyone did getting it to me. Thank you. Just to reiterate what I did with all of your documents. So everyone submitted a document to me. I created a big spreadsheet in excel one page is everyone's quantitative their ratings for every single piece and one page is the qualitative comments for everybody for the ratings There are a few, the form is hard, right? There's like a bazillion places where you're supposed to put the same thing and some people just forgot to put it in one place then another. So some of those I had to impute for you and I sent that back out to you to confirm I didn't screw up at all.

but once I had a score for everyone for everything we're taking the mode here you all may remember back the mean the median the mode the mode is the most frequent response so for every quantitative Did you meet your professional practice goals? We took the mode and in some cases there were two modes because sometimes there is. Fortunately we just got to check off both things. So that was the quantitative. and the qualitative what I did is I thematically code sorry I'm a qualitative researcher sometimes so I just thematically coded all of your responses Any time that more than two committee members had a comment on the same theme, it made it into the final document. The final document is all in your packets. It's our Carmona. End of Cycle Summative 2025 SC Combined 1017 2025 PDF. PDF! So that's where it is.

You can see it all compiled there. Erica has the full spreadsheet. I'm not quite sure if that has to go in the packet or just retained, but we have it. We have all of your stuff. You could take a look at that if you want to see how your comments ended up with everybody else's comments. But more importantly, I want to say a huge congratulations to Superintendent Carmona. because pulling this together felt so much like a celebration of so much work that you and your team have done Over the course of the past year and it's just incredible to see this ship moving in the right direction. So I'll turn it over to you to react and share anything you want.

Through the chair, thank you for the compliments and you definitely spoke like a true researcher. I don't know half of what you said, but I got it that there's a compilation here somewhere. This is what I'll try. So first of all, thank you. Thank you for two things. One, for really engaging in this process and giving me feedback. And second, for allowing this to be relevant. I know that when we met, Several years ago, one of the questions was, this is my first gig, and so what I wanted to do is make sure that the data that I get from you is similar to what we do with principals and educators. You give me feedback. I respond to that provide evidence and then we talk about it so what I wanted to do today is respond to your feedback and share with you places in which I

There are other data points that I have or there are places in which I just say thank you and yes, I'm working on this for the next level of that particular goal. So if that sounds like a plan and you're okay with that, I'm going to get on that. Again, thank you. As you know, we're talking about my goals are based on six indicators to a student learning goal. A professional practice goal and four district goals that you at some point said, hey, why do you do this? Why do you do this based on your interests and your goals and what you thought was pertinent for the district? So that's how we embark on those goals. I'm going to start from the beginning, the student learning goal. As you know, that has been the biggest priority in our system, as well as both

Dr. Jessica Boston Davis and myself we are truly educators at heart and this idea of making sure that we have systems to address our curriculum it was essential for us I you know in some degree we were fortunate that we It started at a place where the district was ready for that, and it was significant, overwhelming feedback that we got around the readiness in terms of That is going well. One of the indicators around that was to make sure that we have a cycle review that we could actually check implementation across the board. And that is happening. You saw that in my data. It was a document that has been created through the Dr. Jessica Boston-Davis team, the DILT. That is on 24-25.

The indicator for that, I believe the next level of that is the work that is happening through external providers that are coming into the district to say, yes, that implementation is looking good. This is an adjustment. These are the places where we can go. So I wanted to say that the next phase of that goal, the next level of assessment, and I know that The last conversation we had here during the special education meeting was can we make sure that our monitoring is actually strengthened to make sure that we actually have a good read on what's happening. So I know that TNTP is working with us to provide some feedback on fish tank, wit and wisdom, as well as illustrated math. And that work is happening through the lens of both classroom instruction,

We feel very confident that the next level of this work will not be just an implementation of and many more. Thank you. It will allow us to provide some data points from a third party and not just the district. So that's the student learning goal. The professional practice goal, as you know, is part of my professional development through the goal with NSIP. and I added a couple of other things to transcend as well as leading now. I think the next level of work needs to happen around the work of Working with principals. You know that the Barr Foundation will be part of the work that is coming here.

I also am working with John Saffier. So he, you know, wanted to focus on the biggest lever of Learning, which is supporting principals. You know, I know John from the past, and so we will be doing some kind of feedback around feedback that I provide to principals. So that's the next level of work in my mind. So I'm teeing up the next set of goals. And then the other goals around improvement goals, All of the goals again came from the context of our conversations and the feedback that I got from you. There is one about facilities and maintenance. That's one that, again, because of the work of Both Amara and Daniil Berry, we have been very

I guess impactful in making sure that that relationship with the city in terms of assessing the quality of the work that happens in the facilities is taking place in a systematic way. I'm very proud of that work that is happening through them. And I cannot take full ownership of that, but I have to say that as a team that was built up, and his work that is happening and is happening in a way that is it satisfies both The level of accountability that is needed toward the city and also the respect of the relationship that is to happen. And to do that you need to have a certain personality and you also need to have a certain criteria to be able to do that. So I'm really excited about that work. And yes, rodent mitigation is one thing that needs to happen, and we need to find ways in which we do that in a way more aggressively and more impactful, but that's part of the work.

The second goal under the district improvement goals was the one around communication. That work, as you know, SFLC has had, does the bread and butter that they really, Do a very good job reaching out to families, especially the families who often are not seen in our system. There is a next level of work around that. I think that as you know, Our website has been revamped, but it still requires a bigger design that will be costly as well. So that's the level of improvement around that goal. The third goal was around the out-of-school time. We know that that continues to be a pain point. But I want to highlight also the contributions that have happened in that field by both Summer Promise with Chris Hussman as well as Brian King.

They actually are part of a team that is addressing, we call it the steering committee, and Ruth Santos is part of that as well. There is a lot of work that is taking place and yet we also know that there has to be an adjustment both in, as you know, financially and also there's a larger question that has been part of the conversations here as to what is the future of out-of-school time. Many of you have approached me with questions about different ways and different models, and so all of those pieces have been weighing to determine how do we continue both the services to a lot of our families and also a stronger integration for students who need extra support outside of the school day. And the last goal is goal number four, which is the goal around diversification. As you know, the work that happens through

The people team, I guess, is one that I'm very proud of. Again, it's the merit of the team. They have been working on diversification for a while and the metric that we were using to measure that has been just developed so but I think the intent and the spirit of making sure that our employees are Have a sense of joy and commitment to the work is there. And retention also is a sign of that. So those are the goals that I have on that side of the ledger, if you will. There's also another goals that I am responsible for, like every teacher and every principal, is instructional leadership, operations and management, Family Engagement, as well as Professional Culture.

And that's what every principal, every teacher has to also be accountable for through the regular Department of Ed metrics. and I will address some of the highlights that you shared with me around that and the instructional leadership. I think all of you were very kind in identifying the DASA strength. There are a couple of things I want to highlight there. There is a portrait of a learner that I added in my goals that has not advanced We have a portrait of a learner at the high school that lives in somewhat of a passive way. I guess a positive way probably might be to not the right descriptor, but it's a document that still is trying to

The pivot that we made was around the middle school grade experiences. As we outline that goal and so the portrait of a learner will take a pause and we will be focusing on the middle school experience that is one thing, a point of feedback that I gather from most of you. and also one thing that we see given the K-3 ecosystem in which we are is something that is an immediate thing. We will be working with Amara and other members of the team The DILT also identified that as part of the goal. So I'm really excited that it has become part of a natural progression. and Goal for many different groups and so and at some point again we'll be coming to the community to get some feedback around that.

The other area of growth that is still being worked out and is in different places in different buildings is the work around X Block. That is one piece of, is a little bit of a complex and many more. Different schools are in different places around the X block. We know that that variance is probably not the best in terms of assessing or providing extra support for students, but that's where we are. So we're working with different buildings to make sure that we have Just one quick example I went to a building the other day and then there's a grade level that does the entire grade level does the X block as a grade level. And that allows you to maximize supports and also differentiate for kids.

There's other buildings in which it doesn't happen. Part of that is because of the structure. Part of that is also because of the social dynamics of teachers. Or part of that is the complexity of some of the students' profiles. So we are in different places. We are actually making sure that At least every X block is designed to support students, and we have instructional materials that allow us to do that through iReady as well. But that is an area of growth that I just wanted to convey to you that yes, We have made some significant progress in instruction and also there are places where we need to continue to strengthen that work. Along the management and operations, again, thank you for your Your comments, I think proficiency was what you identified. And again, the work that happens to the human resources team, as well as the work that happens to Amara and Danielle.

I also have to say the collaboration with the city in terms of the responsiveness is amazing. When the weather was an issue, I heard from most principals about how the buildings, how cold they were, and I got a response from DPW over the weekend they were, and then They got most buildings in line or with heat knowing that the district took in some Some instances precedence over the entire city. So I am very, very grateful for the responsiveness. And again, I want to highlight that part of this We still have to identify the best way to manage our 311 system.

is a point pain that we still need to identify and will be part of my continuous effort to make sure that there is more predictability on how we measure the 311 system. Family and community engagement, as I said before, the area of improvement is around our website. I think that family engagement, the work with Ruth Santos and her team also has shown a significant improvement. There are a couple of places in which we are thinking about having more access to families. We have talked about having office hours The food market experiences the families come in and get food. There's 300 to 400 families at one point, so we were thinking about maximizing my time to be available during those sessions.

Yes, I guess the gains and the systems in place are really allowing us to build stronger relationships with families and yet there are other places in which we can actually make more intentional changes and professional culture Again, very complimentary, thank you for that. I think that there is a place in that area that I feel the work that Chris Blinn does is phenomenal. I don't know if you're familiar, but we teachers have a catalog of professional development that is run by teachers.

One of the things when I talked to him about what is the next level of work around that he was hesitant to make any changes around that because he said that most teachers feel that they have a choice despite the fact that it might not be fully aligned with and many more. Thank you. There is a place in which we need to tighten a little bit the alignment around the experiences that the professional development that principals provide in the buildings. That is an area in which we need to have more consistency across the board. and so that's a point of a strength in terms of professional culture you identified that as a strength and I do think that the next level of work around that is more alignment especially around the professional development especially around the issue of psychomanguage acquisition and special education. I think that that is it.

I don't know if it made sense. I tried to basically do both a thank you and also yes, there is a place where we actually need to continue to go. and I always feel that feedback is something that everyone deserves and so thank you for the feedback you have given me and we'll continue to work on the things that we need to improve.

Okay, thank you for that. And I believe the committee needs to move to authorize me to sign this. I have a motion by Dr. Ackman seconded by Dr. Phillips to authorize me to sign this evaluation. Ms. Pitone.

Thank you through the chair. I just want to thank Superintendent Carmona for being so thoughtful and reflective about his experience and where the opportunities for growth are and acknowledging The work that has been done by the administration and the educators and I also want to acknowledge Dr. Phillips for her work in facilitating this process because I've done it before and it's not minor and it does take time and all my colleagues for participating in it. So just thank you to everyone.

Thank you for that. Is there any other discussion? If not, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to office hours. Reminder to send them to Ms. Barish.

Yeah thanks I was just gonna say that so far two people have listed their office hours and I think those are the same two people who have announced their office hours publicly so the rest of us should list our office hours on the document that I shared with you which in fairness I lost for a little while so if you need me to there were a lot of emails over the last few days. So if anyone needs me to reshare it or, yeah, okay.

all right thank you again for that and reminder to all of us to get on organizing those thank you okay that brings us to a motion to authorize the chair and the superintendent to sign the assistant superintendent of academics contract I have a motion by Dr. Phillips, seconded by Mr. Green. If there is no discussion, Yes, Dr. Phillips.

I'm sorry, I just need to say through you, Chair, how blessed we are to have Dr. Jessica Boston-Davis in this district. We are lucky to keep working with you.

Yes, I think this will be an enthusiastic. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to a side letter to authorize the chair to sign the side letter with the Somerville Administrators Association, the SAA, releasing the director of the Center of Career and Technical Education, CTE, position from the union unit.

So moved.

I think that was Ms. Barish and seconded by Ms. Pitone. If there is no discussion, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to some grants. I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve a federal strengthening career and technical education grant for the CTE programs in the amount of $79,366. and a state grant Metro North WIOA youth program to the SCALE department in the amount of $259,478.44. Second.

I have a motion by Ms. Barish, seconded by Ms. Pitone. Mr. Green.

Through you, can I assume that the bar grant will be before us in the next couple meetings since it's been announced publicly?

Thank you. So the bar grant happened to be on an earlier committee meeting, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. So it was actually an... We didn't, how do I want to phrase this? We shared it earlier than we were supposed to and the committee actually did pass it at one of our earlier meetings. Am I right, Ms. Garcia? And then we were told that we are going to have a communications plan. So unfortunately, we tried not to talk too much about it. But yes, it is official, and you have already approved it. Thank you.

Okay, so all in favor of these grants? All opposed? Motion carries. So that brings us to items from committee members. Does anyone have any items?

Ms. Pitone. thank you I'm probably going to do this most meetings but just reminding people about the ballot question about the Charter and I urge everyone to if they have an opinion about it to and others. This is regarding accepting a new charter for the city that will set us up for success as we move forward to also every 10 years evaluate and change the charter which we cannot there's no requirement to do that right now so even if you don't love every single item in the charter it sets us up for success moving forward so I just want to encourage people to learn about question one and support that

Thank you for that and also thank you for being on the committee that looked at that charter review because that was a lengthy process. Mr. Green.

According to the Charter Ballot Committee, we've all endorsed it, so. Yes. Similarly speaking, I think we all support it, so just the committee knows that.

But it's a good reminder for us all to tell our friends, so thank you for that. Okay, are there any other items from committee members? Seeing none, do we have any condolences this evening? I believe we don't. All right, we are adjourned, everyone.