School Committee Meeting - January 12, 2026

Good evening and welcome.

Can you hear me? Good evening and welcome. Sweet, thanks. It is seven o'clock and I am calling this January 12th meeting of the Somerville School Committee to order. We do a moment of silence and salute to the flag before, right? Alright.

Thank you.

Thank you, Superintendent. Will you call the roll, please?

Yes, through the Chair, President Davis, Member Piton, Member Lippens, Member Eldridge, Member Green? Here. Dr. Stellman?

Here.

Mayor Wilson? Present. Member Biton? Here. And Dr. Ackman?

Here.

So with nine members present, we have quorum.

Thank you. All right, item number two is report out of the school committee, student advisory representatives.

Yeah, hi, everyone. I know there's some new members here, so I just want to reintroduce myself. Hi, I'm Bhavika Kalia. I'm a junior at Somerville High School, and I'm one of the student committee representatives. Yeah, I think our fellow student, Representative Aiden, will be joining us shortly. So I can begin, but I'm not sure if we want to, if we should... If we can move around the schedule a little bit, just to... Sure, would you like us to wait? We can do public comment first. Yeah, that would be great, actually, yeah.

Okay, thanks, Babaca. All right, then we will come back to the advisory report ad and we'll go to public comment. Do we have? We have one. Okay. Okay welcome and thank you to those of you who have signed up for public comment speakers will be allowed three minutes to present their material however the chair may limit comments to two minutes based on the number of individuals that are signed up to speak Those speaking tonight will be permitted three minutes. Speakers should begin their comments by stating their name and address or in case of a district employee, their role within the district. The chair of the meeting after a warning reserves the right to terminate speech which is not constitutionally protected because it constitutes true threats that are likely to provoke a violent reaction and cause a breach of the peace or incitement to imminent lawless conduct Public comment is not a discussion, debate, or dialogue between the public and the committee.

Members of the committee will not reply to the public comment in the course of the meeting, though individual members may follow up and items from public comment may be taken up in future meetings. The school committee will not hear personal complaints about school personnel nor against any member of the school community in public session. Individuals may address topics on the agenda or items within the school committee's scope of responsibility such as the district budget, goals, and policies or the role of the superintendent. The public is encouraged to submit comments in writing for inclusion in the public record. So on Zoom, we have Ryan Williams. Are we set? All right. Ryan, please start.

Good evening. Ryan Williams, 47 Kingston Street, president of the Somerville Council of PTAs. I want to start by saying welcome and congratulations to our new and returning school committee members. Later tonight you'll be discussing out of school time. This is a topic that I've been asked to speak to and continues to be one that we hear about frequently from our PTAs. and our families across Somerville. OST and afterschool are essential for many families balancing the high cost of childcare and the escalating cost of living here in Somerville. They are a critical pillar of family and student stability. The social engagement and participation offered by these programs are part of addressing the whole child, and that is especially true for those who might have no other options for child care. I do want to start out by thanking Dr. Carmona and his team for making this a priority within SPS. Since the start of this administration, we've seen steady growth and expansion of programming. and Options for Families. This effort is noted.

This effort is appreciated. I also want to especially thank Ruth Santos and the SFLC and OST teams. for the outreach to the community and for being friendly and engaging partners on this and many other issues. However, we should all note that we still have more work to do. We have families at East Somerville and undoubtedly elsewhere relying on GoFundMe campaigns to cover after school fees. Families struggling to keep their spots. We often say that GoFundMe is Not a health care plan. GoFundMe should not be a child care plan either. I want to emphasize to the new school committee that OST and after school continue to be essential to our SBS families. barriers to access still remain we must work together to address these barriers we must understand where you have gaps in engagement and communication We must solve logistical barriers around space and staffing, and we must create a system that is easy and straightforward to navigate. I know there's hesitation about the district being in the childcare business,

But whether you believe this function belongs within SPS, it does sit within the district right now. And because it sits here, we have an obligation to make it work for all Somerville families. So please consider this context when discussing this later in the meeting. And on behalf of the Council and our member PTAs, we're offering ourselves as enduring partners. We appreciate the upcoming listening sessions. and beyond those sessions we hope they are the start to even more collaborative work on this topic so let's work to make the current system even better right now and then let's start that work to build a more sustainable model for the future thank you

all right thank you very much with that we conclude public comment we're going to move on to the school committee student advisory committee representatives

Hi, my name is Aiden for the new school committee members. I'm a senior at Somerville High and I am also involved in class office and Our new student advisory council, which is involved with the state, called the Massachusetts State Student Advisory Council. Do you want to introduce? Are you ready? Oh, OK. Sorry. So since we don't have much new since we're coming back from the break, I wanted to take this opportunity to bring up something that I thought is an important program that maybe we should start to think about, especially as we are getting into the midst of thinking about the class of 2030. So I've been looking at other public school systems and I've seen a lot of them have like a centralized eight to nine transition program.

and I just wanted to give a brief like layout uh quick it's not very fleshed out but um A template of what something like that could look like at Somerville High and what the benefits of having something like this may be. So first, there would be stuff that starts at the middle school level. We already have many of these supports. We have course selection that starts in middle schools right around this time. School staff like counselors help select or help inform eighth graders about what their freshman opportunities are. But I was thinking we could also supplement this with pre-orientation events that bridge middle schools and

Maybe some programming where high school volunteers can come in and share their own experiences, share what they think could help freshmen get a better start at the school. Babaca noted that high school students could also share about extracurricular opportunities because This year as we've noted, it's really ramping up and people are starting to get a lot more interested in what clubs, what sports we have to offer. So stuff like that where in the past students have struggled to find or feel engaged with. The second part would feature freshmen starting school orientation activities before classes start. So as someone who's looking at colleges, I was thinking of how typically freshmen at colleges have a week before classes start where they get to do orientation activities get to meet other students form those bonds

but obviously we don't have the kind of time that college freshmen do so instead of doing a week before classes where most people are still on break I was thinking that maybe we could try to find a way to Thank you for joining us. for creating that early community because as we already have a freshman orientation assembly on the first day, it's not really, It's not too structured. It's more of a slideshow presentation and then you go to your classes and you're just dropped in, which it's not a bad way to do it, but I think it could be done better. and then the final part would be freshman advising through the first semester.

We already have this year implemented a peer mentor pilot program which Bhavika is also a part of. She can give you more information about that.

Yeah, great. Thank you, Aiden. Yeah, just so continuing on with that eighth grade to ninth grade transition, this year, as Aiden mentioned, we had piloted this Peer Mentor Program where older students, specifically 11th or juniors and seniors, acted as peer mentors for the freshmen and educators at Somerville High School including Beatrice Thomas and Cynthia Massalon spearheaded this initiative and we had peer mentors leading restorative justice circles with the ninth graders during a block in their schedule but we did notice that there were some difficulties with getting involvement and engagement from the students and although we are really trying to ease in that transition a lot of students are just not Thank you.

Thank you. and our school our Somerville High School community and I think a big part of that is missing during that first week of school or just that early transition to school as a lot of students just don't feel like they're involved right away and just having like what Aiden was mentioning a more of a transition like during that first like those initial weeks at school really ensures that The freshmen and the rising students actually feel like they're a part of the community and they have a voice and they truly feel included. And another thing is that of course we have like course selection with eighth graders we have visits the zoom presentations there's different summer activities and a brief summer program and there's obviously the word of mouth that comes from other students and teachers

However, implementing a program to support freshmen would really set up these students for success in their upperclassmen years and, of course, for life on their own after. and something I've noticed as a junior is that a lot of my peers feel unprepared for post-secondary life and a lot of students have been struggling just because they haven't had that and many more. I think it's really important for students to have the opportunity to really become involved during their freshman and sophomore Community Service Hours or like internships and community projects and things like that but there's no one really there to mentor them and I really don't want that for the rising freshmen so I feel like Amplifying and really supporting that transition, support that. And of course as we know,

With the COVID pandemic there's definitely been this aspect of learning loss and even though we are coming out of that and rebuilding that it's really important to have stronger connections for students which we might not have deemed necessary before but I can speak from my own experience as a junior during post-COVID and going through that. I think it is very important to provide students with the support that they need that may not have been as apparent before.

and I just want to take a second to note how this really aligns with like what the Somerville High School Improvement Plan is where with With wellness and joy, it plainly states to enhance student community building opportunities. This would very plainly do that. I also feel that it would help with family engagement because I have heard from some families, it varies, but that some people don't feel like there's enough information surrounding the 8-9 transition and that they're going into it blind, like especially with athletics, they have to Track down the coaches and there's not enough messaging or clear comprehensive structure around it for some people who may be new to the system or maybe it's their first kid going into high school.

And I also feel that it would help with academic excellence because just being happier in the environment of school will help students do better because it's hard to do well in an environment where you're miserable. Thank you both.

Do any of my colleagues have questions? Uh, Member Stellman and then Member Biton.

Thank you for giving us this pretty excellent set of recommendations and your empirical data just from your lived experiences and from being Thank you for being part of the student council and for really being very compassionate and thinking about how to operationalize the visions and the promises that we make is really impressive. Pretty awesome. So I just want to thank you for that. And I just wanted to back up the data that you're talking about, your lived experiences, what you're seeing, and the ideas that you have are backed up by a lot of significant research. and you point to something really important which is that transition to from middle to high school but especially when it's not done well that's those losses just into ninth grade have a really significant

I love the ideas that you have creating connections and relationships between the upper level students and the lower the lower grades and I think that's really inspiring and excited to hear more and be of service

Thank you, Chair, for you. I second everything Dr. Stellman just said. This is a really lovely and exciting idea. I would love to the superintendent and the team would love to see How this could be structured and implemented and what resources would be needed if we were to go ahead and consider it. So I would love to see that follow up and really appreciate you bringing this forward.

Thank you.

Dr. Boston-Davis, do you want to?

Thank you to the chair. Thank you to our students. Powerful as always. Thank you. Some of the work that you named is happening. So we have, for example, some of the educators that they named are, well, one of them is a scholarship recipient for our PSI program. for the PSI program. So this is, I'm not gonna say the name of the scholarship correctly, Essentially, we as a district sponsor educators each year to pursue their leadership licensure, and one of our main partners has been PSI. and Peron-Sizer Institute, I believe is what it's called. I had to just think about it for a second. So we...

So Beatrice Thomas, who is also a Somerville High alum, is one of the educators that they named, and this is one of her problems of practice that she's working on as a project. So I'm so glad that she's partnering with students, partnering with Cynthia Massalon, who also has extensive training in restorative justice. And I also sat in on a presentation from Ms. Thomas. and Ms. Massalon on this. So I'm really, really excited. They're very passionate about it and I think they'll take some of these recommendations. In addition, last year, the district instructional leadership team which is comprised of educators and administrators across the district look at data together and kind of simply stated this is the arc of the year but we look at a lot of data together identify some district-wide problems of practice and form working groups to move those problems of practice forward. One of the four working groups last year was on this very thing, thinking about our middle school or middle grades transition to high school

So they did some initial research and made some recommendations, presented the district instructional leadership team presented to all admin in June. and now as a district we are leading a middle grades transition working group so a formal working group taking some of these recommendations taking the recommendations from the district instructional leadership team that's formed by administrators and educators and that's led by Amara Inasike, our chief of staff. So there are some structural things in place that were we agree that this is an area that we need to strengthen really appreciate the lived experiences and the amplifying it it's it's very very helpful and i If you have not already, I'm sure you will be tapped for some support with that. And so that's currently how we structured it. So I'm really excited to move some of that work forward.

Thank you, Superintendent.

I just wanted to first thank Babik and Aiden for the work. And I think part of the gap is also how do we communicate these processes that are taking place. Part of the strategic plan is to create a profile of a learner at the middle school grade or the middle school grade experience. and we again that's something that is going to take time I know there's a profile of the learner at the high school how much is that center in the daily experience of students is something to that we probably can do better But I do think that there are significant efforts at the high school to actually establish that transition. I love the idea of having high school students come down to the middle school. We have had those discussions with the high school, but it hasn't really I just wanted to again thank you for that and also just to this is a point of reflection for me as to how do we also advertise the things that actually

are trying to address the things that you're sharing, but haven't actually surfaced to the level of awareness to families and to students. But thank you for bringing that up.

We're going to go member Green, member Pitone, Mayor Wilson.

So first I want to echo all the thanks and all the support particularly hoping that if this is something that requires resources we can discuss it as part of the budget process because I think This is absolutely something we need to be doing. But I also want to make sure that you and the larger community knew that, first of all, we always appreciate hearing ideas from students, and that you are always welcome to do that. Thank you so much for being here. I hope that part of your role when you sit at these meetings is to bring us problems, bring us potential solutions, bring us things you think we need to be discussing more. Thank you, Tom.

thank you through the chair first thank you um i love that you are feeling more and more comfortable in this space of school committee and bringing ideas forward and it's it's really exciting so I just want to compliment you and urge you to continue it my question is more directly to the administration one thing I've been thinking about is you know we have different spaces of student leadership we have The School Improvement Council, we have the School Committee Advisory Group, we have student officers, we have student council, which I think is associated with the officers. I don't completely understand all the aspects of leadership that exist, but I'm curious about How as we move forward we want to systematize our connections through the administration to these groups and I know that you all are very sensitive to not wanting to overburden them but at the same time how do we loop them in as we're doing

So maybe this is something that administration can think about more formally and bring back to the school committee because the bottom line is we want voice. We want engagement from students. We also don't want to constantly pulling in the same people all the time. And I'm very sensitive to that because I know you guys have a lot going on. So just that'd be something really exciting for me to hear about.

Thank you, Mayor Wilson.

Yeah, thanks, Chair. And through you. Thank you so much for coming in and talking about this. It's a really important conversation. I see it as a key... As the parent of a new freshman at the high school who just went through this process, our oldest first time at the high school, it's not lost on me the degree to which we were able to just through our networks and connections connect Thank you. My daughter with so many resources for you know advice on on how to navigate it and whereas another family without those connections is just going through this and trying to figure it out on their own and so I think it's a Addressing this is a key way that we can just address equity in the city so I think it's a really important conversation.

Thanks.

thank you um i'm going to add in one of the things we had a meeting with the student advisory committee they were brilliant they as my colleagues had mentioned Was it January 7th we had that? I'm going to say it was January 7th. I hope that's correct. I want to thank you, thank your peers. They come with challenges as well as proposed solutions, which is just really wonderful for us as a body. And in any situation, it is deeply appreciated. I see you doing this with this proposal, and so I'm thankful. I do want to task, because you're the Student Advisory Committee representatives, and as Member Pitone mentioned, we hear from you, we hear from other high school students, but you know we as a district we as a body serve pre-k through 12 students so I loved hearing how you you know are thinking about the middle grades but

however you can be bringing in voices of of students across all schools throughout the city in the younger grades we you know look forward to hearing it you're you know more innovative than i probably will ever be so I'm confident in your ability to do it but I you know I love that you you are already doing it but I task you with you know continuing to think about all the students across the city Anything else? Thank you. That was a great presentation, very thoughtful. We really appreciate it. Shouldn't shut my mic off. Okay, we are moving on to approval of minutes. Do I have a motion?

I move to approve the minutes from the school committee meetings from November 17, December 1, and December 15, 2025.

Second.

Thank you. I have a motion by Member Biton, seconded by Member Green. I want to note for new members and for the public that this is our body voting to say, yes, these are the minutes. It doesn't mean that necessarily everyone was present previously and that everyone agrees that that was what was said it's just that these were the minutes that were presented to us and there's nothing glaringly incorrect about it um okay with that uh i have a motion i have a second all in favor All opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Minutes are approved. And we are moving on to the report of the superintendent, Dr. Carmona.

Great good evening Dr. Ackman and members of the committee. I am thrilled to be back here with you to begin 2026 with our three new committee school committee members as well as council president Lance Davis, and of course, our new mayor, Mayor Wilson. Welcome to you all. So this Wednesday marks the halfway point of the school calendar. And as we begin this calendar year, I want to pause and reflect on the progress we have made together and to share my excitement for what's ahead. Over the past year, we have seen meaningful growth across our district. Through the hard work of our staff, the resilience of our students, and the strength of our partnerships with families, While there is a lot more to do, I am energized by the momentum we have built through the strategic planning, and I am grateful for the committee's continued leadership as we look ahead

to another year of learning and opportunity so this includes our ongoing collaborative efforts with our families and community members Over the next few weeks and months, the district will be hosting a number of workshops and collaborative sessions to bring families and staff together for feedback and Conversation. These are opportunities for us to listen, learn from one another, and continue to build strong relationships across our school community. I encourage you to check out the new happenings page on our website for upcoming sessions on topics such as academic curriculum, the new school building project, multilingualism, and much more. We truly value working alongside parents and community partners as true collaborators in this work. Your input helps guide our decisions and supports our students so every learner can succeed.

So many of these upcoming discussions are strongly supported by the efforts of the SFLC. Which brings us to our first presentation this evening. Our community-facing initiatives are led by the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, the SFLC. Their work on behalf of students and their families has been instrumental We have reduced barriers, expanded access to resources, created meaningful pathways for families to engage with our schools and with one another. By intentionally reaching those who have historically been underserved, we strengthen trust, belonging, and equity across our district. Throughout the year, the team has continued its work to expand access to food markets at three schools and to support families impacted by immigration-related activity.

The importance of the SFLC role was especially evident during last year's period of heightened food insecurity which disproportionately affected families who rely on SNAP benefits to meet basic needs. With that, I'm going to welcome our director of SFLC, Ruth Santos. She's here with us tonight, and she's going to highlight these efforts to help ensure that every family feels welcome, supported, and fully part of our shared community. Welcome back, Ms. Santos.

Thank you Dr. Carmona and I'd also like to extend a warm welcome especially to the newest members of school committee and to Mayor Wilson as well. My name is Ruth Santos and I have the immense privilege of being The director of an incredible team of people known as the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, the SFLC. Most of you know SFLC. Many of you have had the joy of being part, I think, of some of our early childhood programs. You've registered your own children for school, you've helped other people register for school, and you've come across much of the deep work of our staff in the public schools. Next slide please. So this slide just gives an overview of the work that we do in more or less chronological order. You'll be hearing separately from two of our offices later on in the year. So the Office of Basic Needs and Housing Support Services and the Enrollment Office will be presenting separately.

We'll give a little light overview of them tonight and have a look as well at some of the other pieces of our pipeline. Next slide. So, the Enrollment Office. Simone Braga is our new-ish Director of the Enrollment Office, and she's a great example of the workforce pipeline that we strive to create. She was originally a home visitor. She has been an enrollment specialist herself. She was the registrar at Somerville High School. and she's returned to us in the role of enrollment director. We're thrilled to have her. She and her team are deep in the throes of pre-K and K registration. We've been open a little over a week right now. and I believe we're at 95 pre-K registrations and 195 K registrations, which is about 50% of capacity in six days. So you can see the level that they're working at.

This week we opened in-person support for registrations at the TAB. We are booked out throughout the week and the Enrollment Office will also be going out to the community and helping families that need additional support at the East and at the Capuano as well. So they have two full days helping people on the other side of the city. The quote on the slide is indicative of how much a warm smile and a helping hand can change a person's experience. We always have great feedback anytime we go out in the community to help people understand a little bit more of the process. Next slide please. So pictured here are Regina Bartholdo and Jen Ochoa, who between them run our basic needs and housing support services office. It's an incredibly innovative office helping with stability,

for families throughout the district we know that stability is fundamental to family success and their work is incredible in terms of how deep it runs and the outcomes for students The slide gives an overview of their work and their community collaborations, and I'm sure you can imagine the magnitude of the additional challenges that they've had to face this year in terms of supporting families with basic needs, You can look forward to diving a bit deeper into their work a little bit later on in the year. They'll have some statistics and some stories to share with you about how wonderful their work has been this year. The next slide. So we turn our attention to the rest of the SFLC work, which begins very collaboratively and intentionally in early childhood. We believe in partnering with families before their children

We can then provide warm handoffs and we're a resource for families who are trying to learn about what all of this means as they take the next big step with their families. And the next slide. All of the work that I'm going to talk about for the next two slides is funded by the Coordinated Family and Community Engagement Grant for a total of $350,000. It's been flat funded now for 10 years. We've had no increase in that. And the work that Fernanda Villar, the director, does and her team is truly nothing short of a miracle. They keep all of the programs in place and still somehow manage to do more. We offer a huge variety of free programming, multilingual playgroups across the city, parent support groups and some fantastic workshops. Next week we have

A Tufts professor offering a really interesting workshop around bilingualism and language acquisition in early childhood and we'll offer that in English with interpretation but we also offer the program in Spanish. We are grateful to all of our community partners for the support that they provide especially for our playgroup spaces and we're always on the lookout for a permanent space for playgroups like we used to have. So any ideas are welcome. The next slide, please. Our home visiting program, Parent-Child Plus, is an early literacy home visiting program and it's a model of its kind in the state. One thing we're really proud of is that all of the home visitors that we have now went through the programs themselves. They graduated and they're now the ones supporting families in the same way that they received support. Another example of the pipeline of the work that we do.

This year we received a very small grant from BU and it's designed to follow a few of the Parent Child Plus families into their first year at SPS. It will be a home visiting for transitional support and this will be conducted jointly by Parent-Child Plus home visitors and either the child's teacher or a liaison at the school. Home visitings are something I'm very passionate about. It's very complicated, but it's something that we definitely would like to look into more moving forward. Next slide, please, Erica. That home visiting piece I think is part of the transitions piece that the student representative spoke so eloquently about from eighth to ninth grade, which is always, you know, all of these transitions are very much on our minds. Transition into public schools has to be one of the biggest and most terrifying steps that people have to make. So we've been working hard on creating a very intentional transition pipeline.

We have a concrete calendar of events and workshops and we have some purposeful design materials like the social stories about the individual schools that we share out with families. We do a lot of warm handoff and handholding. We introduce families to liaisons who offer popsicle parties. We make sure that they've got their heads around walking around the outside of the school even if they hadn't had a chance to go inside of the school. and we try to just make that huge step a little bit more palatable for everybody. and the next step. So the next step after the enrollment office and the registration and that lovely warm welcome that they offer is the liaisons. They're the important people for families to know in the schools. It's a multilingual team and it provides a huge variety of support services on top of engaging families, helping them navigate unfamiliar and very complex systems and connecting them to schools.

The liaisons run three monthly free food markets and the Carrot Card program to help with food. These programs have been relaunched thanks to generous funding from the city as well as from a private donor. We're very, very grateful for that. Again, this has been an incredibly challenging year for many of our families and liaisons have shown such commitment and adaptability in how they've offered support and a really good example of this, as Dr. Carmona mentioned, was that when the PTAs stepped in with this outpouring of support in the face of a snap shutdown, the liaisons developed a system literally overnight to get the cards into the hands of the families that needed them. They're so used to this work, they put in the extra hours, they developed the systems that needed to happen and they were there when they were needed. Our prime goal as a team is family engagement linked to learning.

The pie chart that you're looking at there in previous years has had a lot more variety of colour on it and we would love to get back to that. Right now we are really in supporting families with resources that they need mode and trying hard also to grow those other pieces while we do the work. Next slide please. So the multilingual services team is the often invisible backbone support that allows for inclusive and equitable engagement with all families. They offer translation, which is written, for a huge variety of documents from handbooks to home school communication, flyers, policy, you name it, they're there doing it. They also offer interpretation for tons of meetings and events both simultaneous and consecutive interpretation and over the course of the year they get to know families really well.

Families really trust our team and coordinator Michaela Yang often hears how The stability of seeing the same person interpreting at a follow-up meeting can change outcomes for very very difficult and complex conversations that families are having. at any given time. Last year this whole team completed the highest level of training for interpretation in educational settings and through a grant they've been able to train other people in the district and grow our pool of local interpreters who can get to know families. and they're currently offering a PD for bilingual paraprofessionals as well to help ensure the integrity of interpretation in the schools at all times. And the next slide. We're incredibly lucky to have a high number of very competent, very qualified volunteers in our district willing to support our work. Just between September and December, we had 119 weekly volunteers, many of those in the high school.

and many more helping with specific events such as the food markets and other school-based events. Jen Capuano offers monthly volunteer orientations and she's supported by a point person at each school who has an hour or two One piece of the work that we're looking into is how to formalize a tutoring program using those volunteers moving forward. We have great people. It would be great if we could create a framework to slot people into on a yearly basis. Next slide Erica. So this page just shows some of the programs and events offered by and supported by SFLC over the course of the year as well as some of the support that we offer in terms of how families access services. Huge credit here to Tina Liu who is our

Data Resources and Communications Coordinator, and she's played a huge role, for example, in setting up Arbiter as a single point of entry platform for afterschool and summer clubs and hopefully other afterschool programs moving forward. It's a very big undertaking and she's done amazing work as well as creating some Flyers and kind of instructional pieces on how to navigate various parts of the school system which is a complex thing to do and put into simple language. Our staff are also integral to many cross-sector coalitions and advisories across the district and across the city and regionally. Knowing what's going on and working collaboratively to improve things is core to our work. and to creating this robust network of engagement. The last slide.

And this final slide highlights just a few of the ways in which our work aligns with the goals of the strategic plan and in reality all of our work is driven by these goals which along with data gathering are central to our planning throughout the year. And finally, I'd just like to acknowledge on a personal level that just as many of the families we work with have had an unbearably hard year in many ways, SFLC's amazing staff, many of whom are facing similar challenges themselves, have risen up and they've shown immense bravery, dignity, and deep dedication to Somerville families, and I'm really proud To have just shared a very tiny glimpse of all the amazing work that they do. And please, if you see them around, thank them. Give them a hug, we're huggers. It'll all work out. Thank you so much for listening and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you. Member Green? And then Member Lippens?

Thank you, through you. You know, I can never, ever say enough because SFLC and In a community that really likes talking about reaching out to underrepresented communities, no one in the city does it better than SFOC, full stop. and so I'm always mostly curious to know what can we do to help you do your job better because you really are at the pointy end of all these things. And I especially with this year want to echo your comments about their bravery. These are the same people who were the first people back in the office, back in the job during the pandemic. Even as they all had their own family, their own family.

And it has been tough. They have again been the front line on pretty much everything. So this year I'm going to ask both how can we help the organization and in particular how can we help this staff.

Through you, one of the things on my mind is to continue to advocate for the basic needs resources that we've received this year, the food support, It offers way more than just food support. It offers a conversation with families and it offers a way to dig a little bit deeper and see what other things might be needed. It offers us a chance to refer them to The Office of Basic Needs and Housing Support Services, if that's on families' minds. It's an opening door. So the support in terms of the Carrot Card, we had some MBTA support, which was It was absolutely fantastic for families last year. Those monthly gift cards were amazing. It was ARPA funded and we know those things are hard but those things really sort of opened the door to help our work go more smoothly. An additional thing would be and I think Fernanda would agree with me, space for playgroups.

Do you allow me to briefly dig deeper on the basic food support issue? I know that the City of Somerville were represented when the Boston Foundation, the City of Boston, announced their food security partnership. I know that there was some announcements of funding citywide at the end of last year, but I'd love to know a little bit more about To the extent that City of Somerville is part of that partnership, has SFOC and SPS been part of that partnership? And what does that look like? And has there been resources? And if not, we can have a conversation offline about how we can possibly get some.

The SFLC works very closely with the... I'm going to get the word wrong. The Office of Healthy Living and Food from the City of Somerville. We always have done. We partner with the work for Food for Free and they advocated very strongly on our behalf for the food Thank you. Member Lippens?

Thank you through you. I just want to commend the SFLC for your clearly tireless work and during this critical window of a child's life like 1800 days I believe I have three kids and all of them took advantage with all of them I took advantage of the Playgroups and all the resources and I know that that's only expanded and I am really interested in learning more about How family engagement really ties to learning because early childhood investing in early childhood education is investing in our future. So I want to echo Mr. Green, Member Green's comments about just supporting this work. So thank you. Thank you.

Member Biton?

Thank you through the chair. Thank you so much for the presentation. It's always exciting to hear how people are connecting and I always appreciate how you have pictures of different Staff, and really give the school committee and the community the opportunity to really see the players and the work that's being done. My question is actually for the administration. I very much appreciate Santos' concern about playgroup space, and I don't know what the mechanism is for that to be considered where does it go so you know consideration through the school spaces consideration for city spaces and obviously those needs have to be considered with all the other priorities that the schools and the city has and whether or not it should be brought up at the building the school building issue or whether what administration wants to sort of figure out the pathways internal before it gets escalated at that level so it's almost like I'm asking

how do we explore this how do we it's great to hear that we need it you know obviously school committee can't go whoop here's you know x dollars and let's do it um there's lots of needs in the city and there's lots of needs in the district and i'd love to figure out how do we formally put this request forward and how it can be prioritized with other needs in the city and the schools.

Superintendents?

So we know that once the Cummins and the building at the The eduly was offline. It created some space challenges. Not only that, but the logistics access for families who needed the most was also impacted. So we know that the solution also lives not only with the district, but in collaboration with the city. So I think that these are things that we definitely need to explore together. It is one thing that is a clear challenge. Space is a clear challenge to other districts. But I know that we have a willing partner in this conversation and I am really looking forward to those conversations. But we'll continue that in a more formalized way.

Every time you have a follow-up?

Yeah, please, through the chair. I'm curious when is an appropriate timeline to have follow-up and whether or not it comes to this body or comes to the school building maintenance body obviously this is something you can think about and come back to us with but I really would like to hear like okay we're going to have this conversation in April or May or whatever is appropriate Because I really want to keep my eyes on this and I really want to get the updates. So that would be great. Thank you.

Thank you, Member Eldridge. And then Stellman, then Biton.

Thank you. Through the chair. I'm not sure who the best person to ask this question is, whether it's you, Ms. Santos, or maybe Dr. Carmona, but I'm trying to understand a little bit more on slide 7 and slide 11, there was a note of the intensive I'm trying to better understand how a family qualifies and how they inquire about a program like that and I'm also interested in hearing a little bit more about the volunteers that are supporting math and literacy tutoring and again how families and students can inquire and become involved in that and what you need to help Thank you so much for those questions.

I'll begin with the early home visiting literacy program. Fernanda Villa is with me this evening. She runs that program. It is all done through the intense roots that her team has in the community. Nearly everybody has English as their second language. and most of the families are low literacy themselves. And the goal of the home visitor is to go in and partner with the families on teaching books without words, teaching them that literacy isn't all about Thank you for joining us.

and we talk to families and her home visitors gauge which families may be a good fit for the program and then they go out and visit with the families and do some more intake work around that. Does that sound about right? Yeah. and then the second question was around The Math and Literacy, yeah. So we currently place, so the requests are made, we have a volunteer coordinator in each school, the requests are made either through the volunteer coordinator or through a form that we have where any educator can go on and make a request to the volunteer to Jen Capuano and she will match with the existing volunteers and send somebody out. which works very very well. She has a whole database full of volunteers who check their skill set and she's able to say this person said that they

We've talked about this a lot with Dr. Carmona about trying to do some more formal work with putting volunteers in the classrooms and that would require a point person and a sort of a standardization of the program and the curriculum and that's something that we've talked about and we're hoping to move forward on this year.

Dr. Stellman.

Thank you, Ms. Santos. I just want to have a short question, but I want to just preface it by saying that The SFLC, I'm sure everyone here knows that it's phenomenal, but it's not just phenomenal in the sense that it serves our families in Somerville extremely well. It's actually a blueprint for communities across the country and if we haven't already figured out how to start putting a spotlight we should do that. Not just because it's fun to show off how awesome our district is, but because other places need this. They have the people, but not

you know not the secret sauce that you have and it's not secret right and and we could do training and etc so that was just my statement and then i wanted to um I wanted to just ask a question about, and I don't need any specific numbers, but just understanding the scale of the Carrot Card program. Approximately how many families and what is sort of the typical amount that folks are getting so we could just get a sense of what that looks like.

I can get the exact numbers to you. We were able to up the monthly amount this month and I'll be happy to send those across to you offline. We prefer not to. That is very fair. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Superintendent Carmona.

Yeah, just I wanted to give you a little bit of a visual to kind of create a better impression of what we're describing. The food markets is an experience that I would welcome everyone to join me on those. We serve sometimes 100, 200, 300 families. and the logistics of is not just passion for families but it's also there is a system in place so there's like everyone gets funneled through a specific space there is When they are actually lining up, there's also surveys. There's so much that is intentional about supporting families in this process. But what I wanted to highlight is that Two things we have realized during the food challenges that we had was that the needs are greater and also the support is even bigger than we realize.

And so I just wanted to leave you with that as we realize how many families were exposed to the gaps in the financial support from the federal government. More families needed support and our system was basically primed to do that kind of support. Obviously, that had an impact on the human toll as well, but I just wanted to highlight the fact that in these real instances, the people that do the work, SFLC do it as if that's part of their call. So just wanted to give you that little bit of imagery.

Thank you, Member Biton.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Ms. Santos, thank you so much for the work you and all the other superstars at the SFLC do every day. I don't know anyone who's involved in any way at our schools who is not deeply impressed by the work everyone there does and I could go on for an hour about Probably each page of your presentation. So I won't. I wanted to follow up on Member Pitone's presentation. The dialogue around the space for the play groups because I do see this as an important piece for follow-up and I'm glad you highlighted it.

and I just for the administration I would encourage so in the same way that Mayor Wilson has emphasized that Our beautiful new high school should be a space that gets more use. I think one thing that we need to do is think creatively about our space considerations. We have needs for teen center spaces. and how can we think about complementary uses for you know groups that might house very young children for play groups at certain times of the day and then spaces for teens and other times in the day

I don't have any specific ideas, but I just wanted to throw that out that in our very dense and space constrained city, this is something we're gonna need to get very creative about, so thank you.

Thank you. Trying to use my teacher time to make sure no one has additional thoughts. Okay. Director Santos, thank you. Thank you to the members of SFLC who showed up, and thank you for your amazing work. We appreciate it.

Thank you. Now to the second topic of discussion for today, which is around out of school time programming. And I know that as we heard from Mr. Williams earlier on, This is one of those things that everyone has a wish list, everyone has some desire, everyone has some intent to make sure that we strengthen the programs that we offer for families. We know that given the structure of our families, everyone needs support after school, so I cannot I want to share with you how much this team has done and has worked together in collaboration with the city. Actually, you know, Summer Promise is here. S.F.L.C. and Out of School Time last year started working together just to address issues of family access, issues of communication, and

Yet, we still are often finding ways to provide more space despite the fact that we continue to grow. as you know we have had some financial challenges that we share with you we have we came to this body for feedback and that allow us to actually build some sustainability but we know that it has had some other and Intended Consequences that we are actually addressing at this point. But with that, I just wanted to give the floor to our director of Out of School Time, Rosanna Parabello, so she can share information about the program.

Good evening and welcome new members. My name is Rosanna Parabello and I am the director of OST, out of school time programming. It has been a very exciting year for OST and we feel privileged to share this update with you all. You will hear from our OST team in the many hats we wear to carry out a cohesive and multifaceted network of programming to our students and families. Next slide. Our mission is to support the academic, social, and emotional development of our students through equitable access to high quality programming. We are always striving to increase access, capacity, and academic opportunities and carry out the goals of the district's strategic plan of out of school time. Next slide.

This evening we will share updates regarding our summer programs, full-time care programs, partner contracted programs, OST enrichment clubs, and our OST Steering Committee. Next slide. Some particular highlights we would like to share with you include increased capacity in our full-time programs, the implementation of the arbiter registration system, increased opportunities for our youth, More consistent options across schools, coordination of space for our community organizations to offer programming opportunities as well, and making improvements around consistent communication so we ensure equitable access. Now I'd like to introduce James Mandart, this summer's director, to give a brief update of our fabulous summer programming.

Thank you, everybody. Next slide, please. So we had a wonderful summer. If we go back just one more slide to the pictures. We had an awesome summer in 2025. Now we're in 2026, so we'll give you a brief snapshot of just a few of the things that happened. So next slide, please. You can see here in terms of enrollment we had about 1,403 students total with 17 programs spanning just about all the buildings in the district. 14 of those programs were internal and three of them were external. and we have on the right of the presentation here just three of our many programs that I wanted to briefly highlight for you. The elementary spell program that happened at the Argenziano School. They provided students with some really great theme-based language learning experiences. They even had some outside vendors come in, do some great presentations for the students. They even got to meet some really exotic animals which is a really cool experience for them.

The Calculus Project, they develop students understanding and appreciation of mathematics through instruction, community building, field trips, and enrichment clubs, and even having some of the high school students come down and help some of the younger students to talk about math and make it cool, which is great. and lastly our middle school robotics program explored engineering, digital design, fabrication, coding and robotics with high school students from the HSA SSHS team, excuse me. And they also pushed in two other programs which we hope to continue with this next summer coming up. If you can go to the next slide, please. and lastly just a few more snapshots of highlights and some areas for improvement. Our highlights as we heard earlier from SFLC, Arbiter Sports, it was our first year for registering all of our programs through that. It was a great experience for families as well. We increased attendance across most of our programs and we improved our communication between those programs especially in our shared spaces throughout all the buildings.

For some areas of improvement, just a couple more slides, or a couple more points there, sorry. We like to increase our high school student participation in terms of like how they can help different program directors and giving them sort of work hours. So if they're not necessarily signing up for programs, we want to give them opportunities to help other students and get some experience working. We want to improve access as well for building with our non-STS programs and even specific teachers who may be working in a certain building who don't work there during the school year we want to make sure that everybody has access to the buildings that they're working in for that summer and lastly we want to start that recruitment process a little bit earlier to increase more of our numbers for for registration so thank you we'll give this back to Rosanna

Partner Programs. We are fortunate enough to offer free programming to students through contracted partners. These programs are funded through the OST budget and we collaborate with different organizations The programs prioritize academic improvement, cultural competence, and student-centered practice in meeting the needs of diverse learners, social-emotional learning, and college and career readiness. This is directly related to our strategic plan for out-of-school time. Next slide. Embedded in our Somerville Public Schools are partner programs. They fall under the OST department, which include Unroot, Boston Debate League, Becoming a Man and Working on Womanhood, We are also able to partner with such programs such as Apollo to expand seats for the five daycare programs.

We also have Welcome Nova in their future lab program coming in January for our 6th through 8th graders. This program will support students as they begin to explore their likes, dislikes, skills, areas they would like more experience in to prepare them for high school and beyond. Next slide. Also funded by the OST budget are our OST enrichment clubs. Not to be confused with our school based teacher led clubs that many of our students participate in. Next slide. OST enrichment clubs were added as another option to extend the student school day while participating in hands-on activities, which is another one of the goals of our plan. OST clubs are managed by the OST main office, site directors at each school, the OST steering committee, and supported by the SFLC.

There are currently over 200 students who have benefited. The clubs are free to students. Offerings are based on interests and need at each school. The offerings are sent out by principals via newsletters and the SPS website. SFLC helps to recruit students, especially for schools that we have noticed show low enrollment in these activities. Starting with this new session that began January 5th, we began using Arbiter for student registration. With the immense support of Tina Liu of SFLC, Managing the tech support and liaisons and site directors helping to register families on the ground. This is the same system as James mentioned we used last summer and we plan to increase the use of this in other programs such as El Sistema and Soccer Without Borders, moving more into a single point of entry.

And now I'd like to introduce the Assistant Director of OSD and Community Schools Program, Adriana Garecke, to provide an update and highlights of the Community Schools Program.

Thank you. Good evening, everybody. My name is Adriana Huereque and I'm the Assistant Director of Out-of-School Time with Community Schools. And if you wanna pass the next slide, please. So the city offers a total of 1,542 full-time after-school slots, with community schools having a capacity of 1,043. This in-house program staffed by trained educators creates high quality curriculum and fosters strong connections with our schools. as our longest running program enables us to build meaningful relationships with students and understand them better as learners and individuals. We serve students in pre-K through sixth grade across eight elementary schools. Site director and assistant site director, Lead each site. A clinical consultant and a student service coordinator provide additional support.

Next slide, please. Registrations open in March. Sorry, let me see. Yeah, registrations opens in March for all grade levels. Multilingual staff and SFLC and site directors support families with registrations and technical needs. Priority placement is given to return students and families experience financial hardship. Seats availability depends on staffing projections. Staffings include, sorry this, sorry. Staffing includes lead teachers, assistant teachers, and interim students, many working part-time in our schools and education-related roles. Our ratio is pre-k 1 to 10 and school age students 1 to 13. Next slide please.

This slide compares last year enrollment and waitlist data with projections for the 25-26 school year. Our poll is included because it supports community schools, waitlist management for Argenciano and Kennedy. where the wait list has been significantly reduced and is now minimal. El Sistema is included to demonstrate Somerville Public Schools total full-time care after school enrollment. All Summer Republic Schools programs are evaluated using an after-school practice tool observation and are supported through community-wide professional development alignment with program's quality goals. Next slide, please. Over the past five years, community schools has experienced steady growth across all areas as shown.

in these charts enrollment has nearly doubled staffing has increased and equity and access have expanded as reflected in financial aid participation During this time, salaries have risen while tuition has remained largely stable. Community schools continue to charge lower tuition than other local providers. Community School is $149 YMCA is $210 Elizabeth Peabody House is $185 and we also remain below the state average. However, rapid post-COVID growth grade need to increase tuition to support rising costs while maintaining program quality. Next slide, please. This is a snapshot of current finances and projecting forward.

Historically, the tuition has been low and there was a need to increase it to be comparable to our community partners and neighboring programs and to keep up with expenses and salary increases. Thank you for your time and I'm gonna pass it to Mr. Brian King from Summer Promise.

Good evening. My name is Brian King. I am the out-of-school time coordinator for the City of Somerville and a member of the OST Steering Committee. Just to begin, what are the OST Steering Committee? We can go to the next slide. All right, so we are the OSRN committee. We promote city school cooperation and engage in collaborative planning to leverage city, school, community partners and resources to strengthen Somerville's out-of-school time system and also strengthen Somerville's opportunities and equity for Somerville's youth and families. Who we are, we're comprised of the Out of School Time Director, Adriana, oh sorry, Rosanna Parabello, the Assistant Director, Adriana Cuarique. Cuarique.

We've got Chris Hosman, who's the director of Summer Promise, Lou Santos, the director of the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, and myself, Brian King, the coordinator. Next slide. All right. What we've been doing. So we've been working hard to understand the community-wide needs and barriers to out-of-school time. Last year we administered a city-wide survey of Somerville families. to assess actual demand for out of school time seats. The survey surveyed 742 families and representing 1,046 pre-K through sixth grade students. and this is approximately 37 percent of the school pre-k through six population and through that data and along with other data that we assess through community schools registration and waitlist as well as surveys In the middle school, I can't remember the name of the survey.

We started to come and compile what the demand was and as a result worked hard this year to increase capacity and pinpoint those needs to specific schools and populations. Additionally, we also do system-wide development. So this year, we've been working hard. Also, this is in line with the Arbiter Initiative Align all health and safety protocols and practices for all out-of-school time programs operating in Somerville Public Schools, which is great. also just to mention that also on the arbiter front we've been working closely with that initiative and that also allows us to align and ensure Program monitoring of our partner programs both through attendance and also requirements of staff around first aid training and other qualifications necessary to operate in the school. and other things.

In developing shared quality standards along with that, we've identified the APDO, which is a tool out of the NIOS, National Institute of Out-of-School Time at Wesley College. We use a tool to provide quality standards and then also a tool to assess programs. So now we actually have feedback loops of our partner programs as well as our in-school programs. and also that will contribute directly that eventually that every school would be every program excuse me would have a continuous quality improvement program in place as they operate in the schools. Yeah and lastly just we're also working around the issues of identifying sustainable and diverse financial strategies and this is just crucial so that we support the entire system to make sure that Somerville families have access to The diverse out of school time programming, both in school and out of school, community based. Thank you.

And with that, I will pass it back to Rosanna.

Thanks, Chair.

Through you, I can't remember who presented this. First of all, love the creative approach of going to Arbiter, an app that definitely wasn't necessarily created for this, but it sounds like it's doing a really good job. Question about the summer program. Back in October, former school committee member Dr. Sarah Phillips and I attended a presentation in Boston for Boston After School and Beyond, and one of their big successes was really improving the attendance I'm curious, I see the note about increased attendance across most programs, but also that the area of improvement cited increased high school student roles and hours. I'd be curious to see that you know not to create a bunch of work for y'all but if there were a breakdown of what that attendance looks like in the summer programs with crosstabs, age, gender, uh race and ethnicity just to see what that looks like in our city

Yeah, thank you. So I have a breakdown of all of the student attendance for all the programs and the reason why in the slides it said over most programs for attendance was because about the Third week in July is when we saw that dip in attendance and that was based off of ICE that was in Somerville area and a lot of messages were sent out through different program directors noticing that those students were dropping off because of that. So that was the main week that that dropped off. And in terms of more in-depth of what type of students are dropping in that attendance, I could definitely get those numbers for you. And to answer the areas of improvement for high school student roles and hours, We last year and the year prior, my only two years that I've been in this role so far, we partnered with the mayor's office to have student employees to work in different areas of summer programming.

and we did notice that some students were also working in other programs outside of the mayor's office had a few more hours and I know that a lot of the students who were in the mayor's program specifically were looking for more hours and we also had more Program directors that were looking for more students. So we want to try and we have to have some more meetings this year as we're now getting ready for summer 2026. We want to find more ways to get students involved to not just necessarily work and many more. So many of these students were really excited to get involved with the community and work with some of the younger students whether it was mentoring students or even working as like Excuse me, I'm forgetting the word for a second. Just helping with language barriers and translating for other students who may not understand what their program director is talking about or their teachers are talking about.

There's definitely room for students to participate more in the working aspect which I think is a really good opportunity for those kids like they were speaking on earlier to transition outside of high school as well. I hope that answers your question.

Member Biton.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Great work. I just wanted to highlight how incredibly impressed Impressive the movement in the waiting lists for community schools has been over this last year. That has been a persistent issue for many years. and now it appears that just a handful of families and you know I'm sure it's difficult for those families who are still on the wait list but um wow uh market decrease in the size of the wait list so um Kudos and thank you for your work there. I'm wondering in that list, and in fact, is it possible to pull that slide up?

um okay I've got it up in front of me on my computer uh so we have the student enrollment and we have the wait lists. And I'm wondering Is there another category? Are there any families or students who have been priced out? I doubt it, but has there been anyone who has been rejected? I just want to know what universe we're looking at. Is this the entire universe of students either enrolled or wait-listed?

So this is the total. These are pretty updated numbers. It does change daily. And we did lose some students since the beginning of the year. The waitlist contains families that not necessarily are not in programming. So we did dive deeper into who's on the waitlist and the families that we're currently pulling off the waitlist are enrolled in other programs in the city so we are trying to figure out that piece whether you know do we do we call it a wait list or do we call it a preference because we also in this as we realize as are we pulled more students off the wait list this year We also decreased the enrollment in our partner programs like the YMCA and the PUDLs, which we don't necessarily want to do. As Brian had mentioned, we're implementing the APTO to sort of Thank you.

Thank you so much. It's really uncomfortable to reduce programming and other programs just based on that.

Thank you. Member Eldridge? Do you add your hand up?

Thank you. Through the Chair, a question kind of off of Member Biton's question, but then also another side question here. Are there... Scholarships, or is there a threshold for financial assistance for families? Are there families that are able to participate in these programs without any type of financial commitment?

I mean zero like not paying a fee yes so we have approximately 80 families that don't pay a fee I believe um And then others pay $5, $2. We have a sliding scale range of what families will pay. But if families didn't enroll in that initial period and apply for financial aid, When we did registration back in March, we did see some families come in in September who had registered and maybe not understood they needed to apply for financial aid, so we were doing a lot of work and so on. So trying to accommodate these families is something that we're working on right now to ensure that if a family wants to participate they're able to whether they need care or they don't need care we understand that there are needs in the community for families who

Just need the academic support, need the social enrichment, things like that. And so we don't want any barriers and have to say no. And so that's why the funding piece is coming into play when we're figuring out We did see a decrease in vouchers, a loss of subsidies across Massachusetts, so this has been very difficult. The restrictions they put on these voucher reassessments is really difficult for a lot of our families to produce these documents. Obviously, if they're asking for financial aid, there's a reason, and we're jumping through hoops to help these families not lose vouchers. So that piece we're also analyzing and trying to figure out a plan for.

Thank you. Member Lippens?

Thank you, through you. I have a question specifically about summer programming, and you had talked about high school students and their roles. I do have a daughter who's very enthusiastic about doing the mayor's program and volunteering and as a parent I'm wondering where there's more information about these programs for parents. I know the signup is not until April is what I'm understood from the information I found, but I think, you had mentioned students wanting more hours and also so I'm wondering about connecting with our student advisory council how our students can find out earlier about what's offered what's available what this might look like I hope that question makes sense

Yeah, I think that makes sense. Thank you. Now that it's January, we're just going to start the process, Rosanna and I, figuring out how summer is going to look this year and what we want to do differently. You're definitely right speaking with the student committee and hearing what they want from us and how we can partner with them better. And then I think having a meeting with the mayor's office to see what the mayor's program for those jobs could look like this year and how it could be different from last year. We'll just be able to answer that and hopefully give more opportunities to those kids. Did that answer your question? Or how to get it out earlier you said? Yes and yes.

No, we don't actually run the mayor's program. It's done through the mayor's office. So we partner with them. So we've provided feedback around what we are seeing. There are certain barriers with the hours. We get feedback from the high school students that 20 hours isn't enough. We've also noticed that we need, within SPS on our end, on the school side, we need to increase As James said, the roles that high school students are doing so that we can accommodate more high school students into jobs. Some jobs outside of the box of what we think should be summer jobs.

I'm going to check that everyone has spoken once before I let colleagues speak again. Okay. Member Eldridge and Member Biton?

Thank you. Through the chair. I'm really excited to hear about another academic support opportunity over the summer. We heard from two from FSLC. S.F. Elsie, excuse me. And we're also hearing through out of school time, maybe it's Mr. Mandart. I'm wondering if you could shed a little bit more information on, again, how families can participate in that program. How we go about qualifying and just the staffing. Is it internal, like are there educators here or are we bringing someone else in?

As for the educators for the SPEL programs, both at the elementary and the middle school, high school level, there are mostly internal hirings for staffing with teachers. There are a couple that are from outside of the district, but it's pretty minimal. and those are referral based programs. So Alex Hershey, who works at least for the elementary program, I'm not sure who's gonna be working for it this summer. But they work with the staff members at each building to see what students might be a good fit for that program. So there's definitely a lot of communication between Summer. is most likely starting that now. I know he works very early on that program. He adores it. So a lot of communication throughout the different buildings to get those students who need those things, we reach out to them.

Thank you, Mayor Wilson. You're right. Thank you. Member Biton, then Mayer.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to follow up on Member Eldridge's question about Funding, or I guess we heard public comments before this at the beginning of this meeting and in an email to the entire school committee earlier today from the east and the PTA council about families that may be relying on GoFundMe or other you know charitable giving to be able to afford out of school time services or community schools. I'm not sure exactly what that is. I need to dig into it a little more, but I'm wondering

I guess to the superintendent, is there a funding need? from us to help bridge that gap? Or is it a needs identification piece? I'm wondering what the disconnect there might be.

Through the chair, so as you know, we did encounter a situation with our projections for the structure fee that we have. As you know, Somerville has such a diverse population. Families actually have said to me, hey, I am willing to pay as much as you need to ask me. Can I contribute too? So you have some families actually who have that capacity. and we have families who don't have that ability to do that. So we have looked at the data that we use for reference as to who can pay and who can't and we try to not use a scalpel to determine How much is the fee? We try to use a sliding scale, and we try to be as generous as possible. And as you mentioned, yeah, there are some group of families that were impacted by that. We also know that any paid structure for families who struggle with finances is a roadblock.

Short from saying, yes, we need money, can we actually... I think that does a question that we need to discuss with the mayor as well as our team to find out what are other ways that we can actually Bring all the families that are in a sliding scale. I think it's not as simple as when we actually have been discussing how do we do this in a way that doesn't cut anyone. But the reality also is that we have some capacity, some limitations at every building. And so there is a multi-pronged approach in terms of how to How to extend the out-of-school time, the community schools slots. I mean, as you see, the numbers have increased significantly. And so there is a capacity piece there. But back again to the question like,

Is there a magic number or is there a number of folks who actually are being cut off because of this? That's a question that we continue to ask and of course as you saw my response in the email today is That was an intended consequence and we will definitely look into that.

Mayor Wilson. Thanks, Chair. Yeah, I appreciate this discussion about the fees. And I'll just name that it's admirable to want to keep Overall fees low we heard the comments about how you know the sort of rack rate compares to other options in the city I've just found that Not every, you know, trying to do that, you end up subsidizing every family. And I just, from experience, Not every family needs subsidy. And I've become a big fan of raising, rather than trying to keep all fees low for everyone, Having a much more dynamic sliding scale fee. And I've seen that really pay dividends, especially when you're looking to get generous with financial aid and make sure that you can really take care of the families that need it the most. So yeah, here for that discussion.

Back on the data question, I'd be really curious to see what a comparison would look like of the overall student bodies by school compared to the enrollment. In community schools in terms of along socioeconomic lines of who's actually enrolling their kids in these programs. Does it look like the school? Are we seeing a body in general or are we seeing a separation between the school body and who's doing out of school time, community schools in particular? Not asking for that tonight, to be clear, Chair, but I would be curious to see what that comparison looked like.

If I can just... One of the meetings that we had, I forgot which one it was, that was the same debate we had. And the question that came up from the members was, Who are we serving as a community for our community schools? So that's a question that has been raised. It is a question that requires us to go over the data, but I think we have some numbers already, Obviously there is a when our system base is based on and so on. has tried to be more equitable, but the basis of the membership has been based on that structure.

I think that I can hypothesize that the audience of the program by default favors families that have had more access to information. But I know that any time that there is a question from our apparently about trying to have students to be there because they need to be there, There is a dynamic that actually is very fluid. So we also have introduced some ways in which we actually built in some Direct feedback from the daily operation to have kids to make sure that they get preference in those cases.

and if I may we also implemented the lottery system last year for registration that we saw a lot of change in the enrollment but with that It was challenging with families who need the care, two-parent working or one-parent working. So our goal was to try to admit everyone who needed the access, the care.

Thank you, President Davis.

Thank you, Chair Ackman. So first, I just want to kind of Say again, to echo what I said when we had a similar conversation a month or so ago, that I would be fully in support of a more dynamic, to use the mayor's phrasing, Price and Structure. I agree that, and just sort of my experience as a parent and my sense is that there's There's probably room to have a number of folks help out more. There'd be a lot of willingness to do so. I certainly agree that GoFundMe is no way to be funding members of our community to participate in a program like this that we are running. And so, you know, full stop there on that point on border. The other thing I want to flag, and I can't remember if it was Dr. Stellman that pointed this out to me, but someone whom I respect tremendously,

I want to make sure that I give the good member from Ward 6 credit if it was our conversation, but in terms of The type of data that the mayor was referencing, and when we look at those data, as far as the participants as schools, how do those relate to the school populations? That is informative, but there also are other factors like are there other alternatives that particularly serve communities that might sort of skew those data in a way that wouldn't be obvious as we're looking at it. you know so just there's a lot more sort of a dynamic aspect to that as well and I know you all will think about that but somebody pointed out to me and I thought it was worth repeating because I hadn't thought of it when we were thinking about that before so thank you

Member Green.

I'll go ahead and fill in some details to that question, actually. We know that, like, for example, our Brazilian community has a fairly tight net child care network. that runs, I'd say, in parallel to ours. And I think those kinds of, so I think those are the right questions. I think we have seen that... A number of different communities in our city would rather do their own thing. And I would ask, and I know this has happened in the past, that groups like SS4C, our program, work with these networks. And I really appreciate the comment that, like, We don't want to put these alternatives out of business. We want people to have options that work for them culturally, ideologically, whatever it may be.

So I really appreciate and I think it's worth us thinking to be about how we support out-of-school time, SFOC and other agencies in supporting alternatives we don't have to we not only do we not have to do it all ourselves we probably shouldn't

Thank you. All right. Deep appreciation, Director Parabello. Deep appreciation to your team. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, do you have more to report?

No, that's the end of the report.

Beautiful, thank you, Superintendent. Thank you. Okay, we are moving on to item six, report of subcommittees. Do I have a motion?

I move to accept the report of the Rules Management Subcommittee meeting for December 15, 2025.

Any others?

And I'll move to accept the report of the school committee and student advisory meeting for January 7th, 2026. Okay, great. Yep, that's gonna keep it there.

Sorry, there's a motion by Member Biton, seconded by Member Green. Ms. Biton?

Yeah, through the chair. The finance report will be in the next packet. It's done, but it just got in too late for people to actually look at it, so...

Great. So with that, we have a motion by Member Biton, seconded by Member Green for the report of School Committee, sorry, the Rural Subcommittee and the Student Advisory Subcommittee. Is there any discussion? All right, all those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? All right, passes. Thank you very much. All right, so Ms. Pitone will be in our next packet. Great, thank you. We're moving on to unfinished business. The calendar, I assume, Dr. Boston-Davis? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Chair. Good evening again, everyone. In your package, you'll find the draft of the 2026-2027 school year calendar, along with a memo that I drafted that also just has the requirements With the law written for the school committee and it is around approving a school year schedule and talks through what that means so I don't have much new to add but I did want to bring the calendar, the drafted calendar back to this committee. Given that we do have new members and we're welcoming new members, so I wanted to just talk through at a high level the calendar and offer any questions and progress that we're making based on some questions that came from the committee in December. So you'll see our drafted 26-27 school calendar here. As named in the memo, you are

as a committee required to schedule the school year for 185 days. and operate the schools for 180. I just named that because there's often a question of why do we have a 185th day on the calendar and it's part of the regulation and also obviously kind of works with us in terms of potential snow days. From there, also you'll notice we've Tentatively marked the committee member the committee meetings the full meetings for the first and third where that works Mondays in the year that's a new addition so that's not something that you'll necessarily approve within the We didn't include the schedule, but we included it in the calendar and all the breaks and early release Wednesdays are indicated.

The other thing that I'll add and then happy to answer any questions is that when we brought the the drafted calendar forward in December There were questions from the committee around the tentative last day of school falling on a Monday. And is there any way that we can be creative with our thinking? I think this came from our chair. Can we be creative in thinking about You know, shifting dates, either coming in on a day that was typically off or thinking other creative ways with our calendar. So I just want to name that we are having conversations with SEU leadership right now. I named the SEU as that's our largest union, but obviously we want to engage with all of our staff members. but we're having our initial conversations with our SEU leadership and thinking creatively through what some options could be. I don't have anything formal to report

We're back at this time, but I do want to say that we're engaged in that conversation. The SCU has been a great partner and just kind of thinking creatively about what we could do. to have our tentative last day of school fall on June 17th. So we're having that conversation right now.

Thank you. All right, Member Green.

I want to thank the administration and SCU for being creative on this point because it's not just last day of school being on a Monday, it's last day of school being a Monday after a three-day weekend. I think it's fair to say that attendance would not be the highest on that day. So I really appreciate everyone being creative and flexible about thinking about ways to have this school year. make logical sense for families and staff, both?

All right, so, oh, Member Biton?

This is about other issues related to the calendar. OK. Thank you, Chair. Through you. I just wanted to flag the January 4th potential school committee meeting date. I think in years past we haven't reconvened after the winter break quite that early so just a request to maybe look at the 11th as a potential date for Our first school committee meeting after winter break. and then the for February break I found it a little confusing where it says from the 15th

to the 19th February vacation office is open and then the line immediately after says President's Day office is closed for the 15th if there's a way to make that more clear. That was it. Thank you.

Thank you. Member Pitone? And then Member Green? OK.

In response to Chair Biton's point, I think this is actually a question about the new charter because normally that first Monday would be our organizational meeting and the State of the City address. I don't know if that's changed on the new charter or not. So I think that would be the question is, is that when the organizational meeting slash state of the city address will be? Because the vice chair is right, we wouldn't normally have a normal meeting that day, but it may be.

Thank you. All right. Well, thank you for providing us with what you have and for mentioning the ongoing conversations. As I have said many times, my hat is off to you, Dr. Boston-Davis. This is succinct and quite impressive how much information you convey on one page. All right, with that we are going to move on to the MSBA update.

Through the chair, so as you recall in late December, the construction advisory group, what is also known as the CAG, delivered its recommendation to Mayor Ballantyne regarding the city's plans for a new school building for the Winterhall community. This recommendation comes after a more than a 30-month process in which the CAGS members review data from the city and district alongside community input from survey responses and focus groups. All members of the CAG recommended that the new school be built at 115 Sycamore Street. That was obviously the former Winter Hill location. and a majority of members also recommended building the school to the maximum size that is permitted by MSBA. So regarding the future of the Brown School, the majority of the CAG recommended that this decision ultimately be decided by this body, the school committee.

and the full recommendation is also publicly in our website as well as the city's website. Since the recommendation from the CAG, my team and I have met with Mayor Wilson, who is eager to move this project forward and ensure that the Winter Hill has a new building as soon as possible. The mayor plans to join district leadership in meetings with both the Winterhill and Brown School communities to discuss next steps in the MSBA process and what the CAC recommendations mean for each of the communities. He also plans to join the Educational Leadership Visioning Session that is scheduled for January 20th. And it will be an opportunity for the project design team to hear from educators and SPS families on what their hopes and dreams are for the educational design elements in the building project. Please note that additional community engagement opportunities on the project design are anticipated in the coming months.

We don't have those yet, but be on the lookout for more details that are coming soon. Finally, as I mentioned in previous meetings, the ELT was convened by the city to support the design of the new building. This team includes school leaders who are working together to identify Programmatic needs across general education, special education, specialists, out-of-school time programming, and much more. The team has already met multiple times and school tours are scheduled this week. In fact, I think there is one tomorrow to visit other recently designed schools across the Commonwealth. As you can see a lot is happening a lot is happening and fast and so I just want to make sure that both the community is aware of the visioning sessions as well as The process that is happening through the ELT in terms of visioning what is coming next for the project.

So with that, that's the end of my MSPA report.

Any questions? Member Pitone?

Through the Chair, thanks for the update. I was just looking at the website and the page, the new winter happenings page, and getting the detail about the Visioning Forum, the Building Visioning Forum, and I apologize if you've already talked to this. It's obviously, it's like a 8.30 to 2.15 session, so it's like a long period of time, and I'm not critiquing that. But I would imagine that would limit the type of people that could choose to participate in this I don't know if visioning forums are ever staggered over time so that we would have it for two or three two-hour sessions I'm not saying this is how we should do it but I looked at it because I was thinking oh I might just observe for me as a school committee member curiosity killed the cat but I often like to hear what the conversation is but that made me stop for a moment because often that really favors our more

for people who have more access which is not necessarily the only voices that we want to hear although I know all the members of this committee are going to try to represent as best they can so I'm just flagging that and and putting the question out there in terms of if obviously if the um The schools in the city feel like this is the best way to do that. I understand it, but I just wanted to flag my question about accessibility for a session like that.

Thank you for flagging that and that's I know that we work with SFLC to find a time that made sense and we also recognize that more time is needed to do that and we will We have some visioning sessions. We don't have them yet, but that was a recommendation that we had for the design group. You know, sometimes often the way these things are designed are by folks who don't often work with families that have some limitations, but I know that there are some constraints around that. But we will be having more sessions, and so I don't have the days with me right now, but that is coming.

All right. Thank you very much. Oh, my bad. Member Lippens.

Thank you. Through you. I also am wondering, as part of the building visioning forum, are students How are students' voices part of this discussion? And forgive the, I just don't know enough, so asking it.

Good question, and I need to, just a quick question, Ruth. Do you know if there's a group of students within that session time for students? I know we have different stakeholder groups that are coming.

Yeah, so I think this initial session is designed for SPS staff and parents. And the goal is to have many different sessions moving forward in partnership with the city I think there's a couple of evening sessions that will be scheduled as well at individual schools as well as some larger sessions that I believe Student Voice will be incorporated into. I haven't got the details as you say but I think that that's something that everybody's working on is a calendar of different places and ways that people can engage, maybe targeted populations, maybe targeted topics.

So we will make sure that these two invoices are part of that process as well.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you.

Member Piton. Thank you to the chair, to the superintendent, So I know in the past when the CAG was put together and the MSBA process we have different websites that already exist and I know you're going to laugh but The idea of sort of what the vision of the visioning is, but something that sort of frames out like what we're trying to accomplish, all the voices we want to put in the process. These websites might be the right places to put them, I have no idea, but something where... people can understand how this is going to happen even if we don't have every single date I think it would be really valuable to be able to point people to something that says this is the big picture of how we're doing this part of the work because this is the community involvement part and this is the thing that people really need to know about Thank you.

Thank you. All right. So we're going to move on from the MSBA update. We're going to table the December bill roll because that was not in our packet. So we will vote on that next meeting. And now. We get to start our first reading of the Public Schools Policy Manual reviewing sections A, B, and C. I want to note for new members or for anyone Tune in for the first time. We're calling this a first reading. A reading of a policy often happens out loud. We're not going to read all of this out loud because it's a lot. But a first reading is a chance for members to sort of give their first impressions and then they go back to their constituencies, make sure

you know also gut check what they've read and then at a second reading at a minimum which would be our next meeting uh we vote so it's just a stage setting um I feel like, Member Biton, like I should kick this to you, right?

I'll take it. Thank you, Chair, through you. I guess I should start by highlighting the excellent work that my predecessor, Member Barish, predecessor as chair of rules, did. And if you look back in the packets from the December 15th meeting, not to do right now, But I just want to highlight that there is a summary of the policy manual review for sections A through C. This is a process that we as a body have taken on. We're reviewing all of our policies from A through K, L. I forget how many letters there are, but there's a substantial

We are taking a systematic review. This is a process that has taken quite a while to get to where we are. Policies that have brought us here, that we have in front of us, A through C is quite a chunk. It reflects, I want to say, at least a year and a half of work of the Rules Subcommittee. I took a careful look at it over the weekend and found a few things that even in the time that I had spent in subcommittee, I did not catch at that time.

and I'll be suggesting a few small changes as well plus we updated our charter in the time since we undertook this task and there are several policies that we will need, even in this batch that's in front of us, to revisit, so I'm going to suggest pulling a couple of those back as well. and I will itemize those in a moment, but that's just a large framing for those observing and for the new members.

wonderful thank you so um that's what we will consider our first reading at any point if someone wants them all read out loud they can be i feel like that's not the best use of our time uh but i do not want to deny anyone I was going to wrap up, so if we're not ready to wrap up.

Thank you, Chair. Through you, so I want to just highlight that policies A, D, B, B, B, B, E, B, D, A, BDEA and BGC should be withdrawn for reconsideration because some element of them does not match with either the I will absolutely do that.

Thank you. Thank you through you.

Just to clarify, so the version that we're going to get for next meeting will not include those. That is my understanding. Policies that you just listed.

Yes, I will make that change. Is that how that works? Sorry.

So they were voted out of subcommittee. You know, we can choose to vote through Whatever we want. I guess unless there's opposition, I tend to defer to the subcommittee chair about taking them back. As long as it is very clear you know well before our next packet what we will be voting on I think that is that's my interpretation of the request and is that it be made very clear to the body which we are. We'll just use the active sense, what we will be voting on, at least in the next, or what we will be asked to review and vote on by the next session.

Thank you. Through you, I will work with Erica to Ms. Garcia, pardon, to make sure that it reflects what we should move forward with.

and just to be highly specific if Ms. Garcia can send us all an email very shortly saying don't look at these because obviously it's going to be a lot of time to review them and I don't want particularly the new members to spend time looking at things that we're not going to Mead. I don't want it to just come out that Thursday when the packet, as you said, Dr. Ackman.

Makes perfect sense. I agree. All right, so we'll move on that as quickly as possible. Thank you. All right, we're moving on to item B, acceptance of FY26 grant funds. Is there a motion?

I move to accept all grant funds for FY26 for the state grants mass cultural youth reach to the El Sistema Department valued at $26,550. And from Computer Science Engaged Part Two, District-wide grant valued at $33,627. Second.

Motion by Member Biton, seconded by Member Lippens. Are there questions? Member Green?

Actually, no, sorry, not for the specific gifts, sorry. Question was drawn.

There's a motion on the floor. There's a second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Abstentions? All right. The motion passes. We're moving on to donations. Do I have a motion?

I move to approve with gratitude a donation of computer keyboards from Ashish Kul from Cambridge Mass with a value of $390 to support the district-wide programming.

Motion by Member Piton, seconded by Member Biton. Are there, there we go. Now I have a question.

Is there a story here? This is a fairly unique and specialized donation. I'm just, I'm curious.

What I'm hearing from Ms. Garcia is that the donor offered to donate them, and we, once the body approves, gratefully accepted.

Works for me. Thank you.

All right, I have a motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Bitone. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? All right, motion passes. We move on to community or calendar items from committee members. Okay. all right uh vice chair are there any condolences uh for our new members we stand for our condolences

While I pull it up, I apologize.

Tonight we remember Daniel Riley Moynihan, brother of Julie Hughes, ESL specialist at the East Somerville Community School. Russell Arredondo Jr., husband of Leah Arredondo, principal, accountant, clerk, payroll in the finance department. Mary Houghton, sister of the late Rita Houghton, retired teacher Maureen Foster, former pre-K paraprofessional and Kathleen Houghton, retired special ed teacher Mary is also the aunt of Diana Young, Argentiano teacher, and Matt Young, East Somerville Community School teacher. and Miguel Contreras Camacho, father of Catherine Contreras, Gannon Community Schools, out of school time principal clerk too.

Our meeting is adjourned.