School Committee Meeting - January 26, 2026

The school-issued computer hasn't been on SPS Wi-Fi in a while, and so it's like yelling at me that Microsoft is not activated. Oh, wow.

Are we recording already? I heard the recorder in progress. Okay.

Do do do do do

We have a quorum, right? All right, then I might count. It is 7 p.m. And I'm going to call this meeting of the Somerville School Committee to order on, what are we saying, January 26, 2026. and we're recording, so thank you. All right.

Do we need to do the roll call?

Yes, I needed to find it on my screen.

Sorry.

I haven't done a remote meeting like this in a minute. So I wanted to do this while looking at everyone. There we go. Good evening and welcome to this January 26th meeting of the Somerville School Committee pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2025. This meeting of the school committee will be conducted via Zoom webinar participation. We will post an audio recording, video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and or local Cable Access Government channels. Superintendent, can you please call the roll?

Through the Chair, President Davis, Member Piton, Member Lippens, Chair,

Member Eldridge?

Present.

Member Green? Yes. Member Green? Yes.

I'm sorry, I'm not hearing any of the responses. I had my roll call over the faces, so if you could please stay present or here, that would be great. So, Member Green?

No.

Thank you. Dr. Stellman?

Present.

Mayor Wilson? Present. Member Biton?

Present.

Dr. Ackman? And member Biton? Present. Great. So we have nine members present and we have quorum.

Thank you. I'm going to give Ms. Garcia a moment to bring up the flag and we will do our moment of silence and salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right. There are no student representatives speaking today, is my understanding. And Ms. Garcia, is there public comment?

there is no public comment and there is no public comment okay um so we are chugging right along to the district report and uh to make the best use of our educators time we are

Are we going to start with the district report or with the

Sorry, reported the superintendent and then says district report field trip on the agenda.

Gotcha.

Okay, so let me begin with the report. And I just want to start with a reflection on the MLK celebration that we held probably two weeks ago already at Somerville High. I was really proud because this is a moment in which our district shows its commitment to some of the things that we value dearly. Hearing from our students express themselves through poetry and music with such depth, conviction and clarity was truly moving. So I'm deeply proud to be part of a community that creates a space for the students' voices and embraces the diversity of our people, our ideas, and our ways of being. So thank you to this body for your continued commitment to those values. So one of the things that stayed with me from the students' poems was the idea that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Obviously, those are the words of Martin Luther King.

But those words still resonate with me deeply. And some of our families and students are experiencing The fear and the uncertainty that is coming from some of the political pressures. It has been powerful to see our students respond with empathy and also with a call for justice. and as a district, our responsibility is to hold both truths, to celebrate the beauty of our community and to remain steadfast in our commitment to dignity, safety and belonging for every child and the families we serve. So I wanted to open with that. But now I am going to actually give the teachers the time to share. A field trip that is coming for the Healy School. One of the things that I wanted to encourage all principals is to

bring to this space the voices of those who matter most in the system, second from the students. But that's the most important thing. These options of learning that are so valuable really highlight what we are truly about. Before we do that, Dr. Jessica Boston-Davis, is there anything else that we need to know about the field trip that needs to be framed?

I don't think there's anything else from my end.

Okay, with that, I'm going to hand the microphone to Steve, Emma, and Principal Wall.

All right. So I'm just waiting. There we go. And let's make it full screen. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes. Alright, so this is our out-of-state trip. We're heading off to Niagara Falls. Let me give you just a little bit of background. Last year, after the kids got back from Washington... D.C. I sat down with them and I was just like hey what'd you guys like about the trip of course you know the first thing that they said was the bus ride and The second thing they said was spending time with their friends and experiencing things. So we just got into a conversation and it really came from them where they were like... How about a road trip? And someone said, yeah, let's go to Nashville. And I was like, no, no, that's way too far away. But we did get to actual thinking and talking.

and thought about what could we do that is really outside of what the kids have an opportunity to see and Niagara Falls sort of popped up as the right distance with a lot of interesting stuff along the way. and so from there let's click on and we'll start to talk about it. History of off-site learning at the Healy School. We've been going to nature's classroom for about 35 years. I have been going for 26 years on the overnight trips. I've been on or helped plan every Nature's Classroom trip or trips to Philly, New York and D.C. over the last 26 years. I've never gone to Red Gates Farms. Let's click away. So there were some questions about cost.

In the 35 years that we've been having these trips, no student has ever been turned away because of their ability to pay. We do a ton of fundraising, teachers, students. and parents and families and we cover 100% of student needs. Here comes the trip. I talked a little bit about the students' voice, their desire to really go on a road trip to experience things in different places. This year, it's actually a pretty excellent deal for the kids. because we used to and have always in the past hired an outfit to organize it but this year primarily myself and also Emma have been working to organize this trip and so they're getting two nights at a hotel, all the foods and all of the things that we're doing are covered in the cost.

One of the things that gets hidden in overnight trips when you're not going to a place like a nature's classroom is the extra expenses. Food at the rest stops, etc. And all of that's going to be covered on this trip. Instead of reading this list, let's just look at the pictures.

Yep.

Oops. It went right to the Museum of Play, which is an awesome website. But let's try to get to the next. Here we go.

Okay, so our first stop, our trip starts at 7 in the morning, which is always fun to tell the kids. And we tell them that 7.05 the bus is gone and starts at 7 in the morning. And our first stop... is going to be at Howe Caverns. This was recommended to us by our science teacher. He's been there and said it's incredible, Mr. Dooley. and then it was confirmed by a couple parents who were like oh my god you guys are going to Niagara Falls you have to stop at Howe Caverns so we have reservations to go to Howe Caverns on the first day of our trip on the way out to Buffalo Next slide, please. Next stop. So what we're trying to do is think about, you know, what can we do that's really fun for the kids? I'm a baseball fan and I was like, man, there must be some minor league games. And so we contacted the Batavia Muck Dogs.

and believe it or not they actually scheduled a game for us on that first night because they hadn't made the schedule yet and they have a set package where you get to sit if you can see in the background there um The little canopy out in left field there. No, no, no, no. See the tent?

No.

Right below the mouse, okay? Yeah, so we have an all-you-can-eat picnic before the game. Hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans, etc. Fries and then they're also want some lucky student we haven't figured out how to figure to do this is going to be throwing out the first pitch before the game slide From there, we head up to Buffalo and we'll be staying at the Hilton Garden Inn. We have reservations there and the exact number is malleable, but they know that we'll need enough to cover about 90 students and about 25 adults altogether. And so that's been all set in place and we've reserved that. The next morning. Oh, let me just tell you a little about the hotel. Let's back up for a second.

So when we check into the hotel, that when we're on the bus and the buses are super nice, they're coach buses with a bathroom on it and comfortable and Wi-Fi and Chargers and all of that. When we get to the hotel, up until that point, no student knows who they're rooming with. So they're all very excited. and parents are worried because often they're away from you know their kids for the first time so we just tell the kids right now call home say you know good night to Your parents because we're going to be taking your phones from you for the evening So they don't have their cell phones with them at all in their room They're told their rooms and then they go up into their rooms It's made very clear that they cannot leave the room We have paid guards on each floor who will be sitting all night long and give us a report in the morning and that's actually for both nights.

It's very beneficial for us. It also helps with the parents to know that no one will be have access to either get out or in their room. Obviously, there are regular phones in their rooms. So if there's an emergency, they can certainly use that. Unfortunately, the only thing they tend to use it for is calling all of the other rooms in the hotel but uh we always shut it down though we always shut it down very yes we do next slide The next day is Niagara Falls. There were some questions about which side we were going to go on. Of course, we're just going to be on the USA side. I've been to both sides. Interestingly enough, last year I went just to the American side. and it's super beautiful trails that lead right up to Niagara Falls which is um

Nice, because on the Canadian side, there's a bunch of stuff to do, but there isn't as much like hiking and sort of nature experiences. So there's a lot of nice hiking stuff to do outside on the American side. and then of course we're going to be going on the Maid of the Mist boat tour which the kids are super psyched for. From then from there that evening we will be going to the Anchor Bar which if you don't know is the home of the original Buffalo Wings. and they're not just gonna have buffalo wings we also have like french fries and all sorts of and pizza and and uh vegetarian options for anybody who wants them um but it's right up the kids salary It's a bit of history, so to speak.

After that, we still have an evening where we'll do something else in Buffalo and haven't quite figured that out yet. and then we go back to the hotel. The second night is usually a lot easier than the first night because they're all exhausted. Lots more sleep. And then the next day we're going to Rochester. Some other people had recommended this and we spent some time looking at it. and it's a National Museum of Play and it's as you can see a ginormous building just filled with nothing but the history of games and toys and play which we like a lot. and I think the kids will have a blast with after we leave this museum actually we have reservations at a local restaurant to get what's called a garbage plate or trash plate I can't remember which one it is which is a Rochester specialty

That involves just a giant pile of french fries and whatever you want on top of it with some sauce It's a chance for the kids to sort of experience what it means to be on a road trip not just seeing the tourist stuff but actually getting a chance to taste the local fare so to speak From there we will be going to the Women's Rights National Historic Park. That is a national park and we will be going on tours. There they have guides. It's like a regular national park. It's also right in the area where It's a Wonderful Life was filmed in Seneca Falls. So that should be totally excellent. I think the kids will love it and it ties directly to Well, Emma, you could probably touch base on this, but it ties directly to this year's curriculum.

Yeah, there's a lot in particular in the seventh grade fish tank curriculum. It's chock full of history about the suffrage movement. So I think the kids will make a lot of connections.

Next. The trip is $550. It's a great deal. It's two nights. Includes all the tickets to everything. Includes all the food. Nice bus, the hotel, security at the hotel. and that is less than what it usually costs or about the same as one night in New York City. Much less stressful than going to New York City as well. and it's less than what we spent for two nights going to DC last year. As you can see, we've already raised about $14,000. Students have done some of the fundraising. Families have done some of the fundraising. and staff has done some of the fundraising. This year, and I actually think that the destination makes a difference, we have very high attendance.

We have 91 students attending and 15 students staying here The thing I want to note is when they stay here, they also do activities off school grounds all three days. So no one is left for wanting of experiences outside of our building. But we are projecting $10,000 in scholarships. It usually goes up, and we think we're in pretty good shape for this already. Yep. Safety is number one for us. As I was joking before, we've never lost a kid, which is actually going to New York a fairly cool thing to say. They are always supervised.

It's sort of this nice thing because when you go to a place like, let's say, the museum, they're able to roam because they can't leave without supervision. but they are starting to get a little sense of independence at this age which is really nice for them as I've already mentioned there's security in the hotels We have collective cell phones, so there'll be no use of the cell phones in the evenings. We have lots of chaperones. Often we have... Parents who will come that make people feel more comfortable sending their kids because they know them. And actually the person who comes on these trips that makes people the most comfortable. is Marie Baxter because everybody has known her since kindergarten. And then there's a nurse on the trip as well. So what I like to tell parents is the truth is they're going to be more supervised and have more access to safe things than... Hanging out after school.

this is a couple testimonials I'll let you guys read them on your own but they are both students who contributed and supported our trip after they left Wanna go to the next one?

Yep.

So this is a older sister of a current eighth grader who I communicated with a lot last year about the trip. and she just was so adamant that her sister who was a little shyer and more nervous than her go on the trip because it was so meaningful in her life.

All right. Is there another one?

There's not. I'll stop the share.

I want to just wrap it up real quick.

Oh, here, there's a little wrap-up here, too.

Okay, there is nothing better than that our school does in these trips. And as much as I love the idea of going to Niagara Falls, and the DC trip the New York trips I just want to shout out nature's classroom which I think is the single best thing that the kids can do these are opportunities that most of our students will not have in their regular day-to-day life. And it is, I'm going to speak to this one more thing too. People are often asking, you know, how does this tie to the curriculum? And my answer is, and I know that, you know, Sarah's probably like not going to be happy with this but travel in itself is beneficial it's just like art is beneficial for the sake of art and I feel like that these trips have um Incredibly important impact on the kids.

Yep.

Thank you through the chair. Steve, Emma, and Principal Wald, you're such ambassadors for the Healy Hawks. Steven, no question, learning is more than just learning. Through walls and through paper and books, is that right? So especially in the time after COVID, it is important that kids learn how to be in community. So thank you for this effort. And also thank you for the thorough presentation you have. and I'm going to leave the floor to the chair.

Thank you. I will, because I don't know if it gets recorded, I want to note that the principal has put in the chat, I'm so proud of this team and grateful to get to work with them every day. How awesome are they? I couldn't agree more. I also want to give like an iota of context setting our educators Educator Daniels, Educator Stefano, like they have been generous enough to come in front of this body. One of the things, you know, we have out-of-state field trips. We talk about them. We have overnight field trips, but... We are a largely new body, and so I wanted folks to see what the process looks like. Not every out-of-state field trip is going to get this

level of depth um they collectively drew the short straw but since they're so good at what they do they you know came and presented my opinion knocked it out of the park so I really appreciate their time and Any questions? Yes, I will say this much. If the body deems that we need presentations for every out-of-state fish, that's something we can probably bring to paroles and come up with something more formal. It is not standard policy just yet. So I... Did see Member Eldridge's hand up first, but then you took it down. Would you like to go or are you all set for now?

That was an accident. I'm having some internet difficulties. My apologies.

Worse things have happened. I also really appreciate the body and everyone who is watching. You know, part of the body is trying to pull together institutions and while we've had COVID-era meetings. We haven't done a full meeting like this, and I don't know how many opportunities we'll get. I honestly hope not too many, but I figured that we should get some practice with this. So, Member Green.

Thank you. I'm having... I just want to keep my camera off just for connection purposes. So, first of all, I want to thank the Healy... I'm going to avoid being too homery here, but I want to thank the Healy... Faculty for, you know, both this great presentation, which I think is a model for how, for the ones we do want more information, it should be handled. But also for the real thought they clearly put into this trip. It's a real example of We talk about wanting to take the whole child, and I think this trip really does that. I think Mr. Stefano is absolutely right that travel, especially for young people...

Thank you for watching! It's a really great example of what we mean when we say we want to take the whole child. I really... I want to point that out. As someone who is currently, say, debating with my child over the value of outdoor classroom, I really appreciate being able, as I will show her this presentation and No, like, this travel is important and it's student-centered and it was student-listened to and really I'm just being effusive in my great job by the Healy team and I cannot wait to approve this.

All right. Mayor Wilson.

Chair, I want to thank our educators for going above and beyond to make off-site learning happen at the Healy School, along with project-based learning. Of course, this is one of the things that makes the Healy unique. in the district, having done the fundraising to make the Healy's offsite learning program happen, and having a child who went on that DC trip that Mr. Stefano mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. I'll say I think this rethink of the trip is really a great idea. As much as students might love the bus rides, getting to DC by bus is an ordeal and it's expensive. and the ratio of travel time to time at the destination wasn't great. So that participation rate that we saw is amazing. I think that really says it all. My question through the chair, Yes.

huge shout out to Steve especially he you know this is something that he does on his own time um and we have we have a great time talking about it and I know he has a great time doing it but it's hours of work um so

wanted to name that so one of the things that's really cool so I actually ended up speaking to the GM of the baseball team and it was just really like I was just like dude what a great job and he like It was really interesting talking to him and then when I was talking to the Museum of Play I ended up calling this other restaurant which is where we're going for the special plate and the dude was like I work at both places you happen to be speaking to the perfect person for this and so it was just it was it was whatever serendipity that it worked out that way in Rochester. But organizing it is a pain in the butt, but it has saved a ton of money. It is actually pretty interesting trying to figure these things out. And I still keep my fingers crossed. It's like going on a plane that has lots of connections. Hopefully we make them all just right.

Yeah, Chair, I think that, I mean, for me, that's the real story here is the amount, actually, it's the amount of extra things they're going to be able to do because they aren't paying a huge cut. Thank you. My father says luck is the residue of design.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Luck is the residue of design. I'm going to have to file that away. That's amazing.

That's a Branch Rickey quote. The guy who signed Jackie Robinson.

Yeah, my dad's not original. That's not surprising.

Yeah, that's Branch Rickey.

Cool. Well, this presentation has been fantastic. Chair, to your point earlier about needing a presentation like this, It's a treat, but I don't think we need it as a standing policy. I'll just opine that at the top here. What an exceptional opportunity for our students. Really, I just, I'm filled with gratitude for you, Ms. Daniels, Mr. Stefano, Principal Wall, for... The gift that you are giving to these kids. I know it's expensive for a lot of them and I'm so thankful that we are able as a community to come together and make sure that those who cannot afford to go can go nonetheless. That is so crucial.

That was my key question coming into this conversation and you nailed it right up at the top. I am so enthusiastic about this. My question is for, through the chair, for Dr. Carmona and Dr. Boston Davis about the work that you're doing in the central office around Fieldtrip, sort of equity across the district and looking at... I guess at this point, what we're doing is we're sort of... Doing an inventory, I think, is my understanding of sort of what are the opportunities. But I'm wondering, you know... I know at the West we had a field trip like this at the DC trip for some time.

How does this trip to Niagara Falls sort of fit into the broader context of what we do for out-of-state field trips in the eighth grade in the district?

Yep, so I'm happy to throw the chair. I'm like, where's the chair? Okay. I'm happy to take an initial stab at that. So all of our trips, all of our field trips are planned at the school level. We do have we have coordinated and we're coordinating two more this year, a handful. of district-wide trips, but they really are coordinated at the school level, often driven by, you know, in each community and context is slightly different, but driven by the interests of the community and kind of designed by there. You're right that we are kind of taking an inventory. What that's looked like is Kaylee Galantano, our director for equity, has been leading a lot of this. She sent a survey to all the principals just to get a,

and understanding of what trips are taken and where and how are they funded of course in my office we have a list of all the trips but that's once we get the forms So once we get all the field trip forms, they come to my office. I review the kind of ratio and the timeline and whether they're in-state or out-of-state. and so if they need to go to the committee so I kind of check for those kind of things but we don't have currently a recommendation for all schools to take X trip during the eighth grade year. Most schools, if not all, I'm thinking about it. I think most, if not all schools do have some kind of like eighth grade celebration rites of passage almost type of trip, but they do vary by school. So that's kind of the larger,

I've been having ongoing conversations also with some community members that are just really interested in being helpful thought partners with me and I've really appreciated it, made some considerations. But currently, the way we also fund field trips are funded through school budgets. So each school has a small allocation that can go towards Buses, and then often PTAs of schools, which we know the way they operate slightly varies support also with the trip planning. I hope that answers the question and I'm happy to answer any follow-ups if I didn't quite answer your question.

I don't have any follow-ups. That was really excellent context. Thank you.

Thanks so much. Member Biton.

Thank you, through the chair. I could wax on and on and on about how much I enjoy these trips that our students get to go on. Both of my kids went on most of these trips. I think my daughter was one of the first classes who went to Red Gate, which was phenomenal. My husband has shepherded Every one of these trips, I was all about fundraising. He was about chaperoning and organizing volunteers. I did that kind of work. Anyway, so putting that aside, and thank you, Ms. Daniels and Mr. Stefano for coming. Really appreciate it. and I think My bigger concerns, not concerns, but questions are from a policy standpoint, the two biggest concerns from my perspective are safety and access. So and obviously this presentation addressed both safety and access and to the level of safety in terms of students being able to sleep and having good sleep hygiene and not having their phones. So I really applaud all that.

I don't know what the answer is to this, but whether or not we want to have Think about a policy or think about learning a little bit more. I know that Dr. Boston Davis was trying to work on refining the process to make sure that the school committee has as much information as possible when we're I'm not saying that everyone should have to come every time, but maybe there's a cycle or when there's a new trip, somebody comes and presents at it. Because I also don't think we can make assumptions. so the level of detail that you're able to provide here was kind of different than what we would have gotten on a form and if we can automate that and put it in forms great because bottom line is we don't want to give any more work to our educators the fact that you're even putting these trips together is is phenomenal. But at the same time, we are responsible as well as administration, the superintendent's office for the safety of the students. So I guess I defer this to the chair, Dr. Boston Davis and the chair of rules to see whether or not there's

just sort of a based on what we've been presented here and sort of this example how we might want to refine and improve our process for approving to ensure the safety and the accessibility, but at the same time, not too overboard. So just flagging that. Oh, and I also just wanted to note, give a little Extra kudos to the Healy. I think the Healy is constantly setting the example that has been passed on to a lot of schools and a lot of educators. So since when my son first started going on these trips when Healy was the only school doing it, Till now where many of the schools do whether it's New Jersey Classroom or a big eighth grade trip it's just really exciting and I know how much um support the Healy educators give to the other educators in the other schools and when other schools are interested in these trips that's where they start and so I just want to compliment that as well and the fact that

Healy continues to innovate and says you know this trip might not be working for us let's do something different. and being very proactive about that like I got a message in an email list about the Niagara Falls for of course a fundraising ask but was very very clear about why they made the change and I was just super excited to hear that as opposed to kind of the rumor mill saying we're shutting down the eighth grade trip nobody's going to New York anymore so anyway I see that as like an example of innovation and really good communication so thank you for both.

Thank you Dr. Boston Davis.

Thank you to the chair. I just wanted to respond from a practice perspective. Obviously, through the committee to determine in terms of if there's going to be policy or a regular policy about presenting to the committee. But from a practice perspective, I did want to just name that we are refining our field trip form I'm not going to roll it out until next school year, but it will be electronic. Out-of-state field trips will require a little bit more detail. So again, I'm not going to roll something out in the middle of the year. but you can expect and I'm happy to share that with the committee you know for feedback in advance to you know at least kind of in our practices for as a district to receive a little bit more information I had ahead of time for any kind of field trip that you need to approve.

I also wanted to say while I have the opportunity, I should have I'm going to end with this because I should have started with this is just I do deeply appreciate the presentation. Thank you so much for this presentation, that rich presentation. It is exciting. We are very fortunate to have such passionate educators that are planning I couldn't agree more.

Just to Build on what Mr. Stefano said, there's a Mark Twain travel quote that is, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of others and things can not be acquired by vegetating in the little corner of the earth for all of one's lifetime. to speak to that kind of education. I think because they have done this work if the body would like to if someone would like to make a motion to approve this field trip let them have their complete Package, I will accept motion.

Motion to approve the 2026 Healy 7th, 8th grade field trip to Niagara Falls.

Second.

All right, I have a motion from Member Pitone, seconded by Mayor Wilson. Any other comments, questions? All right, we're online, so we have to do a roll call vote. Dr. Carmona, do you mind doing that? if you can take notes I can do it also your sound is off

Sorry, thank you. I moved my sheet of the roll call, so I don't see it right now, but I'm going to do it right now by calling you. Emma... Hold on. Okay, I'm going to start. Emily, Dr. Ackman?

Yes.

Dr. Stellman? Yes. Member Green? Yes. Member Biton? Yes. Yes. Member Biton? Yes. Member Eldridge? Yes. Mayor Wilson? Yes. Member Lippens?

Yes.

And I think that is everyone. So yes, the approval is inevitable.

Thank you for your time. I assume you're not going to stay on, but have a lovely evening. Hope you're warm and safe.

Good night. Thank you. Bye.

Thanks, everyone. Good night. and remind me the health and physical education update that is happening or is not that is happening okay wonderful excited it is it is happening move on to that

Thank you. So before we move into that, I just wanted to highlight the fact that we had a major storm. and I wanted to really thank the city partners that have worked with us both to prepare for the storm as well as to make sure that we anticipate challenges So there have been multiple meetings over the weekend. Prior to the weekend, and we continue to need to determine what are our current needs but I have to say though that at the center of most of the responses and most of the collaboration is how can we make sure that the schools are ready. So I want to thank the city for their collaboration. And I also wanted to remind families that Our information is always shared through social media websites and as well as our direct email and phone messages. If you're not getting our communication, please let us know because that means that our system has to be updated.

and I also wanted to finally remind everyone also that next week, this week and next week is going to be very cold. So make sure that your children are prepared for the weather and also that if you have any needs in regards to resources or winter clothing Please communicate with your every building has apparently a zone who can support you and SFLC is ready for that. So again, a sincere thank you to DPW for their work and also to the mayor's office for their support. Secondly, I just wanted to also thank everyone who joined us last week during the visioning session that we had at the Brown School. We met with families during a coffee hour along with Mayor Wilson to talk about

We also have a second coffee hour that is scheduled at the Winter Hill on February 3rd. and I know that we will have forums and community input that has been developed jointly by the city and the school district. And as I said before, the mayor is fully committed to making sure that there is continuous transparency and also that this project continues to move forward. Okay, with that, I am going to bring the next connection, which again is in part related to what we just saw a minute ago, which is looking at the child from a whole child perspective. And so I'm really, really excited to bring our next director, Director of Health and Physical Education.

who has been instrumental in helping us think about different ways in which we structure the systems for our kids. He has a vision and has helped us lay out the groundwork for some innovative programming that is happening in our district. So with that, I am pleased to welcome Blair Williams with an update on health and physical education.

Thank you so much for that introduction Dr. Carmona and everyone for being here tonight. Thank you so much for joining us today. Rest and kind of disconnect today. So I'm just going to share my presentation now. And if everyone can let me know that they see it, just sort of quick thumbs up or shout out.

We can say it.

Yes. Wonderful. So Blair Williams, the K-12 and Health and PE supervisor here in Somerville. And I will be presenting Somerville Strong. Advancing Health and PE for every student. So on our agenda today, I'll get into a brief purpose and introduction about myself and my why in health and education, health and PE. I'll get into our department. I'll discuss our alignment to the district's strategic plan and what we focus on in health and PE and how it aligns to that plan. I'll then dive into our community partnerships and some current initiatives that I have going and then I will dive into our third grade swimming program which is going very well.

and then I'll get into some future plans for next year and so on and then if there's time within our schedule I'd love to answer some questions. So quickly about me, Blair Williams again. I began my career in Miami-Dade Public Schools as a K-8 student. Health and PE, Educator, and then later moved on into Cambridge Public Schools where I worked in leadership roles. I'm now here in Somerville, which has been phenomenal. I often say that I found my voice In movement education as a child, movement was where I learned confidence, self-expression, and resilience long before I had the language to use them. And that experience shaped My belief that health and physical education is essential to student success and it's supplemental. It's not supplemental.

And then additionally, my why in health centers on the belief that When students understand their bodies, emotions, and well-being, they are better prepared to learn, lead, and thrive. And I truly feel Somerville Public Schools commitment to educating the whole child can allow us to provide A strong in health and PE program that all of our students can access. So briefly, I don't want to read to you this whole time. I just want everyone to just take a brief look at our vision statement and just reflect on it and think about How this plays into Somerville Public Schools and our overall goal for the district. We, every department meeting, look at this statement and then additionally we have worked on it and continue to look at it in ways that we can alter it and make it better for our vision overall.

All right, I'm going to move on. So now I'm just going to dive in our alignment to the district's strategic plan and how HealthMP directly aligned to it. So we, the SPS Health and PE experience, we really like to provide our students a program where there's joy in movement. which aligns to our strategic plan of wellness and joy and then additionally we like to build physical literacy which coincides with academic excellence when our students Thank you for watching.

and then additionally I'm big on teamwork just from the leadership level I love to collaborate with my peers and then in terms of family and community engagement our teachers are big on communicating with families letting them know about what's happening within their programs and then additionally which I'm going to dive in later I'm big on communicating about our swim program and other public facing initiatives that we have going on and Health and PE. And then additionally, the next step is that every student is included. We have a vast diverse group of students here in Somerville. So our program is built for all of our students to be able to access it and to have an inclusive experience and that aligns with equity and access which also Somerville Public Schools stands for.

So now I'm just going to dive into our community partnerships and current initiatives that I have going. We currently work with the Cambridge Health Alliance. and at the middle school level which is really important for our adolescent years and that middle school experience this partnership delivers our get real health education. And that is where our students get primarily the sex ed topics and puberty and all what that entails. and then before we even get into that, something new this year that I've been providing, I was able to do it at the East and at Winterhill was a parent caregiver session Where CHA and myself collaborated. We went to the school. Parents were able to come up. We did a presentation and they asked questions. And then the goal for next year is that I will be at all of the

K-8 schools in the beginning of the year when they're having their open houses and we'll be delivering these sessions then I just was so new in the beginning of the school year I didn't have my feet on the ground yet but that is a goal for us next year and then This... Partnership supports our goal for equity and wellness and student knowledge because we provide this program to all of our students and then if students choose to opt out that is allowed and then this also this Partnership provides additional support with us at the high school. So Cambridge Health Alliance is a great community partner that we use from 7 to 12 that we'd really like to keep going and they're great with us. So some current initiatives I have going for this year will be that the rock wall at the high school will be put up into compliance.

I've now been able to prove that we have the proof of insurance. I have created a wall set for it. I have now I've got a company called Project Adventure, which will be coming in February break to switch the belays. Then additionally, we'll be providing a PD session for our high school teachers in the beginning of the school year. Next year will be a full day training. Teaching the curriculum and how to administer this program. And what's good about this Rockwall and Project Adventure is that our students develop SEL skills that are brought to a whole nother level. Again, with providing equity and access, some of our students might not get the chance to ever get to a rock on their lives. This is an activity that, you know, for some, it's hard to access. and now that with this being up to compliance, it's free.

So I'm excited to get this going and this to be a part of our health and PE program and it just provides an inclusive opportunity for all our students. So hopefully next year we can get Dr. Carmona or Dr. Jess Boston-Davis climbing at the high school, which would be really fun to see. And then I'm just going to dive into a current initiative of mine, which was shared with me in my onboarding and in my interview process. Third grade swimming. It's been going great. What's new? I created a swim operations team this year, which consists of administrators from recreation, Admin from the SBS facility team, myself, where we met together and continue to meet to make sure transportation is going well. Communication is going good and then that facilities and operations at the pool is going well. We also have an emergency plan.

Just in case something happens with chemicals, which I know has happened in the past at the pool, which shouldn't happen anymore. I've also launched new department-wide instructional protocols, being a report card. Students are now knowing where they're at and our families can see how they can further strengthen their children's Swimming, and then additionally I've created pre-swim classroom visits where I go to each school, I present in front of the third graders, and I have them ask any questions and I break down the program from how we get to the pool, exiting, entering, changing and so forth which I'll dive into in the next slides and then I also I feel like I've strengthened communication with school leadership. I've just been very transparent, sharing data, just being really ahead and making sure everyone knows each detail along with the third grade swimming program.

So just a brief breakdown of our SWIM presentation. This little guy here is Andrew Galanick, the pool manager. I just shared a few slides of the presentation. I go to each school. I show the students where the pool is at. We explain how to get into the pool. Some students get there. They're not nervous. You know, they already see where they're going. I break down the goal of the program. The goal is for students to successfully have a backstroke and a crawl or the frontstroke. They also learn how to back float and which are important learning skills and essential safety skills for swimming that students should have. And then this is my favorite slide we share, the instructors. Some of these instructors went through Somerville Public Schools. All of them are college students. Granted, some of our SPS students might not go to college.

I always feel it's important for our children to see visionaries that are young and going through the traditional process. Edrick went through Winterhill. and SPS, SHS, Yanni. He's a director within the REC program. When he can get down by the pool, he additionally swims. He went through SPS K-12 and it's great because He gives back to the community and is a visionary for them. Sue is a retired elementary teacher. She works great with the students and overall this program and these instructors are really invested and I hope to just continue to get more college students in that enjoy teaching swimming. Here is the report card that we now give back. None of our students leave third grade swimming as non-swimmers. Some might come in as that, which is okay.

Everyone leaves emerging, meaning they feel comfortable with the water. They still need swimming lessons, which is okay, which means that the seven weeks wasn't enough for them. And then additionally, a lot of students that score or land in emerging... Our program was the first time they've ever been introduced to a pool. So even getting them to emerging is phenomenal because some of these students were scared to even touch the water. And then proficient students can front crawl, back crawl, Front Float and Back Float Successful. And students that also land in the emerging criterion, they're given information from Andrew on how students can further swimming lessons so it's not just students are left at a limb they know that they have an opportunity to continue lessons

And then just to share some data, I'm very happy. The first session is completed and went great. Healy kicked it off with 96% of the students are proficient at that building. East did phenomenal as well with more than half. Right now we have Genziano and Winterhill participating. I'll be meeting with some members tomorrow of the swim operations team to discuss makeups. Snow days, it's inevitable in New England. And then in March, Kennedy, West, and Brown will be participating. And then the goal for next year will be that programming starts. Earlier, so session three doesn't fall into MCAS testing. Again, I was new in the beginning of the year, getting my feet in the ground. We'll definitely be kicking off swimming earlier so we don't run into that issue for 2026. 2027. And then last looking ahead, some goals.

Unfortunately, with some changes with the higher federal powers, We no longer have our collab with UMass Lowell with our nutrition for first through fourth. They are no longer a program, which is unfortunate, but our health teachers are excited to dive into teaching that curriculum. That will now be an add-on within our HealthSmart curriculum that our K-8 health teachers instruct. I'd also like to bring in orienteering, another outdoor program to our K-12 health and PE program. I'd also like to get biking going. It's a great form of transportation and we can get our students utilizing that. coming to school, Project Adventure will be coming to the high school and that is the climbing I explained in the past slide. I'd also like to get rowing going, a free community partner that I worked with in the past.

And then also rugby would be a great K5 program that I'd like to get going because Keegan Bliss at Winterhill plays rugby for the New England Free Jacks so that could be another experiential program that we could bring to SPS. So these are just things I'm thinking ahead to bring to just make our program Even more 21st century and more innovative and inclusive for our students and again giving access to things that some of our students might not get if they didn't go to Somerville. And thank you so much. I'll open up the floor to questions, wonderings, or just thoughts that you might want to share in regards to health and PE.

Thank you so much, Professor Williams. That was really impressive. You have touched on what I will say have been some Warts like I'll say that from the from the school committee perspective or challenges the climbing wall the third grade swimming the way you addressed it like I'm sure my colleagues will mention this but like I just, I regret that we're not in person so you can't hear us clap, but like, really, thank you so much. Member Pitone.

Thank you through the chair. Mr. Williams, thank you so much for being here. And I want to thank you specifically for your vision and your enthusiasm. This is something that's very near to dear and to my heart personally. When my kids first started health education, everybody gets bored of me telling this story, but the nurse would come down for a couple hours. and teach the kids and it was completely insufficient most of the nurses were not qualified to do that work and certainly not enough time so anyway I'm thrilled about this I'd love to hear more about A, the scope of sort of the K-4 because that's something we were kind of leaning into in the last few years just to try to extend it down to the younger grades to have Developmentally Appropriate Health Education. Also, our policy technically has pre-K in that list, and I don't know if we're doing that now or if there's a plan to do that. And then where can

people find more information in terms of you know how long how much time do kids get for health education how many sessions I don't think it's on the website anymore and it might be on your Goals are ready to work on the website because I think maybe it's a little stale but I'd love to be able to direct families because I sometimes get questions about this. This is not an uncommon place where I get questions. and I'd love to be able to give people direct them to the definitive answers of like now your kid gets like two weeks of 45 minute sessions or whatever it is because I don't know what we've gotten to now and I'm sure it's even better than I remember or more substantive so thank you

Thank you so much. And just to dive into it, what you're asking, state and district policy once a week, 30 minutes. National state is twice a week, 45 minutes. that would be ideally the goal however some ramifications with FTE and scheduling don't allow that but we're working towards that in the future.

Can I do a quick follow up? For sure So when you say once a week 30 minutes this is all year or is it like they get four weeks of it and the used to be the health educator would rotate from school to school I'm curious just how it's being executed

Great question. There's kind of no shoe fits all. We have DCLS in some of our schools, and then due to scheduling, it's... Thank you for joining us. The FTE, bully it that it can be like that in every building.

So again, to clarify, basically right now they get at least 30 minutes once per week through the whole year, but it could be not just once per week, it could be multiple times in one week, but that's the total amount they get. Correct? Yes, correct.

Thank you. Superintendent Carmona, did you want to respond?

I wanted to respond overall to Blair's presentation, so I don't want to cut in line. But in general, I just wanted to say a couple of things. Last time when we had the game between Cambridge and Somerville, we have usually the luncheon. There were many people there who actually know Blair from Mr. Williams from Cambridge, and they were very unhappy with me because we have... Mr. Williams and so their loss was our gain that was consistently what I heard now it's very clear to me the reason is they're right I love the systems in place I love the idea of Really bringing Somerville to the 21st century. Most of the sports that were discussed were part of kind of what they call the new body technology. My son got into rock climbing and actually that's what he's doing. Some spinoff of that for his career. So I think that

Thank you for your eloquence and your tendency to think about systems. We are here to partner up and hopefully we'll continue. to do what's best for all our kids.

So thank you. Member Lippens.

Thank you to the chair. I just want to comment. I thought it was an excellent presentation. I think it speaks highly of any institution where our students go through and then come back and our mentors and and Work. So that's really wonderful. I also really appreciate the future plans such as orienteering. That is an excellent I do have a question you mentioned about parent partnerships and the work that you're trying to do. And I think I heard you mention it, but I wanted to know if you could maybe go a little more detail about it.

Sure, so before the Get Real Puberty Sex Ed Unit was even going to be shared, I feel it's important for parents to just have the open dialogue and conversation with CHA and myself just to run through it before it's even administered to our students. Just with timing and so forth, I couldn't get into all the open houses with CHA in the beginning of the school year because I was getting my feet on the ground, learning the district, building community ties, just learning. So I was able to do it for EAST. and Winter Hill where we went to the schools. It was before it was between 8 and 8 30 right after drop off so parents potentially that did drop off were able to just come to the school and stay and then We did a caregiver session where we went through the presentation, the scope and sequence of the work, and then it just was a Q&A based off it where we really just kind of

Broke down a lot of wonderings and just, it's sensitive, you know, these topics and I'm not a parent yet. So your child... They're learning things. And we explain how we talk about negative terminology because children hear things that aren't correct. Basically break it down of what is going to be taught to our students. And then my goal for next year is that's going to be at every school. And I'm going to push in at open house.

Can I ask a follow-up? Sure. Thank you. Sorry. That sounds all wonderful. From your experience with meeting with families, do you have any ideas of how to make it more like maybe not recording the session but maybe keeping track of like common questions or for parents that aren't able to attend those sessions because as you know like health can be culturally and um just for certain families like there's a there's a lot to unpack so I'm just wondering how you plan on like communicating even information from those sessions where I think a lot of great questions are probably asked and then answered.

Yeah, THA, they are very tech savvy. So I handled, I got translators from our district to be there to be able to translate and our communication was and French Creole, Portuguese, Spanish, and English. And then CHA had a virtual live stream linked So parents could link in and watch and answer questions additionally on top of coming in person. So we feel like we covered all bases and we did have a contingency of parents that participated virtually.

Thank you, Member Green.

I want to echo the praise for the presentation. And in particular, I want to thank you because you've done something I haven't really seen done in my time on school committee. And you really named and thought about, like, what are the goals of the program? Like, what are we trying to accomplish when we have? Health and particularly Fragilitation. It's a question I was asked for athletic department and I'm still waiting for a good answer. And in particular though, because you have goals, I can ask a question I always really want to ask is how do we know we're doing a good job? Like you did it with the swimming lessons and I really appreciated that. You have a rubric, whatever. But in general, when it comes to our health and physical education programming, How does a district know we're on the right track?

Well, sure. I think from The technical aspect would be always providing data like what I did with swimming and other programming and showing the results, right? The adaptive would be the joy that is seen in our classrooms, you know, going around and hearing testimonials, getting feedback, and just, again, with the district strategic plan, Joy, overall wellness and just seeing our students participating and happy in our programming. And then just to think of the continuity, it's also seeing students continue to choose our electives at the high school that are continuing to grow meaning like we now have dance two

which is a new program because we have students that want to stay in our dance program so that's just another example of if we're increasing programming at the high school it shows that students truly enjoy our health and PE experience from K-8.

Thank you.

Superintendent, do you want to respond?

Yeah, I would be remiss if I don't mention some of the tools that we use to triangulate that data and the conditions for learning data is also one that we look at carefully. and so I do appreciate the question it's a great question how do we know we're actually moving inching up in terms of our growth But that's another place to look at to determine how students feel in regards to their communities, in regards to themselves. But the conditions for learning should be somewhat of a correlational data point that would allow us to determine how kids are moving up.

Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that Ms. Garcia and President Davis came right around 8 o'clock. I want to welcome you. And thanks for joining us. Mayor Wilson.

Thanks, Chair. I just want to say, if anyone in the public is sitting at home wondering why we're making such a big deal out of teaching children to swim... It's also an equity issue. The stats show very clearly that young victims of drowning deaths are disproportionately kids of color. due to disparities in access to pools and beaches. So this is a really great way to combat that. As a society, we've moved away from teaching swimming in schools, and I think that was a mistake. So this is a really welcome initiative in our city. My question is about the transportation piece. I know that YMCA used to do this. is part of an arrangement with the city, the transportation, and I think the program too. But through the chair to Mr. Williams, could you please talk a little about how the transportation is working, challenges there, and any ideas you're looking at on that front?

Yes, so the YMCA, it was presented to me that this was kind of like a word of mouth type Thank you for joining us. provide transportation for us. But on my end, I have I've taken an extra step to reach out to Eastern Bus and make sure that community tie is great. And then additionally, I've worked really closely with Denise from REC who handles the transportation side of that. and then additionally I've worked really hard with

Amara and Danielle Berry on the SPS side from facilities so again that swim operations team we've all really collaborated to make sure that the bus system program problem won't be a thing this year

Thank you. Thanks, Chair.

Follow-up? Yes.

We'll see the chair if I get something. I just wanted to, well, thank Amir Wilson for his point about the equity issue, but to give a minor historical correction. The move to slash public funding Swimming lessons in schools and frankly swimming pools was a conscious decision made in the aftermath of integrating public pools where many communities literally fill their pools in rather than integrate them. and many, many, many communities stopped teaching swimming in schools as schools integrated. So I appreciate the sentiment, Mayor Wilson, but I just want the community to know it wasn't a mistake, it was a conscious decision we made as a society.

Thank you for your patience. I heard a crying child and wanted to check on them. Mayor Wilson, did you have a follow-up?

No, sure. It's important to call that out. That's what I was referring to by the mistake.

Thank you. Member Eldridge?

Thank you so much for the presentation. I appreciated it. I learned a lot. I wanted to, I guess, elevate the use of social stories to get children acclimated to the pool. I think that's wildly helpful. I think that's really fantastic. And I also want to elevate the pair of presentations that you've done at East and Winter Hill. I've had some gifted Thank you so much for having me. A percentage of students in seventh and eighth grade that participate in the health and education. I'm trying to figure out how many are participating and how many are opting out. And I'm just purely curious.

Well, in terms of physical education, 100% participate. And then I would say it's a small amount, maybe 1% opts out. Very, very minute. And then, which is great, after doing the parent presentations with Winterhill and East, and many more. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Boston-Davis.

Do you want to also? No? Okay, great. Supervisor William, sorry, you muted yourself.

Yes, to clarify, there is no opt-out policy for health and physical education K-8. It's only allowed for the Get Real topics, and that's in collaboration with CHA. So our students have to take health and PE outside of Get Real.

Just a quick follow-up. We're on the same page. You're totally right. I was inquiring about the Get Real. I was looking for some more specific information around that. Thank you.

All right, my burpee time.

Thank you, Chair. Through you to Mr. Williams. So I just want to call out, and I think this is reinforcing what Member Eldridge had just said, I'm so impressed with the developmentally appropriate approach to previewing The educational swim experience for the third graders, the way you have that all framed is really fantastic. I also really appreciate and want to compliment Mayor Wilson for pointing out the importance of swim education. and you know I believe that we have a responsibility to teach our kids to swim so I'm so glad we're doing this in our in our school system this is exactly what I think we need to do and I'm grateful for the commitment to doing that. I'm also glad to hear that we're starting earlier next year. I know that there were some facilities issues that delayed our start this year.

and I'm very impressed to hear about your systems thinking around swim operations, transportation, that's all fantastic. If there are future extended closures like the one we had in the last school year, and though I know our mayor has a no-nonsense approach to quickly addressing any facilities issues that may come up, and so I'm wondering if you can share anything about How you're planning in advance to work with rec to ensure that every third grade student has the opportunity to swim if there happens to be a closure that impacts... A large number of swim sessions and welcome any input from Mayor Wilson if he has anything to share there.

Just kind of what I like to go into this work with like a positive growth mindset. And now that I have, that we have a SWIM operations team collectively working together, With our check-ins, Andrew and I, the pool manager, and he's, you know, transparent with me. He's doing his chemical work daily, weekly, whenever I check in. So I... Logistically know that the pool is going well. And then the way we've even scheduled this year with it starting later is between each session there's buffer days for snow days or issues if we have to add in at the bottom which we're going to have to do for today and tomorrow with Argentiano and Winterhill currently in session two. But, you know, that's basically what we've been doing, just making sure logistics align that if something does come up,

A day can be added up at the end of the session and that Andrew is following his procedural work with fidelity.

Thanks so much, Member Biton. Thank you through you chair.

I just wanted to get a little clarification and possibly this has just been some shifts in curriculum. You're saying that the only Grade spans that we address sex education is 7th through 8th grade. which seems to be a change because I think we used to do some level of sex education at younger grades. Developmentally appropriate. Going to make that really clear. and so I'm curious you might not have this this information I don't know if Dr. Boston Davis has this but When did we make this switch? And I thought that I guess the sort of leading directive was that it should start younger with the developmentally appropriateness around themselves and consent and all those things and it shouldn't be Only at 7th and 8th grade. I'm just really curious and I might be missing the boat on something so I apologize.

So I can speak to the now. We don't do sexual ed younger than Lower than 7th and 8th grade. However, we do do consent and other topics in upper elementary that allude and go around those topics. Meaning like how to respect yourself and others and healthy relationships. Can sex ed go to upper elementary? Yes, it can start in fifth grade. I'm just going to speak to that and maybe let Dr. Davis speak to maybe what happened prior to me stepping in. But again, it can go down to fifth grade. I'd love for it to if we can get to that capacity. But right now it's just seventh and eighth. And then we teach topics about healthy relationships and other things leading up to entering sex ed.

Thank you, if I may, through the chair.

Thank you. So, yeah, I agree with everything that Mr. Williams said in terms of consent. and Healthy Relationships. I'm not as familiar with the HealthSmart curriculum. I just need to refresh myself on that to talk through the different topics, but I'm sure Mr. Williams knows the curriculum much better than I do at this point. There was a moment a few years ago where I knew it very well, but he would be the person that I would reach out to. around what topics are taught when. But to my knowledge, there was no change in policy. We're still using the same curriculum. The explicit sex ed is taught in CHA. But Mr. Williams, do you send an overview of the topics by a letter and which grades do you do that for parents and guardians? Is that for all grades or is that just also in seventh and eighth?

Well, the scope and sequence is open to families on our website for K-8. And then the Get Real topics, that's just explicitly sent out to 7th and 8th grade families because they're getting that content. and again that's also translated in our four district languages and it's also linked with the opt-out list and so forth.

Awesome. So that is my response to just, you know, we've used the same curriculum that we've used at least since I've been in this role, which is the past three or four years. While I, if I may, Chair, I just want, I have to just underscore something that's been said with everyone. and it's just because Blair and I work so closely together. He's right that there were certain things in that interview process that I was like, swim, you know, I kind of named a few big beams. And it was very clear from the moment that I met Blair and he shared that story about him finding his voice through movement. impactful of a leader he will be. It is also true that I hear people from Cambridge say to me more than once, you got a really good colleague of mine and we are so, so thrilled to have Blair in SPS. So I just, I can't just,

I can't go without saying how grateful I am for his leadership and really taking some systems that needed a lot of attention and I mean you would never think you know he really increased swim Tremendously getting the rock wall up in a matter of months. That was a pain point for years. So I just really appreciate his leadership.

Yes, I've had literal nightmares about Ben Rockwell, so I'm like over the moon. Mayor Wilson.

Yeah, thanks, Chair. Sorry, I just want to jump back. Member Biton had asked a question, was looking for a comment from me about what would happen, sort of about any closures of the pool and the impact. You know, obviously... We're going to start by minimizing the chances of closures. I feel pretty hopeful that there's new leadership in DPW, interim leadership and new leadership. New leadership at Parks and Rec. We just named a new director, hired a new director earlier this month. Very hopeful that we don't have closures should the unthinkable happen. We're going to make sure that we prioritize people not missing out. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Supervisor Williams. This is amazing. Thank you for your amazing work. And I hope you're staying warm and safe. Yeah, thank you. This was amazing.

Thank you. I appreciate everyone hopping on tonight. And yeah, this is my passion and I'm loving Somerville. Thank you.

We couldn't be happier. Thank you so much for your time. Superintendent.

Thank you, Chair. I am going to get to the last item in my report. And this is basically a discussion around our AIM program. As many of you know, this is a very specialized program that serves our elementary students who are in the autism spectrum. And you know that this program is designed based on the students experience. Thank you for joining us. We also know that these needs of the students have evolved. We have a very large program that continues to grow and requires also ways for us to kind of strengthen the focus to support the different presentations and strengths of the students.

and so it has grown in terms of numbers and it has grown in terms of complexity and so we are thinking about how can we best serve these students Not just with the needs that we currently have, but the needs that are coming up in the short term future. And for that reason, we have Our director of special education, Ildefon Sorellano. And he's going to walk us through the plans that he had for expanding the AIM program. And he's also going to kind of share with us the impact that this is going to have throughout the system. I also have our director of multilingual learners, Paulina Metropolis. She has collaborated with special ed in terms of addressing those complex needs that we have in terms of a space through some of the developments that have happened through the MLE programs.

So with that, I'm going to have El Defonso Arellano and Polina Metropolis delve into the program recommendations that we have for the program. So with that, Mr. El Defonso.

Thank you. I assume the presentation is going to be pulled up on screen? Okay. As that's happening, I would just like to make a request that any acronyms get like shared out like MLE is multilingual education or multilingual learner education director metropolis can correct me if I'm wrong but you know letting everyone know what AIM stands for MLE things like that um always a great refresher for all of us thank you

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. As Dr. Carmona said, I'm Ildefonso Arellano. I'm the Director of Special Ed. I'm not going to go through every single slide. I'm going to just summarize the information. that I submitted to the school committee in addition there was an email that went out a few weeks ago regarding The program expansion and where we were looking to have a second strand. So the AIM program which stands for Adapt, Include, Motivate is our program for students who are on the autism spectrum. As Dr. Carmona has mentioned, the program has experienced some significant growth, both in enrollment and in student needs. And we've reached the point where the program can no longer be sustainably housed at Winter Hill alone without compromising some of that instructional quality.

Currently we do have a The first grade to eighth grade strand over at Winter Hill. There is a five classroom K-1 strand at the Capuano and then obviously our pre-K strand at Capuano as well. So the AIM classrooms are intentionally designed for small class sizes to support individualized instruction, regulation, and meaningful access to learning, and maintaining a coherent K-8 strand is essential to program integrity. So therefore beginning in next school year the district is proposing creating a second AIM strand with four classrooms shifting to the to the Argenziano while the majority of the classrooms continue to remain at Winter Hill ensuring appropriate space, continuity of services, and long-term sustainability. This plan does include a restructuring of the current K-1 AIM program at the Capuano.

We are essentially taking those classrooms, Combining them with the current Winter Hill classrooms and then making two programs, two K-8 strands. Four classrooms will be at the Argenziano and 10 classrooms will remain at the Winter Hill. So our plan is to have staffing ratios and service provider supports to remain unchanged, though some staff shifting will occur and will be managed in partnership with human resources. So in parallel, the district is also refining the AIM strand definitions based on student profiles and supports needs. We are hoping to have all of the students identified End of February to support thoughtful transition and transparent communication with families.

We did have our first informational session last week Thursday with families who are part of the AIM program informing them of the of this shift or this additional strand we were hoping to have one today in the morning but obviously because of the weather that's going to get rescheduled to a later date um That's essentially my presentation. Just kind of go through each of the slides kind of quickly. And I'll have Paulina go next so she can talk about the MLE piece. Give me one second.

You know.

Thanks, Ildefonso. Could you go to the next slide, please? Hi, everyone. My name is Paulina Metropolis. I'm the director of the Multilingual Learner Education Department. If you don't mind clicking a few times so we could see the text come up. As you know in the memo provided or the email provided to school committee a couple weeks ago and as I shared in the fall, we're still continuing to see a decline in our newcomer enrollment for this school year. Our low enrollment is projected throughout the rest of the year due to everything kind of going on geopolitical factors it's consistent with statewide trends as we talked about again in the fall. Right now we have two SCI-1 strands in grades one to five. And through our analysis, maintaining those strands is no longer sustainable. You have some numbers here with our current enrollment. So our two strands are at the Argentiano School and at the Healy School. Right now we have 18 students in five classrooms at Argentiano and at Healy.

We have 27 students in our SEI classrooms. at Healy. As you notice here, only two students have arrived this year at Argentiano and live in that proximity. And we've had 16 students arrive, newcomer students attending the Healy. Could go to the next slide, please. So the trend, as you can see, is that for the small number of students we have coming, they're arriving and settling at the Healy area. You can go to the next slide. And this brings us to some of the program changes and the impact. So due to the low enrollment, our proposed changes are to consolidate our SEI strand to one strand. Again, based on family proximity, our intention is to maintain the program strand open at the Healy and close the strand at Argentiano. All the current Argenciano students will be supported and transition into gen ed at Argenciano. Families will receive notification.

like individualized notification through the MLE office. Students will maintain any transportation they have through our office as well. and starting for next year any newcomer students enrolling in grades one to five will be assigned to the Healy School and again we're seeing that most of the students are settling there and students families want to go to the school that's closest to their home. Those are the big changes and can open it up to questions.

Thank you so much. Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough. Work on this. Member Biton.

Thank you through the chair to Ms. Metropolis. Thank you for coming and for laying this all out. If a student was a newcomer, and was placed at the Argenziano. They're not going to get replaced into the Healy. They're going to get transitioned into GED-N. And what level of support would we have for that when we would normally place them in an SCI classroom? I'm just kind of curious how you...

Yeah, that's a great question. So our SCI program is generally a two-year program. So if we look back, we've only actually had the two students that arrived this year that are in year one. So all those other 18 students are in year two. So they're kind of projected to go into gen ed. So it'll be two students that are mostly impacted, but our plan is to support them through increased ESL next year at Argentiano.

Thank you. Member Biton?

Thank you, Chair, through you. This is a question for the AIM program expansion, so Director Arellano. Will this change require any movement of students from the Winter Hill to the Argenziano?

Yes, some of the students at Winter Hill will be impacted by this change. because we are thinking of creating, like I said, a K-8 strand there as well. So it'll be a small number, but still some students will be impacted.

Thank you. I just want to note that the superintendent noted that SEI stands for Sheltered English Immersion in the chat. I also wanted to double check. AIM students are provided with transportation, is that correct? Or is that incorrect?

So we provide, if it's on their IEP, we are legally mandated to provide transportation. Some students may not require specialized transportation. However, if they're not within their neighborhood school or in their general area, we do provide transportation there. So it would be the same for any student who is identified to attend Argenziano and requires transportation, we would be providing it.

Thank you. Member Eldridge?

I believe this question will be through the chair for Mr. Aliotto. Could you share some more information on the learning center? See, there's already one up and running and I'm just trying to get a greater understanding of what the learning center entails and maybe what the criteria are for identification of being able to use the learning center. Sure.

So our learning center, we have students currently at Winter Hill who, and that is just a name that we kind of put together as part of AIM, but it's essentially our students who... who have been in AIM and have been identified as being able to include Thank you for joining us. that our students continue to require some small group instruction in order to help with regulation, in order to help with just reinforcement of skills. So we have that now at AIM at Winter Hill. It's kind of in different classrooms. Our idea was to like pull our students together, would be multigraded, where they are receiving that specialized support.

through this kind of learning center model.

Do you have a follow-up? Yeah, that's okay. Sorry, there was a delay. The question is, so does the Learning Center service K through 8? I heard you say grades, or is it small groups at different times a day? I'm just trying to get a clearer picture.

It would potentially serve a K-8 model because not all students would be accessing that learning center at the same time. For example, there might be some third and fourth graders who may access that support in the morning, but then be included for the rest of the day. So it would... Yeah, it would just be multigraded that way and it would be able to support those students who, like I said, are either partially included or fully included.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair, through you, and grateful to get a second crack at this. Question again is for Director Arellano about whether there might be any implications for The community schools after school at Argenziano and maybe that's actually more for superintendent.

Um... In terms of any kind of after-school programming, we want our students to access. As far as what we're planning on doing with the Argenziano staff is provide some professional development for them. So that they are aware of the students that they are going to be welcoming into their community. Similarly, if after school needs that kind of PD as well, because they've never really worked with this population, we'd be more than happy to provide that.

Superintendent?

Thank you for the question, Laurent. I think part of what we're trying to do with this Alignment is to address both the growth and the complexity. One of the things that I was really excited about Mr. Arellano approached me with a question about how do we make, and I think it's not only something that I heard from Mr. Arellano, but I heard from the Winter Hill Educators as well. The argument that sometimes the continuum or the continuum The profile of a learner can live in different spaces as is a continuum. Is that right, especially for these students? and sometimes those the skill sets of certain students are very diverse and so trying to provide a much more targeted focus for students I think is something that is very compelling to me and along with that

In conversations with our principals, some of the questions that have come up is how do we make sure that our communities, our entire communities are welcoming to these new communities that are coming I don't want to underscore the fact that This is a change that is a complicated change. It's also going to impact communities that have identified themselves as being of a certain kind. and so when we're introducing a change like this is something that requires some processing and some grieving as well and so this is not something that we're done lightly that is done lightly it's something that is done because we need to as well as it's something that requires changes across the board so um I don't know if that answers your question, but I just wanted to share with you that this is definitely something that will impact some communities more than others.

Member Biton, you have a follow-up?

Well, no, I just thank you, Dr. Carmona, through your chair, for... Laying that out so clearly and compassionately, you know, I agree this is complex and Thank you for listening. Thank you.

Thank you. Because she hasn't gone yet, I'm going to go to Member Lippens.

Thank you through you chair. My question, thank you for the presentation. And I know that this is done with kids at the center. I am wondering if you have a thought on how to, Judge the quality and I guess you're making such a change. If you look ahead in a year or two, how are you thinking about measuring the success of the shift? Because it is such a shift from... The buildings and the community, I'm thinking, are you thinking of surveys or asking kids or families? I guess, how will you rate the impact of this decision?

Thank you for the question. I think it's something that we're always looking at in terms of students being I think that that would be something that I would be personally looking at. I know that Principal Soto over at Argentiano has been nothing but supportive. I always say she's five steps ahead of me with PD and wanting trainings and whatnot. wants to make sure that this is successful and I have to kind of tell her one step at a time Glenda you're like a little bit far ahead which is great it's really it really is great to see her really embrace and I've met with the Argenziano community as well the teachers there and they've been very um

you know like anything else it's something new they're grieving a loss of a program they're going to be receiving a new program so they're very open but in terms of measuring success is really is looking how well we're integrating This new program into the community. We are hoping to better define our strands so that students don't shift between different programs. So my hope is we get the profile of students correctly for the two schools. So that if you're at Urgenziano, that is where you're staying K-8. There is no shifting. That's another measure of success, right? Being able to provide the appropriate supports at each of the schools.

Thank you. Member Eldridge?

This is kind of tough, but I would love to hear as this plan grows larger, and maybe this is two or three steps ahead, but how we're supporting the community at Argenziano to welcome our new community members. and I mean not just on the PD end but how are we supporting our students and our families to best adjust to having a whole new community that there's you know there's plenty to learn there's plenty to grow from and there's a great way to welcome them and I'm wondering how we're going to do that and I look forward to kind of hearing more.

I think that that's all you know we want to be able to do that um it is a couple of steps ahead and and that is something that I am planning with um with Principal Soto regarding how to best introduce the program obviously to the school community, to families over at Argenziano. But, you know, when we get to that step, I'm more than happy to share that information out with the school committee.

Superintendent Carmona, do you have something to add?

So I'm going to lean on two, I don't know if these are cliches, but this idea that you do better when you know better and that you don't know what you don't know. comes to mind in this process. I know that the minute this process started, one of the things that I heard from the principals was, What do I need to know? And it might sound as PD is the right, but it's more than that. Like, I know that from Mrs. Soto, she was saying, Well, now I might have to adjust my bells. My bells during the day might have to change because there are students who actually respond differently to that. So I do trust our leaders, building leaders, who have a good thumb in terms of... The culture of the buildings. Not only that, it's like what does it look like to have student leaders that actually can support the students that they are welcome. So I think that

is not only the professional development piece, but is also all the questions around how do we build community to make sure that our school is a successful one. is one that they're steeped into that work on a regular basis. So I think although it has been a call from the communities, the ILT instructional leadership team as well, to how do we know better that also is reflected on the thoughts as to what are the changes that we need to do internally so um So I think that I just wanted to elaborate on the fact that it's not just the PDPs, but it's also how the communities are asking the questions. What does this look like from a different lens that is new to us. I think that inquiry to me is one of the best ways to start to reflect as to how do we become good neighbors to a new community that is coming to our shores.

Thank you. Member Pitone.

Thank you Drew. You too. So one thing I just want to clarify, make sure I understand it is a quick one. So Capuano will continue to serve pre-K students for on the autism spectrum, but not first graders. and Kindergarten. Okay, great. In terms of me understanding it. Will this, I mean, one thing that's interesting about this is you know sometimes there's a case to be made for centralizing services so that you kind of have a whole approach and leadership around how we're delivering this and also a case can be made for If you have it at more than one site you have an opportunity for students to be in their own community. So not every student is being shipped to one site. and so I hope I'm hoping that's part of it um but also I I am imagining and you can let me know if this is true or not that This shift may improve the opportunities for inclusion when we're having students at two different sites.

I know we were starting to get to the point where we were having limitations at Winterhill. because we didn't have enough strands. And I'm hoping that this change will hopefully address that if you want to speak to either of those. And also the last thing is just about the leadership that even though there's two different sites we're still going to be getting leadership from the special ed department to guide both sites so that we have continuity in terms of how we're

Yes, no, absolutely. And with both strands, so whenever we were looking at different... There was a lot of different kind of versions in terms of where the program was going to be housed. We did look at every single specialized program in the district and see what made sense. So when we did land, one of the things at the top was definitely opportunities for inclusion. We want our students to be able to be included with their peers. So yeah, that was also a factor in terms of looking to ensure that students had that opportunity.

Yeah, just a quick follow-up through the chair. I guess I know we're not there yet, but the next step is, you know, obviously we're building a new building. And... We have this opportunity to be intentional in terms of whether or not there's an advantage or disadvantage to have one consolidated program in one school or two sites. that again give opportunities for students to be in community and go to school in their community versus having to be bused somewhere else. So I hope that that sort of overall Strategy in terms of what we'd like to do gets addressed. I mean, we don't have that much time to address it, honestly, because we have to put a design together and that's going to be coming together in the next whatever, six to 12 months. And so what does the administration want longer term and utilizing whether it's having two sites, having one site? And I look forward to hearing about that.

Thank you so much. All right. If there are no further questions, Director Pagano, Director Metropoulos, thank you, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it, Superintendent.

I know that the existential question that Member Biton just asked is one that we won't have time to delve into, but I do think that is a critical one that question about do we load one building with all the AIM programs or do we distribute them differently that is also one that Thank you very much. are definitely close to my heart because that's the way we can actually plan better. But again, we won't be able to answer that question right now. And it's part of a larger conversation that has to happen, not only with the ELT, but with the entire district. and I'm quite sure we'll be able to answer that question hopefully very soon. Thank you.

Thank you. We're still on the district report, right, Superintendent?

Yes, unfortunately, it's a little bit longer than I thought. The last thing basically is a memo that is in your packet. And I think you hopefully you have the benefit of having read the memo. There are a couple of highlights there. The number of meals that we serve on a yearly basis and also the fact that our Scratch Kitchen is back in line at the Argenciano. Those are great news. and there are many other things in that memo including the challenges of hiring members of the food and nutrition services team but I don't know there are any specific questions or If you have any comments around the memo that was shared in your packet.

Thank you, Member Eldridge.

Yeah, thanks for the memo. It was really helpful to read through. I'm wondering if you're aware of, or maybe there's someone else that can answer this question of what the specific barriers are for providing halal and kosher meals.

I don't have that answer, but I definitely can look into that.

Yeah, it would be really helpful. I realize that there that As it stands, it doesn't quite align with the vision and mission statement for serving all students. And so I'd love to learn more about what the barriers are and see if we can kind of work around them to try to make sure that we have equal access to food for all students.

member Eldridge can I ask a follow-up question with that so it noted that you know vegetarian and vegan options are offered daily for students is that Are you asking for like specifically certified to be halal and kosher? Because vegan options are by design. You're at certification?

So being how the food is prepared isn't always necessarily in line with being vegetarian or vegan. The preparation is a piece of it as well. and I know that there are USDA grants that you can get money back from the USDA to make sure that all students are provided with proper meals and nutritions and access to I think is a big part of it so I really would just love to better understand what the barriers are and if there was any support needed on how we could maybe look into that a bit more remember so much you have a follow-up

I'm sorry, did you ask me for a follow-up? Is that...

I asked if Member Stellman had a follow-up. She looked like she wanted to respond.

Yeah, I just, I think it's just echoing what Liz said in that it's not... Vegan and vegetarian isn't an equivalent. It has to come packaged and in a way that the child and or the parent, the student and or the parent feels comfortable with it.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Appreciate the comments of Member Eldridge and Dr. Stellman. Before me, I have similar questions. about the culturally responsive meal choices for, and this is a question I get every year from both Muslim and Jewish families, And particularly around pork and clearly labeling food choices that contain pork. I think I heard from a family who... had asked whether the hot dogs had pork and... I think there was a little confusion around that, which happens.

But just I know that for those populations in our community, that is... A sort of pain point. So really appreciate the attention to that. The call out in the memo that jumped out at me was that families are always able to send in meals from home and of course that's true in our district we are a very diverse district with uh different levels of need in families and so for some that ability may not exist um and i'm just i'm very sensitive to that um constraint as well um So I'll get back in line. I have another question, but I'll get back in line. Thank you.

Thank you. Member Green?

Thank you. I just want to be mindful that if we are and we should always be trying to figure out how to be as inclusive as possible that the nature of being a very Dataverse district means we also have like a sizable and rapidly growing population that practices Hinduism and so like if we're going to open this door which I think is probably a good idea to at least look through We want to be as broad and as reflective of our actual communities and not merely assume that the people we're hearing from are the people who have the biggest problem, as always.

Thank you. Dr. Stellman?

Yeah. First of all, I really appreciated in this report the data points, and it's really helpful to get a scale. you know of how many students are being served and um and that was pretty impressive actually um and yeah so I really appreciate that and I hope that you know that sort of turns into a dashboard along the way so that we can try to understand How that's working and one thing that would be interesting and you probably do this already but pairing that data maybe at the end of the year with feedback from students and families. I think

Yeah, so I think that's really important and I really agree also with Member Green with the comment about just in general food accessibility and then I Yes, also with Mbah, Biton, I really appreciated that call out around, well, if we really can't give you the thing you need, yeah, you just bring it in. And that's, we would never say that in a special education setting. We wouldn't. and we had this phenomenal presentation at the beginning of this which was we were not going to leave anyone behind if they can't right so this is in stark contrast to that message we had at the beginning, which is like, oh, well, we actually can't give you the diet, so you just bring that in. That's silly. Silly is not the right word, but that's the polite word for right now. But anyway, I just, I do really appreciate the depth and quality of

This presentation and how it's aligned in many ways with the presentation we had from... The health and physical education, it was really aligned with that. And I'm very happy to see. Data-rich and context-rich presentations because it really helps me to have a much better context and then also It's a starting point that I can start tracking from this point too. So thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to call on myself. Has there been any exploration of Breakfast After the Bell? As a consideration for increasing uptake in breakfasts?

or any strategies? Yeah, I did. That's one of the questions that I asked. I didn't get an answer because I know the 70% participation is, can you break this down between breakfast and lunch? And I didn't get an answer. So that's, I will find an answer for that one. Yeah, it does require, yeah, I'm working on that.

And I deeply appreciate it. Remember Biton?

Thank you, Chair, through you. I should have led with this how impressed I was with the number of meals served is a truly It was almost a million meals in the last year. I mean, just like so grateful to the work that we are doing to support our students in their healthful lives. you know growth and um sustenance I mean it's just this is such an important part of what we do in school I'm so grateful um so I should have led with that and I apologize for not um Which leads into my question, which is the challenges outlined in the memo, particularly around staffing and workforce development. I saw the problem clearly laid out.

I didn't see a request and I'm wondering what can we do to help? I wish I could come in with an answer, but I'd love to hear from you what answer you'd like from us because, you know, I'll speak for myself, I'm a willing partner here. So, thanks.

Yeah, through the chair, if I may. I mean, I know that I've been in several districts. The food and nutrition department is one that is very competitive. And also, there is a lot of competition. Turn around in that field. We constantly have to recruit new folks. But the churn is real. And so, you know, just last week we had two or three people we had to find new people for new spots. And so it is, I don't have... A clear pathway as to what is the pain point in this, but I know that it's one that is not just unique to Somerville.

and we pay very competitive wages so I don't think necessarily the answer is going to be around salary although there's always you know that is a category of employment that is you know The salary is limited. But it is a pain point. But I can double check with the team just to make sure that I have a better understanding of what has been tried and what are the efforts that... HR is collaborating with them to determine changes.

Thank you.

So thank you for the question. What can school committee do? I will come with a couple of a wish list.

Amazing. Before we move on, I just want to note in times of potentially tightening budgets that I won't speak on behalf of the body, but I'm thankful to our state delegation and our legislature who continues to fully fund meals for our students so it is not a burden on families it is not a burden on the district and uh we are deeply appreciative um that's correct all right are we moving on to the personnel report

Well, the last thing I have is basically we added a comment about the SEU update. The only challenge on that one is that it's still in progress and is going to be moved to a future report for your review, but we don't have it right here.

Thank you. Now, personal.

Personal report. Hold on. Sorry. It's in a different folder. So just give me a minute.

That's okay. I can do subcommittees first.

Yeah, why don't you do that? I was going to ask you to shift the order here.

We're adaptable. We do not have the finance subcommittee report, but... We do have Ms. Pitone. Member Pitone, yours were... It wasn't finance. It was finance? Yes, you took the finance notes. There we go. Sorry. I'm there. Okay. So, can I get a motion for December's finance?

Motion to approve the December report from the Finance Subcommittee.

All right. I have a motion. approved the December 17, 2025 Finance Subcommittee, motioned by Member Biton, seconded by Member Lippens. We do need a roll call vote. Member Biton?

Yeah, through you chair. I didn't see it in the packet. I may have missed it. Was it in there?

That's my mistake. I thought I saw it in there.

Well, it might be my mistake.

No, that's fine. Ms. Garcia, can you help us?

One sec.

Thank you so much. No, as I'm scrolling through. I don't notice it.

In that case, Chair, may I request that this gets deferred into our next meeting?

Yeah, we will. We will table it. If that is okay. All right. Back to being adaptable. Um, all right, are we on to our personnel report, Superintendent?

Yes, we are. Okay, so bear with me. I have some, I'm going to start with some retirements. So Roxana Screma, she's a kindergarten teacher at Kennedy, 35 years of service. I have five retirements, so hold your applauses there. Joel Villegas, he is an assistant principal of the Elm community at the high school, four years of service. Anansi McQuinney, she is a Winter Hill head cleric. She's a school secretary, 27 years of service. And Regina Bartoldo, you know her, Director of Basic Needs and Housing and Support Services, 27 years of service. So please join me on a congratulatory applause for these folks. So these veteran employees will be a great loss to our district as they have dedicated many years to our school system. Roxanne has been a fixture at Kennedy at their kindergarten teacher

Joelle came to us four years ago but has made quite an impact at the high school. Nancy studied as a paraprofessional at the Brown and Cummings School then moving to the Winter Hill as their school secretary. and Regina needs no introduction. She has been a mainstay in our community and has impacted many lives and has won many awards for her work and even being honored at a basketball game during a halftime for her beloved Celtics so I really think that you know as much as we talked about the The benefits that new employees bring to our community. We also have some losses as these great employees are moving to their new phases in their lives. So we're really grateful for their contribution. I have a couple of resignations. Katerina Vieira, she is a payroll coordinator in central office.

Neftali Reacher, he is a principal clerk at the high school. And we have some promotional or reassignment opportunities. Leanne Braschi, professional, will be covering for Mrs. Crema, leave of absence. Isaac Weil, paraprofessional, who will be taking over Mrs. Jaster's vacant teaching position. We would like to welcome Kia Wakefield as the new head clerk at the Kennewick School. And that is the personal report.

That's heavy. Member Green.

Thank you. I'm sure we'll have time to more formally. Fett, Mitch Petardo, as well as all of our retiring staff. But I do want to take this moment just to really highlight How respected Regina has become, not just in education policy circles, but in communities, especially communities that May not otherwise have a very high opinion of Somerville government. And state and nationally. Regina Leadership is a place where we have really shown to be a true difference maker. in the work of supporting particularly low-income students and the work of what it really means for schools to support basic needs. And

You know, I think, you know, speaking as finance chair, we have a budget to replace it with five people because I don't think people understand just how much Richard Miltoto does for this district. So... You know, happy for her, sad for us. And I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to federate more formally, but I just really want people to know how much she means to this district.

Well stated, Member Piton.

Thank you through the chair. First, I don't think the personnel report was in the packet unless I didn't find it or I didn't update my Google Drive. So if that can get added back into the packet, because we usually get a separate document, that would be great. and you know I didn't know everybody that was retiring but people could go on and on about Nancy McQueenie and Roxanne Screama and It's always a loss, but I'm so happy for people moving on. Anyway, so the short was that I'd like to have the personnel report if it wasn't in the packet to be added.

Thank you. We'll make sure that happens. Mayor Wilson.

Thanks, Cher. As we heard, Regina is going to get a huge amount of gratitude from all over the city. I'll just say she does the work. If you know Regina, that's the easiest way to put it. She does the work.

Agreed. Member Lippens?

Through you, Chair, I just want to make sure that if we vote no, that these people are not allowed to retire, but I don't think that's... We're allowed to do that because I would tell Miss Grima and everyone else they're not allowed to but I really truly wish them many adventures and as you all know and we all know teachers really make such an impact in the community. So I wish them much love and a great retirement. And if you change your mind, just say it.

Thank you. I did just receive a note that the personnel report was in the public-facing folder, but was not in our folder, so it has been added. Thank you for noting that, Member Biton.

Nope, came here to say what you just said. Thank you.

Sorry to steal your thunder. I will echo all the sentiments about the wonderful people who we are. Happy, sad to see moving on to the next phase of their lives. And one of the things that I have said for many years that now seems much more salient is that I I do think Ms. Bertoldo has done an amount of work that it would behoove us to consider naming a school after her. So I'm going to plant that seed with our leadership. I'm happy to have conversations, see what we can do, but she... as the mayor said has done the work and I believe that is an honor that uh is worthy of that amount of work um Unless somebody has something else, we are going on to... Unfinished business.

The calendar that was in our folder is the same one that we looked at previously. There hasn't been an updated one yet, Dr. Boston-Davis?

Thank you, Chair. There's not yet an update. I think that was added as hopeful placeholder. And my hope is that there will be a final update for your consideration and vote at our next meeting. Thank you for your patience. We appreciate it.

Thank you for keeping it swift because it is late. And now we're on to an MSBA update.

Yes, so for an MSBA update, I think that we are again within the timelines that MSBA has outlined for us. I think one thing that is... new for all of us is a there has been a request from the school committee to kind of identify what are the the The delivery points in which the school committee is supposed to make a decision or take a vote. So that work is going to be happening in conjunction with the city. We have a meeting coming up in the next week, I believe. With Rich Reg and the chair as well as the mayor and myself to actually map out what is the impact that the CAGS decision has on the deliverables for the school committee. And so I think that this is something that has been missing.

It's something that has been called out very smartly by many of you. And I think that this will also make a difference as to how do we inform the community as to the times in which decisions has to be made by this body I think that that's the most significant piece of information that I needed to share about the process as you know the ELT which is Been guided by the design team, continues to meet. We recently went to visited many schools and brought some design Feedback and many of the folks are very excited about what is in place right now. Very similar communities have done the work that we are facing right now. and so that seemed to have energized the team as to making sure that we have a clear start from the beginning so this process of Vision in the future of our schools is well grounded from the beginning.

And as you know, we also had a meeting with the community to talk about the visioning of the future schools. and so that is happening and so I am hoping that as we actually are clear about the deliverables this process will become a little bit more clear as well.

Thank you, Member Pitone.

Thank you, Chair. I had an opportunity, I did crash the visioning a little bit and got to see our The Architects in Action, and I wanted to thank all the staff and the parents who showed up and really took a great deal of time. I didn't go to the whole thing, but it was from like 10 to 2 or something. It was very appreciative and people seemed pretty excited and optimistic, a little apprehensive, kind of unsure about where this is going. But clearly, at least the member who was leading from the I think he has a background in public school education and really was able to speak to a lot of the concerns of educators and parents and tried to frame the conversation in a really positive way.

I do want to again follow up and say I know we requested last time were there going to be some other sessions that were more accessible whether they were going to be in the evenings or remote or Mornings. They wouldn't necessarily be that whole several hour session, but other input visioning sessions. So I'm going to make that request again and ask that the district follow up and let us know if there's going to be anything scheduled and please to publish that as soon as possible and promote it as soon as possible. I also, so thank you to everyone for that amazing work, had the opportunity to attend the Brown School coffee and I'll just give a quick Update and question. Overall, people were pleased that the city and district staff came together and were willing to discuss what was going on and kind of get the update and be clear that

At a minimum, the Brown School would be operational through 31-32 school year, which I think people appreciated hearing that. There was some confusion around a couple things that were shared. One of them was that At one point, it was stated that the MSBA said if we were going to build in Somerville the largest school possible, that it would require District to close the Brown School. And that was the first time I ever heard anything like that before. And I think that really kind of struck and confused some people. Some people misinterpreted that as CAG's recommendation was a recommendation to close the Brown School, which the CAG was very explicit in saying that what they recommended had nothing to do with whether or not the Brown School would continue or how long it would continue. So that's one question. Did we get new news from the MSBA about...

Building the largest school and implication for the rest of the district in our school structures. And we might not have a full answer here because obviously we don't have Mr. Raish here who might have been the more direct person. to speak to this and then I think Dr. Carmona did speak to the other piece which is the confusion about this process and it sounds like there is a plan for Chair Dr. Ackman and city staff to get together next week on Monday to sort of put together a plan in terms of how the district the school committee will Address and deliberate on these questions. But I just wanted to put this out into the public because not all of my colleagues had the opportunity to attend the Coffee with the Brown families. And I also want to be very clear that there were families that came up to me and they were thrilled about what was shared and understood that changes had to happen.

but of course the people who stayed after who I met with afterwards tended to be the people who were unhappy with the way the things were moving forward. So I know I wasn't getting a full representation of what the perspectives are so I just wanted to put that out there and kind of put those couple questions thank you I will let Mayor Wilson respond first

or Engage, I assume you're answering.

Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yeah, I want to thank Member Pitone for being there and for sticking around afterward to answer questions. I got whisked away to something. answered a lot of questions during the actual coffee hour. But I appreciate that Member Pitone was there afterward to talk to parents who had additional questions. And we were clear at the end, you know, it's not the final opportunity to ask questions. There were a lot of questions. To Member Pitone's point, yeah, it was clear that among some members of the community there was confusion around the process. I heard loud and clear people want more clarity on some key pieces that will be required to be figured out moving forward. As I said in that meeting, We could have waited to go engage until we had full information on all those things. And I understand people having a lot of questions about specifics of how things are going to work going forward.

We just thought it was very important given the statement that was going out to go engage and just in terms of kind of a reset of the relationship and a different approach. to just get out there and answer people's questions about just like the very, you know, top level things that were in that statement that people were going to have. And yeah. I really wish that there was time to come up to explore all those things. A lot of these are going to be things the school committee is going to need to discuss, deliberate on, and make decisions on. It's a conscious decision on our administration's part. to engage the school committee much more than this body has been engaged to this point about what's a really really series of consequential decisions for a district. My view is the school committee has been underutilized to date, and we're out to change that.

This body is an elected body precisely for these sorts of decisions. and we're going to be engaging this body heavily on these decisions. So a lot more to come very shortly on this. Cherry, you might be about to speak to this as well. But in our meetings, both on the city side These combination meetings we're having with the city and SPS about this. The chair has been very adamant and correctly so that the school committee needs to be given a clear timeline and explanation of some key decisions that are coming and coming fast. that this body's gonna have to deliberate and make decisions on. And that is something that we are working Very, very quickly on.

There's a meeting coming up here shortly where we're going to look to have some real clarity on that and bring that to this body because we've got some heavy decisions. They're going to be coming before us as part of this approach of having the school committee weigh in. Just if you're wondering why all of a sudden, we don't want to have the school building committee out there making decisions without having... The body that's charged with making the programmatic decisions about this district weighing in and expressing support for the plan that the school building committee is gonna be proceeding with. It's a level of risk with the MSBA that frankly I'm not comfortable with. And it's really, really important that we have clarity on that from the school committee for the school building committee as we go about this process of charging full speed ahead with getting this new school built to keep our promises to the community.

Thank you. As I would reiterate, I think what the superintendent and the mayor touched on, I know I have been asking for it. I think the body has been asking from Mayoral Administration for quite a while for a timeline. And so you know in full transparency the meeting is set up I think it is technically two Mondays from now so it will be like right before the next meeting so ideally what we come up with goes in the packet but it won't It won't be able to go in like 48 hours spans. The meeting is scheduled for February 9th as of right now. I'll see if I can push it earlier as it was hard enough to plan. I'm thankful to the mayor who, you know, as was mentioned, the previous administration made very clear that it is the mayor's decision.

in a lot of ways and the previous administration you know had the CAG recommendation to advise their decision you know this administration is looking to us um you know as well as their requirements for the SBC the school building committee that we're a thankful member green serves on so what my commitment to my colleagues is that you know we will by our next meeting I wish I could say like way in advance but by our next meeting A timeline will be developed. I cannot promise it's going to have dates. My ask is either date ranges or decision ranges. Ideally both.

But having some sense of that because we, I will speak for myself, feel more than once that we were, you know, like given things to vote on. Where we were not given much time to consider, deliberate, have a choice. So I want to make sure we know coming down the pike because we represent our identity and I want to make sure that we're getting meaning feedback.

Thank you, through you. Clarity about what the scope of these decisions are and also the question, I don't need an answer right now, but if we can get the answer about what the current status was from the MSBA about The fact that because we chose this very large building, that we would have to really relocate out of the Brown, which was something, again, was never, at least my understanding, Mr. Green can speak to this. I don't think the CAG ever heard that. As a school committee member, I never heard it. It was the first time I heard it was on Friday. and I think that's a really important thing because unfortunately I think it's creating this kind of misunderstanding that because the CAG made a recommendation to make the largest building As a result of that, the decision is to relocate out of the Brown. So I think we need some clarity, or at least I need clarity there. Thank you.

Member Green.

Through you to answer Mr. Tull's question. This is a question I asked on the CAG on multiple occasions. And the answer was always, it's not clear, which is not surprising. That is how the MSPA works. You know, I think There's a lot to the process that just... We can make assumptions, but the MSBA will do what the MSBA wants. And what the MSBA wants is almost never centered on equity, so... That's just the reality. Unless something has changed since the beginning of December, there is no official answer one way or the other about what these decisions mean. If that has changed, I welcome hearing it from the administration, but to our knowledge, there's been no official guidance from USDA.

Thank you. President Davis?

Thank you, Chair, and I apologize for not having my video on. My signal is really having a hard time and y'all are cutting in. But I'm leaving the video off to try and... Just on this point, and I guess through you, Chair, to Mayor Wilson, I read the communication. was that about the Brown school seats being transferred. That seemed like a very definitive, clear answer to this question. If that's not, I would love to have an explanation. If we don't actually know the answer to this question, what the heck does that mean? Because to me, it seemed pretty unequivocal.

Chair, can I respond?

Mayor, did you get one of those?

Yes, I think it cut out, the audio cut out, but Chair, through you to Councilor Davis. Yeah, I guess I've been in office here in this office for three and a half weeks, but all along, you know, right away, we were instructed that it's... in line with what I understood it before. Basically, if you transfer seats, you can't have it both ways. You can't transfer seats and then go and keep a school open. The MSBA is going to have a lot of thoughts on that.

So Madam Chair, follow up. How is that not an answer to this question? I mean, is there any other way to interpret this?

Are you directing that to the mayor or Pitone?

Through you, Madam Chair, if you're understanding or anyone else who can interpret that. Sounds pretty cut and dry to me.

Superintendent, do you have a response?

So I have spoken to MSBA a couple of times because at some point the school committee asked me, would you ever look into the middle school option? And I, since that has been a hypothetical question that I have had with either some of you or with some members of the SEU, that question has come up so I did approach MSBA at some point and say hey is there a possibility that we can actually do a middle school option in there and what what I heard from there was from them was If you're asking to build a building for a replacement of the Winterhill community, that's what you got. You have the option to build the replacement for the Winterhill or the combined option. And I think that when we are talking about the combined option, the larger seeds, I am assuming that that question will, that that response will carry out with the same question, which is, if this is what you're choosing, this designation is what we'll pay for.

I know that MSBA, and that's why I hear often, well, you know, MSBA has this kind of Basic structures and very rigid ways in which they do things. So I can see the idea of carrying on with the numbers. of the Brown School if we are combining the schools. But that is something that we definitely I would like to explore. But from the response that they gave me at that point, I understood that that seems to be part of the logic. but I just wanted to you know I know that those are questions that we will be exploring but I know that the rigidity as to what do they build and for what is is whatever is stated in the SOI that we submitted at the beginning.

Thank you. Member Green?

Thank you. Actually, this is a good follow-up through you, I guess, to the Mayor. When you said it was made clear to you, because this is a conversation, again, we've had multiple times over the last year, who and how is it made clear because I've because getting a straight answer from the MSBA has not been historically the way they've done it so they've changed great but like It's been implied multiple times, but like saying, you know, getting answers straight forward to the question, if we build a 950-person school, are you requiring us to close the Browns? is not one we've sort of gotten a definitive answer from. So I'm just curious to know how we made clear to you.

Mayor Wilson.

Thanks, Chair, through you to Member Green. Director Raish has been crystal clear about this in the meetings that we've had. I believe Director Raish Basically spelled that out in black and white in the coffee hour that we had on Friday. That's been, from my perspective, he's been very clear about this. That might be a new thing. Here's what I'll say about that. There's been a lot of confusion about this process in the past. I think that's extremely regrettable. I've been frustrated trying to get answers. I've pushed really hard. It's taken a lot of work to get a clear picture of this. So I can only imagine what someone out there who hasn't had direct access to folks like Director Raish, members of the school building committee, I can only imagine what it's like for them to try to make Heads or tails of all of this, right? I think it's extremely unhelpful for this process. The fact that people have been left in the dark about it. There's been such a black box. We're out to change that.

as you can probably tell and that's a big part of what we're looking to do is provide clarity to this body on the decisions that are needed from this body and to the public about the process ahead because Having this amount of mystery around it doesn't help anyone or anything.

Member Green, do you have a response?

Through you. I appreciate that answer. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I would love... Some follow-up detail, only because I know because I've had, as a member on the CAG Ambulance Committee, I've had conversations with Mr. Raich where it's clear that that's his read on the situation, and I'm not sure I disagree, but... is there been a categorical statement from MSPA to that effect because that has not been the case in the past again his read on the analysis of what happens if we do this I don't necessarily disagree with but at least the last time I spoke to him MSBA hadn't been explicit. And I'm just worried that has changed.

Mayor, your response?

Chair, yeah, thanks through you to Member Green. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important that we get Director Raish here before this body also to answer questions. I'm not privy to a timeline of specific conversations that the directors had with the MSBA but my recollection from the meetings we've had and Chair you've been in those meetings my recollection is the director has been pretty Pretty clear and pretty adamant about that, whether it was an off-the-record conversation with the MSBA or someone very familiar with the process. There's been very little to, I would say, zero wiggle room now in that position that I've picked up on.

Thank you. Member Biton?

Thank you, Chair, through you and following up on this conversation. I was trying to suss out these details on my own reading the final CAG report. And I reached a dead end. I was looking at the spsbuildings.org website. This is the city's official website for the Winter Hill and potentially Brown School project. where it outlines the history of how we have arrived to this and It outlines in 2023, we requested approval to apply for funding for these two school renovations. MSBA gave us three answers. The Winter Hills approved for moving forward. The Brown School application was declined. But MSBA offered Somerville an option to combine the schools.

So I began Googling, looking for the document that described this. and for the life of me, I went up and down MSBA's website and Somerville's websites. I could not find a letter that provided that option because surely the answer resided in some kind of standard letter from the MSBA. Maybe I'm naive, but I'm wondering through your chair to the superintendent or the mayor, does such a document inviting us to this process exist?

I have to, through the chair, I do have to, I mean, look at the pile of emails and letters that we have got, but I cannot tell you precisely as to the question that you're asking. that's definitely something I mean again we are we are finding answers or we are actually looking into some of the questions that have lingered out of the the process of deliverables for the school committee and that's one of the questions that I am very interested in finding an answer and I know that you know we will be making sure that as we exchange or find that conversation with Rich Reich that we have both the origin of that response as well as a way to find that and make it more obvious for everyone.

Thank you. Dr. Salmon hasn't spoken yet on this issue, so I'll go to her.

You're muted.

Through you. I will try to be brief. I'm very appreciative of Member Biton's comment because I thought I... I read all of these things and it seemed pretty squared away in a way that was confusing to me and then I couldn't find any additional documents and so now I just... Have a little bit more sanity, a sense of sanity, because that was very... And also listening to Member Biton, because I'm in Ward 6 and people ask me, and you know... There's a lot of definitiveness that is not definitive at all. And that is something that puts me in an... Not personally in a bad... But it puts the school committee in a bad light. It makes us...

Mayor Wilson, I think you your um uh your wish to really have us much more involved and having people really come and tell us where they are what is the timeline what are we looking for and I think that makes so much sense and I feel much better even though I don't have the actual clarity I would like to have, but I have clarity about getting clarity. So a little meta there. But yeah, so I just wanted to say that because it's, it, it's, it is not good for our constituents when we can't, when we, when it It's a trust issue.

And if our constituents know that we don't know where that document is, we don't even know We were surprised. I mean, none of that looks good. And it's not, again, it's not about superficial looking. It's about the trust that people put into electeds. And we need to hear that. Everything, even if it's not good stuff, we need to hear it all.

Thank you, President Davis.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To Dr. Stellman's point and Just on the topic generally, I think I agree. And if I was a parent in this neighborhood... I could certainly understand someone watching this entire discussion and seeing what seemed like a very clear set of choices at the outset. And then as the narrative unfolds, As the narrative was built around going to the large school model, all of a sudden there's this, to use the mayor's word, mystery as to what that actually meant for the school that's in Ward 6. And

Completely frank, I could certainly understand if somebody interpreted this whole latest part of the narrative as an intentional intent to mislead and distract folks, because that's what it feels like to me personally. I think the mayor's communication was crystal clear There's no other way to read it. And I have a hard time believing that we are months down in this conversation and don't actually know when there's a communication out there when the options that were laid out initially were very clear. The mayor's communication this week was very clear but yet somehow oh don't worry we still don't know what's going to happen and it might not be that we're going to leave an entire neighborhood without an elementary school. I think... I question the integrity of the entire process that we seem to have this moving story that from one member tonight

attempted to answer the question. And then when I pressed it on, and Mr. Mayor, I'm talking to you through the chair. When I pressed you on it, it was a different answer. I mean, it's just, how do I interpret that?

Mayor, would you like to respond?

Yeah, thanks, Cher. I'm not going to comment on previous administration. That's not my place. I'll speak to what we're looking to do, and that is to bring the clarity Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Y'all know I said earlier I would have gone about things in a different way. We don't need to dig any deeper on that. All I'll say is it's regrettable, extremely regrettable and frustrating that there is mystery out there about a process that should be very straightforward. All I can say is we are committed from this point going forward.

to make sure that we're bringing that to a process that people should be able to engage with, should be able to understand, and should be able to respect in terms of having integrity, having credibility. With everyone, the public, the school committee, the city council, everyone.

Evergreen.

Andrew, with the full disclosure that I absolutely think we should close DeBrown as soon as possible, I do want to be clear that there actually is, to be clear to President Davis, there actually is legitimate ambiguity. and that can be laid solely at the feet of the MSPA who because the MSPA's process is committed to using technical solutions to their functionally adaptive problems Leave much ambiguity, much unclarity. Don't include school committees almost anywhere ever because to MSBA these aren't community assets. These are buildings they build for the purposes of housing teachers and students. So a lot of the questions that we have been trying to wrestle with as a body and as a community, as a city, the MSBA process, which If you have a problem with it, you should bring it up to our treasurer.

isn't designed to do these things. And so any solution, any approach to it, any way we try to have the competition is, as has been the case thus far, juried on top of a system that isn't designed to do it. So like the ambiguity is not just real, it is baked into the system. And because we are trying to do better and treat schools like the adaptive community resources that they are, we are... And it happens at the beginning of the process up a creek, but it is not because of misdirection or bad faith. It's because the system we're trying to work within isn't designed to have meaningful community conversations.

President Davis are you looking to respond? Okay. Mayor, are you looking to respond?

Sorry, I was trying to respond.

Okay, great.

I couldn't get my mute button. My bad. I appreciate it. Thank you. So through you, Chair, to Member Green. The MSBA is not as clear as we'd like them to be. I just want clarification. Member Green, you didn't say this, but nothing that I said had anything to do with not closing the Brown School. For the past 10 years and longer has been We need to replace the high school. We need to replace Winter Hill. We need to replace... Dispute that. My issue is leaving an entire neighborhood without anything. Right? It's... So... The... My... I don't think that.

So we have some agreement there, but there's different ways to handle that. Thank you, Chair, for allowing that clarification.

Member Green, are you looking to respond?

Just real quick, I want to clear that, I don't even mention that because I know that there is, I've heard it too, that the sense that we're trying to hide the Hide the fate of the Brown. I'm like, whatever you think the fate of the Brown should be, the ambiguity is not based on putting a thumb on a scale one way or the other. It's based on a broken system. So I think we're in agreement, Councilor, even if we may disagree on other things. I just wanted to be clear on that point. Noel Wozintan.

Thank you. Mayor Wilson, you're looking to respond?

Thanks, Chair. Yeah, I was just going to jump in. I was going to agree with... member green's characterization of this like byzantine you know msba process where uh There is sometimes almost a trepidation around approaching them with a question about the process for fear of scaring them off. We know that that's been an issue at times where I've wanted to fairly straightforward Thank you for joining us. I'll also say in terms of whether there's been a local intent to, you know, Obfuscate the fate of the Brown School versus MSBA Black Box. Both can be true.

Thank you.

Member Piton?

Through the chair. First, I just want to thank everyone for having this frank conversation about a really complicated topic. I'd rather have these conversations than not. So I'm really appreciative of how. Both current members, new mayor, and new members are just jumping right in on this complicated topic. I did want to also think, even in the midst of all of this, Both the mayor's administration staff and the district staff for hosting these meetings with the Brown, hosting the meetings with Winterhill. I mean, even though there's still frustration and lots of questions, I think people are pleased that we're going to move forward. And I really look forward to hearing from the chair and in our future meeting about kind of what our process is moving forward. I hope

I know scheduling is really hard, but I hope you get to do it before the 9th because I think this is really critical and I think having this socialized with the members and the community sooner rather than later is better. And then lastly, I do want to leave. the idea which I agree that President Davis the mayor and a member Green have brought up of you know there's a bigger strategic question around seats around the city and whether or not we are ideally placed. And I look forward to the school committee and the city and the district administration collaborating on this as we move forward and trying to figure out solutions. So thanks to everyone and That's it.

Thank you for attending the Brown Coffee and Brain Award. Have a good time.

Yeah, Chair, you mentioned the February 9th meeting. Do we have a February 9th meeting or is it February 2nd? Because I'm looking at our schedule.

Oh, you're right. I'm wrong. You're right. There's another meeting on February 9th.

So, Chair, we're pretty clearly not... This is not going to be fully baked and ready for the February 2nd meeting, regrettably.

It's February 3rd. It's February 3rd. Sorry, there's a separate one on February 3rd.

The 23rd, but we need to get this... Fully ready for this body by that February 23rd meeting. I'll commit to making sure that my administration Make sure that we're there and we have everything ready and that we can bring this to this body for the 23rd because this MSBA decision for the School Building Committee is looming in March. So we need to get this going pronto.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for engaging. All right. All right, moving on to business. Did the bill rolls make it into the packet? I didn't see them. No. Okay, unless there is an urgent need, I'm going to table the bill rules so they can be in the packet until next month. We have... Second readings for items in our policy manual. It is late. I want to acknowledge it. But this is important work. And so... I'm going to seek a recommendation from Member Biton if we want to address some of them, if we want to address all of them, if you have thoughts.

Yeah, thank you, Chair, through you. In your packets you have the amended documents for the chapters A, B, and C of the policy manual. My recommendation would be to entertain questions tonight. If there are substantive big questions... Perhaps we should take that back and address them thoughtfully when it's not staring down 10 p.m. That would be my recommendation for moving forward.

Thank you. Member Pitone.

Thank you.

Through you to Mr. Bitone. I could talk for 45 minutes thank you Thank everybody for all their great work, but just suffice it to say thank you and thank you to former members like Ms. Barish who did all this great work. I did have a question on policy EDF. which is a school district wellness program uh there was some rep there was a couple references within italics that said things like list contains examples of goals but I don't know if we chose any that were specific to us so there were multiple areas that it said this list contains examples of goals and I'd have to pull it up to actually look at the details but um Yeah, so physical education activities, nutritional education, other school-based activities.

so I don't know if the committee did the work to say which goals were our goals I see it looks like we just got like a template templated answer so I'd love a little more detail on that or

May I respond, Dr. Ackman? Okay. Through you, Chair. Thank you. Member Pitone for your keen eye. My recommendation there would be to separate this policy out and send it back to rules. and move forward with the remaining pack items in the packet.

Sorry, I was writing quickly. Which policy?

That would be ADF, School District Wellness Program.

Thank you so much. So then what I am hearing is that for section A, We are voting to approve the amendments on AA, AB, AC, AC-R, ACA, ACAB, ACE, AD, ADC, ADDA, ADGA slash R and A E. Is that, if that is correct, can I have a motion put forth or not incorrect?

If I may, Chair Ackman, Dr. Ackman, I was not able to follow your proposal there.

Sure. I was just looking at the section A that was in our packet. Because we got three section A, section B, section C. So I was listing all of them from section A. And if we're omitting... ADF then we're looking to vote on the other 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 items is that correct If it is too late also to consider this, I can table it to the next meeting.

It's fine. I just haven't... With respect, I haven't counted the items, so I will defer to you on the count. But the items are those listed minus ADF.

Okay. Member Eldridge?

Thanks. Through you. This being my first go-around, but I wanted to maybe see if they're in the specific policy AD under mission statement. if we could maybe because it's kind of our north star for all the work that we're doing within our policies if there might be the opportunity for explicitly naming some of the equity things that we're looking for in terms of like racial justice and linguistic inclusion along with disability rights if we could um Make sure that it reflects the values of our community and what we're hoping to do with the rest of the policy manual.

Thank you. If I may respond, AD was annotated here as being sent back to rules for revision because the item that we had in our in the packet that had at our first reading was template language from MASC and not specific to Somerville. So this needs, yes, that should be noted is not part of the package.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you for that clarification. So I guess maybe just some general ideas and suggestions for when we look at that policy would be great.

So just to clarify, the motion could be to approve all of Section A except and excluding AD and ADF. Is that correct? I guess that's the correct question, Mr. Biton.

Yeah, sorry. Through you, Chair, I am just doing a quick search to make sure that is correct. That is correct.

So I'll make that motion.

All right. I have a motion for Member Pitone. Do I have a second?

Second.

I have a motion from Member Pitone to accept the amendments to Section A, save AD and ADF. that was in the packet, also in the public-facing materials, the motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Lippens. Is there any further discussion? Superintendent, are you willing to call a roll?

Yes, through the chair. So President Davis. Yes. Member Biton.

Yes.

Member Lippens. Yes.

Yes.

Member Eldridge?

Yes.

Member Green? Yes. Dr. Stellman?

Yes.

Mayor Wilson? Yes. Mayor, Member Biton. Not yet. Yes. Dr. Ackman.

Yes.

With nine yeses, the motion has been passed.

All right. That's great. That is celebrating a lot of hard work. We're moving on to Section B, Board Governance and Operations. My request would be that Member Biton Remind us which ones from section B are asked to be considered. Because we're going through B, A, and A.

Thank you, Chair, through you. So the policies in Section B for passage tonight are all of those included in the in the packet except for policy BB BBBE, BDA, BDEA, those ones.

Do I have, oh, Member Pitone.

Thank you to the chair, to Mr. Bitone. I had one policy that I might advise that also gets extracted, which is BDB. which I lost it. Sorry, I was reading it, but I lost it. Let's see.

Responsibilities of officers and members.

Yeah, because it says right on it in the summary that committees should discuss whether this is still in current practice. And there's a bunch of things in there that we may or may not. not be doing so I think that that one maybe should be extracted even if you don't want to send it back to rules that this body should have a conversation about it so if anybody really does want to Move forward a motion to approve everything I would like to, in addition to the ones that Mr. Biton suggested, I would exclude BDB.

Friendly amendment accepted. We'll pull that back to rules.

Hey, member Eldridge?

I don't believe I heard B-E-D-H. As something that was not in discussion this evening, I'm wondering if we could maybe look at The kind of strict deadline of requiring two business days notice to have an interpreter for public comment. If that maybe we could consider language that was more that it is encouraged and we will make our best. Thank you so much for joining us. in public comment also accommodations like in addition to language interpretation ADA accommodations such as ASL or CART would be really great too to include in that one as well again not

not removing the two business days but encouraging it and then maybe making it more we will do our best efforts to abide by if someone should reach out less than two days notice.

and Ruby Thompson.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Excellent suggestions, Member Eldridge. I tried to capture some of your suggestions. If you want me to... Pull that back and you and I can connect and I can try to pull that language in for next time. That's fine. Okay, great. So we don't want to do this on the fly. So I will accept the friendly amendment to withdraw from this packet for the time being, BEDH, and we'll send that back to rules. Or just for quick revision and reintroduction.

Thank you. Because member hasn't gone yet on this issue. Member Green? Or on these, I think.

Just a point of order. You can just table it until our next meeting and propose some change and we're going to text for an amendment for it.

Thank you. Tabled is fine.

May I have respect, sir?

Thank you through you. And I'll be frank, I've gone through some of this stuff. I haven't gone through all of it. It was a lot of content to go through, so I'll be clear. But there was another, the BEDHE also had a reference to whether or not The actual policy matched our actions and I personally didn't get a chance to scan through that one. So I would also like to exclude that as well. Unless somebody disagrees.

I'll accept that. Thank you. We can table that one.

So my recommendation then would be, remember, Biton, when your notes are done, if you can put forward I'm going to say, because there's still a lot, what is being stricken in what we're proposing to pass, if that's okay. Does that make sense?

yeah yes um i will table table let's table section b for now and i will come to the next meeting with that in hand great i really appreciate it um all right

And we can have our discussion on C. Can you let us know in advance and remind us which ones you've already pulled back? They're not on C?

Let me check real quick.

I thought I remembered there was at least one.

No, I don't believe there was anything in C that was sent back to rules.

Okay. Can I have a motion or a motion to table until the next meeting?

I move to approve section C, the policies in section C.

Great. I have a motion. Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you. I have a motion by Member Biton, seconded by Dr. Stellman. Ms. Biton?

I'm going to be frank, I didn't look through this one in detail, so I personally want to table it. But if everybody else wants to move forward on it, I will just vote present.

If I may... Dr. Ackman, through you, I don't feel great about that. Let's give the members the time and attention, the time that they need to give attention where it's due. So let's table section C.

right all right so we will review sections b and c next time um the updated parts of b that will be considered um and then Full packet of C. Thank you again to rules subcommittees for all that amazing work to put this forward. All right. If it's okay, unless there's opposition, I'm going to table the 26-27 school committee meeting schedule and go to sort of the things we have to approve before the end of the night because it is very late. My teacher paused. Okay. Section C. I'm excited to hear a high school diploma request.

Does anyone want to make a motion?

Make a motion to approve the high school diploma request.

We need to state, sorry, that is my fault for not clarifying. There are two names and the cities in which you reside and It has been practiced. I don't actually know if it's required to say their names and the city in which they reside.

I make a motion to approve the high school diploma request for Lorelie Marciano from Somerville and Larissa Marciano from Somerville. Second

We have a motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Bitone. Superintendent, can you call the roll?

Superintendent, you're on mute.

Thank you. President Davis? Yes. Member Pitone? Yes. Member Lippens?

Yes.

Member Eldridge?

Yes, and congratulations.

Member Green? Yes. Dr. Stellman?

Yes.

Mayor Wilson? Yes. Member Biton? Yes. Dr. Ackman?

Yes.

So with nine yeses, the yes have it.

Congratulations. And I hope we will sort of do this because it's wonderful. We have done the field trip and I would love to have someone put a motion forth about grants.

Motion to approve with gratitude the FY26 grant funds from the State Mashed Cultural Youth Reach for the Healy School for $5,000. and the Early College Planning College and Careers Grant for $23,839. I have a second. Second. Second.

There we go.

We have a motion for grants from Member Pitone, seconded by Member Green. Superintendent, can you follow up?

Yes, through the chair. President Davis. Oh, sorry. Member Davis. Yes. Yes. Member Piton. Yes. Member Lippens.

Yes.

Member Eldridge.

Yes.

Member Green.

Yes.

Dr. Stellman Mayor Wilson Member Biton Dr. Ackman

Yes, thank you.

Time members, yes, the yes have it.

All right, that's wonderful.

On to donations. to accept with gratitude donations, the following donations, a ping pong table, and Associated Accoutrement, from Matthew Gregorowitz from Somerville, Mass., valued at $525 for the East Somerville Community School, and equipment supplies from Northeast Regional Council of SMART in Dorchester, Mass., Valued at $3,611.50 for the CTE Metal Fab.

Second. All right. We have a motion by Member Biton, seconded by Member Lippens. Superintendent, will you call the roll?

Yes. President Davis? Yes. Member Biton?

Yes.

Member Lippens? Yes.

Yes.

Member Eldridge.

Yes.

Member Green. Yes. Dr. Stellman.

Yes.

Mayor Wilson. Yes. Member Biton. Yes. Dr. Adman.

Yes.

And yes, the yes hand.

Thank you. And for anyone still paying attention, the reason why we do a roll call vote when we are virtual is the thing I read in the beginning to pursuant to chapter 20 of something. When we are virtual, we need to do roll call votes. All right. Do we have community or calendar items from committee members? Remember, we don't.

Yeah, thank you, Chair, through you. No one's still listening, but I just wanted to announce Ward 7 joint office hours this Saturday. January 31st from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. I will be at Basma Cafe on Holland Ave. Their hummus is delicious so I'm gonna get a big plate of hummus and it will be there. For anyone who wants to come, I will be joined by Councilor, Ward 7 Councilor Emily Hardt. Rep. Christine Barber and Senator Pat Jalen. So please come by, share your concerns, and we'll eat some good food.

Thank you. Any other community or calendar items for members? All right. Member Biton, do we have condolences? All right.

We do. The school committee offers its deepest condolences for the passing of Maria Isabel Vieira, mother of Stanley Vieira, athletics director of Somerville High School. and Anna E. Roderick, Nae MacDonald, also known as Betty, mother of Patty DeFraya, retired HR administrative assistant of Somerville Public Schools.

All right, we are adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Stay safe, everyone.

Good night.