School Committee Meeting - September 29, 2025

Recording in progress

of the Year.

All right, good evening, everyone. We are ready to begin. All right. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of the school committee will be conducted via hybrid participation. We will post an audio recording, audio-video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Dr. Carmona, will you please call the roll?

Through the chair. Ms. Biton, Dr. Ackman, Mr. Green, Mr. Biton, President Davis, Mayor Ballantyne, Ms. Barish?

Here.

Dr. Phillips?

Here.

Chair Kripchen? Here. We have quorum.

All right. We will begin with a moment of silence and a salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, a nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we are going to start with a report from our new student representatives this year. Oh, did I show you how to turn on your mic? Oh, Audrey, thank you. Just press on it.

OK. So our school year has really gone off to a really great start. For starters, our club fair was two Wednesdays ago and at Somerville High we have a really like a lot of great clubs. So there were also a lot of new ones like the American Civil Liberties Union just started up. and a lot of like classic clubs like the Community Service Club and Dear Asian Youth have gotten a lot of involvement. Yeah.

Hi, everyone. Just a brief introduction. My name is and I'm a junior at Somerville High School. and so as Marlee was saying we had an amazing club fair two weeks ago and there were a lot of great clubs new and old ones and we're getting like clubs are starting again everyone's getting back into the rhythm of school which is really great I know Dear Asian Youth which I'm the chapter lead of has We've been doing great in numbers. We're getting like 30 plus students for each club meeting, which is really great to see students participating and wanting to learn more about different cultures.

Yeah, sorry, I'm Marlee Thrasher. So also, one of the other things that we're doing to get all the new freshmen involved and integrated into the school community is this freshman peer mentor program that's very newly implemented. It started last year by having a group of us be, I'm trained in peer mentoring and restorative justice circle leading. And so then we have a group of freshmen, and every week we Run a circle with them and check in on them and I think it's really been great for getting the freshmen integrated into the community. Another thing that we did is called BSHS where we revised the

responsibility rubrics that we've been giving out and the kind of the structure that we've been using to grade the students on their participation in like the school community and yeah their involvement you want to add to that

Yeah, of course. Thank you, Marlee. So just adding on to be SHS students, including myself and Marlee, we're able to help participate in a teacher training. where we talked more about like what BSH stands for and the importance of having these new norms in our school and just emphasizing them both in like the classroom environment and throughout different areas and spaces in our school. And yeah, moving on to some other things that we're doing within Somerville Public Schools is that we are starting back up our climate education initiatives. We did a bunch of things last year which is really amazing including Climate Action Clubs and a couple years ago Climate Tech Academy. But this year what we're doing is that to start off the school year

All the SPF fifth grade teachers are partnering with Mass Audubon to teach three days of climate introduction lessons as like a preview to STEM week, the upcoming week. So what we wanted to do was like SHS climate and our little climate cohort at the high school was that we wanted to get as many high school students involved as possible. So currently we have about 14 high school students who have been trained with Mass Audubon and the fifth grade teachers. and they will be co-leading the climate education lessons to the fifth grade classrooms and that will be occurring on so like high school students will be going in on Wednesday October 15th to teach these lessons and that will be the first day but there will be three days total of climate preview lessons yeah um that is really great i think

and I know Bhavika has been at the very head of a lot of that initiative. So one just new like update in staff is there's a new dean in Beacon community and I believe his name is Mr. Gonel and yeah so he's there and that's yeah I think he's doing great yeah thank you okay thank you guys so much I will take questions or comments from my colleagues Mr. Green

First of all, welcome. Thank you for joining us. In that spirit, I would like to remind everyone that you are non-voting members of the school committee, which means you, in addition to your reports, which are excellent, and if that's how they are going to be, I'm really excited to see them. But also, you have a right to speak on any issue on our agenda at any time. And if there's ways we can facilitate more of that because I would love to be hearing more from our student reps on the stuff on our agenda so there are things we can do as a body as individuals to make that easier to give you more support in doing that I would love to hear that now or in the future just If there are ways we can help you be better representatives for the students, we'd love to hear them.

yeah great thank you i i mean we both really appreciate you saying that and just for everyone for being so welcoming i think For the upcoming meetings we would have to do a little bit more research on the agenda items for ourselves and we just wanted to see kind of like the flow of the first meeting but definitely in the upcoming meetings We would love to share more about our opinions on agenda items.

I'd like to hear that and actually that's one of the questions is are there ways we can make that research and that getting the resources to be around these issues easier?

Yeah, I mean, if you, I mean, I mean, I don't know. So if, oh yeah, I mean, just if it's, if it's, the agenda's there, it'll be fine. We can do it, so. Mr. Biton?

Thank you, Chair, through you. I want to echo my colleagues' welcome to you both. I'm very excited, and I loved the very substantive update Really enlightening about what's going on. In particular, the climate lessons for fifth grade classrooms I remember reading in the spring from actually a Somerville High student who was graduating I really want to applaud everyone involved and I think it's a really exciting development. I also just had one question about the clubs. I know when Principal Kirsten introduced

My daughter a couple years ago to the school, she mentioned that many first years don't join clubs right away. and I'm wondering if you're seeing any change to that or like what are you seeing in terms of first year students?

I know that there's a lot of encouragement for freshmen to join clubs because as we've advertised it, it's a great way to make friends and it's a great way to just be connected and involved in the community. And so I think that I do see a lot of freshmen joining clubs, though I do see a lot more sophomores as they become more comfortable in the school joining clubs. Especially with sports, there are a lot of freshmen because often they can carry those up for middle school. But I really do think that a lot more freshmen are beginning to join clubs at SHS.

All right, if there are no other questions, that concludes our report of our students. That brings us to public comment. We just have one person sign up for public comment, so I will go ahead and do public comment now. I will quickly read our Directions for public comment, and then I will invite Irish Gershman up to speak. Welcome and thank you to those who've signed up for public comment. Speakers will be allowed three minutes to present their material however the chair may limit comments to two minutes based on the number of individuals signed up to speak you will have three minutes speakers should begin their comments by stating their name and address or in the case of district employees their role within the district The chair of the meeting, after a warning, reserves the right to terminate speech which is not constitutionally protected because it constitutes true threats that are likely to provoke a violent reaction and cause a breach of the peace or incitement to imminent danger. or obscenities. Public comment is not a discussion, debate, or dialogue between the public and the committee.

Members of the committee will not reply to public comment in the course of the meeting, though individual members may follow up and items from public comment may be taken up in future meetings. the school committee will not hear personal complaints of school personnel nor against any member of the school community in public session individuals may address topics on the agenda or items within the school committee's scope of responsibility such as sorry That's weird, sorry. Such as... the responsibility such as district budget goals and policies or the role of the superintendent. The public is encouraged to submit comments and writing for inclusion in the public record. So with that, Iris Gershman, the floor is yours.

Hi, I'm Iris Gershman. I live at 108 Hudson Street and I'm in the fifth grade at the Kennedy School. I want to address the idea of putting solar panels on the roof of my school. Although the Kennedy is a well-run school, I believe it could raise its environmental awareness. I think the first step to Doing this is giving the Kennedys solar power. According to the data shared with me by a school committee member, the Kennedy as well as multiple other schools does not have any solar power. If this project were possible though, I think the best place to put the array would be over part of the front basketball court. I know the city is planning to build a playground on the front court. and it would be much easier to install in an area that is already going under maintenance.

A solar canopy on the front playground would be helpful because it provides shade and to and Energy to the School, as well as an opportunity to educate the students on renewable energy. But if this project is too expensive, another option is a PPA, Power Purchase Agreement. This involves a company paying the cost to build the array and then the city would pay a certain small fee every month to use the energy. This arrangement can be a good option because it does not involve the city directly paying for the solar array. Instead, paying the money back over time. In conclusion, I believe the Kennedy School should use more clean energy. I would also like to quickly thank Ms. Pitone, Mr. Piton, and Mr. Davis for their help and support. Thank you so much.

That brings us to the report of the superintendent, Dr. Carmona.

Well, that's very powerful. Great to have the community, especially our young students, voicing their thoughts. And Marlee and Blackiva, thank you for being here tonight. Thank you for bringing your voices and also thank you to the firefighters and police officers outside that are helping with the crowd control. So always really excited to have the community next to us. So I would like to begin tonight by making a very special time for those in our school community who are of Jewish faith or heritage. Rosh Hashanah was celebrated last week to reflect the start of the Jewish New Year, and this Wednesday evening marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, considered the holiest of the High Holidays. and so we wish our Jewish friends a reflective and solemn day beginning October 1st at sundown.

Also, as you know, we are in the midst of Hispanic Heritage Month, an opportunity to recognize the many contributions of the Latino community in our society. and right here in our district, we are pleased to learn that Jennifer Ochoa was selected by the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus as a distinguished Latino leader from across the Commonwealth.

Thank you.

So Jennifer works for with the SFLC as a basic needs and housing support social worker and last Wednesday she was among those honored at the Latino Excellence on the Hill event at the Massachusetts State House A celebration of the transformational work of Latinos throughout Massachusetts. We thank Jennifer for her contributions to our district and congratulate her on this outstanding recognition. Jennifer is part of a vibrant Hispanic and Latino community within Somerville Public Schools. where more than 1,900 of our students identify as members of this community. This reflects 38% of our collective student body. Later this evening, we will hear a full overview of student enrollment from our Director of Admissions with her departmental report. I'd like to shift our attention to facilities for a moment.

And I know that I'm still running the traditional session that we have. I think it's good that you get a sampling of what we do in these sessions. So I am pleased to announce that we have selected a designer for a new school building. Last week, that choice was given to Perkins Eastman. They were selected to begin the architectural design of a new facility. We are excited to work with them to create a state-of-the-art building at our school community and that our school community will benefit for years to come, hopefully decades to come. Also in your packets, you will find a city memo related to building inspections at two of our schools this week. As outlined in the memo, the city is addressing a terracotta panel that fell from the back of the high school building last week on September 23rd. The panel that fell was in the same location of a panel that fell in September last year.

While I appreciate the City's quick response and diligence in conducting inspections, beginning immediately after the incident and continuing as recently as this morning, I also recognize that this is the same problem we faced last year. To protect our students and staff, I have requested that the City arrange for a third-party assessment of the panel so that root cause can be identified and fully addressed. In the memo, you will see that high school administrators also observed another loose panel at the front of the high school on Friday. The city staff secured the area immediately and contractors were on site to correct the issue over the weekend. Out of an abundance of caution, CDN staff and SPS staff immediately sectioned off the area and contractors have been on site over the weekend to address the loose panel. So this week the city also inspected the exterior brick at the east where some brick panels have fallen or loosened. These areas have been sectioned off to ensure safety.

Please know that the safety and well-being of our students and staff remains my top priority as we work with the city toward a lasting solution. So before jumping into tonight's presentation, I want to share a special education update. First, our next school committee meeting on October 6th, our Director of Special Education, Ildefonso Arellano, will join us to provide a comprehensive update on our Department of Special Education. He will be here to share department highlights and answer any questions related to areas of promise and some areas of growth of course. Second, I'm excited to announce that the district will convene a special education listening session for families, which will be hosted by SFLC and our special education department. The sessions will provide an opportunity for our school committee and district leaders to hear directly from families and answer any questions.

This will be the first of several family listening sessions coordinated by SFLC and other departments. So please stay tuned for more details to come in the coming weeks. Finally, as the state data and reports become available, the district will remain transparent about findings and any strategies that may need to be continued. and obviously enhance or adjust it to improve the outcomes for all our students, especially our special education students. And now, for our special guest tonight, this is a tremendous occasion that we acknowledge each year when many of our dedicated staff members join us here at City Hall to welcome new faces. Along with the introduction of new administrative staff, we will also celebrate those in our district who have been elevated to professional teacher status. after three years of exemplary service to Somerville Public Schools.

So I would like to ask Karen Woods, our Chief Personnel Officer, to introduce us to all these wonderful people who are with us here tonight and then to provide us with a report from her department. So welcome everyone and here you are, you have the mic.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much. My name is Karen Woods. I'm the Chief Personnel Officer for the district.

Chris Glynn, Director of Educator Development.

Mariana McDonald, Director of Human Resources.

Thank you so much. And together we call ourselves the personnel team. Anything related to people is kind of our jam. and we're very excited tonight to be able to honor and celebrate and introduce so many wonderful new team members to the Somerville Public Schools. As you can see, we have a lot of people to celebrate and to recognize, so we are going to jump right in with the introduction of our new administrators. So please join me in introducing Darrell Nash, our Chief Communications Officer. A native of Winchester, Massachusetts and a graduate of Emerson College, Darrell joins us most recently from Los Angeles, California, where he has most recently redeveloped marketing and communication strategies for the ISEF public schools. including the Evolution of Excellence Initiative at the Networks Preparatory High School. Welcome Daryl.

and I am very happy to welcome Mercedes Braga-Tinoco as the new Assistant Director of Human Resources. Mercedes joined Somerville Public Schools in 2021 as the school secretary at the Argenziana School. Since then, Mercedes advanced from human resources associate to HR generalist and has earned her bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in human resources. Mercedes will also continue on to get her master's degree soon and she does all this work in full time while raising two little kids.

Thanks for watching!

Okay, is that on? Yes. This next person is a familiar face. Please welcome, excuse me, we just did. Simone Braga, our new Director of Enrollment and Admissions. Now, my friend Simone has been here since 1999 when she started in the SFLC, and she most recently served as the inaugural Somerville High School registrar. and has now found her way back to the SFLC as the Director of Enrollment and we're thrilled to have her in the central office.

I'd also like to acknowledge Caitlin Sheehan, our new Assistant Director of Food Services, who couldn't be here tonight. But Caitlin brings more than 20 years of experience in public service, most recently as the Food and Nutrition Supervisor for the Somerville Public Schools. So welcome to Caitlin. So I'd like to welcome our new interim principal of the Capuano Early Childhood Center, Isabel Barros. Clearly, Isabelle needs no introduction, but Isabelle is in her 10th year in the Somerville Public Schools and has served in three different schools. and in many roles including a school adjustment counselor, a dean of students, an assistant principal and now principal. Congrats Isabel.

Next up, please, let's welcome Keveny Landry, our new Special Education Department Coordinator for our AIM program. I'll read it anyways. Kevin has been a special education teacher in the AIM program at Winter Hill since 2018. That's pretty much the inception of the program. And she now brings that experience to her new role as special ed department coordinator for AIM. So we're thrilled.

Please help me welcome Kate DeLisi. She's our new SEEK program director at the Kennedy School. Kate joins the Somerville Public Schools team from Framingham Public Schools, where she served as a special education team evaluation coordinator since 2007, and she brings her expertise and passion for serving students with diverse needs to Somerville Public Schools.

I'd like to welcome Rocio Camargo Ruiz. who is the new interim assistant principal at the Winter Hill Community Innovation School. Rocio previously served as a school social worker for almost 20 years and has held a variety of leadership positions including district support specialists and assistant principal in other districts. Welcome to the Somerville Public Schools Rocio.

Next up, please help me welcome our new Pre-K-12 Supervisor for Health and Physical Education, Mr. Blair Williams. Blair is joining us from the Cambridge Public Schools, where he most recently served as the interim director of junior kindergarten through 12th grade health, wellness, and physical education. Blair brings almost 15 years of experience as a physical education teacher and leader to the Somerville Public Schools. He's also a sailor like me. I just learned that today. So he's a great leader. We're thrilled to have him.

And last but not least, please welcome Belki Sosa-Jones. She's the new Department Chair for Adult Basic Education at SCALE. Belkis is beginning her third year at scale where she has already made a significant impact by building the paraprofessional preparation program and serving as its inaugural teacher. We are excited for Belkis to bring her leadership to this new role.

So we are thrilled to add these new team members to the Somerville Public Schools. I will also say, if that is the reason that you were here and you do not have any other role tonight, you may feel free to leave. I wanted to save that so people don't feel awkward doing so. Thank you and welcome to all of our new administrators. So many papers. So now we are going to turn our attention to the next part of our evening where we honor all of our educators and administrators who have earned professional status. This is a huge milestone in someone's professional career. It really shows that these educators have committed to the Somerville values and we are just overjoyed to welcome them to Permanency. So without further ado, I'm just going to kind of talk through how this will work so that everyone feels comfortable with this.

We're going to go school by school, starting with next wave in full circle. And then each educator will come up to be recognized. And then at the end of being recognized, please just turn this way, where I will be there to take a picture. I just wanted to kind of give that direction and we're just we're so thrilled to welcome our largest class of professional status educators ever So if we go back three years, the majority of the educators sitting here before us started their roles just coming out of COVID, right? and so we had a very large class if you will of new hires that year but to see how many people have stayed and has stayed and chosen Somerville we're just absolutely thrilled So without further ado, I'm going to introduce Margaret DiPasquale, the principal of Next Wave and Full Circle.

Good evening, everybody. As Karen said, I'm Margaret DiPasquale, the principal of Next Wave and Full Circle. I'm excited to kick off this evening's festivities with amazing educators. I have two to present tonight. The first is Pauline, or as we call her, Paulie Katz. Polly is an innovative and dedicated educator. Her lessons are thoughtfully designed and effectively supported. support the academic and emotional needs of her students. Polly fosters a positive and inclusive classroom environment, ensuring that every student feels supported and valued. She demonstrates patience and understanding while maintaining clear and consistent expectations to help her students achieve their best. Her commitment and professionalism make her a valuable asset to our school community. Next up, I'd like to call Shantae Raboen.

Over the past three years, Shante has become a valued member of the Full Circle and Next Wave School community. She has developed a good rapport with her students, which is evidenced by students seeking her support when needed and waiting to spend time in her counseling space during breaks and free time. Shante plans creative and innovative lessons for her counseling and connection groups, as well as planning electives that interest and engage our students. She goes above and beyond making connections with community partners, outside agencies to support our students. She has brought fresh ideas and perspectives to the clinical team and to the Next Way Full Circle staff as a whole. Congratulations, Shontay.

Am I calling the next school?

I'm going to call Dear Genziano. Miss Glenda Sordo.

Thank you so much and good evening everyone. I'm Glenda Soton, the principal of the Argenciano School and next to me is Dr. Iris Miller, our special education coordinator. I definitely think by the look of the amount of people here that the stars were shining towards Somerville the year of 2022 and that was definitely true at the Argenciano School as we had many staff that we hired. That is really amazing. Dr. Miller will begin with the staff that is under the special education department at Argenciano.

So it's my great pleasure to call up Ms. Jamie Ballerini. It is my absolute great pleasure that I recommend and congratulate Ms. Jamie Ballerini for professional teacher status Jamie is the commensurate professional who is dedicated and enthusiastic and an amazing educator. She demonstrates excellent working relationships with her students and supports student learning with with highly effective differentiated instruction to help her students with high expectations to achieve their goals. Ms. Ballerini has demonstrated leadership skills with her colleagues. Great mentorship.

Frequently supporting and mentoring new teachers and paraprofessionals and sharing her knowledge and instructional practices with them. Her ability to build a collaborative approach to problem solving with her teams and the special education department is invaluable. She is always willing to go the extra mile for her students and our school community with a smile and warm demeanor. Ms. Ballerini qualifies as an excellent educator with impressive leadership qualities. Commitment to student success and collaboration with her colleagues and administrative staff make her an invaluable asset to the Argenziano community and the special education department.

Next up, it is my great pleasure to invite Ori Musselman to come on up. It is with great pleasure and also excitement as I recommend Missouri Musselman for professional status. Ms. Musselman is a highly dedicated and compassionate educator devoted to establishing a safe and inclusive environment for all students With high standards and the provision of evidence-based, specialized, and well-differentiated instruction for her students to achieve their goals and demonstrate meaningful and measurable progress. Ms. Musselman similarly demonstrates effective two-way communication with all her families, enthusiastically providing database progress monitoring,

Steele, Steele, Steele, Steele.

Beverly Mosby is here to talk about our music teachers at the Argenciano School, our amazing music teachers.

Good afternoon everyone. I'd like to call up James Mandart. With exuberance. I write this statement in support of James Mandart's receipt of professional teacher status. He has a natural talent for making music accessible and engaging for children, tailoring lessons to fit James, and many more. developed technical musical skills and gained confidence and creativity. His passion for music is contagious.

And he inspires students to express themselves, helping them discover the joy and power of music in a way that is meaningful to them. He went above and beyond to ensure that a student with physical limitations could participate fully in music class by creating custom adaptive prosthetics James empowered the student to engage with the music class program, showcasing his commitment to inclusivity and individualized learning. James has proven himself an asset to the educational community through his vision and leadership. James Mendhart is an exemplary candidate for professional teacher status.

Just to double check, Joshua Daponte is not here tonight? Nope, okay. So we're gonna move forward with our social workers. So if Nadia Curry can join us in recognizing our school social worker.

Hi, everyone. I would like to welcome up Lisa Stahl, school social worker at Agenziano. So Lisa's passion for supporting students and their well-being is evident in all her work. She approaches each student with a deep sense of empathy and care, always striving to meet their individual needs and create a supportive environment. This passion extends to her work with colleagues where she fosters collaboration and open communication to ensure that all students receive the best care possible. In addition, Lisa is eager to learn and grow, particularly in group work. She actively seeks professional development opportunities and is always open to feedback and new approaches to improve on her practice. She has an eagerness to grow and her already strong foundation makes her a truly exceptional social worker. I'm confident that Lisa will continue to thrive and contribute positively to the profession and the Argenziano School community.

Congratulations.

The absolute amazing assistant principal of the Argentinian School, Ms. Candelora.

Good evening. I have the pleasure of inviting Kristen Swanson up. So Ms. Swanson consistently creates a safe and welcoming classroom environment where all students feel respected and valued. Her ability to establish trusting relationships with students fosters a positive atmosphere that encourages open communication and supports academic and emotional growth. She uses humor effectively into their teaching style, using it as a motivational tool to help make learning enjoyable and engaging. This approach helps students feel excited about their education and enhances their motivation. She thoughtfully adjusts lessons to ensure that all students, regardless of their background or learning level, can engage meaningfully with the material.

Overall, Kristen Swanson exemplifies the qualities of an outstanding educator, consistently prioritizing all students' well-being and Academic Growth. Her commitment to creating a positive and inclusive school and classroom environment makes us more than deserving of professional teacher status. Oh, yikes.

And I have the greatest pleasure to finally recognize my partner. I finally found her. It took me a long time, but I did. She puts up with me, which is... I am pleased to offer my strong unequivocal support for granting Ms. Candelora professional status. Since joining our team in July of 2022, Ms. Candelora has proven to be an indispensable asset to the Argenciano School community. She has brought a unique blend of energy, I can testify to that, humor, and passion that has enhanced our team's dynamic and had a lasting positive impact in our school culture. Her leadership in literacy instruction has been nothing short but exceptional. Ms. Candelora's deep knowledge of literacy and ability to translate that into actionable strategies for educators and students have been invaluable.

Most importantly, Ms. Candelora is deeply committed to providing our students with the highest quality of education. Her ability to collaborate effectively with all stakeholders, her steadfast dedication to student success, and her unwavering support for her colleagues make her an exceptional leader. Undoubtedly, Ms. Candelora has earned professional status and I have complete confidence in her continued contributions to our school and our district. Thank you so much.

Oh my God.

I would like to ask Christopher Ames to come forward for the Brown School. Thank you so much.

Good evening. My name is Christopher Ames, and I'm the principal at the Benjamin G. Brown School. I'd like to call up Alexandra Chase. I am enthusiastic in my support of Alexandra Chase as she earns professional teaching status. Ms. Chase has taken on various essential leadership roles in our school and district. In addition to her leadership and dedication, Ms. Chase puts a remarkable amount of thought and effort into providing targeted and impactful instruction to every student, always looking for ways to improve her own practice for the benefit of young people. She is not just a teacher, she is a change agent who works tirelessly for the benefit of young people. The entire Brown School community benefits from Ms. Chase's expertise and commitment.

And now I'd like to call up Susan Gardner. I am enthusiastic about supporting Susan Gardner as she earns professional teaching status. Ms. Gardner is a reflective practitioner who possesses all of the mindframes we look for in an educator. Such as her belief and dedication to fostering collaborative communities, building positive relationships, and the power of using data to drive instructional choices. To name just a few. With her many fine professional qualities, Susan benefits her students, all colleagues with whom she collaborates, and our school overall. The entire Brown School community benefits from Ms. Gardner's expertise and dedication.

and the next educator to be recognized actually works at two schools. So I'd like to invite Isabel Barros up and also Bev Mosby.

I'd like to call up Kayla Pugliese. Take my glasses off because you know you get old you can't read with your glasses. All right. Kayla Pugliese's receipt of professional teacher status is a well-deserved recognition. of her exceptional contributions to the educational community as a dedicated music educator she has demonstrated remarkable expertise and passion in teaching kindergarten students at the capuano school and grades one through five students at the Brown School. Her ability to engage young learners in the fundamentals of music, fostering their creativity and love for the arts, has significantly impacted her students' development. Her enthusiasm for music and genuine care for her students drive her success as an educator.

She goes above and beyond. to make music education accessible, fun, and meaningful. Kayla's passion for teaching is contagious, inspiring her students to explore the potential in ways that will resonate with them Her dedication to fostering a lifelong love of music makes her a deserving candidate for professional teacher status. Congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, good evening, everybody. I am Isabel Barros, the interim principal at the Michael E. Capuano Early Childhood Center, being joined by Krishna Chevalier, who's our assistant principal, and you'll kick us off with Jess. Jess DeSilva.

Come on up Jess! It is with great enthusiasm and confidence that I recommend Jessica Da Silva for professional teaching status as a pre-K AIM teacher at Capuano. Jessica consistently demonstrates exceptional skill, dedication and care in supporting our youngest learners with diverse needs. Her classroom is a nurturing and structured environment where all students, regardless of ability, feel safe, engaged, and empowered to grow. She brings a deep understanding of early childhood development, trauma-informed practices, and inclusive instructional strategies which she thoughtfully integrates into her daily teaching.

Based on her performance, dedication, and contributions to our school community, I wholeheartedly support Jessica Da Silva in receiving professional teaching status.

Up next is Catherine Delta. With great confidence and appreciation, I read this statement supporting Catherine Delta for professional teacher status in her role as a pre-K slash one AIM teacher. Katherine brings compassion, structure, and instructional skill to her work with our youngest learners. She creates a calm, consistent environment where all students, particularly those with complex learning profiles, can thrive. Her classroom reflects thoughtful planning, individualized supports, and developmentally appropriate practices that promote student independence and participation across the day. Catherine is a collaborative educator who collaborates closely with related service providers, paraprofessionals, families, and fellow teachers to ensure that each child's IEP goals are embedded into meaningful routines and activities. Her communication with families is clear, caring, and centered on partnership, fostering strong relationships and trust from the beginning of the school year. What sets Katherine apart is her reflective approach and continuous desire to grow.

I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommend Katherine Delta for professional teacher status and look forward to her continued impact in early childhood special education.

Kids!

Up next is kids! We are thrilled to recognize KITT for achieving professional teacher status. KITT has demonstrated exceptional dedication, flexibility, and expertise in delivering individualized instruction and fostering student growth and independence throughout their career. They are an avid learner, always seeking new opportunities to improve their professional practice. They collaborate effectively with colleagues, engage in reflective practice, and consistently prioritize their students' academic and social-emotional development. Kids contributions have been invaluable to SPS and they exemplify the qualities of a highly skilled and professional educator. Congratulations. and our final cup, Sarah Butler.

I am honored to read this statement of support for Sarah Butler for professional teacher status. Sarah is an outstanding educator whose deep commitment to inclusive education is evident in every aspect of her work. Her calm, patient demeanor and responsive teaching practices enable her to meet students where they are and help them grow in meaningful ways. As a teacher, Sarah collaborates seamlessly with related service providers, paraprofessionals, general education colleagues, and families to deliver highly individualized instruction while maintaining a sense of belonging for all students. Her professionalism, dedication to equity and inclusion, and unwavering belief in the potential of every child make her an invaluable member of our learning community. I give my full support to Sarah Butler in receiving professional teacher status. and up next is our Director of Multilingual Education, Paulina.

Hi, my name is Paulina Metropolis, Director of Multilingual Learner Education. I'd love to invite up Antonella Doramo. Antonella Duramo is our curriculum and instruction specialist for the Multilingual Learner Education Department. Antonella is a dedicated member of our team. Over the last three years, Antonella has contributed her passion, expertise, to educating multilingual learners in many of our district initiatives, programs, and classrooms. Countless educators, administrators, students, and their caregivers had benefited from Antonella's work in three short years. Antonella is the kind of colleague who leads by example, holding herself to high standards, and motivating us to do our best work.

In recognition of Antonella's significant contributions to our department and district, and with sincere gratitude for her commitment to Somerville, we congratulate Antonella on earning professional status this year and look forward to many, many, many more years of collaboration. I will pass it on to Nadia to introduce the next educator.

Hi again, I would like to welcome down Nora Sheehan. So Nora is the school social worker at East Somerville Community School. Nora is driven and passionate about her work, always going above and beyond to support students and families. Her compassionate nature always allows her to connect with students meaningfully, providing much needed emotional support to students and their families during really difficult times. Nora is a true team player, constantly collaborating with colleagues, administrators, and community collaterals to ensure students receive the support they need. I'm confident that Nora will continue to excel as a school social worker and make a profound impact on the students and families she serves at East. Congratulations.

That's okay, I need no introduction. Oh, I'm just kidding. My name's Sarah Wall. I'm the principal of the Healy School and I am more than thrilled to invite up to the podium, Harper Stevens. All right, so fair warning, when this was written, Harper was Harper Andrade, but they were married over the summer, and so now Harper Stevens Harper Stevens is an incredibly conscientious educator who cares deeply about every student in their classroom. They have high standards for themselves and their students and work hard to provide the support students need to reach those expectations. Walking into Harper's classroom is like being wrapped in a warm blanket. Messages of acceptance, self-love, and encouragement adorn the walls, and students collaborate and support one another.

As a young teacher new to the field, Harper shows courage and initiative by taking on leadership roles like GSA facilitator and equity specialist. These roles speak directly to Harper's passion for justice and dedication to ensuring students of all backgrounds and identities get the care and support they deserve. I couldn't be prouder to celebrate Harper Stevens earning professional teacher status. All right, now just to double check, Nicole, Rebecca, Les, Diana, and Sabrina, y'all are all... Yeah, just making sure. All right, well, in that case, it is my honor, nay, my privilege to introduce the one, the only building principal of the Kennedy School, Steve Marshall.

wow that was great thank you Well, if you remember last year, I kind of end my little dedications here the same way every time, so that hasn't changed. I was going to make it audience participation, but this isn't the right place for it. All right. First of all, we have Sarah Burke. Congratulations to Sarah on achieving professional teacher status. Sarah has worked in multiple buildings as a board-certified behavior analyst. She has worked with many students helping to understand their unique needs and how to support them. Sarah has recently been supporting the SEEK program full time. She is instrumental in developing behavior plans and systems that reinforce students. Sarah has a calm, supportive manner with students and is a strong team player.

We are delighted that she continues to be part of this community and, of course, a Kennedy Tiger. Chelsea Costa, Mae Winfrey, and friends, and Benjamin, and Mae Cho. The Kennedy School is excited to continue to work alongside Chelsea as she receives her professional teacher status. She has shown tremendous growth since starting as a first-year teacher three years ago. Her commitment to her students, which is every student, is palpable. She has a true heart for students who may struggle in varying areas and creatively supports all students.

We are so happy to have Chelsea as a professional status Tiger. Next we have Elizabeth Gursky, Liz Gursky. And if you remember, this is Kate DeLisi, the new Sikh director as well. Congratulations to Liz for achieving professional teacher status. Liz came to the Kennedy after this past school year started. She instantly became a valued member of the SEEK program and the entire community. Liz actively pursues opportunities for her students to be included in general education when she notices they are ready. She is caring and compassionate to all students and has built strong relationships with staff. Liz can bring humor into challenging situations and has problem-solving skills.

We are so glad that she joined us and became a Kennedy Tiger. Is there a doctor in the house? Next we have Dr. Amy Malidore. Dr. Amy, who calls me Principal Marshall, supports students and staff at Kennedy and the Somerville High School specialized programs. Her dedication to ethical practices, continual professional development, and commitment to improving the lives of students with special needs through evidence-based interventions has been exemplary. Amy consistently demonstrates a high level of expertise, professionalism and compassion in her work.

significantly impacting behavior analysis. Somerville Public Schools is fortunate to have her and we are fortunate to have her as a Kennedy Tiger. And we have Alex Rickwood. Congratulations to Alex for achieving professional teacher status. As a speech-language pathologist, Alex has demonstrated the necessary skills for student success. She is kind, patient, and collaborative. Alex has built strong relationships with staff and students, and they trust her to provide opportunities for students to gain communication and social pragmatic skills. Alex presently splits her time between the Kennedy and the high school. Alex, however, is an actual Kennedy Tiger.

And we are so glad she's part of this community. Next is Alicia Kirsten, coming up behind me.

Well, I'm just double checking. I'm really afraid I'm going to forget someone. Is Constantina here? Hi, Alicia Kirsten, principal of Somerville High School. I want to echo what Glenda said, that this was just three years ago was a banner year in hiring. We have so many phenomenal educators that were being recognized for professional status tonight. So I would like to start with my long list. Is Kendra here today? I didn't see her. OK, no Kendra. I will not like to start with Kendra. I would like to start with Sue Bullock. Through Sue's skillful therapeutic services, students develop social emotional skills so that they can effectively access their educational programming. Sue's greatest strength is her ability to develop strong and supportive relationships with staff, Aboff, students, and family.

Susan is well deserving of a professional teacher status and is a wonderful addition to our Somerville High School community. Amber Hall. Amber has remarkable expertise in reading instruction, which she couples with the unique talent for building relationships with students. She is exceptional at teaching students how to read and also tracks and uses data with a high degree of sophistication. Amber approaches her work with unwavering dedication and positivity, and we recognize and appreciate her commitment to her students, colleagues, and the SHS learning community. Is Allison here? No, Allison.

And Michael? Mike? Rizzo? Aileen Sill. I do want to acknowledge that we were lucky to have Aileen at Somerville High School, but she's also been at the Kennedy and the Brown, yes? Did I have it right?

The Brown, the Healy, and the Capuano.

The Brown, the Healy, and the Capuano. We're very lucky to have her at the high school now though. I am pleased to so strongly recommend Aileen Sill for permanent professional teacher status based on her outstanding contributions to the educational environment and her continuous professional growth. Aileen has consistently demonstrated impressive progress in her teaching practice, showcasing a deep understanding of evidence-based strategies, Language Development and Effective Student Engagement. Her ability to foster a positive, supportive learning environment while maintaining high expectations for student success has significantly impacted her students' educational experiences. Her consistent contributions and unwavering dedication to student success make her a valuable asset to the team. I'm confident that she will continue to make significant strides in her career. And again, we're very lucky to have you at SHS. May, do you want to come up?

May is going to present this to Stan Marmish.

or affectionately known as Mr. M by all the kids, right? Right? I'm delighted to celebrate Stan as he receives professional status in Somerville Public School. Stan has shown remarkable growth in his instructional practices as an art educator and as a leader at the Somerville High School. His commitment to collaboration and continuous improvement is evident in his contributions to enhance photography program. Stan is truly a valuable asset to our schools and community, always prioritizing students' well-being while delivering a high-quality arts education that empowers them to succeed.

And Bev, do you want to come up? This is for Max Everard.

Maxwell. Maxwell's receipt of professional teacher status is a testament to his dedication and passion for music education. His connection with his... Take my glasses off again. But this choral students is one of deep respect and trust, creating an environment where students feel challenged and supported. Through his personalized approach to teaching, Max fosters a love for music that transcends the classroom, encouraging students to develop their vocal skills, Skills, Confidence, and Self-Expression. His students constantly demonstrate growth, individual, I can't even talk.

individually and as a cohesive group, thanks to his ability to inspire and motivate them to reach their fullest potential. Max's contributions extend far beyond the classroom, as evidenced by his consistent success of his students in district and state competitions. Through his guidance, he has nurtured a culture of excellence and dedication, ensuring that his students succeed in music and develop the skills and values necessary for future success In any endeavor, Max Everard exemplifies the qualities of a professional educator and his receipt of professional teacher status is well deserved.

Trish Murphy. I'd like to welcome up Trish Murphy to give our math recognitions. The first person to come up is Dr. Laura Peters.

Ms. Peters has had an enormously positive impact on our district since her arrival three short years ago. Her efforts have resulted in new courses being taught at SHS which have become critical pathways to graduation and career opportunities for others. Her tireless work with our elementary schools is bringing awareness and opportunity to younger students, particularly those underrepresented in computer science. Arguably, her most significant contribution is her vision and implementation of the SHS Robotics Club which has just had its most successful year thus far. She is a great source of joy and passion for scores of lucky students. Laura has already won numerous awards, but this acknowledgement of professional status should help solidify her future with the Somerville Public Schools.

She is. Oh.

Ms. Pilch has been an enormously valuable addition to our math family at SHS. Without needing to be taught, Ms. Pilch instinctively knows what type of support a student may need. and, equally importantly, she is beyond capable of providing that support. In addition to having a comprehensive understanding of mathematical content, Ms. Pilch keenly understands each student's mindset. What may be holding them back and how to gently reveal a more successful pathway. The challenge I face with Ms. Pilch is that I can't have her teach every course or every student. We are so glad that Ms. Pilch has chosen to offer her unique teaching ability to SHS.

Next, we have Eva Mamjunder, ne Untermyer. I am pleased to acknowledge Ava, physical education teacher at Somerville High School, as a professional status educator. I have witnessed Ava's hands-on approach with developing and prospering movers at all levels in yoga and dance. Ava's innovative lessons require thought progression and real-world application. Her interpersonal relationships with students and staff alike are outstanding. Ava is a passionate educator who believes that physical education and movement are integral to lifelong health and physical literacy. She has also established herself as a leader amongst the specialist educators at Somerville High School. She has led dance productions within the Highlander Theatre Company. The dance team, Dance Recitals, incorporated multicultural dance in her curriculum and is an integral member of the Multicultural Fair Committee.

Ava's commitment to being an educator does not go unnoticed and we would like to congratulate her on earning professional teacher status. And last but not least, Dr. Christian Medina. I particularly enjoy this one because perhaps we had a conversation about how you should come teach at Somerville High School once like before you came to teach so I'm taking credit for him. I enthusiastically recommend Dr. Medina for professional teaching status in Somerville Public Schools. Dr. Medina is a beloved member of the science department, NEST, and the larger SHS community. He has demonstrated his passion for science and dedication to his students over his past four years at SHS, including his year as a student teacher.

He constantly engages students in project-based learning and his classroom is always lively with students building solar ovens, dropping objects from the stairwells, and even skateboarding. Dr. Medina has worked hard to build strong relationships with students and also works to build community within our department and at the school. He makes the science department and school a better place. Congratulations, Christian. And now I am calling up Andre.

Nadia is going to come on up and help me congratulate Stephanie Joseph.

So Stephanie Joseph is a school social worker at West. She has demonstrated exceptional dedication and skill in her role, and I firmly she is more than deserving of this recognition. Stephanie is a passionate, highly motivated professional who continues to strive to meet the diverse needs of students at West and their families. Through her work developing social emotional groups and providing individualized support for students, she has significantly impacted the well-being and development of the students at West. Her ability to assess and address the unique needs of each student is impressive and she does so with a truly remarkable level of compassion and empathy. I am confident that Stephanie will continue to excel as a social worker and bring the same level of expertise, compassion, and integrity to her professional status. I wholeheartedly recommend her for this recognition and believe that she is more than deserving of this acknowledgement. Congratulations.

Courtney, come on up.

Hello, everyone. My name is Courtney Gause, and I'm the principal of the Winterhill Community Innovation School. And I would like to start with recognizing Brynn Rothschild-Shea. So Brynn is a dedicated educator at the Winterhill Community Innovation School. She is a speech and language pathologist in the AIM program, which stands for Adapt, Include, and Motivate. She has been serving students with autism. She is knowledgeable in her field and strives to help increase student communication. She also works hard to find opportunities for AIM students to be involved in school activities, such as when she coached Girls on the Run and piloted a buddy system for speech sessions with general education peers. She is a strong advocate for the needs of her students as well as for needed materials and interventions to support all AAC users to do their best.

We appreciate all that Ms. Rothschild-Shade brings to our Winterhill community. Congratulations. And I'd like to call up Nadia Curry to introduce her. Is she here? Emily. I'm going to call up Nadia Curry to help me recognize Emily Tease.

I've had the privilege of observing Emily's work firsthand and can confidently attest to her qualifications and impact on our students. Emily consistently shows a deep care and concern for students always striving to meet their emotional, social, and academic needs. She possesses an impressive understanding of child development and applies this knowledge to build strong, trusting relationships with students. Whether through one-on-one counseling or group interventions, Emily excels at fostering a safe and supportive environment where students feel valued and heard. Emily is a true team player who works seamlessly with colleagues and is always willing to contribute to the success of the school community. As described by her principal, Emily is a true wildcat. I support Emily in her pursuit of professional status and believe she will continue to make a significant impact in the field of social work. Her dedication, knowledge, and collaborative spirit make her an invaluable asset to Winterhill and the students she serves.

At this time I'd like to call up Dr. Jess Boston-Davis to the podium.

And I'm gonna invite Beverly Mosby up. We are proud to celebrate Beverly Mosby. We are a long-time music educator and now pre-K-12 music and theater arts department chair in Somerville, whose impact on students has been both profound and lasting. Known for her high expectations and deep care, Ms. Mosby has inspired hundreds of students to strive for excellence. Affectionately known as Mama Mosby, She brings unwavering commitment, joy, and a deep love for music, education, into every classroom and performance.

During this year's opening convocation, our student speaker named Ms. Mosby as the educator who had the greatest influence on her life, recalling the powerful advice to walk with purpose. That student, now an alum in her 20s, shared that she has carried those words with her ever since, a testament to the lasting power of Ms. Mosby's guidance, presence, and passion. We are thrilled to have Bev as a leader in SPS and congratulate her on this accomplishment. Miss Kathleen Seward, come on up.

We are thrilled to congratulate Kathleen Seward on her continued leadership and impact in Somerville Public Schools. A dedicated educator who began her career in Baltimore City, Kathleen has brought her deep commitment to students and learning in every role she's held. from Principal of the Benjamin G. Brown and the West Somerville Neighborhood School to her current position as Coordinator for Humanities Curriculum Instruction and Assessment. Her leadership in one of the most significant curriculum implementations in recent SPS history exemplifies her vision, collaboration, and excellence.

As a longtime member of SPS and now SAA, Kathleen's contributions have shaped the educational experience for countless students and educators. We are proud to celebrate her outstanding work and lasting influence. Congratulations. and now I'm gonna turn it back over to the personnel team.

Well, thank you everyone so much for being here. Listening to all of those words is such, it's inspiration, it's awe-inspiring, it is just so, we are so fortunate in the Somerville Public Schools. to work with such amazing educators and leaders and so school committee and through the chair I present to you our professional educators 2025-2026.

On behalf of the committee, thank you all for being here. Congratulations and let's have a short recess for cupcakes.

and I believe we now have a report from the personnel team. Yes?

Yes, that was part of the... It came as a package. It was the...

If I could ask Chris and Mariana to come up for our presentation. That would be great. We're doing the people thing. Perfect. Shall we begin? The floor is yours. Wonderful. So we've already introduced ourselves as the personnel team, but really... Leave it open. but really it is it is our honor to be able to work with the amazing staff of the Somerville Public Schools so some of the ways that we do that are through and this is going to be a quick Through our personnel strategy, which includes recruitment, which often entails strategic partnership development, We have many partners in many of our local colleges and universities and relationship building through networking. We heard some of that through the presentation tonight. Hiring and onboarding.

We hire highly skilled and diverse staff. through retention. Retention is a really big bucket that I just want to name here. It's only one kind of right in the middle of the strategy but really retention comes through Our systems, our culture, and our feedback really all influence an educator's experience in the district. Recognition and things like what we're doing tonight really help in that retention but that's a huge bucket and somewhere where we have really been focusing our work. Development and support. So through our many, many ways that we continue to have our educators collaborate, grow, support one another professionally, and then finally, advancement and recognition. We've been looking for different ways in creating new opportunities to recognize the amazing work that our educators do and to provide opportunities for growth within our entire organization, which we'll name tonight as well.

All right, so let's look at some data for this year. Okay, so we wanted to start by naming that we wanted to look a little bit more deeply into our vacancies from this past spring, which we call our hiring season, into this school year. And if you look on our school spring site, you see A ton of positions, right? You go, wow, they're really hiring for a lot of different positions in the Somerville public schools. I wonder what that's all about, why people might be, you know, leaving Somerville or what the case is. Well, when you drill down, people aren't really leaving. There's many reasons why there are shifts in staff from year to year. So if you take a look here, out of that entire chart of 145 vacancies, only 34 of those represent resignations. There are retirements, leaves of absences, new positions that get created, there are reassignments, there are promotions, but only 34 of those are true resignations.

So when we drill down into that 34, even more, we can break it down by Teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators. And so when we look at how many resignations we received at the end of last year, so we had 23 resignations from teachers, which represents only 3.8% of the entire teaching staff. We had seven paraprofessional resignations. We had four administrator resignations. So again, you can see that's 5 and 4.7% respectively of the different groups. So really, we have... Wonderful retention in the Somerville Public Schools. It is a great place to work. We have lots of different reasons that people want to come and stay, but we really are a highly sought-after district. So I just thought that that was some interesting data to share. Again, when you look at the number of vacancies of what we're hiring for, it looks like pages and pages, but really it's a little bit more complex than that.

So Mariana is going to share a little bit about who we hired in this past year.

So of the 94 new educators that we hired last year, 11 of those were administrators, inclusive of seven internal promotions that we had, 65 teachers, Three nurses, 13 paraprofessionals, two administrative assistants. Now you might think, well, there was 145 vacancies, why only 94 new hires? What happened is that we also hired People who were covering for leaves of absences last year so they were hired as temporary employees so we rehired them again this year so we didn't include those out of the 94 because they were here last year so we've been very very busy this year. But we're very proud of the work that we do and we're very proud of the educators that we've hired so far. And I'm going to give it to Chris.

Okay, so my slides are about our newest educators, particularly the Unit A Educators, Teachers Council. You can see the trend over the last several years. The group that was just here was one of the 100. That sort of post-COVID class, my first class back in this role, I kind of think of these folks as like my new Students, I felt tremendous pride with seeing the growth that's happened with these folks over the last three years. You can see we've needed fewer and fewer hires each of the last few years. We're down to only having 65 vacancies needing to be filled. and you can see our retention rates as well so you know these are apples and oranges because there's a one year two year three year but we're doing quite well with retention and I think that's a tribute to

The amazing leaders we have supporting our folks, the amazing mentoring programs that we have in the district, the great PD, all the different various teams we surround our new people with to ensure that they're not isolated. and that they're supported because isolation is just what swallows people up in this profession. So that's what we aim to avoid and we're doing very well. and oh yeah it's animated like like Karen mentioned earlier this was the largest like single class of PTS teachers all at once and it was a full house tonight and that was just it filled my cup so Oh, here are the percentages of retention. So you can see that data represented in percentages. So if I'm guessing, our retention will be above 54% next year for our coming third year people.

Okay. So looking a little bit at our shared goal of staff diversification, we have seen substantial growth in diversifying our staff. and so if you take a look in the blue that was the end of the 22-23 school year so that's the Call it the summer, if you will, of 23. And then the orange is now. So that's the beginning of the 25-26 school year. and while the growth doesn't look substantial in the percentages when you actually look at the number of individuals that this represents it is substantial growth and it's dozens of educators that are behind these percentages. The 2025 numbers are still what I'll call raw data. So it was our annual data collection at the beginning of this year. We send out an annual checklist to staff that allows them to identify their race and ethnicity.

And so the N isn't exactly the same for the 2023 and the 2025, but this is very encouraging data. We're going to continue to work on this goal as a team, doing many of the things that we've done over the past several years that have proven to be effective, working with our Equity and Excellence Office, continuing our diversity recruitment fair, our retention strategies, holding affinity spaces. And so we're going to continue to work on this goal, but we're very pleased to see movement in the data. And we just wanted to share some department highlights as we kind of wrap up our portion of the evening. So I'm going to let Mariana start.

So I am so, so excited about this new staff database that we developed in custom design for HR. It's gonna be a revolutionary We'll be able to have current and accurate data at our fingertips and it'll help us retain staff because staff will be able to look at their information you know from anywhere whereas before they had to be at Central or at their schools to view their information now they can view their information from anywhere we can also have them do little changes like if they want to change their addresses now they can do it on their own so it alleviates some work for us But we're very excited and we hope to be able to launch it no later than January.

We're really excited about this second highlight. So for the first time this year we have launched a substitute support and We started in September with all of our building substitutes, which are a group of staff that really deserve and need to be supported. They're with our students every single day. We had an initial meeting with all of our building substitutes from across the district to kind of just go over expectations and responsibilities of the role. and then we were joined of course by Mariana and by Larry Silverman our assistant director of student services to provide some really necessary training about We're going to be providing this training to all our substitutes on a rolling basis. So we have one scheduled for October and then we hire substitutes all the time.

And so if someone's hired in December, late December, they'll come to the January training. We were able to schedule this on our early release Wednesdays because we still have time in the day at the last hour of the day and we meet at the high school to provide this support. and admittedly it's not something we've done a great job of in the past so we're really excited to be launching that this year.

Okay, common planning time. and paraprofessional PD. So we had a really successful first year rollout. We learned lots of things. It's such a large initiative. I think it's worthy of more discussion than a quick presentation on it today, but we did alter the structure of CPT and we put that into the new contract and that was based on feedback from educators throughout the year last year, leaders throughout the year last year. There's a process of collective bargaining and we think we know we have a much stronger structure. There's 80 some odd unique teams that are designed around smaller groups of students to go deeper. We've got about 22% of our unit A educators who are eligible to serve as CPT leaders who have taken the training. so that they're increasing their skills around data literacy and adult learning and moving groups of adults towards common goals. So it's been really exciting.

We've now we're starting our second CPT meeting tomorrow of the year and there's lots and lots of momentum. We've also embedded in that Paraprofessional specific PD, which has never existed. I came in as a para 20 years ago and they said, here are the keys, go listen to the teacher and you'll do fine. And more or less, that's how we onboard paras. Yes, there's support, but it's never been chunked out time during the contractual hours where we're going to have paraspecific PDs. We launched that last week. It was very well received. So we're really excited about that as well.

So next it's the Harvard Graduate School of Education Teaching Resident Partnership, or we affectionately call them HUGSE. So these are Harvard fellows who come in to teach every year and it provides release time to our teachers so that they can do coaching for other teachers. We've been fortunate that we've hired at least half of those that came to work for us as resident fellows and it allows us to have them come, learn the Somerville way, and they stay on and we still have them here which is great and we continue to enjoy that partnership with them.

We're very excited continuing along this theme of development and support that we've aligned our professional development and all of our professional learning with the newly created SPS and Instructional Vision, which was created under the guidance of Dr. Dawson Davis. But really this is providing educators with a foundation of what it means to be an educator in the Somerville Public Schools. We've been talking for a really long time about kind of rowing in the same direction that everyone's doing a lot of good work and we acknowledge that but it might be that over here these educators or this school was working on this and perhaps this department was working on that but this vision kind of provides a nice umbrella for everyone to be working towards so our In our professional development catalog, we've aligned each of the opportunities to an area of the vision, and we really hope that that starts to become ingrained and that educators really kind of start to take ownership of that and that's a living document so that was an exciting development from this year as well.

Last but not least, for the last two years, we've partnered with Boston College Lynch Leadership Academy to do work with our principals. I asked the principals this summer, I said turn around and look around in this room, how many of you were a vice principal or department head before you were a principal? and we all like raising our hands so clearly we see the need to expand this work into our vice principal ranks into our department head ranks to sort of Expand that circle of same language, rowing in the same direction, increasing that capacity so that our bench is super deep and no assistant principal in Somerville Should serve and not be able to be a principal here is sort of the vision that we have so we are expanding this partnership and Super excited. We had our first meeting with the APs last week and the feedback was off the charts. They've never felt so much like attention around being an instructional leader. So we're going to keep going with it.

and we wanted to just end by sharing a way that we celebrated recognized educators at the end of last year was part of the strategic plan for recognition and joy and we have as you saw tonight amazing So last June we were able to put on a district-wide celebration at the end of the year and it was We celebrated individuals that were nominated by their peers for particular awards and some of those people were here tonight. receiving professional educator status. We were able to recognize groups of people that were celebrating milestones in their careers like retirements but also years of service and it really it left it filled my cup and really kind of left us saying wow this is something that we need to do every year to continue to recognize and support our staff.

It really is an honor to be able to serve in this role and to serve all of the staff of the Somerville Public Schools. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. I'm sure my colleagues have comments or questions. Ms. Barish.

Thank you. I just want to say that the The vibe and energy in the room tonight is just a testament to the work that you are all doing throughout the district to Thank you so much for being here. I couldn't go to the staff recognition ceremony last spring so I can only imagine what that was like because there were like 10 times as many people in the room or more. But I just want to say kudos because it's just tremendous.

And just to add to that, it really felt like a family in each of the schools and the departments and also the principals, just watching the principals interact with each other kind of spoke to what you're talking about with the principal development and having the Lynch Academy and that was also really nice to see. Mr. Green.

First of all, I want to echo my colleagues' comments, and especially at a time when nationwide the morale of the territories is so low, the fact that we can have these moments and that people are responding coming actually in higher numbers in prison than prior years as saying to me we would do something right. Given this national moment we're in, and given the fact that I'm taking a stats grad school class and needed some data to play with, I actually did look at the diversification numbers. and I want to remind people of two things when I say if it looks like it's not changing much mainly we don't want to change that rapidly because that implies that turn that retention rates are are too low. So if we're only getting 10% turnover, you're not going to see massive swings in your graphics. And also... We're not asking the district to put the thumb on the scale for candidates of color. We're one of the most qualified teachers ever.

We just firmly believe that if we're doing our outreach and we're doing our work properly, Those qualified teachers will be a more diverse group than we've had historically. So in that light, it's important to remember that, again, we want this change to be gradual. That means that we are still doing merit-based hiring. We're still doing all things we're supposed to be doing. We're doing it with a more inclusive lens. So I actually want to thank you for the prudence and the wisdom with which you're approaching this work.

Okay, more questions, comments, Mr. Pitone? And then Ms. Pitone?

Thank you, Chair, through you. I was feeling choked up even as you summarized the slides here, let alone what I saw with the A sense of gratitude and pride, what we saw with the teachers and professional teacher status. So just reinforcing that, thank you for all the work you're doing. I'm really excited about the database too. Nice that love that you led with that and I think that will improve you know processes and systems and I'm glad that you included that. I was also really excited to see the introduction of the substitute training program because these are professionals who

deserve our attention and to be sort of pulled into the way we do things here in Somerville, right? So really excited to see that. And I wonder if you have, I would just love to hear about this in a year but also just and you don't have to answer now but if you have thoughts about How you're gonna evaluate how successful it's been so you can continue to tweak it. Thank you.

Thank you so much through you chair. Absolutely we're excited about it as well and and in addition to the the monthly trainings we're also putting other supports in place as well so just by way of example we've created a template if you will that we shared out with our schools with our principals assistant principals school secretaries and we said please make this specific for your school and provide this to the substitutes that come in every single day so that there's some common expectations across the school some common guidance you know what to do if this happens what to do if that happens but also just the phone numbers I mean these things seem very kind of base at a basic level but they're so they make such a difference to the person who's fulfilling the role that day. And so we are certainly going to be gathering feedback from the substitutes to your question about how this is going. We're also going to look at substitute retention because

We are always in need of substitutes and we want to make sure that the ones that want to stay are staying and that they feel supported. and really also just making that connection to actual people in the district right because sometimes substitutes can come in do their job do it very well and leave but we want to build those relationships and build those connections So that we can improve our retention of our substitutes and also the quality of our substitutes as time goes on.

So just to build on that or follow up, I'm wondering if there's a way to advertise that we actually do that for substitutes. because I feel like there are probably people out there that would be scared to be a substitute, but if they know that they're actually getting some kind of training like that, that it might sweeten the deal.

Through your chair. Excellent idea.

Great. Ms. Pitone. Thank you through you to the team. I actually got to go to the staff recognition event and it was super fun, super energized. They literally had pom-poms. People were using them so kudos to the organizers and I know it was a lot of players. Kudos to the people who showed up because sometimes that's always a challenge as you put something together and you're like are people actually going to come and participate and be excited and they did. and I think you got a really good turnout so anyway it was it was a real privilege that I got to kind of sit as a fly on the wall with my little pom-pom Anyway, thank you for that. I also wanted to, I mean, I just want to acknowledge the Extending the Lynch Leadership Academy, or AP, is amazing. like that's going to be really powerful and it's just another reflection of the other thing I wanted to acknowledge was the fact that of the 11 administrators you hired seven were in-house and that is like

That is kind of like the dream, right? This is why you guys do all this excellent work is to try to develop great people in-house, but of course sometimes we have to bring people externally. and acknowledging obviously Mr. Green probably did a better job of acknowledging sort of this low number of resignations. I do kind of want to put in the air and It could be a non-issue here, but I know in the past, not in Somerville per se, but in the space of education, people talk about You can hire educators of color, but can you retain educators of color? And so I'd be curious, doesn't have to be now, but if this is something that we're seeing, either a trend of improvement, and you know whether or not we're capturing capturing like qualitative feedback about why we're may or may not and again this is not me saying that these numbers are bad because I don't even know but it's something that I'd love to hear about even if it's just an email or something

Because I know you guys are doing a ton of good work, and I'm sure we have made progress, but it'd be great to make it more public. Thank you.

Mr. Green, you wanted to follow up on that? And then I have Mr. Davis and Dr. Appen.

I just wanted to actually say to Ms. Baton's point that actually those two data points actually speak to each other in a way because when we first started some of this We worked years and years ago. One of our big concerns was, well, if we create all these pathways and there's nowhere to put them, we're just spending our money to train Boston's next round of teachers, next round of principals. and so like the fact that we are actually seeing that upward movement does speak to that and the fact that and to the point about retaining the color I'd also see the data but one of the things we know looking at what happens nationally is one of the things that help retain teachers and educators of color is they can see pathways. because historically what happens is they don't see the pathways and they say they leave or they see the pathways but they're the only one in it so they leave. So the more that we can actually make those pathways work, that is one of the strategies we know nationwide for bad practices helps retain teachers of color.

President Davis and the DACA.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And through you to the personnel team, I echo all the thanks. That was really cool. First time I've got to experience one of those. It was good to see some of the teachers that I recognize from my kids' time here. So that was awesome. I just have a question on the retention numbers and you know I said I'm new here so I haven't seen this historically so just from my own understanding I was anticipating seeing the next slide that said sort of, you know, and compared to previous years, here's how this changes. but then it occurred to me that's probably not really easy to do because of COVID and because of where we are so I expect that's probably the answer there's a little bit um what is your sense through through the chair to you what is your sense for like where these numbers are are we feeling like this is We're improving over what we've seen in the past, whether it's pre-COVID or in the few years before that. Just if you could give me a little color just in that sense, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you so much absolutely so COVID was kind of a mark right where we kind of say everything before COVID and everything after COVID right and so We are collecting the data from here forward. We showed the one-year retention rate, two-year, three-year. Next year we anticipate showing two years of three-year retention data so we can kind of see what those numbers are comparatively. But what I can share with you anecdotally is that before COVID our numbers for new educators because we all worked on orientation and so we always had that number kind of It was always in the 70s. Annually, year after year, it was about 70 something educators. So you saw in 22-23, we hired 100 new educators. That was, you know, there was the great resignation. People retired. It was a different time, right, in education coming back from COVID. So we had 100 new educators that year.

Then we went back to kind of those 70 numbers and then this year we're at 65. And so we kind of see the trend that more people are staying, we're retaining more of our educators and we hope to continue to see that but we'll have better data a year or two out.

Scott. Thank you for that. That makes sense. Good to hear. I suppose there's also some with the facilities that would probably may have an impact on our current numbers for historic. I have an acute understanding and appreciation for how hard it is to hire and keep on the hiring and keep hiring when you think you're done and then you're not done. I get it, I see it in my own home, so thank you for all the work and I'm sure the incredible number of other folks who put time and effort into that. Good to see those numbers going in the right direction, so I appreciate it.

Dr. Ackman and then Mr. Green. Okay, go ahead, Mr. Green.

I just want to actually thank President Davis, because actually when he said that and your answer made me realize something. That's a smaller number of new hires, even in the face of a larger headcount, a larger headcount than it was. So that actually... To me says even better news about our ability to retain staff is that even with a larger denominator, the numerator is shrinking.

Thank you. Through the chair, thank you. I just, you know, as a, having now been here long enough as a means of sharing institutional memory, I would like to thank Mariana McDonald. Like, I remember working with you on crafting What we were doing with hiring, how we went back and forth with the legal team, and how you pushed us to be on the forefront. I want to acknowledge that and show appreciation. I hope you are proud of the results that are, you know, I also would like to share credit with the personnel team and the administration. I know there were conversations about not moving forward with the Lynch leadership.

Ship Academy at some point potentially and if I remember correctly the principals were like no we love this and I just props to you for hearing your staff responding to them and like that's leadership leadership is like you know we have a great age is is acknowledging trying and you know listening to your people and that is how you're modeling leadership and So I just want to like acknowledge and celebrate that as well. And I think that is why, what did you say? Like seven of the 11 new administrators were internal hires? That's a pretty, that's why. I mean one of the many many reasons but you know just thank you and I just you know want to note how how far we've come and how much work collectively has been put into getting us there so thank you

And this is all good news. I'm just curious. It sounds like we're in a very good position for right now in the school year, but I'm just curious, surprisingly, how many positions are you still trying to hire for?

Thank you very much through you chair. So the last week when I was working on this presentation and we had a slide and then we said these changes every day so we you know if we We had seven teacher vacancies as of last week so we are very close to being fully staffed. We had one paraprofessional vacancy as of last week and zero 0 administrator vacancies. Excellent. So we will have a new special education department coordinator who you were not introduced to tonight because they are starting on October 6th. So we are fully staffed for our administrators.

That is excellent news. Glad to hear it. Okay. If there are no further questions from my colleagues, you guys have certainly had a long night. So thank you again for being here. Thank you. Dr. Carmona?

Through the chair. Now I have the pleasure to reintroduce someone who was already introduced, Simone Braga. She's the new director of admissions and student placement. So welcome to the space. And this is the first presentation you will have as a director, so we're all ears. Thank you.

I'll just put this to myself. Hello, everyone. I'm Simone Braga, the director of enrollment. It's been an incredible start of the year. I just want to let you know that I've been here for, since 1999, as Somerville Working for the Somerville Public Schools, I started with what was called the PIC, the Parent Information Center, and then move along the different positions while I was holding the position at the Parent Information Center, home visit. Scaled, Instructor, and then my latest opposition was at the high school as a Register and Data Supervisor and now I'm back full circle as a Director of Enrollment which is amazing.

I'm really enjoying the role, the opportunity of learning new things and sharing all the experience that I built. from the Somerville, working for the Somerville Public Schools. And it just feels like the right place for me. I'm part of this community. I have... I've been living here for 22 years. I raised my children in Somerville. They attend Somerville Public Schools, so I was a mom. I was a mom on the sideline of the soccer games, chairing for Somerville. Now I have my granddaughter attending some of the public schools so I love this community so I just want to let you know that this is like really passion and I think the highlight of this for me coming back to this position is My team. It's a wonderful team.

And you can see that everybody there, I mentioned that most of them are even older than me, like been working for Somerville Public School much longer than me. So it's a team of very experienced staff and passion. And a lot of them are also, you know, they were also parents in the Somerville public schools. So I think we hold the two sides of the cones. We have the experience as a professional, but we also have the side of the parents. So that's what shows the passion that we have for the families that come in. As we know, the welcome, Enrollment Center is the welcome place for all the families coming to Somerville Public Schools. So I think we do have that as a team, solid as a team. And I think that if you add it up all the years that we have together, we have 130 years of experience. If you put it together, so that's one thing. So moving to the next, please. Thank you.

So tonight I'll be presenting the enrollment trends for the school year 2026. Just so you know, all data presented here was collected as of September 19. So, and as you know, also, enrollment is very fluid, so numbers change every year, every year. They, pretty much. As one of my colleagues says, like, you hold, like, in Romans, like sand. Sand in your, slipping through your fingers. You know, one day you have no spot, like somebody call like, oh, there is no space. The next day we have two or three spots available. So that's how enrollment works, moving along, like very fast, changing very fast. So just for you to know, today we had five new families coming and enrolling. So that's how fast we move and change things. Can you go back one slide, please?

Can you go back one slide? The next one. The next one. The next one. Go with the graphic, please. Right there, thank you. As you know, enrollment stays very steady through the last eight years. And we just saw like a drop during the years of 21 and 22 through the pandemic. But right now it's fairly early. And based on what we see, we're going to be reaching the 5,000 students by October 1st. I just want to add up that in that total number that we have right there we also include the 101 students who are outside place students like some special adult place and also the ones receiving walking service. So that's all included on that big number over there.

Next one, please. Yeah, here's a breakdown by schools. As you can see, the schools across the district pretty much remain steady. However, we just want to point out that Canada school has an increase of, A little increase, and that's due to the sixth grade classroom that we add. And now so just a slight decrease from the Somerville High School in Winter Hill, but it's nothing to worry about. We can go to the next slide. That's the enrollment by grades level. We just pointed out that the pre-K, we had a little, a slight decrease, but I wanna point it out that for the Somerville, for the grade nine, I'm sorry, grade nine, We had a jump, and that for me was outstanding.

We had 49 new students registering for grade nine, and that tells me a lot tells me like our families in the community really uh uh interested in our high school program this is a beautiful thing it's a good thing for us to share for you know the next slide please Thank you. So here we have the top 10 languages other than English, spoke among our new registrations. Our community is very diverse. That's a very good thing. But I want to point out that we had a decrease of 58% of the Haitian Creole speakers. and it's something to think about because this is one of the target languages that we have in our district so just something for us to keep in mind. Mandarin is still growing slowly every year and Arabic is studied.

However, we know we will continue to enroll new students through the year. Just for your information, last week we had four new Arabic families working. So Arabic is really increasing. And they come, in the book, they come like, each family comes with two or three large families. So that's how it is for the Arabic families. So as you can see, a very rich linguistic demographic. So the next one, please. So here's the top countries of birth of the new registrations. And I want to point it out that this big bar represent 75% of U.S. born registered this year. And that means, so in that number 501,

Born in the U.S., 65% speak a language that is not English as the primary language. and on that big number we have the majority are pre-k students and kindergarten students. So pre-k is about 33% and kindergarten is about 48%. So that tells of the families of our young children are really holding their primary language, which is a good thing. The next slide, please. Here we have the enrollment thread, the overall from the med lead department and the specialist departments.

and just we didn't have a big change for the medley department it was just a slight decrease from last year that we had like a 1,170 and this year we have 1,150 but For the special ed department, we had an increase of 13% of students requesting IEPs. This increase has placed an additional staff for the enrollment placement in process. but enrollment has worked very close with the special ed to make sure that we serve and support all the students so they can get Wright, service that they need.

and I just want to thank the special ed team because we really work together and they really give us all the support and to help us through the process so we could continue to provide quality and equitable service to the families. So that was a big shout out for the special ed departments. We can go to the next one. Well, here we have the summer withdrawals, which is something that we see every year, but I just want to tell you, for the 143 students who went out of the district to a public school in Somerville,

and most of them moved out of the district but we had like on that 143 we had about nine students who were registered to doing to enroll who enrolled at the prospective academy So they're still local, but they went to the Prospective Academy. I think we can go to the next one. Phillips, and this Last slide is a few points of interest that I would like to share with you tonight. So we enrolled 833 students this year since January 2025. and 199 additional families decide not to attend or did not complete the registration process.

16.4% of the families request support In person. They walk into the office and they come multiple times, but they request support for the enrollment process in person. We approved 38 requests for inter-district transfers for grades 1 through 8 and we denied 12 due to space limitations. We have 50 students placed in schools, but waitlisted for the perfect K-8 schools. and we have 44 students on the pre-k waitlist. Again, place in school, but in the waitlist for the Healy, the Kennard or the West Somerville.

And we have families of 6 to 1 pre-Ks who are assigned to a school but decide not to attend Somerville Public Schools. Different than last year, we had like 53, and the year before, in 2004, we had 37. Most of those families decided not to attend because they either did not get the first choice for preschool or after school program did not work for them. and some just decide to stay with the program that they had for daycare. They already had a structure going on so they decide just to stay with that program. While enrollment has remained relatively steady, we are watching the burst data. for the Somerville City of Somerville. As you can see, there's a decline like from 2022.

So we just keep an eye on for the future so we can better prepare for what's coming.

Thank you. Any questions? So I will start with the first question, which is just you talked about how we have 50 students placed in schools but are on wait lists for their preferred school. Are those... People whose preferred school was their neighborhood school, or do you think there are people whose their preferred school was outside their neighborhood school? So we don't necessarily have a ton of people who didn't get into a preferred school that was their neighborhood school. Is that correct? Correct. That's helpful to know. Mr. Green?

Sort of related to your question, through you, how many empty seats do we currently have? Like, what is capacity?

Okay, I can say for one grade specific in the district that is in my mind is our sixth grade. For example, across the district we have very tiny, you know, Only one school capacity. It looks like at this moment only one school is able to place sixth graders. It's the Healy School. Across the district, sixth grade is of the capacity. So we hold the 23 students for each grade. That's our limit for the schools.

So I think it would be helpful, you don't expect you to know the top of your head, but perhaps in an email form to understand that for all grades. Yes, all grades. That would be really helpful. Thank you. I think I had Mr. Pitone and then Ms. Barish and then Dr. Phillips.

Thank you, Chair, through you, to Ms. Braga. First off, just welcome, congratulations on your new role, and thank you for Bringing all of your great experience back to this position. I think I hear the enthusiasm, so I'm glad you're here. My question is actually not to you, I think. Your presentation was very data rich and I love it and it it reminded me of the enrollment forecast from the enrollment study that we Yes, for those who can't see on the monitor, Mr. Green made, well, diverging numbers are going in the wrong directions here. Not the wrong directions, just different directions. So we had in the high 300s, I think, of new kindergarten students this year.

And in the high scenario, The high scenario for this upcoming year or for sorry for this year it was only around 340 that was the high scenario so we're well above about a classroom above what the enrollment forecast and so on. My question to the leadership team is how are we thinking about this enrollment forecast in light of the current data and Yeah, that's my question. How are we thinking about it?

Yeah, please. Yeah, good question. I mean, as you know, after the pandemic, it was hard to have a kind of a steady prediction of the growth. I agree, it looks like the numbers seem to be off and we seem to keep on increasing. However, if you look at the birth rates, which is Very alarming in my mind. You're talking about 600 to 400 to now half of that, 255. That is very concerning. Again, I don't know if that prediction is going to continue to be real. It is right now numbers that we usually use to make those kind of enrollment predictions that are, if that trend continues, I think we will be very impacted by that. That's close to half and both. and most of our different subgroups is showing the same trajectory. So back to the question of what do I make of the predictions?

There is a data point now that is making me think we don't know what's the end of the story here.

I have Ms. Barish, Dr. Phillips, Ms. Pitone, and then Mr. Green.

Thanks through you. Thanks for being here. Again, congratulations. We're delighted that you're still with us and just sharing your long years of expertise. It's wonderful. This again might not be a question for you, but the presentation, and you mentioned that there were 49 new grade 9 students. I'm curious to know how many of those students were in the district previously you know left for a few years came back anecdotally families leave in middle school and then they come back. It's awesome that they're coming back and coming back in large numbers. But this is, you know we talk about middle school our middle grade years and I'm it's just a reminder that we need I think as a district to think about

Why families are leaving, what they're looking for elsewhere, and find out whether they're finding it or not. and you know in hopes of encouraging folks not to go.

That's a good data point. I don't have that information. I don't know how much we have tracked that. And so that is definitely, I'm always curious as to what keeps someone happy in the district. I don't have that data in front of me.

Sorry, I hope I didn't imply that I wanted an answer now. It's just something that I was reminded that yes, middle grades, it's always just hard, I think.

No, I can look into the data and put it together.

Yeah, definitely. Thank you to the chair. The only other thing I will add in addition to what Dr. Carmona said is that we share the same kind of want to focus in on our middle grades experience and learn more about all the strengths and all the areas that we can continue to grow. It's a conversation that we've had at our executive team level. It's a conversation that our district instructional team has had. through their own data investigation has lifted up as an area to look deeper into and it's work that will continue this year so just agree in agreement with what you said I think it will be helpful to have some of the data and also using some of the experience that we'll learn as a team to dig deeper into that very problem of practice.

Did you want to respond to this or do you have any questions? I wanted to respond to Ms. Barish's comment. I just wanted to sort of... note that you know our neighbor to whatever that is Cambridge which has has a has switched to a middle school model also like has that there's actually the Harvard Crimson May 28 2025 had an article about the what they refer to as the de facto segregation in Cambridge schools where so many people leave in the middle grades that it has become like you know de facto segregation and I note that only because like I It is a challenge. We want families to stay here, but we're not the only ones dealing with it.

And I hope that no one points to the K-8 model as the reason for it. I own my biases in favor of the K-8 model, but I just want to note that we're not the only urban district dealing with that specific challenge, and I don't think it has to do with the model.

I want to expand on my colleague's excellent point. The reality is every urban district in Massachusetts is having this middle wage problem. which keeping in mind Massachusetts is the seventh most segregated state when it comes to as a matter of between district enrollment. I think we just need to own the problem which is that Families that, for whatever reason, can leave urban schools tend to in middle schools. And it's a larger problem than any one district can handle, and it probably requires a more systematic approach.

I believe I had Dr. Phillips.

Thanks to you, Chair. Welcome, Ms. Braga. We are so glad to have you in this role. Thank you for this wonderful presentation. I do am going to ask for some more data at another time. I have a constituent who is very interested in withdrawals and is trying to convince Many people running for office this cycle that the Argenziano has a withdrawal problem that happens at certain grade levels. And I'm just wondering if you could just give us some data on How many people have been withdrawing by school and by grade level, if that's possible? Definitely, yes. Thank you.

Can I just ask a clarifying question? Has that withdrawal problem in the sense of, I just don't know what that means.

He's been looking at some data and I am not sure, like I don't know whether it's right or wrong. That's why I want to ask the enrollment office. Just saying that families are disproportionately leaving between first and second grade. At this school compared to other schools.

I don't know if that's true at all. Because the enrollment doesn't, I'm curious because the enrollment at the Argenciano is pretty full for the most part. If there's a specific question, I'm curious, but I don't know what it is.

Yeah, I don't really have a question. I would just love the number to be able to say, look, no problem, because that's what I think is happening. No problem.

I have Ms. Pitone.

Thank you through you Chair. Ms. Baraga, you have been, I don't know, your face has been present in so many spaces and places in my experience in the schools and you've always been such a welcoming person and it seems so fitting. that you have assumed this role so thank you for that and I also wanted to thank you for starting this presentation with talking about the team it really is True to you, obviously, and also for us to kind of have more visibility to the real talent that makes everything happen because you work so well together. So thank you for that. I was just talking to someone I know who works in Chelsea schools and they were talking about the reduction in their enrollment specifically for newcomers and so I don't know if there's a good way to capture The trends in newcomer data and just to kind of inform this whole process around enrollment and I don't know if that's more appropriate to come through

the MLE office or your office but that would be something I'd like to learn a little bit more about but if it's already scheduled somewhere in due time I'm fine with that too so that's just one thing I wanted to flag whether or not we're feeling pain

I know the MLE department is working on the presentation. I think it's happening November or end of October. And there is data related to the newcomers. You're welcome.

Thank you. This is a data request for another time. I really appreciate the slide on The MLE and special ed populations. But I'd also really like to know the overlap of the Venn diagram. What are the demographics of the MLE special ed population? What are those numbers? Um, does that make sense? So we have the MLE numbers and we have the SPED numbers, but I would love to know the numbers of the people who were both.

Like together? Yes. Oh, okay. I don't have those numbers right now.

If you had them off the top of your head, I'd be kind of creeped out, frankly. But if I could get that, that would be great.

We can provide that, definitely, yeah. Okay.

If there are no, yes, Ms. Patel.

The Chair.

Again not something that we need to discuss today but we talked a little bit about sort of the losses in middle grades and I am curious if If specifically we have one school that transitions from fifth to sixth grade and whether or not we see a trend in loss in that population, I think that would be just something to add to the conversation about buildings and about enrollment.

and actually related to that point since you used the sixth grade as your example for almost no capacity that if everyone who left for middle school all of a sudden came back we wouldn't necessarily have room for them so that's perhaps something we need to think about

Right?

I mean you were just saying there's very little capacity in sixth grade across the district. Are there any other questions? All right, seeing none, thank you again so much for being here. Thank you.

Carmona. And through the chair, that concludes the superintendent's report.

Oh, and then the personnel report.

Is there anything? On the personnel report, yes, we have information.

We have so much about personnel, I don't know. But it is on the agenda.

Yeah, so we definitely have a couple of things that we should mention. And one of those is that we will be losing two very influential educators to retirement at the end of this school year. One of those is Sharon Levesque. She's a special education teacher, and she has been in our district for 30 years. And Marie Foreman, she is the assistant principal of the high school, has been in the district for 27 years, but she will Be retiring at the end of the school year. And we have Suzette Pasqualini. She's the newly hired accounts payable specialist that has tendered her resignation and the position has been reposted. We also have internal department reassignments. Lindsay McDonnell, she went from para to teacher at the West. Franklin Vargas, he's a program administrator and the EEL director chair for SCALE.

We have Belcy Sosa, a SCALE teacher. She was the, prior to that, was the AE department chair for SCALE. and we have Diana Posada, OST Assistant Site Director at the Winterhill. We continue to be hiring for substitute teachers, building substitutes, standardized test proctors, high school helpers, and educator vacancies that came up close to the beginning of the school year. And so as you heard today, that is a never-ending process and we have a team ready to do that on a daily basis. So that is the end of my personal report.

Okay, great. If there are no questions, I'm going to go back to an approval of minutes because I skipped right over that at the beginning of our meeting. We have some minutes to approve from August 25th, 2025. Motion to approve. Motion by Mr. Tone, seconded by Mr. Green. If there are no questions, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to reports of subcommittees. I will entertain a motion. I have a motion by Mr. Green, seconded by Dr. Ackman, to approve the subcommittee reports. If there are no questions, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to, oh yes, thank you.

Through you, I had a question for Mr. Biton about his report. I didn't know if you could say any more about St. Anne's? There was a reference I think in that report to the St. Anne's property and someone said we don't know yet or something to that effect. Can you just provide a little more context?

Yeah, through you, Chair. There was discussion brought up by City Council, I believe, about whether the City would pursue acquiring that property which is adjacent to the Sycamore Street, Winter Hill Building. Mr. Raish indicated that There had been discussions, but that the diocese archdiocese was not in a position to sell at the moment. and I wonder if President Davis has anything he might add.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you to Ms. Barish. Yeah, I mean, that's the crux of it. My take on it was that given the proximity of that school to the Winter Hill building, that it was just Some folks had raised the idea as a possibility. Obviously, there's big questions in terms of what will be built there, if anything is built on that site. And so I think, yeah, Mr. Raich's response was sort of a, it's an option, but we really aren't there yet, is how I took it.

Mr. Green and Dr. Ackman.

Just to build on that, since I was, since I, and then in terms of Superintendent Curley, were part of the conversations three years ago, good lord, two and a half years ago, whatever it was, At least that's when we had them. They seem to have had some since then, I don't know. But two and a half years ago, our science disposition was very much, we're in no rush, we'll decide when we decide. Now, since then, they've sold the Matignon building, so I don't know if anything has changed, because they said the same thing about Matignon at that time, too.

Dr. Ackman and then Mr. Michaud.

Thank you. Through the chair, just from my work on the payment in lieu of taxes, the pilot task force, my understanding is that to answer or to like yes and is that you know the city within like especially you know when we needed the building has continually followed up with the archdiocese and has can like have continually been told uh We're not ready yet and we're in no hurry. So granted I don't know how recent it was and I'm trying to remember our last meeting has not been this school year so it's been a number of months but you know it has the the conversation to the best of my understanding has been ongoing since, you know, Winterhill has moved to Adderley. Mr. Biton and then Mr. Green.

Thank you, Chair. Through you, I just want to point out that City Council has submitted a resolution that will be discussed specifically on this topic at the School Building Facilities and Maintenance Subcommittee at an upcoming meeting so I expect there will be a more in-depth conversation about this.

I just want to remind the public that as a general rule the city doesn't discuss Steele, Steele, Steele As much as I love to be the first person to bash the city for not telling us things, I understand them not necessarily giving us super detail on that conversation.

Okay. All right, that finishes the report of subcommittees. Is there any update on the MSBA? I know we're going to discuss the MSBA finance presentation, so let me just quickly do the July and August bill rolls.

Second.

Motion by Dr. Ackman, seconded by Mr. Green. There is no discussion. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to the FY27 state budget sign-on letter that should be in your packet. That is something that was brought to me by the SEU president asking if we'd be willing to authorize me as the chair to sign on our behalf. This would be our first reading, so it would come to our next meeting. But if there are any questions or discussions,

This may be a question that's best for finance. I know the governor is currently holding a number of earmarks and other like Yeah, in all remarks. But all the other targeted items in the budget. I just wanted to know if there's anything that... Was Somerville getting any of those that are currently being held? Is there any state money that's currently being held? and I'm just curious because that is you know there's several billion dollars currently being held by the governor

I have not received any updates from Bobby at this point. I know that we were short some, I forget the number, but it was not as significant as a loss as we thought originally. So, but I don't have any updates at this point.

Okay. Any other questions or comments? Otherwise, it will be, yep.

Thank you, Chair, to you. You know, the language as drafted, I gave it one read, I haven't looked at it very carefully, so I'm very interested in feedback on it, but I guess the language doesn't I'm sort of wondering I could be wrong, but if there's an opportunity for more, I guess, collaboration,

So this is a letter that was drafted by the state MTA that is a much larger piece that we were asked whether we would consider signing on or not. So there's always an opportunity. It's similar in spirit to things, resolutions we have passed in the past. So if there is specific language that you're hesitant about, I think this is essentially a yes or no situation, not a let's tweak the language situation. because it's not because it's not our letter it's just we've been asked whether we'd be interested in signing on or not other questions That brings us to the MSBA finance presentation to the CAG. Mr. Green, do you want to give us a quick framing?

Sure. I'm going to keep my framing brief. That's why I asked you all to have reviewed the presentation beforehand. And I'm going to go ahead and ask at least the conversation to continue in our next meeting since we have two meetings before the next CAG. And I'd love to... But as you've seen, we finally have some numbers for the ideas put before. The CAG, which I will admit just in the fullness of my position both on the school building committee and on the CAG, to me, I will say The question is no longer about Secretary of War Trump. I'm not willing to support spending $10 million more to move a building half a mile west. and towards, away from our poorest students and towards our richer students. So like to me it's a question of what we're doing at Sycamore.

And as you see there are several options. The CAG would love to get more input from the school committee as to what we think is right for our larger building plans. So I think, for me, that question returns back to the issue of what do you think the right size for school is. What I am being very careful not to frame this, because I do not think it's the way people should be making a decision, Should we combine schools or not? The question is how many seats do we want to build at Sycamore? and then I think the question in the coming years is how do we want to program those seats as is always school committees right in jurisdiction to figure out. I know that's not the most emotionally satisfying way to look at it for a lot of families who want Because I understand schools are communities, but the reality is whatever we do, the community is going to shift around in the next several years.

So I think for us, the question is what layout of seats we think Positions Schools Educationally for the next at least 20 years, but ideally 20 to 50 years. And so for me, I want to lay out my priorities and biases. So as we're talking about this this week and next, people can know where I'm coming from. As we just discussed in our last meeting, we need seats. Like, last agenda item, we need seats. I think that's the first priority is that we just need more seats, especially if we're not going to top off at 5,000. We're going to need seats. I've mentioned before in this meeting that I have nightmares about what happens if for some reason the 200 students at Project Hill leave Project Hill. Because we don't have a place to put them.

So I want to again thank the city for figuring out how to get 650 seats established as a baseline for Winter Hill. that was at a time when MSBA has not been generous with seats was already a victory. And the question I asked at the last CAG meeting, I've not got an answer for it yet, is if we were to build A 950-seat school at Sycamore does not require us to make commitments around the use or not either of the current building, the building currently is around school. Because is this an or or an and situation is my question. I don't have an answer to that question. So that's where I am. I would love to know people's questions, people's thoughts, either tonight or next week. I'm fully aware of the fact that it is

almost 10 o'clock and we don't necessarily do our best deliberation this late at night so if people wanted to save the hearts throwing stuff for next week I would understand that but I want to make sure this got in front of you as soon as possible thank you okay thank you for that

Thank you, Member Green, for sharing your thoughts. I just wanted to clarify, and I want to be clear, I'm not advocating in particular for Trump over the Sycamore site, but I'm hearing that it's your opinion that you don't want to spend $10 million to have the new building via Trum, but that's not necessarily the opinion of the CAG or of the city or of this body in particular. and no one has said that it should or should not be continued to be in play because it is one of the proposals that are in this presentation, correct? which is great and I very much appreciate it as always. Are there other thoughts, questions? Yes, Ms. Pitone. Thank you, and I apologize. I looked through this after the CAG, and I haven't looked at it in detail since, but can we clarify at what point

The decision is going to be made because at some point it was January, then it was December, then it was January. Now I think I understood from Mr. Green that it has to be done by the end of the year

That is my understanding, and again, I could be wrong because you're right, there was some moving target nature to it, but my understanding is the decision needs to be given to the MSPA in December. If you know something more accurate than that, I am happy to be mistaken, but my understanding is that decision has to be made.

My understanding of that decision, I think it was an internal deadline that the city was saying by November to May.

I thought, again, I could be wrong. My understanding was that The General Assembly was made in November because it had to be handed over to the SBA in December, but I could be wrong on that point.

I confirm that. We just met today and there was no discussion about the numbers around I'll find that out. That's a good question. I'm curious.

And through the chair, just clarifying, what's an internal date? What's a date driven by the MSBA process? So that we're in a good place to understand who is going to be making the decision.

Through the Chair, we just had that conversation today and that's exactly what I asked the OPM just to provide us a very clear layout of the different deliverables. He needs to work because we just selected the company that is going to do Perkins Eastman that has been selected. They need to work with us to actually lay out those deadlines. So it's a combination of both the designer as well as our OPM and then As far as the external deadline by MSBA, I will get an answer on that one.

Mr. Green?

Building on that, we have asked Dr. Raish for a timeline of When school companies, because there are a number of decisions school companies have to make. either formally endorsed or some places you have to make, but it's not been clear what the timeline for those are. Like at some point we have to submit an educational plan, like we did for high school, submit a fairly extensive educational plan that has to be approved by this body. I don't know what the timeline of that is. I've asked Director Raish to give us that timeline so we're not, as happened to us with the decision over the design committee, we're not up against the ball.

Mr. Biton and then Dr. Phillips.

Thank you, Chair, through you to Member Green. I'd like to hear a little more if you have any to share about You mentioned wanting to make a decision or make a recommendation. Not about combining per se, but about what size school do we want to build. So I guess my question is, Are we beholden to close the... That's what he doesn't know.

That is exactly my question.

I do not know.

Okay.

That is 100% my question as well.

That is the simple question I don't have an answer to. Thank you. The other question that comes to mind, while we're getting clarity from the city on this, there's a statement in this presentation that says we would be unlikely to get MSBA support for just the brown if we decided if the city decided to submit that to MSBA in the future How do we know that? How do we know we'd be unlikely to get, you know, enrolled in MSBA for just the brand? Sure.

I have a similar question to Kai's as well. Nothing was officially said, at least if they have. They didn't tell me that. But the general sense is that doing it... that it would not be done immediately like maybe if we were willing to wait a couple years after the building of the Winter Hill to submit the brown that might have a possibility but like I think their belief, and I think this is unofficial and it may be wrong, was that if we finished Winter Hill in 2030 and didn't submit it to Brown, we shouldn't count on getting to Brown at that point.

May I just to clarify so it's like you know we finished this don't get right back in line let it breathe and then you know maybe there's a better chance I think.

I think that no one knows.

Yeah. That was the sense. Yeah. But yes, no one knows. That was their sense of the sense. Okay. All right. Thank you.

I had Dr. Phillips, Ms. Barish, and then Dr. Ackman. Is there a new question? New question, Ms. Barish, or did you want to respond?

I think it just to like I mean it's just another factor but to keep in mind like as as the state budget tightens the the MSBA may not become a priority so I think that's another factor to consider as we have a beautiful high school another new building that we have you know been lucky enough to get these state funds for that like uh I feel like that conversation is presuming same and there is this factor of tightening budgets that I just want to make sure we're considering as well. Did you want to follow up or a new question, Laura?

Okay, Mr. Green, follow up, and then Mr. Jones.

To build on that, so it's important to remember that the way the MSPA works is on an equality model and an equity model. So every city in town, Boston has a waiver, but every other city in town It's allowed one school in the hopper at a time. The fact that they even let us talk about the round was a concession on their part. I think, going back to our question earlier, I think that's a policy that puts urban schools at a huge disadvantage in terms of modernizing our schools, but it is the reality that we live in, is that if we're going to be using MSP money, which, unless you're Cambridge, you're going to be using MSP money. You get one project at a time. By my off the back of the calculation, our next wave of schools needs to start coming offline in 2040. That's when the county turns 50 as the next oldest school.

I mean I agree it's it's unpredictable there's really no way to know it has to do with who applies how much money they have allocated however You can read between the lines that they have offered us all the seats. MSBA has made a choice and said look not only are we willing to build you this building for a number of seats but we're actually going to offer to build many many more seats to satisfy the needs of all these schools so I think That may or may not influence it, but I think that with their decision to say, we'll build you one building and we'll build you one building with enough seats for everyone is a message. and we can either take it or not take it and you know it's all a roll of the dice so if we want to continue to apply in the future and get that opportunity to rebuild out the brown to the sort of beautiful vision or something similar to the beautiful vision that's put out there that's something that we need to factor

It's hard for me to talk about where to put one school or another without really understanding what this 925 Seat K-8 will be like? I'm looking at the... It's the CAG projections. More precise projections, Doc. that is showing me at the final size of 925 kids we're going to have. One principal and three assistant principals and two deans. And I'm just wondering, what have we thought about what's gonna go in that school and how we're gonna actually have a 925 student K-8 that doesn't feel like a 925 student K-8.

Yes, through the chair. Yeah, that's a good question. Even the numbers, you know, the numbers that we, you know, if you look at the numbers, it's 589 combined in terms of numbers, real numbers, but just remember that When we went through this process, we also discussed the absence of spaces for kids could actually have special services. We don't have... Places where students also can gather for other purposes. So the idea was also to include all the challenges that we have as a district in terms of the space. So that's part of where that number comes up. All I can say in terms of how we started, because it's not one person's vision, but it's part of the design team that starts actually looking at what is it that works for the district. But in this process of selection of the design group,

They actually provided some very compelling arguments to distribute buildings, even the Sycamore site, in a way in which you actually can separate different sections of the building into different spaces. It was very compelling. I'm not saying that that's where we're going, but that is part of the work that has to happen collectively with you and all the other members of the design team.

I think it's important to remember that if we build a school be it 650 or 625 or 950 doesn't mean how many people we actually have to put in that school which is one of the reasons Mr. Patone's question about What does it mean about taking the Brown building offline matters because we might build a 150-person school and only put some students in it to start. Or we might use it to do... Programming requires more space per student than the norm. I think trying to figure out definitively what we would do with the building is important But it's not as important as it may feel at first glance because What I would feel was a mistake with the Capuano building was when it was a building that was purposely built to do one thing and one thing alone. If we don't make that mistake, we can be modular in our thinking about how we fill those seats.

Ms. Barish? And then Mr. Davis. Thank you. Through you, I want to make sure that I'm understanding the Jet Exclusion, Projection, Data. I'm looking at the slide that's I guess it's slide number 25 maybe where it compares the various scenarios to SHS with SHS being one and everything else being compared to that. Am I right in understanding then that a 2.06

Rating is essentially it will cost the average taxpayer twice the tax increase that the high school is already costing them. Is that sort of the idea?

Yes. Now what I honestly, and I feel terrible about admitting this, what I don't remember is, is that twice plus or is that the new bill will be twice including both? I just don't remember.

Sorry, I missed what you said because Dr. Phillips was helping me understand better. What's that?

But yeah, the short answer is yes. The long answer requires details I don't fully remember, so I'll punt on that for now, but I can get back to you. But the short answer is yes.

Okay, so I looked, it looks like The average single family owner maximum increase that they're going to see for the high school projected obviously we don't know exactly but that was projected to be $294 per year. So if that's true, we're looking at like $600 if it's 2.06, right? In addition to the 300. Okay, great. Thank you. Appreciate it.

I was trying to talk about math and my brain's completely scrambled. Okay, good. You'll all quickly realize that I just don't do numbers. I can't. It's not how my brain works. A couple follow-ups I want to make just kind of to put my thoughts on the table. So I appreciate Mr. Green's point about, you know, To the extent that we can within the MSBA process, think about just the size of what we might want. Jackson. Absent of whether or not that includes moving kids from a separate school then into that new building. And I guess whether we can do that, I think, is an important question, right?

So we'll have to sort that out if the condition of the funding for a larger school is because we're and so on. As far as the MSPA on a future Brown School renovation, that's 10 years down the road, I think. I think Mr. Green very appropriately said, we really don't know. We don't know. If you're trying to anticipate what the government's going to do 10 weeks from now, I wouldn't put a whole lot of money on it. you know I feel personally I like small schools and I think they provide something really interesting and different and important and I also represent Ward 6 where

there's only one school in that ward and one of these proposals involves there being no schools in that ward anymore and that's a problem for me just conceptually and fundamentally so I'm paying attention to this conversation with listening closely to sort of see where the thought process is. But the last thing I'll say is, to Ms. Pitone's point, The fact that the state may or may not be trying to put their thumb on the scale one way or the other, I could care less. I could care less if they want us to create a mega school, that's not up to them. It's up to us to decide what's best for our kids. We'll figure out what's going on 10 years from now if we decide to go that route. Yeah, whoever might be trying to give that hint to us now probably isn't going to be there in 10 years. And frankly, I don't care if that's their opinion.

If we disagree with it, we need to make our own decisions on this.

Ms. Parrish?

I just had a clarifying or a question about the document that Dr. Phillips was just talking about, the CAG projections, more precise projection. I don't know if Mr. Green can explain The line item for paraprofessionals, it goes from 3 at the Brown and 32 at the Winter Hill for this school year to 3 at the Brown and 60 at the Winter Hill in some projected future. Do you know why there's that dramatic increase in paraprofessionals?

These numbers come from the district. I'm going to put it back to the superintendent.

Could you point me to the line again? I lost the...

There are paraprofessionals and there's 3 and 32 and then they project it out and it's 3 and 60.

Yeah, I would not be able to tell you that one. I mean, overall, usually the scale of, and that's what happens in Boston, that's what happened in Salem, that's what happened in Lowell, is like usually, Small schools often as a way of savings they when they have to because of the scale is the right we always have to it's hard to provide more services and provide more support to schools when they have a certain size. So that's why often consolidating schools is an option. I'm not saying it's the best, but that's one of the ways that savings are realized. I cannot tell you about this specific one, so I'll ask you.

It also looks like the projected population of the building you know it goes from 357 to 690. so i mean i i guess i'm just a little confused about how this chart works

When I was speaking to the details of this chart, which because the CAG double booked me and therefore I missed the actual conversation about this chart because I was to be here. I can't speak to this chart, but I do know that one of the things when we've had conversations in the past about student-based budgeting, one of the challenges with small schools is there's only so much stuff that you can cut down. And so small schools, even though they tend to be less well staffed, cost more per student, which, frankly, we're going to talk about this because Somerville is an equity issue. So like, it may be that the part of scaling up is that this is the scaling you would have ideally anyway, but in a smaller school it just doesn't make sense.

One more question. Looking at the... Back to the slideshow. Slide number 10, where it's the sort of basic Drawing of the Brown School and I guess where an addition would be and the elevation of the existing building next to the addition. Is that based on, I want to say that 2021? Plan that was sort of floated by the city? Or do you know if, is there like a, Is there any more information about what this represents that we can look at?

I'm curious about, for example, would there be a green roof since we're losing most of the blacktop? Like, would there be, I feel like those are things that I'm curious about and I know that it hasn't been designed yet but are these things that anyone has discussed or like we even know is a possibility?

I don't know, but we could ask the city.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you to Ms. Barish. I can't speak to what the current administration who put this image in the plans, but I can tell you that at the Brown School PTA meeting 10 or 12 years ago when Matt Rice designed this, And it's been the thing that the Brownsville community has been asking for since then. One of the options was to actually have outdoor space, recreational space on the roof, much like you do in many big cities. Neudegang. I remember my former colleague from Ward 5, Councilor Neudegang, loved to point out that that's where his gym was growing up in Manhattan, was on the roof. So that was one possible use, I think. To Mr. Green's point, we don't know yet, right? That would be a detail. But in that original discussion, you know, and potentially as a way to Activate more space within the building.

Right now, obviously, all the activity space is outdoor, so you'd have some combination, but that was one of the options that was presented. I think that's a decision we could make if we decided to get to that point.

Mr. Green and Dr. Ackman?

So again, we don't know, we don't know, we don't know. I would like to remind people that one of the lessons learned in high school is how prescriptive MSPA can be and what they'll need to pay for. so some of the stuff might be we could do it if we want to spend the money Dr. Ackman and then Ms. Pitone thank you through the chair I think

to expand on that and this is something I asked Ms. Pitone and you know maybe this is something that um I don't know if this is within Sam Ellington's wheelhouse but like We as a body are going to have to make some decisions based on imperfect and possibly non-data. Like that is what this body will be tasked with at some point in the relatively near future. and like we are lucky to have a member here who has done that before like you know I just asked her and if she's willing you know any advice like if Sam Elegyne has advice on like how she advises you with like you know imperfect data and like

we want answers and the reality is like we're not going to get them and like of course we should still ask we want the best information we can get but like i think for me one of the things i i really need to understand is like how imperfect is the data going to be and how much of a gut choice are we going to have to make and representing our constituency choices as well. and if I'm the only one who that's helpful for, I'll just do my own digging, but I think that would be really useful for us because like there are so many numbers it seems like there's gonna be a solid answer and like it's there's not gonna be and so yeah any

I would love any of that if you know again Through the chair, if that is a possibility, I think that would be useful for the body.

Ms. Pitone, and then I'm going to suggest we save the rest of this for next week because it's getting so late. Ms. Pitone?

Sure. I mean, I have a separate thing that I want to bring up, but briefly. I was not on the building committee in the first round but relative to the decision that has to be made now it's so much more complicated than What they had to do for the high school. And the building committee, if I remember correctly, made the recommendation of where the location was gonna be. It all fell into the MSBA process. There wasn't a CAG, there wasn't this, you know, It was really a different community. The school committee really didn't weigh in on whether it was going to be at Trum or whether it was going to be at the high school site, especially since they decided to keep it at the high school site. There was no drama around that that I remember.

I did want to ask a question and we might not have a good answer for this but one thing that I do take pause right now we have a certain number of seats on each bit of the city right so we have Brown, whatever it is, you know, sixth grade K through five if you encompass you know and I know that it's a little six point something but if Kennedy and um the winner um the west and the brown are kind of on the west side of the city and then we've had like When the Winter Hill was where it was, we had five in the central part of the city, and then we have like approximately six on the east side of the city. And at some point, what transpired before I was even on the school committee is we had more seats on the west side of the city through the Powder House. So a decision was made at some point in time and I think I might be wrong but I think the decision was kind of like do we close the Powder House or do we close the Brown? and you know there was a lot of agency in that Brown community.

I also think the Powder House building was a little more difficult to work with so we all know it's and I'm not saying like I would have made any different decision or any better decision and so on. How, if we, for example, keep the Brown online, obviously we keep more seats in the west side of the city, and is that something that we need in the district, especially if we're Trump may or may not be in play and then the Winter Hill becomes a bigger school and so we're sort of becoming central and east heavy on seats and west a little bit of a dearth so that's where I know sort of the fantasy of Trump came about was like well we'll just stick it in between and then we can you know distribute the seats so I guess my specific question is about

From what we know about projection enrollment, is there sort of a waiting that we're seeing around different regions in the city? And if we end up kind of continuing to push more seats, Are we going to be forced into the central and the east side of the district? Is that going to create problems in the west? Be very serious consideration to things like busing because we cannot be able to fulfill. as much as anybody here understands the nuances of all this is such a complicated question and how for example at some point in time if we do take the brown off line and the winter hill ends up getting built at sycamore street I don't know if that could be a real pain point for us. So I don't know if anybody within the district offices or in collaboration with the city could have some kind of answer about distribution of seats across the city and whether or not we're going to create Asit Desert. I think that's the language I'm looking for in these different scenarios.

Or are they so close it doesn't really matter and I'm bringing up something that's not important?

So I know I met with Teresa last year to show a heat map of where families were coming and they were evenly distributed across the board. As far as the new projections, we'd have to look at where are the kids coming from. I know we talked about what are the developments that are happening around the city, so that also determines where the numbers are coming from. So I don't think that that's necessarily a problem. I mean, it's gonna be an estimate at some point in terms of projections because, again, they will be lower in terms of projections. and so on. So we know that we I think it's relatively easy to find right now where they are coming from, and we have that data. But I don't think that that's going to answer the five-year or ten-year projections, all right?

May I follow up? There may be some stuff in the enrollment study, and I'm happy to kind of look at it, but I also think that the district's eyes on it would probably be more valuable than my own, so... I don't know. It's just, and again, I don't want to ask you to do something that nobody else is interested in. Maybe I'm just bringing up something that's my own personal pet peeve and I don't know what my colleagues think. Mr. Green?

Without getting into any value statements, I would just say two things. One, according to the normal study, which again, We've discussed some of the falls within the other. The quote-unquote decliners projecting is mostly declining because they expected to see East Somerville as a neighborhood have fewer children. Yeah, as a result of rising gentrification. That's what the study said. The other thing I just want to point out is the two mile radius that requires the bus from the edge of From the West Somerville School, just use that as a marker, extends well into East Somerville. So we may at some point decide we want to bus, but locations of schools will not ever require us to bus legally.

Right, we may decide as a positive matter, or some future school may, as a positive matter, they want to introduce some form of busing. But guys that will ever have an institution where some student will legally have to be bused is limp to none.

Mr. Biton?

Thank you, Chair, through you. I really, and I'll be brief, I really want to thank Ms. Pitone for bringing up this line of questioning. I think it's the type of analysis I'm really interested in as well. and one sort of segue from that in looking at what effect consolidating two of our schools including one that's more on the westerly side of the city into a more central location might do is exacerbate the differences in diversity that we're seeing in our different schools by inadvertently concentrating more of the families who live in the western side of the city in one or two schools.

So it's something that I fear might happen if we do decide to consolidate. So it's just something I... I don't know if there has been any additional analysis about that, but I think there are some ties with our diversity goals in the district as well.

Dr. Phillips, and then I really am going to suggest we save everything till next week.

Thanks. Through you, just a process suggestion, because I think all of us are really good at asking for more information. and it's really hard to make a decision and I think if I'm understanding correctly all we're being asked for is input what does the school committee think So as a process suggestion, I might suggest that next time we pick a couple criteria and talk about based on that criteria, what would we choose? So like if I'm prioritizing equity, what would I choose? If I'm prioritizing cost, what would I choose? And just have some discussions and see if there's any overlap before we get to a point where we're trying to say, That's what the school committee thinks because my understanding is coming out of next week or next meeting we want to be able to say with one voice this is the school committee's input. What do we want Andre?

I specifically told them we would not be giving them that. I told them that asking for that with the decision was simply not feasible. This is a conversation that if we were really gonna have that conversation about what we think as a school committee is the right thing to do, We went around a process which we do not have time to do. So I simply said we would not be saying the school committee says you should do X. and I think again for some people that's disappointing but I firmly believe that's that's the right position especially since again we're not talking about should we close a school we're talking about How many seats will there be in a location? What we do at the school I think needs to be a separate question that we do have time to run the process on.

So then what are you hoping for after our next meeting?

Just your thoughts. I'm going to give a subjective account of the summation of the conversation. Now, if people really think we can say, we think the school committee says we should do X, Obviously, if someone was to make a motion, I would report it back, but I said that was not my intention to ask for.

Can I just, you mentioned the question about process. So my understanding that the actual configuration of the school itself, what it looks like, How is it going to serve the kids is part of the MSBA question that is going to be answered by the makeup of those folks that we have families, we have principals, we have We have experts in the field. And so my understanding, because it is kind of bumping into, these two questions are bumping into what is it that the MSBA team is going to be doing. And so I am just trying to understand what is the task that you as a body have in terms of a recommendation.

So I think, and I think Mr. Pitone, you were also here at the time, you can correct me if I'm wrong. At some point, that question will be answered in the education plan as part of the state process. Like, what are we going to do with this building is a conversation is the education plan that will be submitted as part of this process at some point down the line. It will not be submitted this calendar year. It will be submitted at some point after we've made some decisions. And that education plan, while we spoke about the school building committee, has to be approved by a vote of this body. So there will be that conversation at some point. That is not a decision we need to make today or next week. But it is a decision we will have to make sometime. And again, this is why I've asked for a timeline from Director Rach. My guess is this conversation needs to have some time next year.

But it's not, to my understanding, it's not now. And I don't believe it's before the end of the year.

Okay, I really am going to move us on because we're all tired and we're not doing our best thinking. This will be on the agenda next Monday. We have some field trips to approve. I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve I'ma find it uh

No, that's grant funds. October 20th to October 22nd, 48 sixth grade students from West Somerville Neighborhood School visit Nature's Classroom in Groton, Mass. Travel via bus. Student cost $175. Second. All right. All in favor? All opposed motion carries. That brings us to some grants.

I move to accept with gratitude federal entitlement continuation grants and all state continuation grants awarded to the Somerville Public Schools as listed below. Adult Education and Family Literacy Scale 732,519 Continuation Grant Metro North WIOA Follow-Up Scale 26,400 proficiency-based outcomes in world language other than english world language department 31 000 federal adult education and family literacy scale 146 504 private morrison bender foundation to the argenziano school for 12 500 Reforma Noche de Cuentos Hispanic Month Night of Storytelling, East Somerville Community School, $500. Second.

Motion by Dr. Ackman, seconded by Mr. Biton. If there is no discussion, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to some donations. Yes, Mr. Green.

I wanted to ask a question after we voted for it because I wanted to make it clear that I had no intentions of not voting for it. But as a student and as a practitioner of educational equity, I gotta say the idea of giving grants to individual schools for the sole discretion of the principal as a matter of policy I have some concerns about because that is historically one of the tools that's been used by privileged families to and Skone by giving their school those other resources without giving those to schools that don't have access to those kinds of parents. So again, I was happy to vote for this one because It's not like Tarantino doesn't have deep pockets of need, but it's something that if this is going to come out, I really want us to think about as a district is how we want to create policies around because it is not an equity best practice.

Noted.

All right, that brings us to some donations. I move to accept with gratitude A donation of work gear from Brent Work Gear in North Reading valued at 105,700 pairs of boots for all of the CTE shops of the Somerville High School. Deep Appreciation, and some equipment from P.J. Dionne in Woburn, valued at $5,200, one Bradley three-bay hand sink for the CTE plumbing program at Somerville High School.

A motion by Dr. Ackman, seconded by Mr. Biton, Mr. Green.

So, I don't think people want to say how big a deal this donation from Brunt Workwear is. Like, when you talk to adult workforce practitioners and adult workforce programs like I do, one of the major things that stops people from pursuing these programs is access to things like work boots. you know obviously you can tell from the value this is a big deal but it's also a big deal that gets that understands a real barrier that prevents real people from thriving I would love to a know more about how this happened because These kind of things happen because of hard work on someone's part, and I want to make sure they get the credit. But I also want to make sure we do, make sure we're making that front work where it gets the credit they deserve for what could be for some of these students a literally life-changing gift.

Absolutely. I'm really glad you brought that up. I didn't make that connection, but I have read some of the data related to access. So that picked my interest. I'll follow up on that one. I'm curious, yeah.

All right. Ms. Barish? I'm just curious, practically, where do we store 700 pairs of boots? Because I don't imagine that they're all going to get used right away.

I don't know but my daughter spent some time organizing them apparently in the in CT shop so they're somewhere there and that's a lot of shoes organizing them

Okay.

Well, yes, but they have to be stored somewhere while they figure that out, presumably. I don't know. It's a good question. Okay, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. All right, items from committee members. Everyone too tired?

Oh yeah, Ms. Pitone. I apologize, I'm actually looking it up, but my office hours are scheduled. Let me look when they are. I'm doing shared office hours with Naima Satt, and Pat Jalen, and I don't know, possibly Erica, I don't know, but I'm not sure, on November 1st from 10 to 12 p.m., and it'll probably be at Zarma Coffee Shop on Lowell. I don't know if we're organizing coordinated hours for the fall. We have not discussed it as of yet. Maybe we add it to the agenda.

Okay, while we're announcing office hours, we've got Ward 7 office hours with Christine Barber, myself, and Pat Jalen at Angelina's on October 18th. from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. So I hope folks want to come out for a slice.

Ms. Parish? I don't know if I heard Ms. Pitone right. Did you say your office hours are likely at SARMA? How do you say the... Oh, Zaruma Gold? Yeah, Zaruma Gold. Got it. Thank you. I was confused. I was like, wait.

I was like, first of all, it's my neighborhood. What are you doing coming to my hood to have office hours? Second of all... Who are you paying for that?

Confirm the location. All right. Any other items from committee members? All right. Do we have any condolences? We do. We have one.

The school committee would like to extend its deepest condolences to the family of Debbie Carbone, 62, sister of Cheryl Young, principal clerk central, aunt of Melissa Juvelakis, K teacher at AFA, Aunt of Matt Young, PE teacher at East Somerville Community School. Aunt-in-law to Diana Young, first grade teacher at AFA.

All right, we are adjourned. Good night, everyone.