School Committee Meeting - June 8, 2026

Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching!

Thank you for watching!

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, thank you for being here. It is 7.02 p.m. on June 8, 2026. and I am calling this meeting of the Somerville School Committee to order. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of the School Committee will be conducted via remote participation. It is being recorded and we'll post an audio recording, audio-video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings. Now it's being recorded. And we will post a recording of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. All right, Superintendent, will you call the roll?

Through the Chair, President Davis? Yes. Member Piton? Here. Member Lippens? Here. Member Eldridge? Present. Member Green? Here. Dr. Stallman?

Here.

Mayor Wilson? Present. Member Biton? Here. Dr. Adman? Here. With nine present, we have quorum.

Wonderful. All right. We are going to have a moment of silence and a salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice. All right, we are going to go to the Student Advisory Committee representatives. Are you two ready to go? Great.

All right. Just to start us off, I'd like to mention how recently we've been having some Xbox initiatives to Include more students in the school community. So recently students were given a choice during Xbox either to play sports outside with a group of people or engage in some fun makerspace activities. The goal of these activities was mainly to increase school spirit and kind of integrate people more as I previously mentioned. Another similar opportunity is also coming up the last day of school. where the freshman class specifically will have a quote-unquote field day with options to play games or do our projects. And I'm passing it over to Babaka.

Yeah, great. Thank you, Marlee. So just to elaborate a little bit on those X Block activities, that initiative was started by a community-oriented group group called Somerville Positive Forces and that group came together and decided they wanted to encourage Somerville High School students to engage in and participate in like technology and cell phone free activities because as a group we noticed that during x block a lot of students were on social media or on their phones and we wanted to encourage People to get off their phones and do some other activities as well so the project was called social mediums which is a fun play on words but there were several workshops offered during school X block and these included board board games Fun in the Fab Lab where students created keychains in Fabville at Somerville High School and there was an outdoor soccer game as well.

And our largest event was a soccer game for which we had over 30 students show up so that was really amazing to see So many SHS students outside and having fun with each other and there are a lot of students who may not have met with each other before so it was cool to see different groups intersect. and in general we just wanted to motivate students to get off their cell phones and just to enjoy other activities as I mentioned before and yeah passing it back over to Marlee.

All right, so recently we had a lot of honor societies have their inductions for the end of the school year, meaning students who applied get the opportunity to be a part of A more subject-focused community while being also recognized for their efforts in those specific areas. So there are a couple different honor societies. Some of them include the National Art Honor Society, TRI-AM, which is the music honor society, There's also the Computer Science Honor Society, Math Honor Society, National Honor Society, and there are also many more. Another thing I wanted to talk about, is the class elections that are happening right now, which means students are running in each grade for president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. They're also running for the five positions as student reps on this very school committee, and they're also running for the three positions open on the School Improvement Council. We have a lot of kids running this year, which is very exciting for student involvement in leadership.

Outside of elected positions, class advisors are also making an effort to encourage students to step up to leadership by bringing issues and ideas to them who will then later bring it up to other groups, whether that be class officers or other staff. So right now, SHS is filled with posters for students who are campaigning. We are, we, Bofka and I, are also, Campaigning to be reelected as your school committee student representatives and hopefully we'll be successful, but if we are not, I trust that whoever wins will be absolutely adequate. Voting will be held this upcoming Wednesday during the school day. So now I'm passing it over to Bhavika.

Yeah, also something that's happening this upcoming Wednesday, June 10th, will be a Climate Action Club Summit at the high school. and this event will be from 4 p.m to 6 p.m and it is open to parents, educator, community members and of course students. This event was created for the Somerville Middle School Climate Action Clubs which I believe I brought up during the very beginning of our school committee meetings, but I can of course elaborate on those later. because I love talking about them but yeah we wanted the members of these clubs to be able to showcase and present their local climate action projects that they worked on throughout the course of their club meetings and we also really wanted to encourage collaboration among students from these different clubs since we had the climate action clubs at We have five different middle schools and we do understand since we were both in different middle schools before that often students amongst like was in the different middle schools are often

working in isolation from one another and often do not really meet or collaborate with students from other middle schools. So we really wanted to highlight how students across Somerville and not just like in their own school are working towards climate action and being future advocates for combating the climate crisis, which is really amazing. and we also wanted to encourage these middle schoolers to have the opportunities to develop their leadership skills and share amongst community So we would love to have any school committee members there and I would be happy to share more information after. And then we also wanted to mention that we have heard many students from Somerville High School have concerns We have also heard that teachers were interested in learning more as some teachers have voiced that they weren't provided an adequate amount of of Information.

And although we do understand that this is something that is pretty much in progress, we wanted to voice the concerns of our student body and our teachers as, of course, we are student representatives for Somerville High School, so we believe it is very important to bring up the topics and the issues that our school really cares about and we thought this is something to voice and just bring up and yeah I think that is it for today thank you

Amazing. Thank you both. Does anyone have questions for our student reps? Member Pitone.

Thank you through the chair to both of you. Thank you for being here. Best of luck on your campaign. I hope you're out there. I just really appreciate your service and I'm glad that you're willing to step up again. The Climate Action Club which is super exciting but it also made me reflect on something that you may not want to talk about because I didn't prep you for it but I had an opportunity to attend I think the mayor was there as well the echo project and the capstone projects and I know you guys are not seniors but I'm curious what's the attitude being in the student what are you hearing from people are people excited about these ideas and Just so everybody knows, this is a new program that's been gradually implemented over the last few years with the intention of having students have real life, real world experiences outside the classroom.

ECHO project being something that's out of Somerville High School and the capstone project something that they participate and do within the high school so if you're not prepared I totally respect that but maybe next time

Yeah, I mean, thank you so much for the question. And I think the Echo Project was something that we both heard a lot about and are also interested in. And I know my sister is a senior. and she participated in the echo project and she has been someone who has been involved in a bunch of different activities and very rigorous courses so it was really amazing to see her participate in a project like this that wasn't and many more. Thank you. In that way, the Agro Project is a really amazing extension of activities that students are already pursuing and are already really passionate about. And I know that she really enjoyed that extra time of having Like the time available to work on your project because you're able to not have to go to the blocks or like your class blocks are AP classes and

and that was really helpful to actually be able to create a meaningful project and I know that what I've heard from other seniors was that they also really enjoyed it and although there was a lot of I guess Like unwillingness to participate at first, especially when they, the seniors were current juniors, they were really unfamiliar with it and they felt that they weren't having enough information about it and they were just kind of like pushed into it. So I think definitely we could have been a little better about like how we introduced it to students and they kind of felt like the guinea pigs and like the test subjects which of course I feel like every class who's like kind of thrown into something without getting as much information would feel like but I think from what I've heard a lot of the seniors have enjoyed it and I know that a lot of them have taken the opportunity to kind of just pursue what they're already doing was like their jobs or their internships so I think in that way the projects were already something that was

I'm interested to see how the projects will How students will pursue the projects in the future and if more students will be willing to kind of go out of their comfort zone and take risks and things like that.

I will say as I think it was a very good idea that other students like of the younger grades were able to go and see the showcase I think that helped a lot with I think it was really awesome that we got to see such a large diversity of the different projects because everyone like had the freedom to choose they didn't have to do it within school so I saw For example, a project on baking cookies. I saw a project on climate initiatives. It was a really wide range, and I think that is going to be a very valuable experience for our students. and I don't know personally I'm very excited to take a part in that next year so I think a lot of my fellow juniors are also excited for that.

Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you. Member Lippens. Thank you through you, Chair. I just have a question because it's election season and I do have a daughter at the high school. Can you both share why were you inspired to run for student representative and show up on Monday nights and give up some of your time and just thinking about how we might I definitely don't want to lose you so I'll just...

I would say I was very intrigued as to how the whole school committee system worked. As a sophomore, as I was last year when I ran, I didn't really know a lot. So I figured that it would be a good experience definitely. I also was interested in finding new opportunities to kind of contribute to the community in maybe leadership positions. I think in terms of getting other students interested I think making it accessible like I don't know inviting new students to these meetings I think that would be really cool. Yeah, personally, for me, it was about the experience and contributing. What about you, Balvika?

yeah thank you i think i have a very similar response and i think like as a sophomore i definitely was able to get involved in I was able to become a class officer previously but that The main action steps that the class officers focused on were very different than what I personally felt were aligned with what I wanted to do. So when I heard about the student representative I was also very intrigued because it was such a different way to be involved, but also be able to still be a voice for our fellow students. And I think something that I've always taken with me from something that I've heard

is that as leaders, we don't want to be the voices of the students, but be able to help other students feel confident and empower them to be able to voice their own feelings So I think I always take that wherever I go. So thank you so much for the question of how to get other people involved because I think that's so crucial because we definitely want I think for me like as I was kind of navigating this position and navigating our campaigning. I've noticed that a lot of students don't really see them represented as the type of people who run for class officers or student representatives or school improvement council because It sometimes feels like there's only a specific group that's running and I guess the majority of students who are running are people who have done similar things before or who are already involved.

in different activities and I know I guess I can't really speak on that because I have been one of those students but I think that it is so important that people see themselves represented and they just don't feel like oh there's no point of them even running because I guess it sometimes just feels like a popularity contest and I know that we discuss that a lot amongst ourselves but I think We're still open, we're kind of still navigating those challenges and we have heard from a lot of people that it feels kind of useless to run because they know that Someone's going to win just because they know a lot of people or things like that. So I guess we're always looking for more ways to encourage people. But what I always say is just go for it. There's no harm in trying. I really hope more people are able to see themselves in these leadership positions because I know that they have such unique perspectives and such diverse Thoughts and passions that we often don't get to hear about because we hear it from a specific group more often than others.

Thank you both.

Thank you. What a beautiful way to discuss and present democracy. Member Greene.

Actually, as a follow-up to that, over the years I've been on the school committee, we've had informal conversations about more ways we can engage the student reps. State law says we can't give you a vote in the full body and we can't pay you, both things I would love to do. But there are things we could do like have you serve on subcommittees or working groups or stuff like that. In the past, student reps have expressed concern about the time commitment of that. But given the level of engagement we've seen This last school year, I was wondering if that was something perhaps the student advisory committee could take up and think about if they'd be interested in going in the future. Because we're always interested in ways we can get more student voice.

Looking for a first round, just a little check. Okay, do you wanna say something?

Go ahead. Yeah, I would definitely say that I think that is a wonderful idea. I know this past year I've been, I wouldn't say frustrated, but it's been a little bit, I'm kind of off-putting that we come here and we have things to share with you and we don't really know what's going on so I think if we and the people who are in these positions that for the next years and however many I think if uh this position had like more participation um I think that would be absolutely amazing and definitely it would do a lot for Just getting students involved in the general school committee. So I really appreciate that you brought that up.

Yeah, and just briefly, I definitely agree with what Marlee was saying. I think it would be so cool and so awesome to be able to be part of subcommittees and to really understand what's going on. And I think the time commitment part is very valid, but I think if a student were to sign up for this type of position we could definitely you know kind of edit the time commitment and make sure that the people who are running are very able like want to It is very important that the people who are in this position and who are elected to be this position by the student body are committed and are willing to devote their time to supporting their school committee or school community through the school committee so I do think that we could definitely get around this time commitment and I hope that whoever the new school representatives are hopefully us but we'll see Or hopefully we're part of them.

But I do hope they are very willing to take the time and I really hope that we can explore more opportunities for the new school representatives to take on more roles. So thank you so much for that.

Smith.

Thank you. Member Pitone. Thank you through the chair. This is quick, and it goes to both the chair and the student representatives. We have on the agenda the school climate and safety presentation, which is discussing different ideas and different challenges that we're having at schools around safety. I guess the question to the chair is, When is that going to be on the agenda and if it's early enough would you guys be willing to stay and hear out what is being presented so that you can really be an active participant in this topic and share that with the community? So yeah the question the chair is where is it sitting in the agenda time-wise?

I don't have a time stamp it you know is going You know, after public comment and approval of the minutes, if, you know... Yeah, if we would like to, is your request that it be the first part of the report of the superintendent?

I mean, obviously I defer to you and what is a, you know, what is appropriate but yes I would love it to be earlier so our students can stay because they seem to be willing to stay and I'd like to have them participate if they can okay uh thank you we will try and bump it up on the agenda as much as we can

All right. Anything else? Okay. Thank you so much. With that, we are moving on to public comment. Welcome and thank you so much for signing up for public comment. We appreciate your time. We appreciate your input. Speakers will be allowed two minutes to present their material. Speakers should begin 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 lawless conduct.

Public comment is not a discussion debate or dialogue between the public and the committee members of the committee will not reply to 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 responsibilities such as district budget, The public is encouraged to submit comments in writing for inclusion in the public record So with that, we're going to go with our in-person public comment first, and then we will go to Zoom public comment. I will do three names at a time so you know when you're on deck. Please have grace for me if I mispronounce your name, I will absolutely do my best.

And with that, we have Mark Fekete first, Vika Safran second, and Kyle Serena third. Mark, come on up.

Hello, my name is Mark Fickett. I'm at 67 Church Street. I have a daughter in first grade at the Agenziano. I'm here to strongly oppose having the SRO in the high school. You've heard from a lot of people about data that shows that having police in schools harms feelings of belonging and safety among students. and that in cases where there are physical threats of violence like a school shooting, SROs very rarely step in to actually stop that. You've probably seen in the news in the New York Times recently ran an article about Texas schools having SROs. If you've looked at the beginning of that article, it has a series of videos that are pretty graphic showing

Police, Arming Students. But I also want to say we're not here just, we're saying no to one specific thing, but you also have a big engaged community and I personally would love to help in other ways if there's, it sounds like,

Thank you.

Teachers, like the superintendent, is facing issues of safety in school and there are a lot of other options people have suggested and a lot of people, including myself, willing to step up and help out. Thanks.

Thank you so much, Mark. We have Vika, Kyle, and then Claire Valentine.

Hello, Vika Zafran, 16 Prospect Hill Avenue. I'm here as a parent of a rising high schooler here to address the possible return of SROs to our schools. I'll skip all the actual arguments to not let any police, let alone armed police, Back into our schools as a constant presence. You're hearing all of that from many others, I'm sure. So I'll focus on my astonishment that we're discussing this again now as if we just didn't dramatically go through this. From what I understand in published reporting, the initiative to bring SROs back has to do with a recent hoax incident and other instances in which two high school principals felt the need to call in police. I have some thoughts on that for the SHS principal that I'll share with her directly. To you, I will say, until you train the Somerville police to de-escalate to the point where they don't need to carry weapons to deal with children or anybody else,

Hire more social workers. Hire more social workers. Keep weapons and force and the carceral state away from our children. I've read that Mr. Carmona indicated the possibility of having an officer in the school quote, whether or not they're in uniform. This is terrifying in the age of ICE abductions and municipal complicity with them. As someone who works to bail out incarcerated folks locally, I can tell you that sanctuary city is a meaningless designation. Sheriffs all around us are proactively contacting ICE and facilitating abductions. To have an armed agent of the police in my child's school terrifies me. Start acting like a sanctuary city. bring in more social workers. That same publication referred to Mr. Carmona bringing the SRO question to the school committee, not for approval but for thought partnership.

I encourage the committee to in fact direct him and his actions and ensure he complies with that direction. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Kyle, then Claire, then just Perez-Adams.

Hello, my name is Kyle Serena. I live at 174 Morrison Ave. I'm a Somerville community member and a proud member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. I'm here tonight to oppose the return of SROs, or School Resource Officers, to Somerville schools. Police in our schools do not make students safer. What exactly do cops in our schools accomplish that cannot be accomplished by education professionals? It cannot be the best use of our money. This comes up at a time when Somerville just laid off several city workers. This community has already fought this before and now the city is trying to roll back those gains. Let's move forward and be leaders by pursuing non-carceral models that support our students and leave this policy of over-policing behind. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Kyle. We have Claire, Jess Perez-Adams, and then Alexandra Thorne.

Good evening. I'm Claire Valentin, 68 Hooker Avenue. I'm the parent of two children, one who is a third grader at West. I'm also an immigration attorney at the Children's Law Center of Massachusetts, where we represent children on education, immigration, delinquency, and foster care matters. I am here to urge this committee not to return SROs to Somerville schools. I wish for my own children and all children in Somerville a safe and supportive learning environment, an environment that is known to be undermined by the presence of SROs. In my role as an immigration attorney, I have personally seen the SRO's seemingly benign notes about typical teenage behavior introduced into evidence in immigration court and leveraged by the federal government to achieve the deportation of young asylum seekers. In my line of work, SROs introduce into the school setting events occurring in the community ignoring the presumption of innocence. and ensuring that for some students schools are no longer a neutral place of learning but one where they are subject to heightened scrutiny and surveillance. These negative impacts are not born from bad intentions, they are born from bad design.

SROs trained as police officers naturally see the behavior through the lens of law enforcement training and so a school fight or an angry outburst becomes an assault with a dangerous weapon. An arrest leads to fingerprints which are uploaded to a database which triggers notification to ICE automatically and so we have seen ICE show up at police stations to detain immigrant youth. Those ICE arrests are the natural outcome of building a system that links schools to law enforcement and then to ICE. As a parent and as someone who works with youth, Throughout the Commonwealth, I was immensely proud in 2023 when Somerville envisioned a different system, one that did not link schools to the criminal legal system, one premised on the idea that kids are kids and kids make mistakes that they need to learn from. I believe Somerville can build a system that does not bring down the entire weight of the criminal legal system on our students, and one that allows them to make mistakes from which they can recover. I sincerely hope this committee will continue to lead the work of building that better system and not default to the SRO.

Thank you.

Sorry, I just need a second guys. Good evening. Jess Perez-Adams, Porter Street, mom of three kids in Somerville Public Schools. Recently, at a school committee meeting, it was joked about that district leaders and school committee members need to wear a lot of hats. I thought about it, realized I should bring mine. I have my mom hat. I have my PTA officer hat, obviously not explicitly labeled, my CPAC officer hat, my volunteer hat, my advocate hat, My FERPA records requester hat. My care coordinator and educational team coordinator hat. And tails.

You guys might know Tails. He's the guy who fixes everything as everyone else runs to the end to win. And everything's left in their wake. So. Tails is the one who just cleans everything up. The truth is not many parents of students with disabilities wear all of these hats. And if parents are expected to wear all of these hats for free, parents deserve to know their rights. Parents have the right to inspect, review their children's educational records and have them corrected. They can request evaluations, IEP team meetings. They have the right to meaningful participation. Parents can file complaints with the problem resolution system, PRS. Reach out to the Somerville CPAC if you guys need a hand with that. Parents can ask teachers, service providers, and anyone who knows their child to participate meaningfully in IEP meetings for the duration of that meeting and they can raise child-fied concerns when disabilities are suspected. Parents should know that last

Last year in AJT versus Osseo Area Schools, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reminded school districts that students with disabilities do not receive lesser civil rights protections simply because they are in school. The court rejected the idea that schools be held to a different standard than other public institutions with discrimination. I'm going to take just another second. Tonight we'll hear about climate, we'll hear about school resource officers, but before we discuss public law enforcement in schools, we should discuss child find. Before we discuss discipline, we should discuss evaluations. Before we discuss policing, we should discuss access to services. Thank you.

Have a great night.

My name is Alexandra Thorne, 173 Hudson Street. I'm a resident of Ward 5. My daughter is completing fifth grade at Winter Hill Community Innovation School. So she'll be attending Somerville High School in just a few years. I'm testifying against putting police officers in Somerville schools. There's no evidence that policing schools makes schools safer or improve outcomes for anyone. Instead, it breaks down trust between students and staff and increases surveillance and criminalization of children. Thanks for watching! I don't want any of this for my daughter or her classmates. In addition to these obvious problems, as Representative Euderhoven noted at the last meeting, we need to consider the relationship between Somerville Police and the wider system of law enforcement. Somerville participates in the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, commonly called BRIC. Through BRIC, our police share data with other departments including state police and both directly and through the state police with federal agencies including ICE.

Information is entered into brick databases through opaque processes, with no way for a person to know when or why they were added, nor recourse to remove themselves if they were added in error. Something as simple as wearing a bandana can result in someone's being added to a gang database, resulting in systemic profiling that will follow them through life. This magnifies the role of SROs in the school-to-prison pipeline and is unacceptable. Children need to know that school is a safe place to develop their identities without worrying that a fashion statement or minor social misstep will follow them through life. All of this is bad under normal circumstances and worse with BRIC data being shared with the federal administration working to criminalize immigrants and equate dissent with terrorism. Please keep police out of our schools.

Thank you so much. We have Jessica Wigoda, Laura Curiel, and Molly Froust-Wiley.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Jess Wygoda, 26 Grandview, and I'll be reading a statement prepared by a friend. Hello, my name is Jamal Halawa. I've taught English and ESL at Somerville High School for the past 14 years. We, students and educators at SHS, understand that there is a proposal to bring an SRO into the school. Since the focus groups have been paused, I ask my students, who are all either immigrants or first-generation, 14-, 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds, for their opinions around this I copied down students' questions and statements verbatim. This is what they said. What's the point of bringing a cop in when we have Umema and Edson and Jules and Mario, community engagement specialists? What if they only target the bad kids? What if you're around one of the bad kids and they think you're one of them? There are no bad kids, just young people trying things. If there's a cop around, you can't learn from your mistakes because they would just arrest you. The most suspicious people under suspicion will be the immigrants.

What if the police officer is having a bad day that day? It feels intimidating. Invasion of privacy. Will police be in the bathroom? Security comes in and it's already uncomfortable. Racism. What if the police officer is racist? The school is a place for education, not law enforcement. This might affect students' mental health. Kids might not want to come to school. Wouldn't they make a big deal out of something small, like the problem could just be solved by a teacher's but the police will make it a bigger deal. If a kid does something minor, the police would charge him but the kid doesn't know what he's doing and this would affect his future. In Philly, my old city, there's a police officer in schools and there's always kids getting handcuffed and dragged out of school. What if the cops are working with ice? You never know. No police in schools because if you end up fighting someone, you could end up with a record. They will target people in school the way they target people outside of school. The police should not carry a gun in school. I would get arrested. This could bring so much injustice to school.

As of yet, I have not heard a student express a positive response to the proposal to bring a police officer into the school. Thanks for your time, Jamal Halawa.

Thank you. We have Laura, Molly, and then Ellie H.

My name is Laura Curiel. I live at 31 Dartmouth Street, number three. As an SPS parent, the message that I'm getting from school and city leadership is that instead of making the tough decisions You are instead putting forth reintroducing a method of punishment that fuels the school-to-prison pipeline with no data to back up its benefits. Many of our most vulnerable students, those with disabilities, students already dealing with the constant threat of ICE tearing apart their families, and students of color will be the most negatively impacted by this rushed and ill thought out decision that our community has expressed they do not support. Let us use data to find the most effective ways to respond to our children's needs. You can be sure reintroducing SROs is not the solution our children deserve.

We have Molly, we have Ellie H., and then Marianne McPherson.

Thank you. My name is Molly Frost Wiley, and I'm the parent of an incoming eighth grader and an incoming fourth grader. I first want to respond to comments that were made at the last school committee meeting suggesting that students and families most My child's dear friend had the police called on him in first grade. I'm not sure what would make anyone believe that an experience like that impacts only one family or one child. In my community and in my belief system, the children belong to all of us. When one child is harmed, the effects ripple through classrooms, friendships, families and the broader community. We want to work with you to create schools that are more supportive, less surveilled, and the kinds of learning environments where students feel valued, respected and safe. And when I say safe, I mean safe for all students, not just some students who look like who you think should be safe. We also want transparency and good faith efforts made.

As a parent and a community organizer who spent years working on issues related to school policing, it was deeply troubling to learn that through informal channels, the possibility of bringing school resource officers were considering being brought back to our schools. An extraordinary amount of time, effort, community engagement, and public participation went into working to remove police from our schools because the evidence showed the harms Far outweighed the benefits. That's not simply a matter of opinion. The research and the data, plus the community impact with dialogue, showed that this was not what was right for our schools and our children. This is work that Somerville should be proud of. Many of the people who helped make this happen are in this room right now. We engaged with meaningful civic progress and we explored alternatives. Yet much of that work has gone unacknowledged in the recent discussions. Instead, we watch surveys, webpages, focus groups, engagement opportunities appear publicly, become private, disappear altogether.

Information has become available to some people, but not to others. I also want to urge everyone not to confuse that relationship building with accountability. Police officers in schools are not bound by the same confidentiality standards as counselors, social workers, or educators. They have no legal obligation to protect student privacy in the way that helping professionals do, and information shared with them can become part of law enforcement processes and follow children well beyond the classroom. If our goal is truly to support students, then we should invest in people and systems designed to help children thrive. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Ellie H., Marianne McPherson, and then Anna Feingold.

Hi there, my name is Ellie Hanjin. I live at 230 Broadway here in Somerville. I'm speaking today as a career-long youth development worker and a substitute teacher in Somerville Public Schools. I'm speaking in support of the Safe Schools Somerville group and against reinstitution of police in Somerville Public Schools. I'm also here to voice my support of local democratic and civic action, which the City of Somerville seems to be disregarding. First, we need to face the facts about SROs. According to RAND, SROs can contribute to a greater number of disciplinary actions being taken against students, particularly students of color. and this is evidenced by a number of peer-reviewed research articles. Perhaps an SRO presence can create a perception of safety but perception is not reality. Evidence suggests that SOR presence does not reduce violence in schools. If there is a reality that Somerville Public Schools has a problem with violence or crime, then perceptions of safety will not address that reality.

Only solutions that address the root causes of violence and crime will do that, like youth mental health counselors and family liaisons and community engagement specialists, as previous speakers have mentioned. Secondly, I am disappointed to hear that the City of Somerville is disregarding the voices of its community members. In 2023, the Somerville community made their voices heard when we agreed to remove SROs from our schools. More transparency is needed from the City as to why this action to reinstate SROs is being taken and why the City is ignoring the will of the Somerville community. As an educator, I am always talking to my students about the importance of civic action and engagement. Safe Schools Somerville did the It seems that the city is uninterested in that democratic will of the Somerville community and the safety of their own students and educators. It is time for the city to fund the flourishing and well-being of our young people, not their criminalization.

Thank you. Thank you. We have Marianne McPherson, Anna Feingold, and then Oscar Estrada.

Good evening. My name is Marianne McPherson. I live at 10 Grandview Ave. And I'm the parent of SPS students finishing eighth and 11th grade. I'm one of the community members and parents who participated in the process that produced the 2023 recommendations on removing police from our schools. Those recommendations came from years of community voice, student surveys, and a very clear evidence base. Police in schools cause harm, disproportionately so to students of color, students with disabilities, and immigrant students. and police do not prevent the harms that we fear most in schools. The school committee heard that, acted on it, and unanimously directed the superintendent accordingly. That commitment deserves to be honored, not quietly reversed. So I'm asking two things tonight. First, please be transparent. Engage families and students before taking action.

SHS teaches our kids the Highlander Habits, which include communication, collaboration, and culturally competent citizenship. If we're asking our youth to live those values, leadership must model them. My high schooler, who has those values memorized, hasn't once been asked her opinion on a change that directly affects her. That's unacceptable. Second, I ask you to learn from what we've built before abandoning it. What's working with the CES program? Where might the 2023 recommendations need further development? I'm a program evaluation professional and I'd be glad to help structure that learning or support in any other way I can. We have guidance. We have community voice. We have data. We have a framework that this body created and committed to. Now I urge you to follow through. Somerville, we can do better and this is one way to start. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Anna and then Oscar and then Kevin Foster.

Good evening. Anna Fine, Gold Ward 1, 95 Franklin Street. I have a child at Easton and Neighborhood School. First, thank you to the school committee members who supported funding for six additional staff positions for next year. With whatever happens, I see and truly appreciate your leadership. I want to talk about having a police officer at the high school. I oppose law enforcement in schools. It makes school less safe not more safe. As noted earlier tonight, the law enforcement system is a penal system. It's our penal system. It is punitive. It's a system of force. It's not compatible with our schools. My opposition is not a statement about the character of any given officer. But any given officer has been trained to use the strategies and accomplish the objectives of a system that is the antithesis of the system we want our schools to be. That is not a resource. for our schools. Please stop using the euphemism SRO. It is misleading and we need to be honest and clear in the language we use.

Please do not ignore the two years worth of in-depth quality work that's been invested in this issue already. If you are going to ignore it, say you're ignoring it. Take responsibility for that choice and explain to us why you think it's a good idea. Explain to us why in a tight budget year it makes sense to spend money for a police officer for our schools rather than more interventionists. Like the one that my son needed in order to learn how to read. I care about our high school administrators. I care about them getting the support that they need. My understanding is they've told us what they need, and that is for it not to be a different officer that shows up every time the police are called. I have a lot, as a post-conviction lawyer, I have a lot of questions about how often we're calling the police and why. The need for consistency that's been expressed, you should be able to meet that need without installing a full-time officer at the high school and I echo the prior commenter and volunteering to help find solutions.

Putting a full-time officer on site might be easier than finding a more nuanced solution. But with an issue this serious, making a decision based on administrative ease would be a criminal misuse of authority.

Thank you. We have Oscar and then Kevin and then Jesse Rady.

Oscar Strada, 38 Gorham Street. Good evening. I am a resident of the city here of Somerville and a member of the Somerville Municipal Employees Union. I'm making a statement today because I believe the City's decision to reinstate an SRO in our schools is not one that would benefit the safety of the students or the community. I grew up in Chelsea where SROs have been around for a long time. So I know what dealing with an officer at a school is like and it is not good. Bringing police into our schools does more harm than good and only puts our students in more dire circumstances. For example, this past March in South Carolina, school resource officers were caught on tape assaulting a student. And there was another similar instance in California where it involved another school resource officer assaulting a student on the ground. A school resource officer is not a solution to the problem. They are a liability.

As a resident and city employee, I see every day that the City of Somerville and its residents care about building a community that is safe for everyone, and SROs would make our schools less safe, especially for our students of color. I hope the city makes the right decision and listens to their constituents. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Kevin and then Jesse and then Eric Ludwig.

Hey folks, Kevin Foster, 34 Putnam Street. At the April 27th meeting of this school committee, the SRO memo was introduced. When members of this committee asked questions about the need for a police officer, the district's answer was, The principals were having issues that required SPD and that a direct link with SPD through an SRO would increase trust and community safety. but this obfuscates the actual role of police in society the protection of private property in some people's lives to attempt to add additional roles onto the police such as having them be a pseudo member of the school as a blend of an admin mentor and social worker not only takes scarce money away from jobs of social workers and educators, but also attempts to rehabilitate the image of policing as a community-based venture instead of its true nature of the profession, which is violence work. The attempt at rehabilitation continues despite data from the SELU that shows that schools with SROs have 3.5 times as many arrests as schools without them.

SROs, unlike educators or social workers, are not beholden to the same ethics around keeping information confidential. This is also paired with the continued discrimination within the district around discipline. The latest student discipline report from 2024 to 2025 showed that 195 students were disciplined, 89% were high needs, 83% were low income, 53% were Hispanic or Latino, 39% were students with disabilities. How would adding an SRO to this discipline pattern help create a safer environment for our most vulnerable students? To think that simply a nicer cop or different heads of SPD in the district will fundamentally change the character of the role of police in our society ignores the fundamental violence work. It ignores the 2019 cop riot at Straight Pride, which SPD was a part of, with no accountability to this day. It ignores the justice for Flavia. It ignores the uprisings of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd across this country.

It ignores the murder of Sait Faisal by CPD in January 2023 just down the street from here, which has had also no accountability to this day. Ignores the cracking down of pro-Palestinian student encampments two years ago by police across this country. Ignores the ongoing ways that SPD is intertwined technologically and operationally with ICE abducting people, despite the fact that we claim to be a sanctuary city.

Thank you. We have Jesse and then Eric and then Derek. Derek Rice is the last one.

Hello. My name is Jessie Rady. I live at 47 Church Street. I'm the parent of two children at the Urgenziano School. And I join you tonight again to speak out against bringing back a school resource officer into our district. As the old song goes, second verse seems the first. So tonight I have a please and a thank you. Please pursue the alternative path for school safety and coordination that was recommended several years ago after a thorough community process. and thank you in advance for listening to our voices and for committing to do your due diligence as the leadership of our schools. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Eric and then Derek.

Good evening. My name is Eric Ledwig. I live on Berkeley Street in Ward 3. I'm again back with a lot of other amazing people here to speak to you all about SROs. We heard comments in earlier meetings that our most affected students and families may not be represented here. I want to assure folks that the 2022-2023 process included all those people students surveyed themselves we hired professionals to survey those students and families we talked to all of our teachers I may not fit that definition As a white guy with kids in elementary and middle school, but I am using my privilege to show up to remind y'all of what we as a community believe What we have articulated and decided in 2023. This memo that was published is hard to find but was I know our mayor wants a transparent government. I also want to be clear that the process since that meeting that Kevin referenced has not been transparent.

We can be better. I want to be clear that many other cities in Massachusetts do not have SROs. Brooklyn, Brookline, Worcester, Northampton, Hammers, Pelham. I can't read, but apparently I can talk. Boston, Cambridge, Concord, Newton, Watertown. Some of these places have no cops because of consent decrees and other involuntary reasons. Some of them do not have SROs because they chose to. can choose better. My friends in Boston who teach tell me that kids get caught with weapons and drugs by non-armed officers and get diverted into counseling and in-school discipline, an appropriate place for those students. They don't get put into prison. I want to close also, as Jesse said, with a thank you and an offer. We're here. We're ready to help you implement these other recommendations from 2023 for mediation, embedded counselling, School-based social workers, mental health first aid training, restorative justice, community engagement specialists, and de-escalation training.

We're here to help and be part of that solution, but we do not need armed police in our high schools. Thank you.

Thank you. We have Derek Rice.

Good evening, my name is Derek Rice. I reside at 49 Craigie Street and use he, him pronouns. I'm here to give comment in opposition to returning police into our schools. I've noticed in these discussions that the issue of trust comes up frequently. I'd like to direct my comments to the issue of rebuilding trust. Trust is very hard-earned and very easily lost. This community and school committee labored to develop a plan for when and how to involve the police in the school. That plan was ignored. Trust has been lost. It seems to me that the best way to regain trust would be to follow through on the school committee's recommendation from 2023 to develop an MOU with the police department that does not include SROs and to do so quickly. I think that would mean a lot to very many people. Anything else will only reinforce the lost trust.

Thank you. Thank you to everyone who's here. This is for in person. We have four people on Zoom. We have Melissa Duarte, Jen Latourneau, Julia Dolan, and then Vincent. Timmons. I'm going to wait for the high sign for when we're ready. OK, Melissa, you are unmuted. Oh. Did we hear you? Okay, Melissa, we'll try and come back to you. Jen?

Jen, whenever you're ready. Hi, my name is Jen Letourneau. I live at 405 Washington Street. I am the parent of a rising eighth grader at the Argenziano School. I want to thank you all for taking the time to hear our public comments tonight. So many people have shared better than I possibly could. I want to just state that I am against having SROs added to the high school and that I believe the February 2023 recommendation should be Revisited and implemented in full. I work in... The public process on a regular basis, 23 years and counting. I run public meetings.

I have never in my 23 years of working, I've always asked the question, what would it take for me to attend a public meeting? Well here I am for the first time showing up because this is so important and this is a critical point in Somerville's history to make sure that we follow through on a fully transparent public process We hear what your residents are saying and you do not put an SRO in the high school. You go back to the fully transparent memo from February 2023 and you implement the plan. Thank you.

Thank you. We're going to do Julia, Vincent, and then we'll give Melissa another chance. Julia, whenever you are ready.

Is that better? Ah, there we go. Yep, we can hear you. There we go. All right. I'm Julia Dolan. I'm a resident and a teacher at Next Wave Full Circle. I'm speaking today honestly in a state of a little bit of confusion. It seems we have started the process of creating a new relationship. We have a relationship between schools and the police with no staff focus groups and no input and no visible attempt to implement the recommendations of the 2023 subcommittee. I agree that the current relationship is not working and that changes and more cooperation to help our students and staff, but I struggle to understand why it's been three years and one of the solutions we've tried has not been from the extensive community-based work of the 2023 subcommittee. If you did hold the focus groups this year, as were announced, I think it's likely you'll find that many of us are open and enthusiastic about the creation of an SLO or School Liaison Officer. I even think that folks would be willing to revisit the MOU over time depending on the success of the SLO program.

But as of now, a lot of work with stakeholders at all levels seems like it's being ignored in a literal example of we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. Please work with the city to at least pilot the 2023 recommendations before throwing them away and returning to the way things were, which I'll remind you was not working. Thanks very much. Thank you Julia.

We have Vincent next and then we'll go back to Melissa.

Hello. Can folks hear me? We can. Go ahead. Thank you. My name is Vincent Timmons, and I'm an educator at Somerville High School. I live at 558 Main Street in Medford. and I feel that placing people with guns in schools would not make the school safer for students who are already the most marginalized and vulnerable to police violence, right? Our immigrant students, students of color, and neurodivergent students in particular. And so if it's the safety of marginalized students that we care about, we should invest in resources that address the causes of violence in schools. As others have said, counseling staff, education, initiatives to build community, to understand the origins, nature, and ways to resolve conflict, and to build understanding and empathy between the students. Frankly I think banning phones would do more to accomplish this than bringing in police with guns. And furthermore, why isn't the community invited to weigh in on this outside of this meeting?

We received communications from school That said that staff would have a listening session on yesterday, or rather today, June 8th. We even got a link to register. Students would have time on Tuesday, that families would have time on Wednesday, June 10th. and I just copied that over from the memo right it's still there and so I'm wondering what happened what happened to the MOU from 2023 cited by previous speakers And I have no choice but to think that the overwhelming opposition to this move voiced by the community tonight gives us a hint as to why these meetings were cancelled. The move to cancel these meetings shows a lack of interest or respect for student, family, and staff voices. And these groups are the ones who will be the most impacted by the presence of this officer. And if tonight's comments are any indication, it sounds like we say no. So thank you.

Thank you. Melissa Duarte?

Yes, thank you. Melissa Duart, Florence Terrace, AIM Parent. For months, I have been trying to get clarification on what is happening with the Winter Hill transition and why these changes are being made. My child is a fifth grade AIM student who has already endured more disruption than any student should have to. COVID, remote learning, Winter Hill closing, moving to the edgerly. Summer programming ending because of building issues. Summer school relocated and now this. I have worked very hard to be patient and understanding through this process, but the translation is, I'm tired. My child is tired and I'm done being told that everything is okay when it clearly isn't. I finally asked my son a question that I have been avoiding because I was trying to prevent him from having anxiety surrounding this. How would you feel if you were to move schools? His answer?

Not fair. And I can already see the anxiety starting. We are told the children are doing well. No, they're surviving. There's a difference. The children are carrying years of instability and uncertainty. Their parents are too. We are not raising concerns because we enjoy conflict. We are raising concerns because our children are the ones living with the consequences. We are not trying to be difficult. But if being difficult is what it takes to keep my child safe, I will gladly be the most difficult person in the room. Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, we are concluding public comment. I want to thank everyone again. sharing your voices is the root of our democracy i really appreciate it i'm going to move on to the approval of minutes and then the um report of the superintendent Do I have a motion on the approval of minutes?

Motion to approve the minutes of April 27, 2026 and May 4, 2026. Second.

I have a motion by Member Lippens, seconded by Member Eldridge. All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? All right. We are moving on to the report of the superintendents.

Thank you through the chair and thank you to Babica Marley for your feedback as well as your interesting ideas around making the environment at the high school better. So thank you. Really appreciate it. And again also thank you for the community for their feedback and as we have said before that's part of the work that we do to build upon better practices. I wanted to start with a celebration I know last last week yes we attended the high school The Full Circle High School as well as the Somerville High School. It was really impressive to see that most students had a pathway either to a career or to a career path. College, Military Service, or some kind of technical training. So that was very impressive to see that most students had a plan Post High School.

So that was very exciting and we are very confident that whatever direction they choose to go, we're confident that they will continue to learn, to grow, and to make meaningful contributions to their communities. And so we congratulate the class of 2026 including our skilled graduates later this week and we look forward to celebrating all of their successes in the years ahead. And now I'm going to turn our attention to the work that is happening at the middle grade experience. And our first presentation tonight begins by shifting this focus.

Sorry, Superintendent. Member Pitone asked if we could do the school climate and safety presentation first with the grace of the middle grades experience. We have four kids. Oh, we have students here. All right. Always students first. Thank you.

Yes, otherwise we can shift it. I just want to make sure I give them the space. So we're going to start with the middle school students. And so over the past several months, we have been taking a close look at the middle school grades experience. and how our students in grades six, seven and eight learn, grow and develop socially and emotionally. Through data-driven research and conversation with the students and staff, we have explored How structures can best support students during this important stage of development. So tonight, we are pleased to share our findings, but before we begin, However, it is fitting that we hear directly from our students themselves. Joining us tonight are Rowan Adam, Sabrina Karanfa, and Joey Tippins. They are eighth graders from the Healy School. As members of the school's student equity action team, they conducted participatory action research this year,

working alongside Harvard graduate students to identify challenges, gather data and develop recommendations for change. The work was so thoughtful and relevant to our district's middle grades review that we invited them to share with us this evening. So I am pleased to hand the floor over to our middle school friends.

Hello. Hello, we are representatives from the Healy 8th grade seat team or CPAR team. My name is Rowan Adam. I'm Sabrina. I'm Zoe. And the question we were focusing on in our time with the SEAT team is how do school policies affect respect, inclusivity, and well-being throughout middle school? We got our data collection through surveys, interviewing, and observation. On the topic of inclusivity, most students felt in a sort of limbo between being included or excluded. And while it was a small percentage, the people who felt left out and or lonely, it's an important factor if we want to keep our school communities healthy, happy, and safe. Some quotes from the open responses on the surveys are that teachers forget what it's like to be a kid and teachers need to notice bullying more.

This shows that it's not necessarily that the teachers are the bad people in this situation, but they are sort of centered around the strife that children are

Okay, and on the topic of respect, in our surveys we've noticed that half the students at the Healy schools said they felt respected. A quote from our survey is, teachers should learn how to earn their respect from their students instead of expecting it to be handed to them. The students at the Healy School feel like they're not going to give respect to the teachers if they don't feel the same way back and the teachers don't respect them, then they don't think they should do the same. and some common themes we have found throughout the surveys is friends determine their feeling of respect in school whether it's like them feeling included or excluded like Rowan said and also they feel like to be respected they need more mental health support.

Our last topic is on well-being. In our survey we found that nearly one out of three students reported feeling somewhat or in the middle of being comfortable in school. One kid said I would find a better way to help kids deal with mental problems because I don't think that talking with someone always works with everyone. Going through our data, some themes that emerged where friends make students feel safe, but other students and some teachers often don't. Breaks help students' well-being, like recess and lunch, and kids often worry about school safety policies and being judged in school.

Okay, so you've heard all of our data and all of our collections, but now we have some ideas on how to improve our school. One is teachers should be more professionally taught on how to notice bullying because a lot of the times they just let it slot. Like let it slide and they don't do anything about it but if they do do anything about it it's sort of minor consequences even though they should progress it to make it if it happens more than once they should do something to stop it. Another thing is students and teachers should build like an outside relation outside of like class and like get to know each other so So they can form more of an emotional bond and make class easier for them. And our last idea is students can have more of a Socratic seminar. like to voice ideas about school because students voices aren't always heard or if they they're kind of brushed by and I think they need more of a say in the school policies

I recently moved from Oregon and there I was in a traditional middle school. It allowed a lot more freedom. But when I came here it felt like I fell down the stairs and I was in elementary school again. It was restricting. An example of this is that I have to walk in lines to get from places in the school. I feel like a lot of kids here feel like they're treated as little kids and would like to be treated with a little more trust and act like their age. and in middle school I think a lot of kids want more responsibility.

So I'm just going to bring this all back together. We've got our ideas because we can't come to you guys and say there's something wrong. You need to fix it. We have no authority over this because we do. Children should be treated with more choice and responsibility while they are progressing into adulthood. Teachers should perform regular check-ins and relationships between teachers and students should be built more professionally. More personally rather than professionally. And community building should be more Socratic than it already is. The Healy School is a good example of an ecosystem that works but doesn't let everyone thrive and we came to this meeting to inform the public of issues that middle schoolers face and I hope we did that properly and the point had gotten through.

Don't sit down. Don't sit down. Don't sit down. Come back. Come back. Come back. Come back. Come back. We're probably going to want to ask you questions. Don't sit down. Thank you. Thank you for your amazing work. Thank you for coming to talk to us. We really appreciate your time, your effort, what you've done for your community. If you don't want to answer questions, you don't have to, but at least one member has. Member Green.

Yeah, I wanted to actually ask about this, the more choice thing, because I think it's dead on. I think we've heard and we've learned. That the transition from eighth to ninth grade in Somerville can be very, very steep. And I do think part of that is because the gradual choice in freedom could be Accelerated middle grades. So you say you want more choices or students want more choices. Do you have specific ideas of what kind of things we can give those choices in and over?

Um so one of the things in that I came from a traditional middle school was that we had electives and we got to choose our electives and so we had these set classes that we had to do but then we got those two classes a day where it was like what we wanted to do and what we looked forward to every day and here we have a thing that's kind of like that every day for 45 minutes we have a fun class and the only thing that we get to choose in those fun classes are our music classes and I think maybe giving a little more choice to that so that kids aren't like oh this is just another class I have to go to and yeah that could be a instance where you could give kids a little more freedom.

Anyone else?

Oh, sorry. Papka. Great. Thank you so much. First of all, thank you guys so much for being here. We love seeing students in action, of course. And you guys are middle school. Okay, we're so excited to see you coming up to the high school next year. I guess this is more of a comment than a question, but I know you guys mentioned the Socratic seminars and wanting to have that. and I know at the high school we have something pretty similar to a Socratic seminar known as our restorative justice circles which I know we've definitely mentioned before and some amazing teachers have spearheaded one to shout out Miss Thomas again I love her so much but I think that would be such an amazing initiative to bring to the middle schools, and I don't think it is currently in place yet. And I think that we've really implemented a system. We're doing restorative justice circles weekly.

Students come together in a classroom and they sit in a circle and we go through a bunch of different questions but it's really helped students foster strong relationships with their students and I know you guys mentioned like the outside relationship so I think they've just really helped students bond with your teachers and students bond with one another so I would really love to see the restorative justice circles initiative implemented throughout the school district I think that would be such an amazing thing and I look forward to hopefully collaborating with you guys more closely on that and really getting that or like having that as a next step to see in our middle schools so thank you so much once again and I just wanted to make that brief comment thank you Thank you.

Alright, now you can sit down.

Yeah that was that was my fault I told them they were gonna join us for questions at the end I didn't know which way it was gonna go but I just want to say I'm so incredibly proud of those three students and the work that they did Not just to prepare for this evening, but that they've been doing all year with their seat advisors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who partner with us to do the and a lot of what you heard them talk about tonight you're going to hear come up again as we share the work of the middle grades experience working group particularly some of their ideas around student voice, providing choice options for classes and building more meaningful and sort of We have deeper relationships between students and their teachers. They talked about one-on-one check-ins and things like that. So you're going to hear us talk about that as we continue. Can you move to the next slide, please, Erica?

Erika, does the clicker work?

Clicker's not working. Is it on? There it is, thank you.

Here's a nice long list of all of the wonderful people who are involved in the middle grades working group. Some of the folks standing behind me at the podium right now are up there, some aren't. Some people who are up there aren't here, but it was a really awesome balanced group of different members of different schools around Somerville. And that is that. I'm not going to read it all. Great. Does the clicker work? I don't think so. OK. I think I just did it. Go back, please. I think the clicker worked. The clicker might have worked. I'm not going to touch it.

There we go. Okay, it works.

All right. So I'll point it that way.

Hi, my name is Jamie Valerini. I'm the 7th and 8th grade resource room teacher at the Argenziano. So when we were trying to create our mission of this working group, we were trying to answer the question of what is the problem we're trying to solve. We want to design a clearly defined middle grades program that's tailored to the developmental needs of 6th to 8th graders and help them prepare them effectively for the transition to secondary education. We wanted to explore what already experiences exist and how we can improve on them. We want to identify best practices that are there and scale them. We also wanted to prepare students for 9th grade and beyond and also develop recommendations for implementation and training.

For our vision, we wanted our middle grades program to cultivate curious, capable, and compassionate young people who are ready to thrive in high school as well as beyond. Through meaningful opportunities for voice and choice, students explore a wide range of interests, ideas, perspectives, developing a strong sense of identity and purpose. Our classrooms prioritize rigorous instruction paired with responsive interventions so that every student is supported, challenged, and prepared to meet the demands that they're going to have in high school. We also want students to build habits of mind like perseverance, collaboration, critical thinking, and responsibility, which will help them become thoughtful learners and engaged community members.

So it was a very collaborative, thoughtful process that began in January and went through about last week. We met eight times for approximately 12 hours. We created subcommittees so some of us can focus on different aspects of this. And then we surveyed students. and educators. We're still awaiting our results from the student surveys. And we also review data and research. And then finally, we developed recommendations that you will hear tonight. Just quickly, we had four subcommittees focused on developmental experience, readiness and transition, data and stakeholder input, and scheduling which can be quite complicated logistically. And this is just a list and sample of some of the data that we looked at to arrive at our recommendations.

I'm not going to read through that list, but it's just a helpful sampling for you all to see sort of what the process was as we reviewed this.

Hi, I'm Jack Haverty from Next Wave Full Circle. Some of the key themes that we saw, some strengths that came about were six out of the six middle schools had participation in the SEED program, which You just saw from the Healy, five out of six had a student council and five out of six had reading buddies. Students bring important readiness strengths. We saw that the reading and fluency, stamina, and collaborative work skills were high. Transition supports already exist, so K-8 visits, student visits in the high school, high school orientation, and then Highlander Habits. Next slide. All right, and then some areas for growth were mostly aligned about consistency, so some of the strengths of having different

schools with different themes is that you get to choose like what kind of a school you might want to be in but what comes with that is some equitable access issues like voice choice leadership specials and transition supports varied by school Strengthening Academic Independence and Executive Functioning. There were reported gaps in independent work, organization, time management, and preparedness. And we're looking to systemize vertical alignment. For a more structured academic alignment across grades, especially between middle grades and high school.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Weaver, Newcomer Academy at Winterhill. So through the work of the subcommittees, the group created eight recommendations. The work we did from January to now is just the beginning, and this is where we can go next. So create a district-wide middle grades framework which utilizes the themes and prioritizes choice, leadership, student voice, and executive functioning and skill building. Ensure consistent leadership opportunities where we're looking at giving access to at least one meaningful leadership opportunity for all middle grade students. expanding world language access, looking at what's being piloted in different schools and how we can expand it to others. Build habits of learning and executive functioning skills. Building on the Highlander habit and how can we work that backwards into our middle school program. Strengthening the six to nine vertical alignment.

So really looking at collaborating between our educators from six to nine to help build and build upon those skills as students work up to get to the high school. Make high school transition supports more coherent and consistent across the district. Thinking of the Highlander Habits, the MICAP that's coming, Advisory, and then Pilot, Reflect, and Scale. There are a lot of Schools doing wonderful programs but how can we reflect on these and see what's working and then how we can expand them to other schools as well. And then eight, expand mentorship opportunities. In different middle grade programs, there's mentoring, reading buddies, and what are ways that we can expand that so all students have access and opportunities to those mentorship opportunities.

Let me see. Let's go ahead.

When we're thinking about implementation of these recommendations, we think that there should be a convening of a summer working group so we can talk about what subjects are priority areas. pilot some of these recommendations that we've talked about in 2026 to 2027 year. We also want to use existing structures like common planning time and PDs that teachers already have We also want to make sure that we're monitoring progress throughout the year. We'll use feedback from all the stakeholders that are involved. We will convene in January of 2027 to review pilots, identify any lessons learned, and plan for scaling, and also providing clear facilitation and accountability so that recommendations can move from planning to practice.

Thank you. We're here to answer any questions folks have.

This is super exciting. All right, to my colleagues.

Member Biton. Thank you, Chair, through you. Thank you all. This is such... Such important work. I've been looking forward to this presentation for a really long time. I appreciate all the experience, the thoughtfulness that you all brought to this process. I'm wondering... To what extent family input and parent input has shaped the direction you've taken in addition to the educator and student input that you sought?

Through the chair. Thank you, Lerona. I think that's an excellent question. I think one, we did have a parent on the working group with us who did join. But I think there's more work to do in terms of feedback and input from families. And so this is just the beginning, as we tried to say very clearly. And so that is something that we want to make sure is a part of the process moving forward.

Thank you, Amara. And I think that's phenomenal. And I would encourage you To think more broadly about the different stakeholders in the parent and family communities because I mean I'll just speak for The feedback that you might get from my 8th grader will not be as robust as the feedback that you would get from my 11th grader reflecting on her middle grades experience. and both would be very different from the feedback that I might or my wife might give. and I imagine that's the same in every household. So just encourage you to think creatively about it and seek broad input as you continue this important work. So thank you.

Thank you. We're going to go around. What is this, clockwise? So Mayor Wilson, Dr. Stellman, Member Green, Member Lippens. Mayor Wilson.

Thanks, Sharon. Thank you all for this, and thanks to the students who presented as well. This is such a critical thing for us to, I don't want to say get right, but to do better at. you know just personally i this is the age group that i work with uh and i and i know you know i i see that the yearning for independence to be treated uh you know as For what they are, which are young people who are on their way to the high school very soon. I have a... Kid at home who just did that transition from middle school middle grades to the high school. I wonder if you could you speak a little about like what you found about the different approaches at the different K-8s and the different middle grades programs and and things you've seen work well at one school that might be replicable at other schools as well because obviously you know we have

These different kid eights and your mileage may vary in terms of how that works.

Yeah, we did a lot of work at the very beginning to just kind of collect as much information as we could about all the kind of structures and programming that were in place for all of the different K-8s. So we looked at schedules. We looked at specials offerings. We looked at different leadership opportunities, as you saw. And so I think a couple of the big differences we noticed, and I think somebody at and the district ILT is also looking at X block implementation which is like our intervention block across all of the middle schools and how that's looking and how those are implemented differently we didn't look as deeply into like the details of that we just looked at like the length of time In order to make our recommendations, but I would say one was Spanish. Spanish is different at every school. Most schools have it, some schools have it as a special, some schools have it during X block, and some schools have it as part of the course schedule.

As Zoe mentioned, one of the students who presented earlier, I think right now there's only one school that offers electives across all of the specials options or the fun classes. All the classes are fun, Zoe.

Come on.

But the specials classes actually serve as electives at Winter Hill, and that's something that the Healy is going to try to replicate, is going to replicate. For the next school year, we have a little middle school advising meeting that's actually coming up this week where I'm inviting parents and teachers to come and talk about what they want to see and some of the changes. There was also a difference when we talked to individual on our committee there was representation from almost every school there were a couple that were missing and so we kind of reached out about opportunities for leadership and independence so like in what schools are students walking themselves to class in the morning and at what schools are students still lining up on the playground to get walked up to their homeroom in eighth grade and it just doesn't feel developmentally comparable or appropriate for kids to have that level of oversight at that age and there are reasons that it's been like that for a long time so thinking really carefully about how do we move away from that so yeah

There was a big range. Jake, was there anything specific that you wanted to know about? Okay, I'm going to stop talking then because it's late.

Chair, can I just say it's always refreshing to see people actually listening to kids about the things that impact them most. So just full credit for actually listening to kids on this.

Dr. Stellman? Thank you to the chair.

These were great presentations. Particularly listening to the students is really inspirational. Sometimes I kept asking, they're in middle school? I'm exceedingly articulate, but it's also, you can see that they Thank you very much. Thank you. Your team's approach is to think about the existing infrastructure because it's really hard, especially if you want to move quickly, which you do because you want change. You've got to build on stuff that's existing. Thank you.

Thank you. School Committee too because we we don't do management right we think about the policy piece so helping helping us to see where the invisible structures are are very useful You have so many ideas here and this may not be a fun question so I'm just wondering because no one wants to play favorites but what would be your Maybe top two or three priorities here because there are a lot of great ideas.

We didn't actually talk about this, so this is just my perspective. Just going through it in Cambridge, doing a vertical alignment of the curriculum, I think would be extremely beneficial just because I go to every school to consult on kids who are struggling in the mainstream and I see a lot of anxiety from middle school teachers about when they get to the high school it's not going to be enough support and all this. but if they knew exactly what curriculum they were going to encounter when they got up there I think some of those anxieties would be alleviated and just doing that in the past it was extremely beneficial.

Would you like to follow up, Superintendent?

Just a couple of comments. One is the K-3 models are known for the I have worked in many K-3 models and often that traditional system in how we treat kids in the early grades kind of carries over into the middle school, so I know that does. A pain point that was shared by kids. But one of the things that I wanted to make sure that is not lost in the conversation is the question around what is the profile of a learner that we want in Somerville? And so this is part of that larger question that was That was the start of the beginning of the three-year process, which was, who are the middle school students that we want in our district? and that's a question that requires the entire community to ask difficult questions and so I'm hoping that part of these solutions of what are some of the priorities that we want as an immediate response of like how to treat kids in a way that is independent should be part of the larger question of who do we want and what do we want our middle schools to be as we move into the profile of the learner for the high school.

Thank you. I will say Dr. Stellman and I have the same question, so you get one less. We're going to go member Green, member Eldridge, and then member Lippens, and then member Pitone.

So I'm going to start with the easy thing first, which is congratulations to Mr. Haverty for your recent interim promotion. Well-deserved. I have two questions left. I want to get back in the queue. So I'll start with the student question. So the students were commenting on the lack of electives. I have a child who may also be commenting on that challenge, so it resonated with me. But I also realized that there's only so many electives you can offer in a middle school of like 80 kids. And so, I do believe at some point we're going to have to ask ourselves as a district, does the K-8 model well serve our middle grade students?

and I know this is not the time to do that question unfortunately and it's not it's a long-term question but I think it is one aspect on our agenda but in the short term the other thing that students mentioned was increased mental health supports. I have been doing this long enough to know that we have increased most mental health supports, especially middle grades, basically every year around school committees. The first year our budget does not call for new mental health resources. Thank you. But if we were to...

Member Green, point of order, we increase the funding for WOW in the middle grades.

Fair point. But if we were to do that... What interventions should we be looking at doing in future budgets to further support those middle grades and mental health supports as students asked?

I don't... I would want to think about that a little bit more before I said exactly right right this is it right I'm so excited to hear about WOW we've been asking about that for a long time and I think our social workers and counselors have been kind of filling those gaps by offering groups for for girls and non-binary kids to get together outside of what BAM offers for our young men. I will also say part of what I took away from the students comments on because some of the students who are in seed are also on our student council and I've met with them a few times to talk about what their what their The biggest concerns are what they're noticing what they'd like to see change at the school and a lot of times it comes back to I think actually just awareness of an education around what's available for them around mental health support and helping them also and I don't know what would

Thank you for joining us. I think some of it's just understanding, knowing what's there, Knowing when to ask and how to ask for what they need and how to advocate for themselves. I think that's a skill set that we can really be teaching middle school students because we do have a really robust mental health team at the Healy and across the district that I'm super proud of and we rely heavily on. and that typically like the pattern has been by the end of the school year they're pretty pretty booked but at the beginning of the year they're really able to do a lot of push in tier one supports like in classrooms because they they're they're not They're not totally wall-to-wall booked with individual cases and groups. So I think part of it is just education. But I also want money for mental health.

Thank you.

Member Eldridge. Thank you so much for this presentation. It was really helpful. I'm wondering, well actually I want to say that I'm really excited to hear about the support for executive functioning. That's such an important part. of supporting our kids, especially middle schoolers as demands increase from middle school through high school and really is the difference between having a goal and actually being able to achieve it. So I'm really excited to hear about that. I'm wondering, two questions. One, if we currently have people that are dedicated to supporting our students and executive functioning skills and needs in the district right now, A, and then B, What you might have in mind for improving this support so that our kids can be successful as they take on larger responsibilities and roles as they get older.

All right, I'm going to go with the low-hanging fruit first. Do we have those people?

I'm just the only special ed person up here, so I figured I should answer at least the liaisons. Special educators at the high school and at Next Way Full Circle and at the middle schools can provide those C, either B or C grade executive functioning services as special educators. They can all do that. And they do.

Are you saying that special educators are going to service general education students as well?

No, I think I misunderstood your question. I thought the question was how do students get executive functioning. I see you're asking about regular ed executive functioning skills. I'm standing back now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was just trying to understand if there was already any other, in addition to special education support, if there was any other district-wide special education support specifically, like educators or specialists that provided special education, excuse me, executive support.

Executive functioning support currently my apologies so I think I can speak from the Winter Hill educator perspective and others may jump in as well but I know that in Winter Hill we have an advisory time and that is when we built in and the Newcomer Academy teachers created our own curriculum about executive functioning skills that we think students will need like how to use an agenda book and setting goals writing things down following through on that and there are many other skills so I know that we worked on developing that and then we work closely with the counselor educators to help build that and using resources they had and then I know that like our counselor educator for preparing our eighth graders to go to ninth grade also brought in some of those skills in the Weeks leading up into the end of the year as they are picking their courses and then what it would look like as they transitioned into ninth grade. But that's just what I know is happening at Winterhill.

Okay. Question if you don't mind. So is this the idea then to expand on some of the support? I just want to make sure I understood.

Yes.

That currently is in place at Winter Hill and maybe expand it to other schools.

And I think it's happening elsewhere. I just don't have the information. Thank you.

One of the recommendations on there was to pilot things and to like take bright spots that are already happening and start to expand them. So I think what Lindsay just talked about is a good example of that, like learning from each other.

The second step curriculum that has been implemented throughout the whole K-8 model does touch upon some executive functioning, but I think one of the things that we talked about was an area of growth is that there needs to be consistency.

Thank you.

All right, Member Lippens. Thank you, Chair. Thank you again for this wonderful presentation. I love the work of CPAR. It's pretty amazing. And I'm really looking forward to next steps. I think this is a great list. and I'm really curious about you talked about expanding mentorship opportunities and I feel like we have our high school Student Representatives here and I've heard them talk a lot about the transition between middle school and ninth grade and they've had so many great ideas. and I wasn't sure if you've heard some of their ideas because you know like we don't always get to hear like from from their perspective and I was wondering if maybe they could speak to some of the ideas So if I may, Chair, to give them a little, some time to share?

Sure. So they can also raise their hands if they have things they want to share. Not to put anyone on the spot, so I hope you know that at any point in time you can raise your hand to share.

But if you would like to, go ahead. At previous school committee meetings, our lovely school representatives have had amazing ideas for that transition. I would definitely recommend talking to them if they feel like sharing. Yeah, Babaca and Martley, if you have ideas, go for it.

yeah great thank you we were actually like typing that to each other right now but um that's so funny but we were yeah i mean we have been talking a lot about the transition from eighth grade to ninth grade because I think like me and Marlee we're both peer mentors and we lead like restorative justice circles for freshmen and we work a lot with teachers who are working on this transition program so we're definitely very interested in supporting the middle grades and having like a stronger connection between the high school and the middle grades in really yeah creating like a like a sorry like a transition program that's um really comprehensive and like the same across the of the District, because we've noticed how it varies amongst the schools from our own experience. But I think one of the things that we're interested in still pursuing and continuing this year that we've brainstormed Some of the teachers working on the transition program is high school students going to the middle schools because we know it's been the

but usually we're like middle schoolers come to the high school which we think is a wonderful idea but we would also love to have some of our peer mentors perhaps who have already worked with freshmen and already Kind of understand their mindset, go to the middle schoolers and really just be a support for them, especially with course selection because I think that was definitely a big challenge for both of us and kind of just like it's so amazing to have someone at the high school that you already know and I think I was really privileged to have my sister who already went through that whole first year and I could really rely on her but I understand that a lot of students transition to high school completely knowing no one apart from their class and it often is rare to like meet other students from your class and like to constantly be around them so we'd love to perhaps continue that and talk to you guys more about that but I think the possibility of us going to the middle schoolers and just being like an insider for the middle schoolers to really just share like

you know which elective is actually good and like which ones you want to avoid or just things like that to really support the middle schoolers and really make sure that Although the transition is very difficult that we can be a support for them because we are very strong believers that students can and should be supporting other students.

I want to second all of that. That was very well put, Vavika. I think that student involvement in the transition is very important. Kind of to reiterate some of what Bhavika just said, but just to have that connection because if we as already high school students go out to the middle schoolers, then when they come to the high school, they will already have familiar faces. but also they will have I feel like the relationship that two students can have is very unique and it's different than the relationship that a student can have with an educator and I think that while it's really wonderful that we do have the orientation programs and we have The College and Career team going to the middle schoolers, I think it would be improved if we sent high school students with them to kind of give them an insider view and maybe make the process feel a little less nerve-wracking.

I also feel like one of the girls earlier who was presenting mentioned something about how there's something because the K-8 schools maybe I feel like treating the middle schoolers like their elementary schoolers the transition to high school is a lot more steep. I feel like in addition to implementing some I think that easing the process and bringing more high schoolers into the transition process would also help it feel less steep. Yeah, just so that they feel more prepared, less nervous, and just all around more ready to go to the high school. All four. I really like this presentation so I'm a big fan of it. Thank you for presenting.

Thank you, Member Pitone. Thank you, through the chair, to the team. Thank you for being here. It's exciting. to deal with the challenge of the constraints of the K-8 and maximizing it. And that's something I think we've talked about for a long time. And my question is about the sustainability of this work. Is this working group going to continue and where does the leadership come from that is it going to be rotating members I just don't see this as like a one or two year process I think it's something that we want to continue to feed and support and what does if anything does the school committee need to do to support that

I don't know, Dr. Carmona, if you want to take this one or you'd like me to share a little bit of what we've discussed.

I think you can share where we are and then I'll follow up on that.

Okay. So yes, this is just the beginning. This will definitely continue. I don't know which members will be able to join or who will sign up, but obviously we will invite educators. and staff and district leadership from across the district. My understanding is that somebody from central office on the executive team will facilitate and will make sure that we have stipend opportunities for educators to participate as well.

So if you think about the profile of the learner that happened at the high school, it was a multi-year approach, I believe three more than three years, and so I don't have any... I don't have specific timelines on this, but it is my understanding that this is work that will take time. And also I understand that lives of kids require direct attention, but I think that there are some Simple things that can be done as we move along, but this is part of a greater conversation around our profile of our middle school learners.

I'm really glad to hear that this is an ongoing process.

Yeah, I just want to add, like, I think it would be really interesting to include high school voices. We meet at the high school. It would be very easy to just see if there are some high school peer mentors who would be interested in joining. It would be really cool.

Thank you. Member Green and then Member Eldridge.

Thank you, and I also want to thank Member Pitone and Senator Thresher for asking questions and making comments I was going to make, so I have one last one, which is... When we're thinking about, especially the developmentally appropriate maturing, smoothing path towards high school route, are we thinking about um ways in which we can better elevate their voice the same way we elevate high school student voice and decision making um I know that in the past, Chair Ackman has discussed with the student reps how they can help get more student voice involved in policy making. Are we thinking about how we can do that with our middle schoolers and our elementary school programs and other ideas on how we can do better on that going forward?

Yes, I think it came up that six out of nine schools had a student council and that was something that we thought that could be something that we could get consistent across All middle schools and that's one way for students to join and then they start to have a say and each school can develop whichever way they want to do that so like I know at some schools the student council creates all the dance themes and plans it and then they work on the moving on ceremony For the eighth grade and there are different ways to get student involved and engaged in that and that they're getting to have the voice and the agency over how The events and activities are happening in their school. So I think there are some budding ideas, but we're going to develop it more as we figure out what students start to voice what they want.

I appreciate that and I was actually going to say that like I know that it's traditional for student council to do things like dance and event planning and that's a really good way to practice project management. but I hope that we also think about ways we can actually meaningfully have student voice in the way our schools

I think the other opportunity is SEED. And that's at every school except one this year, which is a partnership with Harvard. And I only know two themes, the one that was shared by Healy and then like at Winter Hill it was talking about school lunches and how to make it more inclusive of all the different cultures that are represented and so that's one of the way that students voices are being heard as well and like in the past like the C partnership helped decide whether or not Winter Hill still had a dress code and it actually eliminated it based on the data that was collected through family and student data as well so I think that's another way that we're able to get student voice and they vote on what they want their topic to be that they're going to go through and they help them go from the beginning to end of the process and seeing the results of their work

And to Mr. Tone's point, that's sustainable. That's not like a three-year grant that's going to stop next year.

Great. I don't know. It's in our strategic plan specifically noted, and it's something that is a priority and commitment for the district for sure.

All right. Member Eldridge, you have a follow-up?

Thank you to the chair. I'll be speedy on this one. I just wanted to celebrate in the vision part of your presentation the prioritization of rigorous instruction paired with responsive intervention. speaking my language love it um i'm wondering if maybe you could shed a little bit more light on what our current middle school access intervention is and i say that because i know adding in like reading specialists was a newer addition just a few years back and we do have Two of them from what I understand. And then with further discussions on the finance end of things, there was mention of building out Middle School Interventionist Support. If there was the opportunity to have more interventions, I'd just love a little bit more information to better understand.

I think one of the things that as a district I know at the Healy and I know at other schools that we're really focused on I mentioned briefly is really digging into X block which is the intervention block For middle school and making sure that our middle grades teachers have the resources and professional learning that they need to make the most of that and really leverage that time and involve as many educators as possible in that time. In terms of adding interventionists, I'm not sure about the staffing ads, but I will say that a big thing that, again, I'm going to continue shouting out Winter Hill. they are doing a really cool initiative this year I'm sure you guys have heard about it but I will just say they're doing read 180 they're training a lot of middle school educators to implement reading intervention for all students who need it and that is something that again at the Healy we're really looking into how can we get I know our MLE teachers are trained in that way but we want to expand the number of educators who are able to provide that kind of intervention because you know we also know that

particularly in middle school relationships with the educator are really important so you want the interventionist to be someone they know and trust and have a working relationship with already so there's a lot of really cool stuff happening but it's definitely like early stages

All right. I'm going to say thank you. This was awesome. I really appreciate it. Before the superintendent continues, I have heard messages that there are people who signed up online for public comment and were unable to speak from, as we all know, Technology is imperfect from our end. We didn't see it. We really strongly encourage anyone both who was present and who was online to submit your comments in writing. We read everything and we always, always appreciate Public comment with that superintendent. Great.

Through the chair, I was asked to adjust the agenda items to continue on the conversation about a school climate and safety. So at this time, I'm going to ask both principal Christian and Principal DePasquale to come up to the podium so they can actually give us a little bit of a detail and understanding, a nuanced understanding of what are some of the challenges that we are facing at the high school. Before I pass the microphone over, I just wanted to acknowledge the ongoing community challenges and community concerns that have been raised to me around this issue. I fully understand that this is a complex matter. I think also the easiest thing for me is just to ignore the concerns that are coming and then just keep the status quo, but the status quo is not really helping. address the complex needs that we have. I do understand the pain that comes with this process and also the perception that we are ignoring the history that has been in place. Please know that that's not the case.

If we embark on a process that seemed to be dissimilar to what was in place, it was not the intent. With no further ado, I'm going to let the team share some of the concerns that we have, and then we will identify what are some of the possible actions that we are looking for.

Thank you so much for having us tonight. I am Margaret DiPasquale. I am the current principal of Next Wave Junior High School and Full Circle High School. I do want to acknowledge I have to hustle out of here at about 9.15, so I apologize. I probably will not be here for questions. I also want to acknowledge that at the end of this school year I will be transitioning out of my principal role and I will be the new director of student services for the district. So with me tonight is Principal Alicia Kirsten, but also Jack Haverty, who will be taking on the principal role of Full Circle High School when I leave. So that's who we are. And like I said I do want to thank everyone for having us here tonight. We have been trying to get on the agenda for school committee since last year to talk about this and I appreciate you getting us in tonight even on a very packed schedule. and for having a late night. So thank you.

We all know that Somerville is committed to a safe, welcoming and inclusive schools for all of our students. We are reviewing currently how we address the safety needs both at Somerville High School and at Next Wave Junior High and Full Circle High School. We are looking at what is already existing investments that we've made to our schools. We're revisiting the prior recommendations that have already been made and now have been mentioned tonight about 2023. And we are responding to the current needs that we have here at our largest school campus in the city. My clicker is a little slow. But tonight, Alicia, Jack, and I are really here to share our thoughts with all of you in exploring an updated partnership with the Somerville Police Department.

We share and I do want to thank all of our parents and community members and staff members who spoke out this evening because we share and recognize the very real concerns that people have. When we talk about having a relationship with policing in our school communities. And our goal really is to try to move forward with a model that provides and safeguards against those concerns while at the same time addressing the needs of all of our students and our staff. It takes a minute for the slide to load.

It's loading. Also, I know this is my second presentation of the night, but I forgot to mention, my name is Amara Anasike, and I'm the Chief of Staff and Strategy for the district. and I wanted to kind of piggyback off of our leaders our high school leaders and Dr. Carmona who said that our intention was was to build on prior recommendations and build on the work of That took place. We know that there was a very thoughtful two year public process that the school committee voted in 2023. We looked at those recommendations and what we saw were recommendations that did incorporate school-based police support but with very clear limits.

With specialized training, with relationship building, with regular review, with stakeholder feedback, and very importantly not used for student discipline in any way.

So just a little bit about the current context. Full Circle and Somerville High School are the only high schools in the greater Boston area without an SRO. I know we heard some public comment that was different earlier but even if they're calling it something different we've been talking to other schools there's a police presence and at all the greater Boston League schools there isn't traditional SRO model But we've also been looking at Cambridge's model and also some of the stuff going on in Boston. And removing an officer from the high schools does not actually remove the need for student and staff interactions with Somerville police, mostly around issues of safety. Last year we'll show you some data in a little bit. We had over 300 interactions with Somerville police in 2025 and in each of those we interact with a wide range of responding officers. We have good relationships with SPD staff who respond. In our experience, and I know again, everything is not perfect and there are concerns about police, but in our experience,

We have very good interactions and have been working with police officers who are not interested in arresting students or putting their hands on students. and we've had a good experience but we believe it can be strengthened by stronger relationships with dedicated officers who know our students, our staff, and our school building. What am I aiming at? We want to repeat this multiple times in our presentation we do not want Somerville Police To police or discipline our students. Student behavior and school discipline is managed and supported by educational professionals and programming. I think that Margaret and I heard a lot of overlap. We've done a huge investment in supports for our students. We have assistant principals, deans, We have six community engagement specialists. If you all have not worked with Edson, who is our head community engagement specialist, he is amazing at his job.

Yes. and it is an incredible model that we're very very proud of and we've expanded with thanks to the school committee in the school district and funding a number of counselors we have six 10 plus counselors if you're counting all of our adjustment counselors as well as school counselors three at next wave full circle all the staff at next wave full circle are counselor educators we have school-based social workers we have contracts with outside mental health organizations We have a full-time social worker, but we actually have this amazing grant from CHA. Since I've been principal, we've actually had an additional social worker, plus some supports for families, and we actually just found out that we're getting that grant renewed for another couple of years. We have two dedicated social workers and working with our students. We have incredible restorative justice programming. Part of our mentorship program was to get our student mentors trained in some of the being tier one trainers for restorative justice. Mediation, we have huge numbers of students who are mediators and also choose to go into mediation to try to get ahead of problems

We have our family and community liaisons. We're actually incredibly proud of all of the work, the resources the district has put in place and all of the work we have done to help our students avoid conflict, make good decisions, and get the supports that they need. Again, I want to repeat this. Multiple times. Wait, did I go forward or backwards? I didn't go anywhere? I want to repeat this multiple times. We are not looking for SPD to police our students. We were hoping to get our narrative out earlier partly because I feel like what some of the student concerns we've heard are we don't want police officers going into the bathroom. We don't want police officers in the hallways. We don't want police officers doing anything to do with discipline. That's not what we're looking for.

We are looking for a dedicated partnership with specific police officers to keep our students, staff and families safe. You're going to hear more about this in a minute, but we feel strongly that having that dedicated officer or officers being part of our team, a trusted member of the community will increase that safety and well-being. We have serious situations where we need a police officer and a trusted officer who knows the staff, the building, and the students will be able to respond more effectively and not having a dedicated officer places unreasonable expectations I want to say that not everybody is here tonight, but the whole team at the high school that's responsible for school safety is on board with getting some sort of change to this relationship with police. I was a teacher and then I was a social studies department chair. I didn't have to make up my mind about police and schools, but after four years in charge of the safety of the building, I have had to make up my mind, and this is where we are landing as a team. We want to work with SPD to make sure it's the right person in the position and that safeguards are in place.

We don't want a lot of what you read about. We don't want to be part of the data that's showing all of the school to prison pipeline or the terrible treatment of students. We do not want that. That is not our values. That's not Somerville's values. But what we have now does not work. We're all going to chime in with stories here. Somerville High School is not a scary place. I think most students and staff feel safe on a daily basis. but you don't know some of the stuff that goes on. We have multiple times a year we have students who are reported missing and police protocol when a student is reported missing is a lot of times the students reported missing show up at school or if they're not showing up at school their friends know where they are and so the protocol is we have police in there who are looking for these missing students who need a lot of help. That is something that actually happens I'm not going to say frequently, but multiple times a year. We have students who are victims of crime. We have a story recently, we have a student who's

needed to get a restraining order against her partner like it was bad and she's coming to school we're trying to figure out her family's not able to get her to the police we're trying to figure out how to get her to the police station safely where you have a different version where there is a resource or it doesn't have to be a resource officer I want to be clear we're open to different models but a trusted police officer who's part of our team who can work with her and get her that restraining order that she needs that is unfortunately students reporting violence either domestic violence or assault from partners is not again an uncommon thing. We need support with potential threats from individuals who are not part of our community. I'm going to tell the story of Edson. We had somebody from the Community coming in and stealing our scooters. If you all know Edson, Edson's response is to come and go out and engage. Hey, how you doing? What's going on? Can we work this out? Edson gets punched in the head and gets a concussion. Just from that little bit of interaction trying to engage this person who's hanging around our students in the school. That is what we need help with. Those are the kinds of things that are not reasonable to put onto our staff. We're also looking for developmentally appropriate workshops.

Anybody who's been out on the street and seen our kids on these e-bikes and scooters and all these new motorized things and the unsafe behavior, I would love to have a trusted person in there who can talk to them about What's safe, what's not safe, what's legal, what's not legal. They're going to get themselves hurt pretty badly in that situation.

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple more things just to share. And like Alicia said, you know, when there is a missing student, we do have to call some of the police. They show up. We don't know them. We have to explain who we are, who our kids are. I can't remember if it was a year or two ago, but we had a student who was assaulted in Foss Park and was really terrified and came to school the next day and reported to us appropriately But then we had to walk him and his parents through the steps of you really need to report this to the police. This is a community concern. And that took some time and some negotiating. And if there was a trusted regular person that this student could go to and just report, I think those needs would have been addressed a whole lot quicker. I know we've had a couple incidents of swatting which has happened at the high school and I know Alicia you have interfaced with that a whole lot more than I have But that requires a lot of expertise to know when a call comes in if it is swatting.

For people who don't know what swatting is, it's when someone calls in a false claim that someone has intended to do harm at a mass capacity. And we've had a couple of those phone calls over the past two years. They have been hoaxes and false, but we have to respond like they are real. And in those instances, I can speak to what just happened, but I am walking around with a Somerville police officer unlocking bathroom doors. I am putting myself, my safety, and my staff, and my students' safety at risk. because I am not trained to interface with someone that has a weapon. That's not my skill set. And so I think that's just a very real thing that we have to be aware of and to have an officer that is fully aware of the landscape of the building All of the bathrooms, all of the doors. There are so many nooks and crannies at Somerville High School. It is an incredibly beautiful building, but there is a lot to it. And there's a lot of egresses. There's a lot of in and outs of our building.

and so that's just incredibly important that that space is really known and known well.

Yeah, just to say a little more about that. We don't have to go around with the police officers. This last squatting, there was a call that went into the state police. It ended up being from Ohio, total hoax. The police rolled up as if it were real in full riot gear. Most of the students were gone. It happened to be that most of the staff were there and some students were there for sports teams. We had to make the decision really quickly as the police were rolling up. It seemed like swatting, so we made the decision to do a secure and hold versus a lockdown, but I should not be the person making that decision on my own. It should be in partnership with the police. The reason a lot of our staff chose to go clear the building with the police is that building is so big that even though the police do training every year in the building, they don't know it. and if we had not done that we would have been in that secure and hold I'm guessing for at least two hours and as it was it turned out to be about 20 minutes and we made that decision because we knew the police didn't know our building and it was going to last forever but it was terrifying They were clearing the building to make sure nobody with a weapon was in there.

And that's the kind of thing where we really want that partnership with. One other thing to add here is I don't want to portray Somerville High School as a scary place, but the fact of the matter is that young people in our community have access to guns. We had that incident at Assembly Road just a week and a half ago. Not just young people. Our young people do have access to guns, but just people in the community. We had that shooting in Cambridge. which impacted some of our students and families as well like that is a real thing we have never we've had to do searches every For a student with a gun, we've never found one. We did find a very realistic-looking BB gun once, but we've never found a gun in Somerville High School. But the fact of the matter is that we get called. That there might be one. We have to do those searches. The police come up, but it takes a while. They don't know the students. It's a whole big thing. But we do get reports of possibly people coming to the school with a gun or being

maybe another student saying that they saw a student just outside the school with a gun and these are things where again we're calling for police we're getting police support but it takes a while for them to get there they don't know us they don't know our students they don't know who's our student they don't know who's not our student and these are things that are just again we've been lucky so far but this is out there this is a very real thing that we are dealing with and so what we have right now without somebody who's with us closely can respond quickly who knows us who knows our students It just makes the whole situation unsafe and makes us feel like it's only a matter of time before something happens. It's the same thing. We're not looking to please our students, but some of our threats are things that come from students adults honestly had a situation today where I was there was an adult that I was a little worried about one of their students but people are coming onto our campus they're threatening to come onto our campus they're threatening our students and it just takes that little bit of time to get police support there and again with somebody who doesn't know our students. Do you have to go, Margaret?

Do you want to say something before you go? Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I don't know what the next slide is. Is the next slide the data slide? Yeah. I can stay for a couple more minutes.

Okay.

Oops. I mean... I know there was a constituent earlier that mentioned data and wanted to know how often are Somerville police coming up to Somerville High School and I know we mentioned this earlier but last year in 2025 we had 334 interactions with Somerville police and 38 phone calls were made by administration either at Somerville High or at Next Way Full Circle. So we don't have a MOU with the Somerville Police Department. We don't have A current police officer working with us and with our students and yet we need them 330 times in a year. That is incredibly significant and as we've mentioned before having a Dedicated officer or officers that know us, that know our students is really, really important. The amount of time that I spend or Alicia spends or any member of our administrative team has to spend explaining

who we are, what we are, especially for Jack and I at Next Wave and Full Circle where we work with an incredibly complex student profile. We really need someone that understands the profile of our students, that is trauma-informed, that understands the landscape of our students and adolescent development and what they're going through is incredibly important. When you make a 911 phone call, As Alicia said, every Somerville police officer that I've interacted with has been wonderful, but they aren't always the best one to respond to an adolescent need. And that is really what we are asking and seeking. I think the next slide actually just reiterates some of that already. I really apologize that I have to leave. This is an incredibly important discussion and We're at the beginning of it. We are doing focus groups. We are learning. We are listening.

So I am stepping away, but there's still a lot more to do.

Again, I think we've said all this, just the advantages of having someone or someones that are dedicated, that knows us and knows the school. Part of the reason Edson and his team are so good at what they do is they can quickly spot when someone or something is out of place. and that's what we're missing if something got more serious. Do you want to tell a story, Jack, about the importance of knowing our students?

Yeah, I had the opportunity to sit down with the focus group and eight students of varying different needs and They actually all wanted an SRO as long as it's somebody who is able to build relationships and de-escalate and would run activities and they wanted them to run electives. Something that I am in common with the comments earlier today is, in my opinion, it is better to not have an SRO than to have one that does not know how to de-escalate and build relationships. I'm in 100% agreement with that. That being said, most of these calls to the school are not inside the school. They're right after school. They're at dismissal. They're when things are happening. It's when somebody notices a fight's going on. Somebody calls the police. The police show up.

One incident of this is I had a fight after school by the library and a kid that wasn't even involved, a 13-year-old student, but he happens to be six feet tall, Got escalated. He has a trauma background. He has an emotional disability. He's been abused. And an officer responded, had no idea who the fight was between because how would they? They show up. He sees this kid escalated. The kid is screaming. The kid is mad because his friend got hit. The officer gets in his space. He has been abused by somebody who looks similar to him. And he ended up getting charged with assaulting an officer, which If it was an SRO that knew this young man, he would know what this kid needs when he's in escalation. He would know which is his point person and where's the teacher that I can get to like walk away with him and give him some space. These are the things that

If we had a really good person who wanted to build relationships, knew how to de-escalate, they wouldn't escalate. And I'm not talking about officers that are doing anything wrong. They just don't know the baseline of our students when they arrive to school. If you don't know the baseline, you can't figure out who's escalated and how you can trigger them. I know we heard about focus groups saying they didn't want SROs. That is not what I heard from my students. I've been working with the most at-risk youth in Cambridge and Somerville for the last 21 years and having an SRO in Cambridge was excellent. The students had great relationships with them. I haven't had one in Somerville. Well, we did for a little while. And that person was full geared, the last one we had, and wasn't a great fit. So it is extremely important that we do this the right way or else I would have the same concerns that were said earlier.

I do want to point out there's no one to blame for the fact that we haven't been here yet. I know Margaret and Jack and the team and I have been wanting to come talk and talk about this for over a year and we're not pointing fingers about not being here. It's just very, very complicated. There's a lot of very real, very understandable feelings. We're here now. We weren't trying not to be transparent. We've been wanting to start the conversation and do it in the right way. I know one of the teachers at the high school was of the public comment. He's not wrong, like we had planned to do these listening sessions and then just wanted to slow everything down, but I want to repeat that it is fully our intention as we move forward with this to be listening to all the constituencies. I haven't given you all a presentation yet. I was going to last week, and then we delayed it, and then whatever. But we're not doing anything until you get a full presentation and the students get a time to give that feedback. Same with families. Sorry, this is some of what we've been hearing. We know there's strong opposition.

We also know there are not people who are coming and testifying publicly, but I will tell you that there is also strong support. There are people who are coming up and talking to us individually about it. There's a lot of strong support for this model as well out there. So I think it's very important that we do this process right to make sure that we hear a really wide range of voices and even folks who aren't willing to come speak publicly, but to make sure we get a lot of feedback and input from a wide range of students, staff and families. We hear a lot on the perspectives. Build on the previous recommendations. Don't involve police in discipline. We agree with all of that. Provide school administrators with the support they need to maintain safe schools. Your school administrators are telling you that we need a better partnership with the police to maintain safe schools. Access SEL supports. Determine where more is needed. We absolutely love that. We love our resources. We're always welcome for more SEL supports. That's not where we need the police support. We're very mindful. We'll happily track data, call ourselves out, check ourselves. We really want to manage the impact on students.

But as we've said, the lack of relationship, we actually have some evidence of having a negative impact on our students as well. Jack already talked to you about the focus groups they did at Next Wave Full Circle. We did, as we started this process, do a presentation to the School Improvement Council and again the the the feedback was raising a lot of these concerns here but it was measured like if we're going to do this we got to make sure that this is somebody and a quote jack on here it's got to be somebody who knows adolescents, who knows kids. To do it right, it's gotta be somebody who wants to work with kids, is multicultural, multilingual, trauma-informed. That's who we want interacting with our students when we need to have police presence. We want to address those concerns about SPD in collaboration with ICE. That is a very real, very understandable fear. We want to address that clearly. We want to address those feelings of discomfort and intimidation when it comes to police. But we really want someone who becomes part of our team and part of our community.

And we want everyone's voice in the community to be heard, not just the loudest voices.

Yeah, yeah, I can do this one. So this is just a data point that we found. This was a survey done that was published in 2024 in January by the Somerville Department of Racial and Social Justice. And it was just, you know, the full survey is online, but what? Our neighbors are saying in the community, a question that was asked was, does the Somerville Police Department officers in your neighborhood make you feel safe? and some of the takeaways were that the majority of respondents said that SPD did make them feel safer almost always or sometimes. However, there was a subset of white respondents that said that they never feel safe with SPD in their neighborhood but this was broken out by different racial groups and published in 2024.

Also, Principal Carson mentioned that she and others of us have been reaching out to neighboring districts. We also looked at I see data around districts in our like our neighboring districts around whether There have been school-based arrests with their SROs. We didn't look past beyond three years, but in the past three years, there was no school-based arrests in the surrounding districts that do have SROs. We heard from neighboring districts that a team-based approach with Not SPD, but the police departments in their communities was highlighted as a strong model. Cultivating strong relationships with students was referenced repeatedly. and school staff and administrators.

What came up time and time again is that they should really be able to focus on school-based needs and discipline while SROs are supporting Iran external safety matters. And with that, we want to thank you and As folks mentioned, please be on the lookout for opportunities to engage. We look forward to a collaborative process where we can gather information from diverse perspectives.

All right, thank you. We are going clockwise again. Member Biton, and then Member Green, and then we'll go to Murley, and then Member Piton, and if someone jumps in.

Thank you, Chair, through you. The whole team here, thank you. This is a complex and I just want to start My question if I may by responding to something a student said in the presentation about the middle school grades which is that Respect has to be earned. And I'm going to do something I don't often do publicly and say that I disagree with that perspective. To start with a basis of respect among our community. Everyone here needs to respect one another for

Their experience, their professional basis, the thoughtfulness that they come to this very complex, nuanced discussion. and respect one another's feelings because I think feelings matter, right? Safety matters. All of this really matters. So I just, I want to say I respect The wide variety of experiences that people brought to public comment tonight that we've been receiving in our inboxes. I also respect The daily interactions that you as education professionals bring to our students, to our educators, and ensuring the safety of our schools, and the well-being of our students. So I just wanted to level set there. There was a process that we started with in

you've talked about it right we've heard from the community about it and one of the um The endpoints of this we came to was the SLO. It's a different moniker, right? It's a different name. And I'm wondering... Does the proposal that was before and approved by this body before I was a school committee member Satisfy what you think as educational leaders at our high school. and what I heard was maybe some acceptance of from the community does the SLO satisfy what you're seeking and is this Are we triggering ourselves over SRO versus SLO?

Can you speak about that?

I think it's important. I was very involved in that process. I was a new principal, but I was very involved in that process. I think it's important when you ask people about that proposed model from 2023 you get multiple perspectives like you need to hear from the police perspective you need to hear from other folks involved but in my memory in my understanding the place where we got hung up was this idea of officers not being stationed at or right nearby the school because it is impossible logistically. And I heard somebody advocating for coming up with a more nuanced approach. But the way policing works, you can't just have a police officer waiting in case the school calls. So when you have an emergency, I forget Margaret had a great quote. We can't plan for the crises. The crises happen when they happen, and you can't necessarily have that dedicated officer be the one who responds. There are a lot of parts of the SLO model that make sense.

Again, I'm not wedded to any one model, but the non-negotiable for me is that there is someone who is there, preferably for my preference, with us. or within 30 seconds of us, whose job it is to be in that area and be right there with us. So the SLO model of just having the same people respond Logistically feasible. Again, check with the police. This is my memory and my understanding. And the other problem with the SLO model is it really didn't afford There was a lot of resistance to having that police officer in the building or doing activities with the students and staff and in my mind for what I think we need to be safe at the school that is a mistake and something that the SLO model as I understood it again check me and my understanding It didn't afford for that like we really I was chatting with Edson on the side there we need and what Jack was saying we need someone who knows us and knows our kids in a non-crisis situation

and what was approved before I think did not have enough room for that. Basically we're rehashing an old community policing model. I'm not an expert on policing but in the conversations I've had of this this is a proven model of community policing that has a lot of elements to it that's basically what we're asking for is some version of community policing so I think there are parts of the SLO agreement but again I think there's lots of Green.

Thank you. Actually, couldn't be a better place for me to pick up. Starting with all the standard disclosures. Obviously, I was... Very involved in the policing committee was my creation as chair, as chair later. I worked with then-Terms Superintendent Curley to write the memo. The memo came about in large part because And I'm just going to be honest, we thought we had agreements with SPD on MOU, and then they kept, at the last minute, pulling out of that agreement. I think the interim chief, for whatever reasons, just couldn't get to yes. But when I look at what you're asking for in a dedicated officer, that is the model we proposed. And I'm glad you used the example of community policing because that was exactly the model, is that it makes sense.

To have an officer for whom the schools is part of their beat and say it makes sense for the beat officers for whom Winter Hill is part of their beat or Union Square is part of their beat. That's how community-based works. And I think we can do that. without necessarily an officer patrolling the halls of a school. And when I look at the three to 30 calls, unless I am wildly mistaken about what directed patrol means, I think the needs can be covered that way as well. I 100% agree and sympathize with the fact that the lack of an MOU has led to decisions you should never have to make as a principal. I 100% agree, and I say this as one of the people in this room who's received the talk, and one of the people in the room who will have to give the talk, that it is important that, like, saying police in school should never touch

is not only not realistic, it is actively dangerous for people of color. It is unfortunately the case in this country that learning how to deal with police is a life or death life skill that people of color have to adapt. I think we can also do that without putting, and nothing I've heard today convinces me that we can't address the very real problems we're hearing. And I want to acknowledge that I hear very real problems. The status quo isn't working. But I think we can do that without returning to the old-school SRO model. And to Chair Biton's accurate point about feelings, it is worth noting that while And I'm gonna say this bluntly, I am probably less anti-police than the median Somerville voter. As a man of color in America, you've stationed a police officer somewhere, you were saying that's a place you don't trust me to be.

And I know that's not our intention, and I know everyone in this room wants students to feel safe and secure. and I know that there are real problems that yes and you know we haven't even discussed some of the times SPS needs to work, SPD I fully agree it needs cooperation But what I'm hearing when you ask for the advantages and the things, I'm not hearing we need an SRO patrol in the schools. I'm hearing we need to revisit the conversation with the police about the things We wanted to do that for whatever reason they couldn't agree to but now we have a new police chief I really appreciate you coming to us at the beginning of the process.

There is a sense in the community that these things are already pre-baked, because I often have them in Somerville, and I know that's not the case, so I would appreciate that if anything, you came to us as soon as the idea came back up, and so I really appreciate that. And so I want everyone to remember that this is not a pure game solution. But having done that, now the right next step is to go back to the police department and say, hey, we agreed on all these things and we're 90% of the way to where we want to be. Maybe we need to tweak that. But if we just go back to what we already agreed, what we already proposed, I feel like 90% of the problems will go away. And then we do that for a year, see where we need to tweak it.

Marley. Yeah, OK. Speaking as an SHS student, Ms. Kirsten, I know you care very deeply for the student body in Somerville High School. Recognize that you guys are looking for a solution to these potentially dangerous situations that, I mean, we don't know when they're going to happen. They're unpredictable. As a student, I was not aware of the discussion that we might have a police officer in the schools until very recently. I recognize that you were going to present this to the student body. During that presentation I would I appreciate deeply and urge you to give students all the possible information so that we're not having people making decisions that are fueled by fear or misunderstanding.

I think having all the information is very important to make informed decisions and by all the information that includes The true facts about police officers and their connections, what does that entail in the school? Also, I think because this is an issue of student safety, it is really important that the students feel safe around The designated police officer if we do decide to go that direction I think that students should be involved in I also hear that Similar to what member Green was talking about, I think the position that you're describing does not sound like one of a police officer to me. I think it's

Someone who knows, is well familiar with the needs of the students, the individual situations of the students, particularly those that have maybe more Debilitating or perhaps traumatic circumstances. That really doesn't sound like a police officer to me. I know that the phrase police officer specifically in this day and age has certain connotations. I think that I also recognize that You would in these situations need someone with the authority and training to handle those types of dangerous situations. So I recognize that specifically because that is a priority that is tricky to get around. But I really think that both involving students in this process, making sure everyone has all the information because that hasn't maybe

I've been very clear to everyone all the aspects in the past but also yeah revisiting the 2023 plan and trying to maybe configure something else that isn't Because I know there's a lot of maybe personal issues with being affiliated with the police. trying to find an alternative that has the same training and ability to handle those dangerous situations without being connected to some of those policing government Affiliations. So I don't know. That's my piece to say as a student.

Thank you.

Member Pitone. Thank you through the chair to the team. Thank you for being here. I want to acknowledge this is a we all know this is challenging and I really appreciate you coming forward and sharing this in an environment that is very anti some of the things that you're concerned about so I just want to name that I also want to name that it's clear that the process is slowing down. but I don't think that's been clear to the community so my initial receipt of a memo made me feel like we were trying to get somewhere by the end of June but again this is me reading into it and I could so I can understand the passion that's coming from the community but maybe having some more clarity about the timeline would be helpful. I have more things but you can go ahead if you want.

Yeah I just want to say that I feel I mean again not pointing fingers but there's been a lot of cooks in the kitchen And so our original plan multiple times has been to come forward with the presentation, presentations to students, presentations to the community, and there's just a lot of complicating factors But that was always our intention and it's been slowed way down. My understanding, I had them, as the speaker said earlier, I had things scheduled, like I was ready, let's go, I'll tell you what I'm thinking, tell me what you're thinking, let's figure it out. We still want to do that, but we still, for all the complicating factors and how complex it is, I do feel some urgency about this. I feel like we are unsafe. I feel like I'm waiting for the big bad thing to happen. and I would like to have something in place that makes sense for everybody to prevent that big bad thing from happening and I understand how complex it is so I'm hopeful that right in the beginning of the fall we've actually done a lot of thought and work with SFLC and folks in central office

I would like to get those listening sessions going as soon as possible when we get back in the fall but I don't have a set timeline hopefully when we get back to school we will.

Superintendent.

Could I just say something about the timeline? So even assuming this case scenario, we're not talking about Next year in terms of any solution whether it's an SLO or whatever solution that we're talking about 27-28 school year. That doesn't mean that some of the questions and concerns around the MOU and that relationship is something that might require a lighter lift than having anything in place. So it is our understanding that We're talking about a year from now in terms of any tangible decisions.

Dr. Stone. Thank you, through the Chair.

Just following off of Member Pitone, just in recognition of How complicated, how complex this is, but also I want to recognize the deep expertise that is standing before us and We come to a school committee and we get these really phenomenal, very data-rich, Thank you for the presentations from our very talented leaders and educators. and a lot of you know they're focused on what we want learning right we want to see people learning how to read people discovering their passions and and being really successful and finding those pathways

And meanwhile, the leaders who are holding these spaces are really worried about student safety. And whether you have a kindergartener or a second grader or a senior in high school and you send your child out, I'm speaking also from some personal experience, but I know how it is to worry, to deeply worry about safety of children, which should not be something that you're worrying about, right? You should be worrying about Oh, is this the right curriculum? Does that kid get the thing that they need because it's not working for them, right? But that's actually...

Not what a lot of our leadership does. They're worrying a lot and some of the things that we Thank you for joining us. My grandmother's saying, don't stick your hand out of the window, a truck's going to come and get it. That was when I was a child. This is real. So I just want to recognize that we have to We as a body here have to think and help around this policy and keeping it transparent, learning from what I wasn't here on school committees, so I really want to dig in and hear and understand what came out of the 2023 work.

But I want to just say that the safety piece is we cannot close our eyes to that and we cannot pretend. that our leaders are worried about safety. I want to bring up something that one of the public comments was said in public comments and it was a really interesting issue and I want to just make sure that it comes up and it was regarding the idea of Student Records and Confidentiality. And I hadn't really thought about that piece. So as we... Explore the relationship in an MOU with Chief Hsu and whoever is working on this.

That was very interesting to me, one because of the ice piece, but also because we have very different types of record keeping. and it made me think and I'm sorry I'm taking a long time here I just wanted to it made me think of Maura Healey when she was an Attorney General and I want to say this is maybe 2018 when she You'll have to fact check some of this, but it was a diversion project program. to really ensure that our young people were not put into the criminal system. They were not coming out. The kids do dumb things. We've all been kids and many of us have kids who've done really dumb things, right? And not having a criminal record and having restorative justice, right? And so that was a really big piece. So I feel like...

The puzzle pieces are coming together and it's not as binary as saying no we cannot work with police but we have to think about how to support you and I'd like to listen I'd like to hear more from our parents and our students, but certainly more of the details of What the seeds are for what will make you as a team be able to counteract the safety issues.

We're still in first round. Jack, do you want to respond?

If you don't mind. Go for it. I think if it wasn't for my experience, I'd be making similar comments to the comments earlier tonight. Part of my role is to, when kids come back from hospitalizations, do reentry plans. Part of my role is when a kid says something unsafe is happening, to investigate. and sometimes weapons are brought up. I have seen, and this is not anecdotal, a major uptick in both hospitalizations and access to weapons. And that is not I'm not just saying it to make it bombastic or anything like that. I have to put it out on the record that we're seeing mental health is a big, big issue, not just because of COVID. It was starting before COVID. Access to weapons in this area is easier for 16 and 17 year old kids, 15 year old kids.

Yes, the 99.9% of the stuff is what we're talking about with the de-escalation and the relationship building and not getting a kid in worse trouble when the police respond to an event and they don't know the kid. But there also is the big element that we're talking about too. And when those police came in with their guns drawn, when they had the swatting incident, there were dozens of middle schoolers out in the common space. I was shooing them into a room. They were in tactical gear with Like assault rifles out. The trauma that was for those kids, for me, I was traumatized. People were crying. and if we had had an SRO, they might have been able to tell us and them to get those kids in a room first. So anecdotal things like that, they add up and I just want to put it out there.

We'll go Mayor Wilson, Member Eldridge, and then we can do a second round of comments.

Thanks, Chair. As I've dug into this, specifically the work in 2023 and more specifically the SLO approach, I've come away Really impressed with what is, from my view, a very elegant solution here that really threads the needle. I'll say I'm sorry you all didn't get... The solution there could have prevented a lot of this. I know what you deal with. We heard about it tonight. What I can commit to is on the city side, we're here to See that that 2023 solution actually is given a shot because I think it I think it really could address a lot of the issues and I'm really eager to work with the SPS administration

and to see if we can't make that happen here because I really think that that might make your lives and the lives of the students a lot better while avoiding a lot of the pitfalls that we all know are out there.

Thank you. Member Eldridge? Through the Chair, I wanted to bring up a quick constituent question that is relevant for like level setting, so it'd be a bit of a district question here. I'm trying to understand some of the recommendations for the supports that were instituted in 2020 or recommended in 2023 and like what has been adopted what have we learned like what have we learned from those programs where we decided to invest and where we decided to pull back but then also maybe if there were any recommendations that weren't adopted and why I think also not only for just level setting for constituents but then also for newer members trying to understand what we have invested in and just getting a better clearer picture of you know where we are and where we want to go again like making those data-informed decisions that are really gonna

So what I'm hearing is just

A grounding in the information that has sort of been collected so far like you would like a brief note from the superintendent right now or just like a gathering of of the 2023 report like what fed into it and

Well there were some strong recommendations that were made in there and then there was some data this is kind of too much to go over here but I can forward along some more information like on mediation and that like in 2021 and 2022 there was 200 cases involving two or more students in 2022 and 2023 there was 125 So just kind of like that level setting of like and also being able to align that with like where we have made the investment so we can kind of see where you know things are working or where we need to you know adjust the dial a little bit.

Yes, that's a good question. I know the community has asked me that question as well, where there's multiple FOIA requests around that. We have six new members of the community who do the work of engagement on a regular basis. A lot of the escalation. We have Bam and Wah. Actually, just it takes for you to sit down in those sessions and understanding and hearing how students are treated and how students are so empowered to be young adults. Those numbers are numbers that again were asked and I have multiple numbers in different places so I will definitely share as much as I can. And I think it will be hard to peg outcomes on one particular behavior because this is an aggregate of multiple interventions that are in place. But I think that there is some clarity from the school as to what are some of the overall benefits of the work that is happening.

And again, there's data that we're gathering, but I think that The thing that has come up multiple times is that question, can we have more social workers? Can we have more of this? Can we have more of that? And in general, what I hear, even some of the comments that I heard today, I know that one of the high school teachers asked his students, and some of the things that I heard is like well what fights are we are we talking about we don't see that that that often and I think that the subset of behaviors we're talking about are behaviors that actually are complex that are in some cases outside of the school and so I hear also that you know There is a small percentage of the population that might have access to weapons that might not live in the school but are in the outside. And so there are those cases in which You definitely need to have some support that is different from the current support student. That's not a social work intervention. And yet they do work around their mental health of students.

And the last thing I wanted to say around that is that this is one of the fears that I have about having this conversation, the perception that the highest school is not a safe place. and I you know we have plenty of data that shows that in the last three years the incidents around fights or things of that nature continue to decline but again this nagging challenge around the things that actually are complicated Those are the things that actually I'm hearing is the pain point that we need to address.

So I'll note I will do a second round of questions and comments but as we have mentioned we're early along in this process and we have A lot more left on the agenda so after the second round I'm going to suggest that we let these educators go and go on to others unless the committee decides to overrule that. So we will go counterclockwise this time. So we had member Pitone who was next, member Green, and then member Bitone.

Thank you to the chair, to the team, but also to the administration. I want to point out that the administration's decision is not the team decision, and I'm very sensitive to not wanting The community to start kind of honing in on the high school team because you're trying to do the good work and you're trying to understand what's going on but this decision comes from the superintendent's office. I agree with the mayor I really would personally like to see the recommendation considered more seriously my understanding is Worcester does have an SLO they've had this model since like 2023 so they're clearly doing something that's working for them or maybe not maybe you'll learn that it's not working I have no idea but I really encourage the administration or the team to consider that I also my understanding is BPS doesn't have SROs and that they utilize A different model with their own internal security that are unarmed.

Again, I know this is hard, I know this is complicated, but I want to make sure that we're doing our homework to make sure, you know, the work was done to make this recommendation. I 100% agree that something has to be different you guys have made that case clear to me and and i'm supportive of that and i appreciate what member green had brought up about community policing and whether or not there can be more intimate relationships between community policing and there are models where community policing The point is they're not housed in the school. and associated with this I want to be careful and it could be me just misunderstanding the original focus groups but what I heard from the focus groups was conversations about SROs. and I don't that makes me uncomfortable a little bit because it's actually kind of leading it and saying well the SRO is the solution and maybe you are having broader conversations that are about Policing and how policing can support schools.

And I'm probably assuming that because I know many of you and I know how passionate you are about the school's student safety and student voice. But I also want to name one last thing and then I'll be off. I very much appreciate that you're trying to get as diverse perspectives as possible. and I was not part of the original team but I had talked to some members that were concerned that there was kind of a stronger voice around The perspective of NOAA's SROs that maybe influence the outcome of it. So I'm not saying that I'm not for SROs, I'm not anti-SROs, I'm for a very good and thoughtful process and Thank you all and I look forward to hearing more about Worcester or BPS and how that maybe could influence us because we could possibly implement

The agreement sooner than a year or a year and a half from now because that was something we already agreed on. And I do think that your team is incredibly creative. and you're not going to be kind of strict about you know you have an answer already so thank you for that and I will thank you member green

So I recognize that all of this comes from a larger systemic problem in our society, which is that we ask police to solve too many problems in our society. You mentioned, you know, we talk about the big bad thing, which, first of all, both as a school committee member and as a member of society, I want to apologize to our administration for the fact that I know how much these things terrify you. I know how much anyone who cares and all of our nutrition does has to carry that fear. I've got just a few briefings and executive sessions about some stuff and it's maybe go home and cry and I'm not a huge crier. So I can't imagine having to live with that fear day in and day out for 1300 kids you care passionately about. And

I always, and the solution we want to solve for that problem, and frankly, the police officer we wanted to use on that problem are exactly the officers we don't want to use and we don't want to implement 99.9% of the time. I apologize because that is an unfair position to put administrators and school leaders in. and I want to recognize some very real realities. Just information to Ms. Pitone's points. Our memo was explicitly modeled on the Worcester model. And I've been recently in conversation with Worcester. They're going to have to retweak it. It's not working quite the way they wanted it to. And so I hope that we can learn from their tweaks in the same way we learn from their model.

and I want to because we've had we've gone back and forth on the whole Boston situation so I want to talk about what was Boston doing and precisely why it's not what I want to do in Somerville Because what Boston has done is, as actually to something you said, Ms. Kirsten, around what the legislature is doing, what Boston has done is escrowed by another name. and in fact a lot of ways a worse system because it is in-house basically sub-department of BPD in charge of controlling the schools. But what it does do, and what I'm deeply afraid we'll do, pro or con, whatever we do, we've tried very hard to avoid doing, is what it does do is it makes white people feel better about the system. It doesn't, in the way it should perform, approve these modest communities, but it makes white progressives feel like they've done something. and both pro and con is absolutely the case as it was through the external process.

We have a process that has censored middle class white voices. And Jack, I've had the same experience you've had. That when I actually can get through that noise, I hear a much more nuanced conversation from marginalized communities. In keeping with the literature we find on policing in marginalized communities, where they're both over and under policed, where they only deal with police when they're a suspect. And so I don't want to replicate that in our processes. I think we did for Somerville, and that's a huge asterisk, a decent job of doing that in the policing subcommittee work. I am confident that we can do that as we think about How to build on that work. But, to Ms. Pitone's point, and I want to apologize to the community, in rolling it out, we messed up. I heard the same thing.

The way I've seen the framing, intentional or otherwise, the framing comes off as a solution to a problem, which is not what I think we want to do. The framing came off to the community as, We're looking back at the SRO, not the very real situation where just the status quo isn't working, we left loose strings on hand, things have to be solved. How do we solve those problems? So I'm hoping that as we do the process in the summer and the fall, we can do what we do very well in the summer when we put our mind to it, which is be solutions-oriented but not forwarding solutions.

member Biton.

Thank you chair through you. I want to build on A lot of the comments that preceded mine and I want to just especially just to start off thank the honorable mayor for suggesting that his suggesting his support for visiting that 2023 solution that was proposed by this body, approved by this body. What I take from that is, Mr. Mayor, your support for an initiative that this body can support and that you will put the resources necessary behind it. and I'm grateful on behalf of our students and our educators for your pledge there.

I think because we are really at the beginning of a new process here that builds on the prior process, We are not taking a vote tonight, so I'm not going to go on for long. But I guess as you're thinking in the district leadership and the team that's worked on this to date, I'd like to just center the idea of risk management because what you're talking about the risks right the safety risks in the school that you're confronting every day The solution that you're seeking is to mitigate that risk. But the solution that you're suggesting brings risks of its own, right? And that's, I think, part of the concern you're hearing from the public and that you're hearing from around this horseshoe. and so

Balancing those risks is really what we're at, and I know you know that, but I guess I want to continue to center that, balancing the risks to find the optimal level for our community. When the school committee debated this back in 2022-2023, I was the president of the PTA council and we did a survey of families across the city. and one of the things that we concluded was that answers on both sides and I put sides because I don't really think we're on different sides but there were Strongly worded answers both for SROs and against SROs and policing in schools in general. And people's minds were made up. People have very strong emotions about this.

And I think one thing we need to consider is if we take in A one-way only approach on this, it doesn't mitigate those risks, right? So we need to find that place that considers the risks of both action and inaction. and so I hope you're centering that in your work in the future and I'll stop. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Through the chair, thank you again to the high school team and Amara for leading some of this work. Right now we're going to have our director of out-of-school time, Rosanna Parabello, who is going to walk us through some of the We know that this is the place where a lot of enrichment happens for students. and we know that as well not only academic growth but social emotional development and so we continue to increase the capacity of our programs and we continue to Enhance the offerings that we have. So with that, I'm going to have Director of Out of School Time share some of the progress that we have made.

Hello, thank you for welcoming me here tonight. My name is Rosanna Parabello. I'm the out-of-school time director for SPS, and I'm here to provide an update on the out-of-school time strategic plan. The vision for OST is to offer our students equitable access to a variety of opportunities that support academic, social, and emotional development. Working with families in the community to offer a connected, affordable system. And also creating pathways for our young people that aligns with our strategic plan of wellness and joy, equity and access.

Thanks for watching!

We are excited to hear that we are aligned with the feedback we have heard from the community. And what you will see from the rest of this presentation is sharing what we have learned, what we are doing, and what we are planning. What we have and what we will continue includes full-time afterscale with very minimal waitlists, clubs, vacation and summer programs, and partnerships with different organizations with specific targeted outcomes for our youth. I feel like I have to keep pressing this. Okay. Here we go. The OST Steering Committee was formed in September of 2024 and includes myself, Adriana Garecke, Christopher Hosman, Ruth Santos, and Brian King. The first year was dedicated to addressing immediate needs in terms of increasing slots and standardizing systems on the back end.

This year has been a deeper dive into long-range planning, including hearing from families and strategic planning. In December and January we held listening sessions with families to better understand their needs and experiences. We met with all of our SPS out of school time providers around what has been going well for them and how we could do better to support them. We also worked with an external consultant to help review our history and guide our future. In April and May of this year, we met for a series of working groups to collect data and evaluate the work that we have been doing. The two listening sessions consisted of members of our OST office, parents, district leaders, and community members. Thank you to SFLC for convening these sessions. Although there are strengths of what is working well, we understand what barriers we need to work on.

Themes that have emerged from the collection of data include communication, accessibility, and financing. Coding qualitative data is important, but hard work, and I want to shout out to Sam and Arundhati for their time, hard work, and support. Although we have done initial work accommodating students with disabilities and creating plans for students, we know there is a bigger need and we need to improve with the support of our district. We celebrated strengths and achievements first by recognizing there is a need to keep improving. We heard you and we have implemented new systems to close communication gaps, such as implementing a new centralized management system, Updating the website, creating internal timelines to share information routinely.

In terms of financing, we developed a unified sliding scale to ensure sustainable access and a simplified application system. We recognize the need to support all students and hope to broaden the scope of work with the special education department as well. Our goals. Goal one focuses on developing a coherent and aligned model of OST. Action steps include clarifying how all programs fit and align with each other and the school day. Program Oversight, and using data to assign and align programming. Goal 2 focuses on establishing a sustainable financial model, including a unified sliding scale in communication and expectations around enrollment, payment, and financial assistance.

and to ensure data is reviewed to ensure equity and access to the programming. Goal 3 focuses on strengthening operational systems and staffing, which includes the implementation of a central system of registration, data management, comprehensive space sharing agreements, and appropriate staffing. Goal 4 includes establishing clear and consistent communication systems, such as a digital catalog of OST programs, partnering with the communication department and SFLC for multilingual accessibility, Establishing clear internal and external protocols for proactive and accessible family communication.

Okay and while working on what improvements can be made over the current school year and into the next, we have also simultaneously been planning for a fantastic summer. Behind the Scenes, and coordinating with district directors and principals, city departments, and community organizations to offer a diverse portfolio of options for all of our students from pre-K through 12th. and offering positions to current employees and new. We have partnered to provide space for Elizabeth Peabody House and Parks and Recreation and expanded school year programs into the summer. We are utilizing the Arbiter system for attendance, data, health and record sharing, and increased enrollment in multiple programs, including the elementary, summer, and high school programs. and a shout out to our amazing staff for their hard work and patience and flexibility in every situation.

And that's it.

Thank you.

To my colleagues, Member Lippens. it's late so thank you through chair for your time and being here and um i mean after school always comes up there's you know even when i was So many questions. And I just want to go back to one of the goals about this idea of inclusion and how are we allowing access for kids with more complex needs. So I know for some families, it's a pain point, right? Some kids just have more complex behavioral, social, emotional needs. and with the type of staffing that we have at after school right like it is hard to sustain those relationships and learn from step even with ongoing professional development right because you're like

I'm just I I'm honestly just asking the question if we can you know brainstorm if there's things that we can do as a school committee or even just work with after school to try to you Thank you so much for joining us. I'd love to have a conversation about that.

No, thank you. We have been working through some ideas that we'll start to work on into the summer and for next year. We have some things that we have done in the past that have worked, but we recognize that with changing staff and changing administrations. We have to keep up with the changes in the professional development.

Thank you, Member Biton.

Thank you, Chair, through you. Really appreciate all of the work your whole department does. I'll also be brief, but I just I was looking at the out of school time by the numbers slide. That's way at the top. And one thing that would be helpful from Our perspective, at least from my perspective, is understanding the Cost per student, like what do our investments in each of these programs sort of get us? And I see the number of students. and it's variable so it would just be helpful to understand maybe with the exception of community schools because that's paid for through Family Fees mostly. So for those things that don't have a revolving fund, What are we paying for and what are we getting?

That would be helpful to understand.

We have some information and some data we've been working on to predict costs for the future. So we do have some information that we can provide more.

Lovely. Thank you so much.

I'm going to call myself and then Member Pitone and then Member Green. I'm curious. I appreciate the updates to I'm curious about sort of communication for prospective families like in contrast to current families because What I'll say is the feedback from prospective families is that communication has not gotten much better. But I've heard that families within the ecosystem I don't know if attempts have been made for both groups or what, but I'd love to hear more about that.

Yep, no, it's definitely twofold with the different types of communication for existing programs, new programs, and current families and new families or prospective families. We're trying to, I don't think we've achieved our goals. Some of this is still in place. We just We created some of these goals recently based on the data that we received. So some of it is still being worked out and we don't have all the answers around communication and I think we did a lot of work around The current families who are registered and trying to get access to the programs that existed, that was an area of need. And in terms of prospective families, we have to work with the communication department to get that information out in a more consistent way and I think we've recently agreed that the website is the best way but like information has to funnel to one place so we have to ensure that the information on the website is

Thank you. We'll go member Pitone, member Eldridge, and member Green.

Thank you through you chair. Thank you for being here. Excited. It must have been a really interesting process to go through the strategic planning process and I really appreciate it. I had a quick question which is how is the Somerville hub fit into all of this which is the website that got developed through the children's cabinet work and then the bigger question and I don't know if you'll have an answer to this one but at some point We can't necessarily sustain and meet all the needs with a revolving account model and I think at some point we're gonna have to just consider how we as a District and as a city want to invest in out-of-school time. And I don't know if that's part of this goal process and if you can speak to that briefly.

Yep, in terms of the Somerville Hub, we still use and share in terms of full-time after-school coverage or summer programming. We still use that as a... A source of resources for families, so we do share that. And then there's the district website. But we have to ensure that everyone communicating is also communicating together. And so that's a piece that the OSC steering committee is taking on to ensure that the communication is the same and updated. If it's updated on the web, it has to be updated on the website, multiple places. In terms of the goal for finances, yes, that is a piece of it. This year we did a lot of work in looking at the revolving and the OST budget and made a lot of

Changes, not necessarily cuts, but just ways that we can offer financial aid and still offer the same high quality programming that families are used to. So that is is definitely part of the goal when we talk about the financial piece.

Eldridge. Thank you to the chair. I want to build off of something that Member Lippens brought up earlier about access to our students with disabilities. And I also wanted to commend your recognizing that that's an area that we can work on and grow from. Just wanted to highlight that students with disabilities have the opportunity to legally access after school activities and that is a right provided to them just like their peers. I'm wondering if From my conversations with special education in the past, if families are interested in participating in programs, who is the best person for them to be in contact with? Is it the special education department or is it y'all? or who is the best person if they're like hey I think my child would like this but they do need extra support xyz where should they go first?

So if it's a full-time after-school program like the community schools program, we have designated resources within our program. We have a student services director for after-school and a clinical consultant. and so most of the time they will meet with families to figure out if this is an appropriate setting for them. So in terms of after school programming we don't have resources that the school day does so we can only offer so much and we do they do you know revise IEPs to after-school model, even the 504. They review all these documents. We have access to them. The parents invite us to get access. and they will meet with whatever school day staff they need to to figure out the right placement if this is the right place for the child considering

The barriers that after school has and resources. So we don't, we try not to exclude anyone. Many students who are involved in these programs have disabilities or 504s or IEPs. I think the challenge is when students are not fully diagnosed and this is usually pre-k or k they're coming in and the teachers and the site directors have to do a lot of work around meeting what the The School of the Day faculty to figure out how to best help the student. We see that once the child has services in place, then after school becomes a much easier environment.

Green.

Getting late. Yeah, so I saw that there were comments about improved accessibility for immigrant families. And I appreciate knowing that we've improved the services. Are we seeing improved uptick from immigrant families and other state activities? Do we have some quantitative data around that? Are we seeing more immigrant families using out-of-school services? And so can we see some quantitative data on that?

Yes, we can put together data for that.

Fantastic. Thank you.

All right. Thank you for your time. Thank you for waiting.

We can do it! We can do it! I know, I know. Just one last push. Yeah. Well, you know Regina and you know the work that is happening around our Homeless and Basic Needs. I will let Regina do the work. She has already been here in this chamber for many years. So please lead us through the work, and then we will do the conclusion of this part.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Regina Bertoldo, and I am the director of the Office of Basic Needs and Housing Support Services. and I want to thank Ruth Santos for the support of our work and Tina Lu for putting this, helping us put this beautiful presentation. Give credit to... Hi, everyone.

Good evening. My name is Jennifer Ochoa, or Jen. I'm the social worker of the Office of Basic Needs and Housing Support Services.

So since this office was created, In 2022, we have been working with students and families who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, fostered students and unaccompanied youth. Our office provides responsive interventions for Somerville families experiencing housing insecurity, and we also co-create systemic preventions to stabilize vulnerable populations. Our goal is to generate pathways for families and students not only to remain in our schools, but also to thrive in life. Federal, state, and local laws and policies have drastically impacted some of our SPS families Especially in the past two years.

As a result, our office has employed an interdisciplinary approach to intervention and prevention, which we will elaborate more on later in the presentation.

Many external factors have impacted families this year, but we will highlight just two this evening. Even though we saw an overall increase in the number of families in our caseload over the past four years, we have seen a decrease this year in both referrals to our Office, and in-family self-identification. We attribute this change to federal immigration laws and policies which have discouraged the arrival of newcomers. Immigrant families currently living here are also feeling less comfortable with reaching out for support due to fear. Additionally state regulations regarding the state shelter system have also changed. Making it harder for people to get placement, therefore families may not reach out for support knowing that they may not get placed into a shelter. These key factors have made it more challenging to identify families in need of services.

In spite of these changes, however, we have continued to build upon our strong networks across many departments and community partners And we are proud to say that through our interdisciplinary approach to prevention intervention, we have been able to help many families reach stability and provide them with immediate support during moments of crisis. We did this by developing local systems to provide emergency relief, especially in households impacted by loss of income. We assessed their needs quick. Quickly, I made referrals accordingly, whether it was for food and rental assistance, childcare, legal services, or any other basic needs.

We resourced families experiencing food insecurity in the fall when SNAP funding was at risk of being cut at the same time as the guaranteed basic income pilot program was ending. We proactively worked across multiple departments, schools, and PTAs to provide food-related relief. We provided housing support for unaccompanied youth through our collaboration with Youth Harbors. Students receive intensive case management to help them access housing resources Benefits, basic needs so that they could stay in school and engage in learning. We developed and strengthened collaborative partnerships. Over the course of four years, our work with the City's Office of Housing Stability has only deepened.

Leading to increased efficacy and efficiency when responding to families facing crisis. In summary, over the past four years, we have seen families move towards stabilization and wellness. in large part due to interventions such as the guaranteed basic income and municipal voucher programs. Partnerships with the City of Somerville and community organizations, as well as our office's ongoing support and follow-up with caseworkers and families.

Okay, the button's not working if you want to try. We continue to work with our foster students coordinating with DCF around transportation to ensure that students come to school regularly. While 73% of our foster students are placed in Somerville, we continue to need more local foster homes because it would be ideal for students to maintain relational connections and remain within their existing community here in Somerville. Our short presentation tonight does not do justice to the vast amount of people power it takes to support vulnerable families. As you can see, many organizations and individuals play a part in this village of support. We are deeply grateful to community partners for their shared commitment to collaboration, advocacy, and empowerment Knowing that families when given the proper support can learn to navigate complex systems, find stability, and provide opportunities for their children to thrive.

You're in the next slide, is that right?

Yeah, it's not working.

It's not working?

Yeah. That was the next one? Yeah.

There you are.

One more now, please, Erica. Yeah. There we go. There you go.

Positive outcomes are possible when both preventive and intervention measures are in place and when we work collectively across many entities. Compared to our surrounding communities, Somerville has one of the lowest evictions per a thousand renter homes. The number of students who have left the district due to housing insecurity have continued to remain low. And most importantly, Seniors in our caseload who have faced incredibly challenging life circumstances having been able to stay in school and they now hold high school diplomas in their hands. These data points showcase the important role that this office plays in our district. Behind each of these numbers are individuals whose lives have been changed,

because SPS staff members and community partners work tirelessly alongside families and students to overcome hardship. Along the way, we also show parents, caregivers and youth the tools that they need to advocate for what they deserve. An educational experience in which their voices matter and their presence is seen, appreciated, and honored. Last but not least, At the end of this school year, I'll be retiring.

and I'm pleased to leave this office in the very capable hands of Jennifer Ushowa who become The new director of basic needs and housing support services. I have full confidence that she will continue to build upon the strong foundations that we have already laid and will lead this office to New Heights. Thank you for listening to our presentation. Thank you for your support always. We're now ready for questions.

All right.

We will go counterclockwise. Member Pitone and then Member Lippens. Thank you. Through you, Chair. Thank you both for being here. Quick comments on the programming. The fact that you can present data not only on how we've impacted and reduced the numbers or supported families that are experiencing homelessness, but that we focus on the risk. That is just incredibly powerful and I am so proud of that. I also want to comment on the fact that this is just another example where we had incredible talent that was given leeway to develop this programming the same way that the SFLC was developed whatever 20 plus years ago and now SFLC is a model for The Commonwealth. This program is a model for the Commonwealth.

And I just, you know, applause to the team, but also applause to all the leadership over the years, the school committees, the superintendents that were willing to invest in and some of our most vulnerable students. And I also, I have too many words to thank Regina and what a successor and Jen you guys have been working in partnership for this time and so I'm just so grateful and thankful that we have this in our community.

Thank you through your chair.

I just feel so incredibly proud to live in a city where this work is being done. and you know I'm someone who looks at data all the time and these are not this is not data I mean these are real lives like every and you've you've changed lives and it's just I mean, my gratitude is deep and I know the incredible amount of work that has been done and I just want to express my deep gratitude. and I look forward even though I'm new I look forward to a continued partnership and whatever you need I'm here so thank you again.

Member Green?

I'm going to save most of my sappy remarks for Thursday. But you know how much I love and respect and honor you. So again, I'm saying my side remarks for you for Thursday in part because if I don't say them until Thursday, I can pretend it's not happening. But I want to comment. On this office, as Mr. Patone pointed out, you were given, correctly, a great deal of ways to shape how it was formed. I think I made a conversation with an instrument that we're basically like, oh, we don't, we don't figure it out. Yeah, just do the thing. I think the whole conversation. And as Laura points out, It's now a model.

And in its modelness, I think it's worth highlighting Why it's unique and special. And unfortunately, why it's unique and special is mostly why other districts don't do it. It is the norm in this country. for other districts, private schools, charter schools too often to try to sweep under the rug Students who need this level of help because it's expensive. Like, the reason the money follows the child logic has never worked is because

Students with higher needs, whatever those needs are, require more resources to meet those needs. And, In those constraints, in those real constraints, you have done, you have literally worked miracles these several years. Like, students who are at lack of stable housing graduated at a 92% clip. is literally unheard of and it's not sustainable unless we as a society finally commit to resourcing it. By most accounts, as a country, we spend less per capita on education, just for inflation, than we did before Brown v. Board was implemented.

because we society have not accepted the fact that to educate all kids means educate all kids. And so when I look at this work, You know, I look at the work you've done, you know, pick up, I recognize that we're seeing Somerville at its finest. This is, I'm going to be blunt, one of the few places where Somerville has actually walked its talk. And we should be proud of that even as we question all the places where we are more talk than action. and we do that because of you and I swear that as long as I have any say in the matter we will continue that work in honor of you.

I am going to make a quick comment myself. Regina, while I cannot be as Eligwin is my colleague member Green. You are my North Star. I often think of you as we are making complex decisions. I thank you. You are Role model is an understatement and we are so deeply deeply grateful for the commitment you've given. In the spirit of this actually being a presentation, my personal goal is to get the you know students in foster placements out of the city down even lower so I will be doing my own advocacy and encouraging my colleagues to Let's get more foster families. It is hard. It is meaningful. It is rewarding. So I just want to note that. And thank you.

Superintendent.

Regina, Ms. Bertoldo, I have seen the numbers of 92% of seniors that are here is real numbers, is that right? And we hear that. I've seen this and I've also seen the comments that have come from your voices as well as other people saying, yeah, oh, that kid when he was in elementary, my gosh, how difficult that child was. And then people realizing, wait a minute, These children have been in the foster home system. And Regina behind the scenes is like, yeah, I have carried them all in my back. and so on. Many lives have been touched. and realize names when teachers have said, oh my gosh, that child was in the, no way. Regina knew all along, so there is a silent super, super,

It is great to hear the testament of a real change that has happened across the years and across almost three decades. So thank you for your perseverance, your resilience, and all the gifts that you have given us. So with that, we want to recognize your amazing contribution.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Of course, I don't have my speech prepared. But the work is so rewarding and I never plan much. I think I have insights. I identify a need and try to work through it and have been really... I'm grateful and privileged to be in this community where the work is so well recognized. You trust me as a board, former superintendents, former supervisors, government supervisor. Trust the work and give me...

A free pass just to do the work that needs to be done in order to break down barriers For the students to access their education. This has been my line. Now that I went to school for that, it happened. So every path within the Somerville Public Schools was breaking down barriers. So minorities, vulnerable populations could have the same access as their peers, whether in housing, Whether it was through interpretation and translation, whether it was through a Roman, Where there was teaching childhood word classes in other languages. This is how I started in the 90s.

It's been always think about my experience as a new immigrant. Going through a path that it's easier for me but might not be to someone else and how we can Our success rate, we all can talk about all these families housed in Somerville, kids staying with their peers. Families working, it's meaningful work, but also we can see how much the community gains From having these families staying and continue to be part of this community, contributing and feeling that they also belong.

Thank you, thank you. Thank you.

You all can go home now.

That's the end of the report.

Oh great, so I get to keep talking. Okay, sure. All right, personnel report.

Yep, so including Regina's retirement, which was actually mentioned probably several months ago. We have some other retirements in May. Cheryl McGovern, Theresa Francis, Joan Driscoll Dwyer, Isabella, Justin, and Maura Godwin. So these are folks. with five to 20 years of service in our district. We also join new members to our community, Michelle Shannon, Director of Equity and Excellence, Emily Gorman, Director of Early Education and Care, Jennifer Ochoa, Jen Ochoa, welcome, Jen. Director of Basic Needs and Housing Support Services, also known as Mini-Me Regina.

Marguerite Pasquale will be the Director of Student Services, Jack Howery will be the Principal of the Next Wave Full Circle, and Christopher Bruno, Payroll Operations and Analytics Manager. It was really hard to get a good Payroll person, and finally we got one. So we're really excited about these new recruits. We also have some resignations. Obviously, Jack Haverty, that was the assistant at the... Okay, these are the big ones, sorry. John Haverty's name is Jack Haverty, but this is the real John Haverty. So with Somerville neighborhood, a special education teacher, and Kathleen Cosman, she is a special education resource teacher at the East Somerville. And that is that. We have just also two new hires, Elizabeth Wollum and Laurence Siva.

Both of them are new teachers who will be hired for long-term leaves. That is the extent of the personnel report.

All right. Welcome to our new members of the district. We are going to jump into reports from subcommittees. Is there anyone who has the agenda up and has a motion?

A motion to approve the meeting for educational programs on April 2nd. Motion to approve the meeting for rules management from May 2nd. 18th, 2026, and motion included is the meeting for finance and facilities of the whole for May 20th.

Madam Chair, could we take the third motion separately, please? I'll need to recuse myself from that one.

Got it. All right. So we got- First two. A, right, six, A and B. Second. Motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Lippens. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? I think I'm going to wait and have you recuse yourself if that's alright. Do we have MSBA updates? Anything at least pressing that we can't talk about next week?

There's not really any... I mean, there is a both... The report that is coming from MSBA that is going to inform the corrections that need to happen for the second round of the MSBA work should be coming before August. We haven't seen that yet. We have a celebration of a meeting too with the PTA in late June with the Brown PTA to talk about MSBA. and we also have a virtual meeting with a special ed neurodivergent families on June 26 although we're inviting every family who is interested in understanding what are some of the Ways in which the new building will facilitate the experiences of students. That should be it.

One thing I will note for my colleagues about the MSBA is we are definitely going to need two meetings in August. So if there is a chunk of August, probably mid-August Let's call it that you will be unavailable. Please do let me know. All right. On to new business. SCU Unit A? Yeah, I just want to double check, Lance. From 8, which one? It's 8E, right?

Budget item 8D.

8D. D. Got it. Okay. We're not talking about that today anyway. So we will be, 8D we'll discuss next week. All right. Sorry.

Member Pitone. Thank you. Sure. SCU Unit A accretion to authorize the chair to sign the 25-26 accretion of the OTs and the PTs MOA. That's to add them to the unit.

Motion by Member Pitone. Second. Seconded by Member Lippens. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Groovy. All right. Next one. SEU Union.

Madam Chair?

Yeah.

Just in case, for those of you who are still up, can you just remind people that we did in fact discuss these in the executive session. We're not voting on this on...

Yeah, sorry, the SEU accretion, these SEU letters were things that were discussed in depth in executive session. They were voted on and passed out of executive session. We are voting on them now in public session. Green, as well as F.

SCU Unit A, Appendix B and D to authorize the motion to authorize the chair to sign the 2025-2026 Appendix B and D MOA.

Second.

All right, I have a motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Green. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions?

All right. C? SEU Unit A side letter motion to authorize the chair to sign the SEU Unit A side letter 2025-2026 for the SEL specialist stipend MOA.

Second.

I have a motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Green. Any discussion? All those in favor, aye. All opposed, any abstentions? All right, I would like to jump to F. If you're willing to, Laura.

Non-union COLA increases. Motion to authorize the superintendent to apply a 3% increase over base salary for the non-union personnel and to authorize the superintendent to review and adjust salaries for select positions to address compression, equity and market issues within the FY27 proposed budget.

Second.

I have a motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Green. Any discussion? All those in favor, aye. All opposed, any abstentions? Okay, with that, I'm going to let President Davis Recuses himself. and we can quick go to 6C and then we can go to 8E. So once he's out of the room, Laura, if you're willing to. Go to jump back to 60.

Motion to accept the report for the Finance and Facilities Meeting of the Whole on May 20, 2026.

Second.

I have a motion by Member Pitone, seconded by Member Green. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? All right. On to 8E. Can someone make a motion?

Chair, I move to approve the FY27 budget for the amount of $123,100,000. I'm just gonna yeah I'm gonna look at the numbers and say it if my math brain works at 10 53 p.m. $123,101,384. Second. All right.

I have a motion by Member Biton, seconded by Member Green. Discussion? Member Biton.

So I just would like to provide a little context around this number. This number reflects and FTE full-time equivalent position increase of six educators in our district reflecting Consensus among the school committee for greater investments in the special education co-teaching pilot program that has seen tremendous success, and additional math and reading interventionists for those students with the highest needs.

This number is higher than the number proposed by the Mayor in his budget presentation to City Council that is with City Council for their approval. I am proud of the budget we put forward. I think it addresses the needs of the students that we have discussed for months. and I stand behind this request as being a pragmatic and reasoned and steady increase of support demonstrated by student need and backed by data presented to us through the district. So for that reason I'm really proud to put forward this budget.

Thank you. Member Green and then Member Lippens.

I want to echo. My colleagues' comments. As I have been saying throughout this process, there is nowhere that the city can invest money that is It has more impact on the most vulnerable residents of Somerville than investing in our schools. As Vice Chair Patone pointed out, we have been listening to families For months, talk about the need for more investments in budget education. And I mentioned earlier this meeting, this is the first year In 10 years where we didn't increase investments in positions around mental health supports for students and although I don't believe any of us believe that we are where we want to be on that point we recognize that in a tight budget year we had big priorities and the priorities of the community were clear about more investments in special education services.

I think there are members here who probably wish we could have done more. I think there are probably members who think we should have done more. But I think we did our jobs in trying to balance advocacy for the students and families of summer public schools with The recognition that as much as I wish there were otherwise, as I mentioned earlier tonight, we have decided to not invest adequate money in education. And I think this budget reflects our values and I hope reflects the values of Somerville.

Thank you. Member Lippens. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I feel very proud of the budget that is put forth. When you invest in schools and kids, you invest in community. And I look forward to seeing some of the data and looking at it more closely and thinking like, you know, we're investing in kids and I I anticipate that we're going to continue to make the moves in the right direction. So thank you.

Member Pitone. Thank you through the chair. I do want to acknowledge that I supported this budget. I also want to acknowledge that the mayor had partnered very strongly with the district putting forward A very strong budget so I don't want this situation to only be a negative casting of it because we were starting from a strong place and for myself I wish I could see that Inclusion Pilot continue to grow. That is incredibly disappointing to me. This work, there's so many other communities that are kind of on the leading edge of this and we are not. This is something that goes on in so many other districts with co-teaching, I'm thrilled that we're moving forward. We have been for the past few years, but this is something in particular for myself personally that I felt was disappointing. Thank you to the mayor.

Thank you to the superintendent and the team, our CFO for all the incredible work. And I wish we could have at a bare minimum added that. So thank you.

Member Eldridge. I wanted to echo my colleagues. I'm very proud of this budget, proud of this body. I want to point out that this request for more interventionists and expanding the The co-teaching pilot is directly supporting our historically marginalized students, our students that are struggling the absolute most at school. And by getting support in there early, we close intervention gaps and we change outcomes, we change behaviors, we change things that we see as our students get older. When we can address challenges early, These students trajectory is completely changed and I stand behind the proposed budget because I know it will go to supporting our most historically marginalized students that are struggling the most at school.

Thank you Chair, through you, and I appreciate the second bite of the apple here. I would just like to share with the public that and my colleagues that I did consult with our district council regarding Steele, Steele, Steele, Steele Navigating the very specific language of our charter. I want to be in a position next year where we are on a firmer Farmer Ground with respect to what the Charter says we are supposed to do and specifically that is and I'll just read from it.

It's section six four, submission of operating budget, budget message. So it says on or about May 30th of each year, the mayor shall Submit to the City Council a proposed operating budget for all City agencies for the next fiscal year. That's his or her responsibility. The proposed operating budget shall include the school budget as adopted by the school committee, which shall be submitted to the mayor on or about May 15th. Well, colleagues, we missed that mark. I think we are about three weeks later in the process than We have, I think, a very strong budget to support Our students the next year but I think there's many of us around this horseshoe that feel

With respect Mr. Mayor that the number that should have been in your presentation was the number that we have before us tonight. and I would like to be in a position next year where we are on firmer ground in saying that. So what I'm proposing to do We'll be to, as chair of rules in coordination with the chair of finance, Mr. Green, to look at a policy where we can deliver We want to move that budget on time to the Mayor's desk and make sure we are in a position to collaboratively move forward a budget Clearly stated in our brand new charter. So I'm committed to that effort if my colleagues will endorse that effort.

We'll go Mayor Wilson, then Member Green.

Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yeah, I appreciate Member Biton mentioning the timing there. I want to be clear, even though that budget was We had enough to go from the vote in subcommittee and that was included as part of the budget submission. ID number 260975 contained basically the same exact thing that was approved tonight.

May I respond? Sure, Mayor Rubito.

Thank you, Chair. Just quickly, and this is something I'm sure we can continue to debate, but the proposed operating budget does not include the school committee's Adopted Budget. So I think the language is clear and you know we can partner together hopefully next year to find a path forward.

Mayor Wilson? Chair, on that point, yeah, the language definitely is clear. It says that it is included, as are a number of other things, such as an explanation of how the budget differs substantially from previous ones. Included does not mean consist of.

Thank you.

Member Granger, do you have?

Yeah. So, on this case, I want to thank the mayor for his Thank you. Thank you. Frankly, ceremonial vote. It is long since been the purpose of this body that the final vote of the Committee of the Whole is binding. We hear that on May 20th, which is, I would say, close enough to the spirit of honor about May 15th as to be literally good enough for government work. I'm happy to work with the Rules Committee to do anything we can to put ourselves in a better negotiating position in future years and that includes

Calling on our colleagues and the City Council to, as they did last year, pass the 1985 override rule, which gives the final decision in case of dispute to the City Council.

Okay, with that I'm happy to take a roll call vote. We had a motion by member Biton, seconded by member Green to pass an FY27 budget in the amount of $123,101,384. Oh, Member Pitone?

Just quick. Through you. Yeah, sorry, through you. Members are not necessarily obligated to vote what they voted in finance, or are they obligated to vote the same way they voted in finance?

Yes, no one is obligated to vote the same way, but I figured a roll call vote.

I just want to make sure all the members knew.

Yep, thank you. Thank you. No one is required to vote how they voted, yes. With that... That is the motion. Superintendent, will you call the roll?

Yes. To the chair, President Davis. Member Biton?

Yes.

Member Lippens?

Yes.

Member Eldridge? Yes. Member Green? Yes. Dr. Stellman? Yes. Mayor Wilson? No. Member Biton? Yes. Dr. Ackman? Yes. So we have seven members yes, and so the vote passes.

All right, thank you. Has President Davis... All right, President Davis, if you're still here, you're welcome back. Props to you. All right, we are moving on to... 8G, Somerville Public Schools Policy Manual. First reading of, well, I'll just let Member Biton take this.

Thank you, Chair. There is a memo in your email about the interim district cell phone policy. It's 1107. I'm not going to say much more about this other than I encourage you all to read that memo. It identifies why we need to pass an interim policy. Cliff notes is it's going to be a state requirement and we want to be in the best position possible to meet that without having to call an emergency session. And this policy provides the support that our educators are looking for at all grade levels. That's it.

Two questions, hopefully quick. One is interim policy really codifies the status quo in all our schools, right? Can you repeat? I'm sorry. The interim policy codifies the current practices that are current at our schools, right? It doesn't change anything. Correct. Question two, I don't need an answer for this one now, but it is an answer I'm going to need both for a vote and more importantly when we come up with a permanent policy. All of these policies have exceptions for IEPs and 504s, etc. How do you do that in consistency with the rights of students to maintain privacy around those things? the superintendent yeah

all right so that's a question that you are putting what i hear is you are putting it uh to the district for our next our second reading Member Green? Yep, okay. I will call that a noted question. All right. Anything? Did you talk about the handbook or just a cell phone call?

I haven't spoken about the handbook. Let's do that. Principal Kirsten is still here.

Probst to you.

No. We did look in subcommittee at the proposed changes in the student handbook. and we approved them out of subcommittee. We felt they were appropriate. I believe they're also in the packet. along with the description of the changes so take a look at those.

Can I ask these are both of these policies I just want to be clear they're first reading tonight second reading in our meeting in a week in part because the goal is to have them passed in a week so that principal kirsten and her staff will have the summer to prepare to implement them for the fall i want to that is my understanding if someone's going to I just want to be very clear with the body about expectations around that. We are moving on to acceptance of grant funds.

Motion to accept all federal entitlement and continuation grants and all state continuation grants awarded to the Somerville Public Schools listed. Private, BU Consortium, SHS, Think, Pair, Share, Enhancing Engagement and Learning through Students Collaboration in Physics, $1,782.20. BU Consortium Raising Awareness Dyslexia Identification Intervention, $1,990.10. BU Consortium For the Winterhill Community Innovation School, Affirming Identities and Expanding Futures, $2,000. BU Consortium, West Somerville Neighborhood School, for the Music World Percussion in the Classroom, $2,000. Springboard Tutoring Partnership District-wide Desi Tutoring Partnership $18,480 Dorothy Lally Estate SHS Estate Trust $32,400 Philatelic Support Districtwide Professional Development, $13,700.

Second.

I have a motion by Member Lippens, seconded by Member Pitone. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Great donations.

Motion to approve a donation with gratitude of the following. Monetary, Joy and Castles, Somerville, Massachusetts. for the value of $9,552.31 going towards the CTE SHS Automotive.

Second. I have a motion by member Lippens. We're going to say a second by member Biton. Any discussion?

Real quick, I just want to thank the administration for including why we have such a specific number in the... in the grant because it just makes it easier and saves the question. So more of that, please. Thank you.

Okay. Do you have a question? OK. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? OK. We are on to upcoming meeting topics. So we have admin retirements, strategic plan update.

Member Pitone. Thank you to the chair, to the committee. A long-range planning there's a proposal that has been emailed to everyone it's a draft and I've already received some feedback and I'm in conversation the superintendent's office to make sure that this process He's not duplicative of the strategic planning process, which I hoped it wasn't. It was part of my headset putting it together with input from member Eldridge and the chair. I'm not going to get into it, but read the email. Read the document. Super excited for whatever feedback you have in our next meeting and just to know that we want to launch this work now. Some work happens over the summer so that we can have our goals established in the fall.

To be extra clear, not in time for it to start in the fall, but we're going to do more intensely the work in the fall.

I just defer to Dr. Carmona to talk about a draft of superintendent goals.

All right, so we'll note that there'll be some discussion of goals at the next meeting. There'll be a drafty draft, possibly. Do you have follow-up, or can I go to it?

I didn't know where we were on the superintendent goals, so this kind of puts us in a weird position, which is probably part of why your email came out that it did. So clearly there was a communication channel that wasn't going. and it's not a judgment because my communication channel wasn't going either so I had delayed the long-range planning because of all the things we already had on our agenda and wanting to let the new members kind of get their Feet wet and be ready to do the long range planning so we really should the three of us figure out with the chair figure out the timing of how this all can loop together because obviously strategic plan the long range goals and the superintendent goals should all be A marriage of some sort. And I know we can get there. Do you have a follow-up?

Just a parliamentary thing, can we make sure that email from Ms. Patel enters the packet so the public can access it?

Yes, I can be confident in that. Superintendent?

No, just quickly, I know that there's a question about the long-range planning. It's also a little, if you think about the strategic plan, that is also a long-range planning process. There is a lot of overlap there, so I just wanted to invite you to do, when you do this exercise, also look at the strategic plan that is a three-year to a five-year process.

I will say I was probably the lost link there, so I apologize and I will work on this.

You've had so little to do recently, I don't know why you could possibly drop anything.

Alright, we're going to move on to community or calendar items from committee members. Mayor Wilson.

Thanks, Chair. It was referenced earlier tonight, but I'm really looking forward to SCALE graduation Wednesday night, June 10th, 6 p.m. in the auditorium. It is a truly joyous event.

Couldn't agree more. All right. Member Biton, we have condolences?

None tonight.

We have no condolences. And with that, at 11.16, we are adjourned.

Thanks for watching!