School Building Facilities and Maintenance Committee

Hello everyone, this is the School Buildings, Facilities, and Maintenance Committee. It is March 23rd. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, the meeting of the City Council will be conducted by remote participation. We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible After the meeting of the City of Somerville on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. And with that... Madam Clerk, I'd ask for you to do roll call so we can establish form.

Absolutely. Councilor Scott.

Present.

Councilor Sait. Here. Chair Link. All right, with that, everyone is here, so we do have quorum.

All right, then we'll go into a brief recess to allow the school committee to establish quorum.

Thank you, Chair Link. Very excited to have this meeting today. It's 6.04 and I'll call the school committee's corresponding Subcommittee on School Building Facilities Maintenance to order an established quorum. I am here, Leron Biton for Ward 7. Liz Eldridge, are you here? Present. Great. Laura Pitone, are you here? I'm here. Excellent. With all members present, the school committee's subcommittee is now in session and we'll turn it back over to Chair Link.

Fantastic. And with that 30 second recess, we'll reestablish a forum.

All right. Deja vu. Councilor Scott.

Still here.

Councilor Sait. Here. Chair Link.

Here.

All right, with that, everyone has returned, so we do have quorum.

Fantastic. All right, so first, so we'll be taking things in kind of a reverse order, but to start with, let's just... Approve the minutes from the December 8th meeting for when it was a special committee. And seeing no objections, I'm going to lay that on the table for approval. So now we'll be working from the back to the front. So we're going to start with item 260267. which is a director the director of public space and urban forestry conveying information regarding the Kennedy inclusive schoolyard renovation and do we have someone to speak on that

Good evening, Mr. Chair, through you, Intergovernmental Affairs Director Najm Williams, to report on this item. As you're aware, Intergovernmental Affairs reached out to both the chairs of the school committee. as well as the council to let them know that the public space and urban forestry team was unable to attend this meeting tonight however the memo that is attached to the item is pretty comprehensive and goes over the engagement process to date. The public space and urban forestry team is looking forward to putting this project out to bid. So that construction can begin. If there are any questions from the committee, I'm happy to bring those back to the public space and urban forestry team as follow up.

Thank you very much. Do we have any questions? So, Councilor Sait?

Through you, Chair Link, no questions, but I just want to take a moment to thank the administration, the whole team, and the parents, and everyone who was involved in this process. This is in my ward. and I really appreciated all the meetings that were hosted so we can hear from the school community about this project. So much gratitude to everyone and excited about next steps.

Yeah, I'm very excited too. I think that school is especially important because it's where all of our Our, you know, programs, like the spring programs and all that are held. So school, citywide, it's a really important school to have this great stuff on. And seeing no further comments on my side, I'll leave it to you, Chair Biton.

Thank you, Chair Link. While I peruse the attendee list here to see if anyone else from the school committee side has any comments or questions, I just want to commend... Peace off for sorry public space and urban forestry for the tremendous outreach that they accomplished in coordination with Multiple interest groups and stakeholders. This schoolyard is a first of its kind in the city. It will be truly an inclusive space with a design meant to be used by every single student hopefully at the Kennedy School as well as neighbors and community members some of whom

require mobility assistance. And it's really fantastic to see The investment in spaces that are truly meant for the most... Not only the most vulnerable students in our community, but also those with the biggest barriers to access. So truly appreciate all of the work that went into it. and a term I learned for the first time probably about a year ago was nothing about us without us and the process by which Public Space and Urban Forestry went about by...

Coming to the table, listening to parents, students, educators to find out all of the needs before engaging in a... The Design Process and coming to conclusions. I understand that the final design really does reflect robust engagement. So I just wanna, I think it's worth underlining and I just wanna share with that appreciation. Okay, I'm going to get off my soapbox and I see member Eldridge has a comment or a question.

I just wanted to echo how fantastic it is that we are working on intentionally inclusive spaces. It's beautiful to see that work moving forward, had the opportunity to participate in the Special Education Parents Advisory Council and the Commission for Persons with Disabilities Roundtable, and pulling that together and really making a space to intentionally elevate the voices of our families that are navigating the need for an inclusive playground. is fantastic and I hope to see work like this just continue like this be the snowball effect of more and more work with collaboration because it was really truly beautiful. to see that and so again just wanted to also echo appreciation and real excitement for what's in store when it comes to intentionally inclusive spaces here in Somerville.

Thank you, Member Eldridge. Ms. Berry, if you could identify yourself for the city councilors who are new to this meeting.

Danielle Barry, Facility Safety and Transportation Coordinator for Somerville Public Schools Sait said, school committee member Biton and school committee member Eldridge said about how amazing the community engagement was. and how involved they incorporated student voice, families voices, Community Voice. It's been an amazing process and we're really excited to get the work going over the summertime.

So thank you. Not seeing any further comments on our side, we will turn the meeting back over to you, Chair Link.

All right. So I think we can mark this one as work complete. and move to the next item, which is 260266, the Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management conveying the Strategic Asset Management Plan Report.

Thank you, Chair Link. For your record, Richard Raich, Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management. This is a matter that's been of interest to both of these committees in the past, and in particular School committee member Biton has asked a lot of questions about our asset management program and how we assess risk and prioritize things. As I've told the committees before, asset management is a program that we've been working on for the past several years in earnest to really bring the City of Somerville, you know, into the 21st century and world class in terms of how we manage our assets, all of the assets, the roads, the sewer pipes, the water pipes in our school and municipal buildings. Because there's been interest, we did publish our strategic asset management plan report.

and I thought that this committee would like a copy of that. So I'm simply providing it as a, I guess not a courtesy, but just so that you have the document in your files. We are also progressing with the next stages of that, which is the implementation of the enterprise management software We selected OpenGov, and we are in the implementation phase with that software vendor. We've been meeting with... At this point, it's largely... The superintendents, like the building superintendent, water, sewer, as well as all the folks at 311 and constituent services to get that That program up and running, you know, essentially it will give all of our DPW water and sewer workers in the field will have iPads.

They'll get their work order assignments through that. They'll be able to access. Our databases so that they have access to all the information on the assets they need as they implement it. We're making some pretty good progress here and just wanted to share this as a document to show what we've been doing.

Thank you very much, Director Raish. I have a question, actually. So I was really glad to see this. Having selected OpenGov, is there going to be an opportunity to make a You were saying that you were starting with a kind of, it was going to be rolled out kind of internally as a platform. Is there going to be some sort of public facing dashboard for that so that people can see what's happening?

That's a good question, Chair. Yes, eventually, that is the goal. The early stages are more focused on the DPW and back of house side. But one of the reasons why... We chose OpenGov, frankly, as opposed to other vendors, is that their dashboard reporting is, Significantly more elegant and transparent than some of the other vendors. So it isn't going to be a thing that gets rolled out in 26. Maybe not even 27 or until 27, but that is what we're striving towards. At least in the interim, what our hope is that we go into budget season for next year, having already implemented this, The department heads like myself, like Commissioner Wiseman will have the benefit of those dashboards in our budgeting for next year.

Fantastic. I know that's been a long time request from you. Our residents here. I'll just ask one more question and then I'll see if other people would like to. But I was just curious where, so I know we've been It's been a long road in terms of just doing the actual inventory. So I'm just curious where, for the schools specifically, how well we've inventoried the schools at this point. Yeah.

In terms of all the mechanical equipment, that's come pretty far. It's not in a consumable sort of... Right now, it's really just like an access database, but OpenGov will consume that so that it will be a little bit more accessible. To everybody. But in terms of the inventory of all the mechanical equipment, the HVAC, right down to the pieces of all the equipment, we're in a pretty good position.

Fantastic, because yeah, I have to imagine that the move from trying to go from reactive to proactive really requires... That to be complete. And, you know, we see what happens with Winter Hill when we're falling back on that one. Okay. Let's see. Do any of the counselors have any questions or comments here? All right.

Sure. Sure. Yeah, I just want to thank Director Raish for the work on this. You know, and it's clear that this is the strategic level, which is getting your hands around the problem and getting the Getting your metrics in place. Now the detailed asset management plan, I know that's mentioned in here. Is that public already?

It should be, and I should know off the top of my head where it's posted, but I do not. Let me go searching for it and get you the link for that.

All right. Now it's just one of those things that I want to make sure that I'm... Up to date on so that when folks ask, hey, what the heck is going on with that building? I'll be able to answer. So appreciate it. Thank you, sir. I'm all set, Mr. Chair.

All right. I guess with that, Chair Biton, I'm not sure.

Yep. Thank you Chair Link. I will just start off by saying I did read all 45 pages of this earlier today and found it to be illuminating. I want to commend you, Mr. Raish, and your team for assembling this document. And actually for the honest and transparent assessment of where you're at, there was a... A diagram, probably some 20 pages in. Indicating sort of where we're at right now and where we want to be. Oh, no, it was maybe it felt like 20 pages, four pages in.

We're immature. Yes.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's not an indictment on, I think go one more, it was page... There it is. Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, here we are in the bullseye. We want to expand out. We want to be more mature in each of these areas. But we're moving forward. We're kind of at an awareness level. and uh boy we'd love to get to industry leader um but you know hey it's a process um and you can't know where you need to go until you assess where you're at so you know I thought this was actually a fantastic visual For us to sort of know our current status and know where we need to go.

and then the rest of the document sort of takes us through it all right here's where we're going to go in these different areas so really appreciated the clarity the transparency um and i am excited in seeing you know those those dashboards when we're able to sort of Get into it, you know, with a finer tooth comb. But that's going to come with that maturity. So anyway, just kudos. Appreciate all of this and look forward to seeing more. I don't see any hands from my colleagues, but I'll give it a moment. All right. Not seeing anything. I guess I'll turn it back to you, Chair Link.

Chair Pitone, this is Laura Pitone. I apologize. I'm on a phone, so it's a little harder to navigate. May I speak through you? Thank you. First of all, thank you for the report. I'm going to ask a really dumb question. Where was the report made available? I didn't see it in my email. I didn't see it posted on the thing. Maybe it came from direct duration. I just missed it. I apologize because I found four memos that we received.

I can only speak for the city side. It's attached to the city agenda. I don't know how they make their way to the...

No, I mean, obviously Mr. Chair Bitone had it, but I can't find it.

So I just can't comment on it. It should be in the drive.

Oh, it's on the drive.

Yeah.

So now we're starting to put things on the drive because before we were just putting them in email. So, okay. Apologies for that. No, no, that's great. I'm thrilled that it's on the drive. I just didn't know to look there. So all I have to say is... I'm excited to see it. I'm sure if it's tracking in the direction of all the work the city has been doing over the last several years to enhance the asset management work, I'm sure it's fantastic, but I can't comment on it, so I'm going to have to defer. My feedback if there is any which it sounds like there won't be but I haven't read it so I apologize and that I missed where this stuff was located.

All right. And member Pitone, I can also track through my email. I had thought I sent this out. I intended to.

You may have. I might have missed it. I saw an email with four memos on it.

No worries. We can.

I didn't know we were managing stuff in the drive. again for this meeting because we used to not so it's great I'm thrilled so all I'm saying is that I don't know if people are willing to leave it open for another meeting I don't know what I'm gonna I just would like to read it so that's all because I'm

Well, so Chair Link, if you're willing to keep this open, I'm happy to keep it open as well. Sure. That is not a problem. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And back to you, Chair Link.

Thank you. So we'll, sorry, so what is the, what would be the official designation on this again?

So we would keep this in committee.

Just keep it in committee. Okay. So we'll just mark that as being kept in committee.

Also, if I may just briefly, the item is attached... The document is attached to the actual item. So if you go here, it's not up here where the attachments are. If you click on this over here, that is how I was able to pull it up on our side.

that's helpful to know where everything can be found because I knew about the meeting minutes in the one I mean the meeting information in one place I didn't know you had items attached to individual things so thank you yes it occasionally gets a little misplaced so yes Not a problem. As long as I know all the places, I'm all set.

All right. Then with that, we'll move to item 260241. which is a resolution that the administration provide the Committee on School Building Facilities and Maintenance with regular updates on the Massachusetts School Building Authority process for the Winterhill and Brown schools.

Thank you. Again, for your record, Richard Race, Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management. We continue to move along through the MSBA feasibility phase. We've had a lot of interaction recently with the school committee. Our next submission to the MSBA is what's called the Preliminary Design Program or the PDP. And there are two aspects of that submission in particular that have a lot of implication for the education portion of the building project. and so the while not a requirement of the MSBA process we did elect to review those portions with With the school committee, partially at the assistance of Mayor Wilson, with the concurrence of Chair Ackman.

And those two components are the educational program, which was largely directed by and authored by The school administration, Dr. Carmona's team with the assistance of our consultants but it was very much driven by the educational vision of Dr. Carmona and his team. and then more from the consulting side, what's called the space plan. So basically mapping that educational plan along with the student enrollment counts that the MSBA gave us to space, numbers of classrooms and square footage. So those two documents were, or components were reviewed with the school committee. School committee voted to authorize Chair Ackman to sign off on those, but was seven, 4 and 2 against.

So Emily is allowed to sign off on that. The school building committee will be holding a vote on that as well prior to the submission of and that'll go into MSBA. The preliminary design program also has sort of massings of the building for those two different enrollments. with a few different configurations that the architects are coming up with. One of the primary drivers that we gave them and was part of Perkins Eastman's selection is the sort of passive house, green building, our energy standards. And so the layout of the building on the site has a lot to do with sort of passive solar gain. And so those are the things that we're sort of reviewing in terms of the massing.

So that's where we are right now. Once this goes in, That gets reviewed and then the next major milestone and the next milestone is very important. To make it onto the MSBA board schedule, we have to submit by August the preferred schematic report, the PSR. And that's where we really narrow it down to one option, one enrollment number, one layout, and a lot of detail on how the educational services are provided in that building. So that'll be the next major milestone after this one.

Thank you very much, Dr. Aish. That was a really great update. So just so that I'm clear on this, so that means that we're At this point we're starting to kind of figure out how, I know in the last public meeting it was kind of a more just concept of these are the potential massings and like orientations of the building itself. or design of the building itself on a very large scale. Does this mean we're actually getting more fine-grained or we're now figuring out what the programming space would look like?

To the chair, yeah. Really, the content... of this submission that goes into the MSBA right now is largely what you saw at that last public meeting. It's really the compilation of those. There has been some Thank you very much. on the preferred alternative.

Understood. And at that time, so we'll have, because there was three or four designs?

Maybe four? Well, technically, there's six.

Okay.

MSBA requires us to also evaluate just a repair and code update. which will not serve our purposes at all but for whatever reason we have to document that and cost it out as a base case but it will not serve our needs. We also have to do a renovation plus addition option, which we also know will not meet our needs, but it is a requirement. So we're carrying two other options together. By rote, but they're not really under serious consideration.

This is just for my own edification. Does the MSPCA understand that those two options, while required, are not feasible? Yes, but we have to go through the process. Yeah, I figured. I understand. Okay, great. Thank you. Any other? Nope. So not seeing any other hands from the City Council. I'll give it to you Chair Biton.

Thank you Chair Link. Director Raish, thanks so much for this update. I have one late-breaking addition to provide, which is... from member Green who serves on the school building committee that the school building committee just voted right before this meeting began 10 to 2 to submit only the 925 seat proposals to the MSBA. So that is hot off the presses. Was there anything else I wanted to ask about this? I got so excited to announce that.

Just a point of clarification on the vote. That is our indication of the preferred alternative. The submission still has to contain all of them, including the 690. Enrollment Options, but the School Building Committee is indicating a preference for the 690, which may still come back. The MSBA may still tell us continue to explore the other options. But there was the... The preponderance of the committee wanted to give direction to Perkins Eastman to focus their efforts and not dilute their efforts. So that was sort of the reasoning behind that. And also to provide clarity to the community who want to have a clear indication of the directionality of the evaluation.

Thank you for that clarification. Appreciate it. I did want to just provide a brief addendum to... This topic unrelated to the current status, which was going way back in time to 2023 when we were first accepted into this process with MSBA. Mr. Raish, I had requested maybe a month or two ago those initiating documents where MSBA invited us into the process and you you went through your email and dug up those files and posted them on the public website so I just wanted to thank you for doing that and just For the public record here, note that those documents are now available and I believe actually attached to this item in this meeting.

So in case anyone's wondering what that item is and why it's there, it's because We asked and Mr. Raich delivered. So thank you for that. Are there any other questions or comments on school committee side? Seeing none, Chair Link, we'll go back to you.

Thank you very much, Chair Biton. We are on item, oh, sorry, so we will mark that work complete.

If I may, Chair Link, I think this one we want to keep in committee. Yeah, I just realized that's how I was doing it. Sorry. We're going to keep this one in committee.

My apologies. Alright, so moving on to item 26-0134. that the Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management and the Director of the Office of Sustainability and the Environment provide a written report to this Council on updates to measures and practices taken to assess, monitor, maintain, and improve the physical environment in schools.

and Chair Link, if I may just mention, I neglected to include this on the school committee's corresponding agenda, so we will not participate in this conversation. However, The memo that was attached to this document was received by the school committee back in January. So we are well versed on this topic and it should be fine on this. So go ahead. Wonderful.

Yeah, to the chair. You know, much of what we've just been talking about, you know, the asset management plan and all that sort of are strategic. Um, where we go about this, what we provided here for an update for this particular item is what we accomplished last year. And I should, you know, point out that this Aboff, Ackman, Biton, Brockelman, Carmona, Strezo, Wheeler, Wilson, Zaremba, Scott, Stellman consistent with the agreement with the SEU and this is what was accomplished within the past year it's the joint and contributions of IAM, OSC, which is the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and of course DPW. So just to update the committees on what has been accomplished in the past year, we provided that.

wonderful director thank you um I'm I'm curious so I thinking about this I'm I was um recalling a An email that we received that I was made aware of this morning about the Edgerly School and the The gym for the HVAC that there's maybe not climate control there. So maybe taking this as a bending this one a little bit, but, you know, I'm curious, is there an Any updates there in terms of when they're going to have climate control at the elderly school in the gym?

To the chair, we meet regularly with SPS and prioritize what our summer projects are. And for this year, the summer project to be prioritized is HEALY 208. So that's what we're... And last summer, it was the infill classroom at the Argenziano. I... suspect that our priority project for next year uh will be the the edgerly um Air Conditioning. However, while I think we will likely launch that effort as soon as we finish Healy 208, it will require an upgrade in the Transformer Eversource Energy

For next summer, it is possible that it won't be complete next summer because of that. The lead times on those things are variable. I don't want to be too pessimistic and say that it's impossible, but I do want to be realistic on when we'll be able to deliver that. Understood. Thank you very much.

Councilor Sait?

uh through you uh chair link uh to director rage uh so first my question about this document is so is this uh the format that was I see like these three bullet points, right? So is this how the city provides... This is like how... Every six months there will be updates on these three different things.

That's correct. Yeah, this is in response to the SEU contract. And it laid out the sort of three topic points that we update semi-annually.

Yeah, the reason I'm asking is because the item I put in is mostly around like updates like around school decarbonization and this one has like more than that. right okay because some of the things uh and this my next question is I see boilers replacement uh these boilers are gas powered right I think it was. Okay. Because, yeah, okay. Because, you know, seeing that... On a report that should be about school decarbonization is not great. We don't want to give the impression that building new fossil fuel infrastructure is...

is how we are going to achieve school building decarbonization so just to be clear this one is a copy of The update to the SEU, not necessarily a direct response to the item we put in.

Through the chair, that's correct. But it was a responsive document. In the interest of time, we turn this over rather than create a new document. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, just because we're discussing that item. Okay, yeah, thank you for this clarification. Yeah, I just want to say, I just want to thank you and everyone who is working on this, the administration. City Staff, everyone in the school community. As you all know, this is an effort that has started years ago between Parents, educators, students, so it's great that we're seeing these updates, that we know we're working on these things, even in these times when... It feels like achieving school decarbonization is impossible.

Thank you for watching! and I will add that This is an important goal that we have as a district, as a city. That would be great to have this not just like in one report, but somehow a way of tracking these things. In like two and a half, two categories, there are the short-term goals and the long-term goals. So that, you know, when we look at the short term, you feel like, yes, we are achieving. We are doing things right now.

and also we making sure that we are we always keeping in mind our long-term goals so um yeah so I think this is how that's why I asked about like the format and again I understand this is just an update for the SEU um but my request is that we'll have something like that where every time we complete something we add it. We have been asking about this for a few years now. I think the school community would like to have something like that. especially that this is we know that this is one of our top priorities and we are doing the work to get there So they can make this request separately, but I know we haven't asked for like a specific format for this update, but we can work on that.

I will say, thank you, Councilor Sait, I believe, yeah, I agree with everything that you said there. And I, you know, I was really... with the project to decarbonize the parking building over in I was really excited to see that. I think that's a model where we're seeing that yeah we can do these things and actually you know while is money up front um it does actually return the investment um where this very quickly the the solar array that's going to be put on there is going to pay for both itself and Other projects that are, you know, there was deferred maintenance. So I believe that, you know, we've got this like really wonderful kind of model of how we can do this.

And I believe Director Nooter is also on... you know feels the same so yeah I'm really excited about that um okay Seeing no further discussion. Charlie? Yes.

May I ask another question through you?

Of course. Yes, sorry. I'm going to ask you.

Through your chair, Link, to Director Rage, I want to ask if there is any update about the power brush or the broom sweepers to remove snow? on rubberized playgrounds. Do you have any? Have we looked into that?

Chair Link, if I may, I submitted a separate item on this through President Davis. My hope is that this will be on the agenda next meeting.

All right. Yeah. Can't say this was I believe this is your order. So what would how would you like it disposed?

I think we can mark it as work completed. I do not expect a different update but as I said we'll work together on figuring it out. would be the best way of... Communicating these updates and also keeping track of them and make sure they live somewhere. But for now we're completed. Sounds good to me.

Great. All right. Thank you very much. So with that marked as we're complete, we'll move on to item 26-0109. that the Commissioner of Public Works provide a written update to this council and the school committee on the status of restoring hot water to all areas of the Capuano Early Education Center including areas of including which areas are affected, actions taken, and an estimate and timeline for full restoration, which I believe is fully restored at this point, but I'll I'll leave that to, I think I saw interim director,

Hi, Eric Wiseman, Commissioner of DPW. Yeah, so thank you for your patience on this item. We have restored hot water to all areas of the school. It was... Something of a whack-a-mole type issue where we thought we'd identified the issue, made a repair or replacement. and then just sort of worked our way through the system until it was fully resolved so the attached memo I think goes through all of the steps we took But hot water is restored and again, I appreciate your patience on this. This was very important to me to get completed.

Am I correct when I was reading this? So there's that on page one, that second to last bullet item there. 15 crossed hot and cold water lines. Am I reading that correctly? And that means that they were literally like...

Mr. Chair, I do have Matt Bennett, the building superintendent, who can explain better than I can the actual physical crossing that happens there. My sense is that there was an inefficiency with how the building was plumbed at the beginning that caused a lot of loss of heat.

Wow.

He can jump in if he has anything to add on that.

Through the chair, Matthew Mendes, superintendent of the building, this DPW. You're somewhat correct in your ascertain of what is the issue was initially what we found is during the I believe it was 1999 renovation some along the lines hot and cold water lines actually were mixing with each other creating the inability for the building to maintain hot water throughout So learning the history in the past year or so, apparently it's been an ongoing problem, but as the food service department ramped up each year, it would drain away from the domestic hot water. So... Like Eric said, the whack-a-mole theory was how we were going about trying to resolve... The least evasive and the least expensive over the course of time.

And the mixing valves seem to solve the problems in the majority of the buildings, specifically the main area affected initially reported. But then it just started to matriculate down the building and a problem in each section of the wing. As you see, we changed 12 mixing valves, a balancing valve. We actually found one tempering valve by utilizing the knowledge of... Stuart McKenzie, who is now a plumbing inspector who worked for DPW for a multitude of years, realized that they were there with a little bit of research working and departmentally in between. And we shut it down and voila, we had the one last remaining room. So it was frustrating to say, at least on all of our parts, but trial and error, we'll get you there. We don't give up.

Yeah, I will say it's evident from this that it was not something where anyone was twiddling their thumbs. There's a lot of work that is very clearly documented here. I really appreciate that. And I'm sure that The people that were really pushing for this also appreciated being able to see how much work went into this. So thank you very much, Chair Biton. Do you have, I see no, oh, sorry, Councilor Scott.

Thank you Mr. Chair. I just want to say thanks for this memo this is a really good capturing of this. It can be a little hard to parse if you're not a plumber. I'm not a plumber. I know my limitations. I can't sweat a copper pipe. But I do know that one of the most frustrating things in the world as a plumber is working on somebody else's plumbing. So, you know, just couldn't say enough about how great it is that all this really detective work and recognizing that all this detective work happens behind the balls and in the ceiling. And it's a lot to track down. So I really appreciate the work here. I appreciate the summary here. probably know just enough about plumbing to waste all of our time 45 minutes asking detailed questions about what happened but I'm gonna spare everybody on that and just uh Say thank you again to Mr. Bennett and maybe I'll buy you a cup of coffee sometime and pick your brain and buy it. All right.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. So seeing no further discussion, I'll turn it over to Chair Biton.

Thank you, Chair Link. I'll pause for a moment to see if there's any questions on the school committee side. Great. Ms. Berry?

Hi. Through you, Chair, I do not have a question, but the school department wants to send their greatest appreciation to Commissioner Weissman and Superintendent Bennett for all their hard work in getting the hot water restored back at the Capuano School. We really appreciate it. And I will say that I truly appreciate all the communication that... Superintendent Bennett had provided to the school department through this whole process. Step by step, we were in constant communication. So I really do appreciate that. So thank you.

All right, I'll second that. I do have one question, which is if... Teachers or students are finding that the water... Is tepid or not coming up at the expected warmth? What is the course of action? Is it a three-on-one request through the front office? Is it... I see Ms. Berry nodding her head there, but just wondering, you know, if something, you know, if there's any more detective work to do here, what the next step is?

So yes, Mr. Chair, that is the best way to get this documented and get it in our hands. Thank you so much for joining us. A risk or something like that, I'd be happy to receive a separate communication on it as well.

Fantastic. Thank you, Commissioner. And I'll say that was my hope, was what you were going to say. I do get messages a fair bit of the time about different facilities issues. My number one is always, you know, please make sure it gets reported to 311. So, thanks for reinforcing that. I'm not seeing any other questions on the school committee side so we will turn it back over to you Chair Link.

Thank you very much. All right, so we can mark this one as we're complete and move on to the next item, 260107. The Commissioner of Public Works update this council on the maintenance issues at East Somerville, Capuano, and Edgerly schools.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think in the same memo there's a responsive mini memo on this specifically the work we've done over the past Fiscal year as well as some planned work that we have coming up. And I think it's worth mentioning that some of the The language or the work captured in the Capuano hot water memo is also captured in this memo, so we didn't replace two hot water heaters. It's all just the one.

Thank you very much. I don't think that I've got anything to add. I'm seeing nothing on the City Council side. I'll turn it over to you, Chair.

Thank you, Chair Link. This is one where you guys had a little conversation and brought up the edgerly... Transformer issue and power supply to air handling. I'm going to stretch this item as well to bring that in so we can have a little bite at the apple. Just for awareness and apologies to my colleagues for not having Put that on the agenda for our meeting. If this is something you'd like to speak on now, maybe a time as well. and just also for awareness I did put this on through President Davis in the hopes that this will make our April agenda as well. But I did notice that for upcoming projects we don't have the anticipated project to

Address the heat and air handling at the cafeteria and gym at the Edgerly. There is a known issue with the transformer there, so... I'm not sure if perhaps this is where we draw the line between infrastructure and asset management and DPW, and that's why it's not on this particular list. So I guess whoever wants to take that can.

So yeah, yes, I will say that this is sort of the line of like a capital project versus a public works project. I will say that we are We recognize this is a priority for the school department, so we are working on a potential temporary measure, but not ready for detailed discussion at this point. More to come. Hopefully.

Excellent. And I guess fair warning that it'll be on the agenda hopefully in April. So maybe we can have that conversation then.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We should have clarity by that.

Amazing. Perfect. All right. Thank you so much. Anything else from school committee? Oh, Ms. Berry, go ahead.

Thank you through you, Chair. I just want to add that I've been in contact with... ISD and we are going to have spring school building walkthroughs. I know that McLaughlin I believe addressed the rodent issue in some of these buildings on the east side of the city. So we are definitely going to be moving forward with having additional school building walkthroughs with ISD and DPW so we can report back on that as well thank you

Thank you, Ms. Berry. All right, seeing no other discussion, Chair Link, we'll turn it back to the City Council.

Thank you very much, Chairman Jones. This brings us to the last, oh wait, sorry, so we'll mark that as work complete. Blue, and... Then that'll bring us to the last item on this agenda, which is 26-0102, that the Commissioner of Public Works provide the City Council a full-time equivalent analysis and recommendations for custodial staffing at each Somerville public school, including distinctions between day versus evening shifts, disparities between school sizes, usage and current custodial assignments. Director Weissman.

Thank you, Chair. I added, there's a separate memo on this if you want to bring that up, please. So thank you again. If you scroll down, I started with a breakdown of the schools that we staff custodians for as well as floaters. and attached enrollment and area data provided by the school department. So this just gives you a sense of what the world we're talking about here. You move along. I then broke it down by square footage per custodian and students per custodian at each of the schools that we staff.

So and I put a like a median line on there to give you a sense of like which schools custodians serve more than the median in terms of square footage and which which serve more. Less than the median in terms of square footage and the same for students per custodian. So what you can see here is that the brown has the most area and student per or Custodian um I've got to question some of the math here on that brown square footage per custodian. I need to dig into that a little bit now that I'm looking at it. I think maybe something got duplicated there but yeah you can see in terms of yeah I'll have to look at that

But in terms of custodians, I think we're right on students per custodian. The Brown has the most students per custodians, followed by the East. And then in terms of the square footage per custodian, the highest are East, Kennedy, and Argenziano. I'll have to, I think there might just be an extra digit in there somewhere.

Thank you. Missioner, Weisman. I guess my question would just be the, you know, we feel that the, it seems like the feeling is that we've got enough custodians But I guess kind of going back to what Ms. Berry was mentioning, we do have kind of a rodent issue in some of the schools especially in or one of some like the older building of elderly and then the you know the east which is our largest school so And I'd heard it from a parent that, and I, so this is, I can't speak to whether or not, you know, this is heard. Third Hand at this point. But, you know, that had been suggested that like the rodent problem was just that like the kids were messy.

So I just want to make sure we're not resting on that as an idea because, you know, we're at schools where there's you know there's children as young as four um and you know i wouldn't want to see I was blaming the kids like we know what the assignment is the assignment is that we've got you know small kids who are going to be messy we can't ask a four-year-old to be less messy really so you know I just want to make sure we're taking the Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Absolutely agree with you 100%. I think that that is the benefit of the floaters is it allows us to shift staff around as necessary, respond to messes. So as we identify needs in the school, we'll assign a floater as needed and direct them to help support the cleaning in the schools.

All right. Chair Sait. Chair Sait. Councilor Sait.

Through your chair, Link, to Commissioner Wiseman, thank you for providing us with this. Yeah, I see that for East, looking at East here, for the day custodian, are there only one custodian? So these are requests from an e-spare after talking to staff. I imagine that... Staff they need help with, especially after lunch, is when... They need additional custodians. Is there, can we like investigate and see if this is the case so that because evening custodians started three. Is that correct?

If there's any way we can have someone start earlier or help since this is a need that was identified, so specifically helping after lunch.

So through the chair, yeah, this is exactly how we would use a floater and then direct them. It gets complicated when there's staff out and we have to cover shifts, but... But yes, I acknowledge what you're saying that that post-launch period is a time that needs a lot of cleanup.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner, for going into this. Scott.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess the thing that really jumped out to me about this is not so much the total area, Kennedy's got a lot of area in the pool, but just the sheer number of students at Kennedy. the East Somerville and having that that balanced I see the balance distribution here I appreciate the floaters are a valuable valuable resource but they're a valuable resource in demand all kinds of places and Um... you know looking around this joint committee I see a whole lot of people with kids uh and it might you know maybe my kids are unique uh but good lord uh they make messes all the time and it is unpredictable both the Timing, location, and scale of any particular disaster. I found myself a few years back.

Wondering if I was just bad with toilets because I realized I was having a toilet break on me about once a month and it was only later that I realized that I was responsible at that point in my life for something like that. Over a dozen toilets. When you got 738 of these kids, there's just going to be more incidents, no matter how much they're trying to keep it together. So just given that, I keep coming back to The staffing on this on a per student basis. It's, you know, nothing about the facility or suitability of the facility, but just The fact that there are that many opportunities for an incident or an event makes it a basic certainty that there is going to be, and then God forbid, there are two critical events happening at the same time.

you know I know that's when a floater gets called in but at some point when you've been managing emergencies for as long as as one hard-working custodian on the day shift has been your scale of what constitutes an emergency starts to Distort a little bit so uh I'm I'm curious you know with With these day custodian floaters, do we have a sense of how much time they spend at each facility? How much time is spent moving from facility to facility for these floaters? Do they have a default home base that they start the day at? So I guess I'm asking operationally about this because maybe the answer isn't we need a dedicated... extra custodian there at the at the east maybe the answer is well we've got it we're doing some operational changes to make sure you've got more resources available there on the default like maybe Maybe there's room at the east that can be the floaters' home base. I don't know.

But, Mr. Chair, I threw you. That's the question I'm trying to get out of here is understanding that floating resource piece of it.

So thank you, Mr. Chair. I got to admit, I lost you a little bit on the toilet metaphor, but the... In terms of the floaters, they start centrally and then they're sort of assigned to cover shortages. And those can be staffing shortages or operational shortages. They typically stay in a building for their entire shift. But occasionally we use floaters to make deliveries of materials or work on special projects. So that's generally how the operational... I think when you talk about the enrollment numbers and the number of... uh students at the east one thing stands out to me is that the Capuano school has significantly fewer custodian students for the number of custodians they have so maybe we could look at shifting a student from the Capuano uh to the East Somerville School.

But sort of on the flip side of that, I think the Capuano population has additional needs because they're younger students. So it's possible that they'd be more messy. Just trying to think creatively about this.

Yeah, I mean, Mr. Chair, if I could, you know, it's not, look, I'm not certainly not looking to take Capuano as only daytime custodian.

No, I wouldn't suggest that. I was looking more at the night. I apologize.

And, you know, the night is a time where things can be a lot more flexible, right? That is, I think, an easier situation to manage than, let's say, the real time. Man, you want to talk about something to make a good reality TV show, a ride-along with the East Somerville Custodian for a week of their shift would probably make for some gripping view. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way other than just saying we need to push for another full-time day custodian at the East Somerville. if there is an operational way. And I understand having the floaters cover folks who are out for a day. It is absolutely great that we've got that floating resource. I'm sure it also helps with the overtime costs Maybe the fire department would like a word about how to staff like that to work on overtime costs.

But yeah, I really want to focus this piece of the conversation on the daytime at East Somerville.

Yeah, so... At this time, I don't feel that we should add an additional custodian. We're not to that point yet. I certainly wouldn't turn down an additional custodian, but... I think that, you know, we've arrived at this staffing. It's certainly something we could look at in the future, but yeah, I'm not ready to request an additional custodian at this point.

All right. Well, I think I got my answer, Mr. Chair. I think I'm all set. Appreciate it. Thank you.

So, actually, Councilor Sait, I'll let you talk.

um through your chair um how do I how do I say this I think if we are hearing from parents that after lunch is when there is a need for an additional person then my request is at least to investigate this to be there with the custodian for a week and see how is it going and especially after lunch like does East need A floater on a daily basis after lunch. I know there are days when there's early release and... There are days where the lunch is easy. They plan all their meals. I don't know how it is anymore about when it used to be in the schools. Friday was more like pizza. Kind of straightforward thing.

So my request is can we please investigate this and if there is a need during lunch shortly after lunch at East then we assign someone to be there or have a floater I understand that Right now we're not ready to make a commitment to add a custodian, but I would like to hear that we're going to look into this, investigate, and take action.

Through the Chair, I don't have the exact numbers, but we've added a number of additional floaters over the past few years in the budget. I'm sure Councilor Scott recalls that. This is something that we certainly have done in the past. I think when... For example, when the edgerly opened up, we added a temporary custodian for that. So it is something we do, but we don't take it lightly. It's a very serious thing to add a new position. So yeah, I'm happy to entertain the possibility, but it's not something that we're in a position to ask for at this point.

Thank you Commissioner again for looking into this and where budget season is starting and if we identify a real need here it is our role as City Council as a school committee to make sure we meet the needs so if East needs that This is a call to my colleagues here on both bodies to do what we can do actually in this case. Thank you.

Sure. Through the chair, if I may, the other thing we can look at is whether that we can have a staggered schedule or something like that to have sort of overlapping coverage so that the Day Custodian has more support shifting somebody to cover both shifts in some way. I imagine that that would have collective bargaining implications, but that's not a reason not to explore it.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was just going to say thank you. I appreciate you looking into solutions here. But I think what we're hearing, what's pretty clear is that there is a need. Thank you.

Thank you. So I guess my only question is to follow up and maybe pull on some of the strings that people have been asking about. So we've got four floaters. Do the floaters have like a kind of a home base that they start from, Commissioner Wiseman?

Through the chair, I know the answer for the night floaters better that they report centrally and go out centrally. and I believe that you know like if they have a pre-existing assignment they'll go directly to their assignment um but um Yeah, they'll typically like work with the custodial supervisors and go to their assignments from there.

So potentially we could just... I suppose that I know better than anyone else. But I mean, I wonder if there's the possibility of having kind of a default where like one floater always starts at... um you know at the east and then moves on if they need to they're kind of semi-dedicated if you would um great uh and i i've also I've got our mayor mentioning some news to me that I guess, so Mayor Wilson's about to send out an announcement that Thank you, Mr. Chair.

What a way to find out.

That is awesome. Well, yes, so I know that Mary Wilson has spoken very highly of you both in public and in private so I'm sure that you're going to continue doing an awesome job, you know. Great.

And with that, Chair Biton's

Thank you, Chair Link. I want to also share my congratulations, Commissioner Wiseman. Thank you. And I'm looking forward to continued work together. I'll pause a moment. Are there any questions about the custodial staffing issue from my colleagues? Member Eldridge, go ahead.

Thank you. Congratulations. And nice to meet you all on the same breath there.

Nice to meet you as well.

I'm hoping maybe you could provide some context or maybe someone else here might be able to or we can get some information and bring it back. We've been talking a bit about this on the school committee end of things. There's going to be a transition of a strand of the AIM program. Our students that are navigating autism from Winter Hill to the Argenziano School. With that, there's been a lot of thoughtful work to support educators, administrators, and students. I'm curious whether there's also plans or resources in place to support our custodial staff in that transition. particularly given the specific needs of the new student population coming into that building but also thinking a little bit more broadly I'm wondering about the full student experience in a building and how we're supporting all adults that interact with students day-to-day including custodial staff if there's any structures trainings or resources in place to help guide interactions and support our custodians as they're working within the schools

Thank you for your question. So through you, Chair. So this is somewhat new information about the shift of this strand to the Argenziano. It's been something we've been discussing internally from a facility standpoint like a facility management standpoint it's not something that's come up from a custodial standpoint this came to my My attention very recently. So. In terms of supporting our custodial staff, if there are recommended trainings, we would be happy to provide those. Most of our trainings tend to be about Safety, Worker Injury, things like that, or technical trainings about materials or... Equipment.

It's not something that we've conducted in-house, but if there is guidance on that kind of thing, I would be happy to facilitate that with my team.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Excellent question, Member Eldridge. Anything more? Alright, so I have two questions and I will just start with one and we'll see if there's any other questions for my colleagues. First off, just really appreciated the data. I love, I couldn't help myself. I threw all of it into a spreadsheet and I can confirm that the Brown School area um calculation was incorrect but um uh you know it it's actually exceedingly distracting to me Oh no, me too. It's okay. But it's much more in line with the other schools. It does have the higher students per custodian count. But in doing that, I actually found also that...

You know, confirm some of what you concluded. That the students per custodian and the area per custodian is sort of an outlier at East. and I trust your judgment and conclusion that this is your department At the end of the memo, when you conclude that at this time you don't feel you need any staffing changes, far be it from me to second guess your... Your own determination there. But that does suggest that area and student per custodians is not a meaningful measure for assessing workload for the custodians. and I don't know what would be a meaningful measure to assess that but it seems that in this instance it may not be so my question to you commissioner is

what might be a more meaningful measure that we could look at because we are getting these questions about you know hey why does a school with almost 800 students have the same number of daytime custodians as a School with 230 students. It's a reasonable question.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think you're absolutely right. I love looking at data and these things stood out to me part of the reason that I've hesitated to suggest a staffing change is that we've had A lot of turnover in our custodial staff over the years. We're working on having a fully staffed custodial department for the first time in a while. I'd like to see how we do with a fully staffed. uh custodial team um at I'm not saying that there is no room to shuffle staff around. I'm saying that at this point, I'm not advocating for a new employee. But yeah, I think that one of the things that we're in active negotiations with Local 3.

So we are talking about ways to be a little bit more flexible in terms of staffing all of these are assigned custodians it would be nice to have Different opportunities to shift people around as needed. Don't want to talk too much about active negotiations, but... I think it's absolutely something that we could look at being more creative about. I also feel that enrollment is dynamic. So... Yeah, it may be. I'm not going to say it's not the best measure, but it's not the only measure. I hate to say that we're doing something because of the way it's always done, but I do feel like

It's worth, you know, understanding the situation before you go around changing things. Yeah, so... Happy to look at the East in particular and see what our options are and see if there's ways that we can correct that anomaly there.

Well said, Commissioner, and appreciate that humbleness about approach. We certainly don't want to go in to a situation and sort of upset the apple cart and create more problems while we're Working okay, but might need some tweaks. So anyway, appreciate that. My second question is about the high school. I was surprised to see in this memo that... uh we subcontract out uh or we contract out custodians at the high school um i know We need custodians every day at the high school. So this surprised me a little bit. Is there a... a plan to transition off of contractors at some point or you know what what is the reasoning for for that um i imagine more expensive so

Thank you Mr. Chair. It was before my time so I'm not 100% certain about the reasoning but I suspect with the building as large as the high school that the thinking was that By contracting out, you insulate the city from... Responsibility to cover missed shifts and things like that. When you have a contractor, they have to take care of... So they're responsible for covering all of their vacancies so they can pull from their resources to staff, whereas we would have to pull from a floater or from another school to cover that. That's my guess. I wasn't here when that arrangement was set up. It's been many years.

Appreciate that answer, Commissioner. And I would be interested in hearing as you come up To the end of that contract, how you may consider changes to it at some point in the future certainly seems worth evaluating. Seeing no other questions from my colleagues, I will turn it over to you, Chair Link.

All right, so thank you to Commissioner Weissman and I think that we can mark this one as complete and that brings us to the end of our Agenda. So for there, Madam Clerk, do we have, is there anything that we need to actually do a roll call on?

For the minutes, yes. So the first item.

All right.

So I guess let's take the roll call for approval of the minutes for the special committee for school. Scott.

Yes, please. Councilor Sait. Yes. Chair Link.

Yes.

All right. That is all votes in the affirmative.

Chair Link, we also have minutes on our side to approve, if I may. Yes. So I'll accept a motion to accept the report from the December 8th, 2025 meeting.

Motion to accept the report from the December 8, 2025 meeting. Did I get that?

You got it. Is there a second? Great. Motion by Member Eldridge, second by Ms. Pitone. Member Eldridge, how do you vote? Yes. Member Pitone, how do you vote?

Yes.

I vote yes. Motion approved unanimously. And that concludes our session. So I believe we're adjourned on the school committee side.

All right. Thank you. And motion to adjourn by Councilor Scott.

All right. On adjournment, Councilor Scott.

Yes, please.

Councilor Sait. Yes Chair Link Yes All right with that it is 7 32 p.m and we are adjourned Thank you all