City Council - Regular Meeting

How are you? I'm just gonna wait.

Thank you.

I think I'm going to give it another minute. I think it's starting to work. I don't know if the staff says otherwise, but I think we have our main cast of characters here ready to go. I'm going to sponsor them here. Yeah, administration and some of my colleagues.

So I think we're good to go. Yeah, I'm going to go over here on my end. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

That's it. For the record, my name is Julia Mejia, at-large Boston City Councilor. I'm also the chair of the Boston City Council's Committee on Education. Today is September the 15th, and the exact time is 1037. in accordance with Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, modifying certain requirements of the open meeting law and revealing public bodies of certain requirements, including the requirements that public bodies conduct its meetings in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public. The City Council will be conducting this hearing virtually via Zoom. This hearing will be recorded and it is also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city dash council dash TV and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82 and Files Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.educationatboston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all counselors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called in the order in which they have signed up and will have two minutes to testify. If you wish to sign up for public testimony and have not done so yet, please email our central staff liaison, meg at meg. Oh, got the name change. Megan dot C-R-U-G-E-N-D-O-M A-R-T-I-N at boston.gov. And the Zoom link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket 1334. In order for a hearing to discuss the status of HVAC updates in the Boston Public Schools, this matter was sponsored by Councilor Abang, Councilor Braden, and Councilor Fitzgerald, and was referred to the committee on July 8th, 2026. And with a quick turnaround, here we are already, ready to do the business. Today, I am joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councilor at-large Murphy, Councilor at-large Lujan, District 3 Councilor Fitzgerald, District 5 Councilor Papang, and District 2 Councilor Flynn. I have been advised that there are no letters of absence, so I will be waving my opening remarks in the interest of doing the people's business. I will just note for the record that it's very timely that we're talking about HVAC considering that we're going to be gearing up for next year's budget. And my hope is that this conversation will lead to some really robust conversations in terms of what we need to do. And I just want to thank the lead sponsors for their leadership. And I am going to... have the lead sponsors. If you are interested in opening remarks, more than happy to kick it over to you. I see Councilor Papang shaking your head fiercely there, so I'm going to go to Councilor Papang for your opening remarks. Councilor Papang, you now have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair Mejia. And good morning, everyone, my name is Enrique pep in Boston city council for district 5, representing Ross in the high park. For me, this great honor to be part of this hearing and very thankful to the chair for providing space. Thank you to the Boston public schools team for participating and being here to give the updates on the system. This was brought to my attention from. advocates and parents in my district who had concerns about the facilities at the Mozart School in Roslindale and also at the Phineas Bates School in Roslindale. Both of those schools have older facilities. The Mozart School definitely being one of the older facilities in the entire city. And they've brought up concerns in several years about how the temperatures in the classrooms can get very hot in the summertime. And it's always on top of parents' mind. I also got outreach from the parent council president of the Mather school, not in my district, but they do live in my district and just providing some good advocacy for their school community. So I just wanted to thank them publicly as well. This is a very important conversation for me as a former BPS student, current BPS parent, making sure that all of our students have a safe and comfortable environment to learn in is a top priority. And I'm looking forward to getting updates on what work has been done, but also asking on what more we can do to make sure that our schools continue to get better across our city. So with that, I'll turn it back over to you, Madam Chair.

Sorry about that. I also just want to note that the administration panelist is Brian Ford, the Chief of Operations, and Dr. Sam DePina, Deputy Superintendent, will be joining us. And I will go over to Councilor Braden or Councilor Fitzgerald if you're interested in opening remarks. Councilor Fitzgerald, I see that you're here. I'll kick it over to you.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I absolutely allow Council Braden to go first, but she's not on with us at the moment. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. No, I just want to thank both Brian and Sam for being here, and obviously thank you to Council Papen for adding me as a co-sponsor to this. Really invested in this is my children's school was one of the... the schools that did not have HVAC. And so I've been hearing about this from teachers, paras, and substitutes for quite some time. It did just get completed right before the start of the school year. So I've yet to get any feedback on how it works, but I know that the work is ongoing. And so I do want to give credit where credit is due, that they are going through the remaining schools did not have hvac and um and at least adding it and hopefully can continue to improve where others uh need it and so i look forward to hearing from them and the work that's been done and the work that will continue to happen uh but again know that the work is happening and so um just want to say thank you again but uh thank you chair

Great, thank you, Councilor Fitzgerald. Thank you, Councilor Papang. I think in the interest of making sure that we are here to learn, am I going to stop us from doing just that? So I'm gonna kick it over to the administration panel, unless any of my other colleagues want to say anything. Oh, I see Councilor Flynn. So Councilor Flynn, you now have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will be brief. I want to say thank you to the sponsors for bringing this forward. This is an issue I've worked on for nine years as a city councilor and supporting BPS to ensure that we have the necessary resources and support for HVAC. I'm not an original co-sponsor, but this is an issue that I've focused on for a number of years, and I'm going to continue to support our students at BPS so that they can learn in a healthy environment and as a parents of the BPS students just recently graduated. This issue is near and dear to me. Madam Chair, thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Fletcher. And I see Councillor Murphy has her hand. So I'll go over to you, Councillor Murphy. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Mejia. Just think it's a timely conversation always good to have, but at the end of the summer, we know we do a lot of this work when many of the buildings are empty when we check in about our pools and all of our. you know, buildings and where we are with upgrades and just important that we all Council of Pepin mentioned, we all get those calls and those outreaches from teachers, families, students who just want our buildings to work better. So how can we support? So just happy to listen in today and make sure we're advocating. It's never too soon to be advocating for resources to make sure all of our students, not just some have the buildings they deserve and our staff too. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Murphy. I see Councillor Lujan also has her hand up, so I'll go over to you, Councillor Lujan. You now have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning, everyone. Really happy to be here. Thank you, Councillor Phan, for filing this hearing order. It's incredibly important. I think none of us would want to go to schools where we don't have an HVAC system that's working, where we don't have AC, and the frantic emails and calls that we get from parents are justified. And I know that BPS is doing what they can and we still need to pick up the pace. I want to hear a bit about sort of how, what are the limitations in us executing on HVAC plans throughout all of BPS? This is an issue that we talked about, especially during my first term when we had opera dollars, and we were talking about the need to do the HVAC improvement. So I want to also hear about it, the limitations, and how it fits in with our long-term facilities plan. So thank you, and I look forward to hearing the presentation and asking questions.

Great, thank you. Well, I guess so much for waving opening statements, I might as well just do mine too. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to first note that we understand improving the heating and cooling systems in our schools is a significant undertaking. Many of our BPS buildings are more than 80 years old, and addressing these needs often means navigating the realities that have come along working within schools. experiencing electrical limitations, aging infrastructure, et cetera. Excuse me. We recognize that the work has gone into addressing these challenges and we appreciate the administration and BPS staff who are working to move these projects forward. However, we really need to be clear about where we are today and the significant amount of work that still remains. From my understanding, there are about eight BPS buildings that remain without full building air conditioning, and some classroom temperatures have reached over 90 degrees, with an average temperature across these eight schools nearly 80 degrees. A recent Boston Globe article detailed the Mathers Elementary School staff having to periodically spritz students with water to keep them cool. It is reported that these students would wrap themselves in wet paper towels in additional efforts to beat the heat. Lights had even been turned off to minimize added warmth. Those conditions clearly have an impact on students and staff and their ability to show up as their full selves and be ready to succeed. We need to continue pushing this work forward and make sure that there is a clear path towards permanent solutions for every school that still needs them. Students and faculty are entitled to a learning and working environment that does not require contentious extreme temperatures. Today, I hope we can get a better understanding of where each of these projects stand and what is contributing to the current timelines. I also want to understand how we're supporting students and staff in the meantime, particularly in schools where permanent HVAC improvements are still some time away. I just want to thank the administration for being here and we look forward to hearing from you all today and continuing this work together. And lastly, I just want to acknowledge Mr. McGuire from BLA, when I first when I was working in the Boston public school education space, I would always see him sounding the alarm literally about how hot his classrooms were. And so just want to thank him for his leadership and commitment to this particular issue. And I think it's long overdue and I'm really grateful to the sponsors for hosting this hearing now so that when it's time for the budget, you guys, because ultimately all of this is really about what are we going to do about it? So if you have the money to do what is right, then I'm going to assume that we can cool this down. So I see Councilor Culpepper has joined us and you have your hand up. So I will go to Councilor Culpepper and then I know everyone is waiting for the presentation to start. So after Councilor Culpepper, we're going to go straight into the administration.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, everyone. And thank you, Chair Mejia for holding this hearing. Thank you, Councilor Pepin for following this hearing order. Councilman here, it seemed like you had my statement. You read everything I was gonna say. So I say, let's get on with the show. We do wanna make sure that the students have classrooms where they can comfortably learn not have to put towels over their heads and other things to keep cool. And so let's get on with the show. Good to see the Boston Public School leadership here to explain to us and give us information when we move forward. Thank you to all of my colleagues that are on this morning that have joined us. Chair, I'm ready, willing, and able to listen. Thank you.

That's right. That's our job is to listen. All right. I'm going to kick it over to my friends at BPS, Dr. Dapina and Brian Ford. I leave it up to your discretion to determine who wants to go next and kind of what the run of show is going to be.

Thank you Madam chair. Good morning. Good morning. Council members and good morning. The public joining us this morning. 1st, I just want to say, thank you for hosting this hearing and all the co sponsors for the hearing as well. I also want to publicly thank our facilities team who's been doing a great job for many years and improving. The work in our buildings in our thermal comfort for our students and staff. I also want to thank all of our partners that contributed to this work from both the financing perspective as well as an implementation perspective. So just thank you all first and foremost. We're taking this work very seriously and have been for many years and we made significant progress that you hear about in more detail coming up. And just want to name at the beginning, just to clarify. So we have 104 schools total. And of those, we have about 4 schools still remaining that don't have systems. And we'll get into that a little bit later in the presentation, but we're happy to say that we've made significant progress over the last. A few years to make sure that most of our schools have a level of thermal comfort, and we have been doing some planning behind the scenes to figure out how we get the remaining schools to a point where they also have systems. There's a lot of coordination that has to happen as you can imagine with this type of work. We're very proud to be able to continue to make progress and looking forward to the next phase of the work that we have under consideration and the different options associated with those. Just also want to just also recognize that we've been nationally recognized for the work we've been doing regarding our work and our indoor air quality. as well as globally we're a global leader in this work um that we presented on at the united nations about the work because it's so uh uh transformative and very transparent we're happy to maintain our transparency about all the work that we're doing with the public and community so we're just happy to be here to share more of that work with you all and uh answer any questions that you or the public may have so um with that i'll turn it over to um to brian ford our chief operating officer and he'll go into the details of the projects and

specifics of where we are and uh some uh next steps in answer your questions brian thank you dr pina um thank you madam chair co-chairs members of the city council i'm very happy to be here this morning to get to explain some of the work that we've been doing here in bps and i agree there's a lot of serious work the conditions our students are going through resonates with me i want to make sure that our team's working expeditiously to solve those So I'm just gonna dive right into those details and hopefully I'm able to address all of these concerns and talk about our approach. More than half of BPS buildings were built before World War II. And in 2021, we only had 38 schools that had cooling. Today, after multiple sustained capital investments, more than 100 school buildings have cooling systems. We have three additional HVAC projects that are underway, targeted for completion this winter. Each and every one of our buildings is equipped with a heating system. This is a variety of HVAC provided heating, radiator or steam heating, and heat pumps, or some combination of in between. And because we know that radiators can sometimes be hot, we've also made sure that we have 385 classrooms that have radiator covers across 47 schools. 32 of our buildings are air-conditioned with central cooling, with 84 that are using window AC units. And we currently have three of those schools, the Lee, Bates, and Kenney, which are going through installation projects right now. And those are the three that should be completed this winter. Of the four schools that Dr. DiPina referred to that do not have AC and are looking for a solution, similar to what Councillor Peppin has brought up, Community Academy, mather elementary mozart elementary and the taylor elementary school to date from 2022 till now we have partnered with the msba and accelerated accelerated repair programs this has allowed us to do boiler replacements across three of our schools the holland tech bailey pilot and the henderson k through 12. We've also had the ability to do heat pump conversions at our Margarita Muniz and orchard gardens. Also, at the, we've been able to do a lot of things that help with our building envelope. This helps us control the environment that is outside of the building to make sure what we're doing inside of the building is able for us to be sustained. windows and doors and roof replacements that have happened through the msba english high school edward everett lyndon murphy adams gardner mendel kilmer mary lyon henderson o'donnell kenny boston adult technical academy hurley mildred and orchard gardens again for the roof replacements We've also made capital investments, even as recent as this year, to continue working on the systems that are within our district. Boiler replacements at Brighton High School and currently in design is a chiller and cooling tower for Joseph Lee K-3. We've also partnered with the Renew Boston Trust. Through Renew Boston Trust's energy efficiency upgrades, the city is saving roughly $2.3 million a year of taxpayer dollars. And the Otis Elementary School was upgraded through the Renew Boston Trust program, a city initiative to improve energy efficiency and resiliency in municipal buildings. Otis Elementary is the first BPS facility modernized to retrofit and is no longer relying on fossil fuels. Later this year, we will also finish construction on the geothermal system at the JFK Elementary School in Jamaica. Those are just two of the RBT projects that we've engaged in, but there are a few more. We've done HVAC replacements at the Condon School, the Murphy K-8, the Orenberger School, and Tynan Elementary School. And our team wants to make sure that we are keeping this information transparent and in front of you. and I like to call them tools of transparency, but we have on our public dashboard, on our public webpage, you can see our facilities condition assessment. On this, you can see everything that is in your building, exactly how it should be performing, all the stats that are there. You could also see an about my school page, which will allow you to look up how your building is ranked in your school community and what that looks like. Additionally, we have the indoor air quality dashboard. And here, you're able to see all of the information relative to your student's environment, whether that is temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. And during COVID, we started measuring particulate matter as well, just to make sure any contagions that are in the air are able for us to be measured. And just as the city of Boston is recognized as a climate leader, BPS has also been recognized by the United Nations as a world leader in indoor air quality management. In 2021, BPS leveraged ESSER dollars to install 4,400 air quality sensors across the district to measure and improve the air quality, the thermal comfort, to create a better teaching environment for our students. This is real-time data. that's available to BPS on a public dashboard that allows us to take immediate action. It's the first of its kind in K through 12 and has enabled us to do research and partner with entities like Boston University of Public Health and to secure an additional $22 million in grant funds for additional building improvements. Now, I know we want to talk about what's next. So I want to start talking to you about that now and then give most of the time back to you so you can ask us the questions. Make sure that we're getting right back to what is the resolution? How do we get there? How do we get away from 90 buildings without AC all the way down to four without AC? And how do we bridge the gap between that remaining four in an efficient and timely manner that allows us to make sure those students aren't feeling this effect long term. So we have two plans mainly that are gonna work for us. The first is a full HVAC upgrade at each site. We have cops for this. We have assessments for this. We have information that's gonna be able to back this and allow us to work with our partners in the budget office, our partners here at BPS, and our school communities We also have options and pricing for a full electrical overhaul. And this would be a smaller solution. This is a solution in which we would do the electrical infrastructure, and then we would come in with a strategy that's worked in a number of our buildings, which is the window units. Part of this strategy is to continue to stay engaged with Renew Boston Trust. We've done this in the past, talked about how this has worked previously, and how instrumental this has been to going fossil fuel free and being sustainable. But additionally, we're gonna engage with them again to continue to talk about Community Academy, Mather, Mozart, and what those solutions look like for us. And now you'll notice I left one name off that list because we have been exploring additional options as well. The Shaw-Taylor or the former Taylor building. Here, we were lucky enough to be accepted into the senior study for MSBA. the MSBA core program, in which they would work to build an entire new school for us. And so we are exercising every option that's available to us. We've also got to engage with a lot of grants. You've heard me talk a little bit about ESSER, but there's also DESE and the IVAQ grant, which is what is allowing us to move forward with the three buildings that are currently in construction. And I know we're gonna talk about what are the factors that sometimes slow this process down Those are design and construction. Sometimes it's making sure we have the capacity within the teams. None of these are excuses. We need to work past and over these hurdles to make sure that we're addressing them. We also make sure that we have the most recent cost estimates. But sometimes when you do that full assessment, the year goes by, inflation happens. And so our numbers are accounting for that inflation. But we also know that we have to put these out to bid. This is subject to change. We also know that the supply chain, ever since COVID, has been ever changing. So we also need to make sure that we're making our adjustments there. We're putting out the data information and we're working on it. But what are we doing right now? What are we doing to address your students today? What are we doing to try to alleviate students having to put wet napkins on their heads? And that's what I also want to address. Cooling zones. While this doesn't seem wildly effective across the majority of our buildings, we know that now it's just three, four, right? Four main areas that we're working on. Previously, we did not have any option in these buildings to cool our students at all, and that was a problem. And we know that electrical capacity was a big factor in us not being able to expand here. And yes, we've explored adding generators and split systems and looking at heat pumps and Eversource, and we're still continuing to explore those options. But in the immediate, we were able to identify enough of an electrical load to allow three cooling zones per building. And this means the nurse's office, And we work with each school to identify two additional spaces to not overload the board that students can go, staff can go to get a little bit cooler. We also have fans and air purifiers and also realize that we can work with our partners in the city that can do pop-ups, surf popsicles, do misting tents. And we try to explore every option that's available to us to make sure that we're keeping our students cool in an environment where they can continue to learn. Additionally, over the summers, just want to add that because we have so many buildings now that have AC or an ability to be cool, we make sure all summer programming is held in those cooler buildings, all buildings that have AC. And just to make sure I'm giving this time back to you, I'll now turn it over for questions.

I'm sorry, before we turn it over to questions, I just want to thank Brian for all the work and him to see we've done again and also just apologize to the public of, especially for the full communities that we haven't gotten to yet. But I hope what you'll hear today is that we have been researching options. We do have options. Laid out and considered, and now we just have to do the work of moving to the next phase of work into getting to your 4th school. So, are we moving to the pace where we want to know? I wish I could have all these done already. But we're moving as quickly as possible and we're going to continue to work and communicate with all the 4 school communities as we progress along this work. So, again, we apologize that we haven't gotten to all the schools yet, but we are making significant progress and we'll continue to do so. With that, I'll turn it over to you, Madam chair.

Uh, thank you. I just also want to, uh, know for the record that we have been joined by Councilor Weber. Not sure Councilor Weber if you have any opening remarks before we dive into questions or do you. You know, we, you could do your opening remarks when we get to your questions, which do you prefer?

Yeah, I'll, I'll just, I'll, I'll. Wait till I start asking questions. Thanks.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, so in the interest of keeping the show on the road, let's go to the lead sponsors first. We'll start with Councillor Bain, followed by Councillor Fitzgerald, and then we'll go in the order of arrival thereafter. Councillor Bain, you have seven minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Chief Ford and Dr. Pina, thank you so much for that presentation and for providing us with those updates. It is very helpful to know and learn about the work that you've already done to know that 90 schools where it was the beginning of where we were without air conditioning. And we brought that number down to four. I think that is a pretty significant improvement. And I personally did not know that number. So thank you so much for sharing that. in regards to the work that you have identified that still needs to be done. That is also very important for me because as you know, two of the schools that were on that list are in my district and amazing schools, by the way, amazing schools, great school environment. The parents love them, but this is just that one thing that has always been the complaint and it's the temperatures of the classroom. So the fact that you have provided updates on the Bates School, in regards to the timing. And I believe you said this insulation work being done to be completed by the end of this year. And then the Mozart schools, it's a bigger topic. So what I wanted to ask is two things specifically about those two schools. For the Bates School, what is the specific timeline for it? I know you said insulation by the end of the year, but is there specific time that you have in store? And then And Chief Ford, I know you mentioned that you and your department are being very resourceful about how to approach these issues. And I know that the Mozart School has been one of the schools that has very old electrical infrastructure, and it is very hard to work with. What can we do? Do I need to put a line item in the budget to make sure that we put enough money in there? What is it that it's gonna take to bring that school to where it has to be?

Thank you Councilor Peppin, I appreciate those questions. Bates, the timeline. The timeline for the Bates, and I'll just add in the Lee and the Kenny as well, because they're all working on a December 31st substantial completion timeline. That's not to say that we won't run into any additional change orders or unforeseen conditions, but that is the planned completion date for those three projects. In terms of the Mozart and what we can do, So, I'm just going to pull up my numbers now. So, looking at the Mozart, I think the easiest and probably most applicable solution for us is to work on the electric electricity upgrade. That means that we would need a partner with utility companies like ever source. make sure that they're able to update the transformer. Believe it or not, the electrical capacity of the Mozart is about similar to your residential home. And therefore, putting in the larger infrastructure that is able to support commercial AC or HVAC units is a little bit higher. If there was anything that you could do to add funding to that, obviously we would appreciate that, as we're always looking to get to a solution faster. And I would say, just looking at my numbers, we've estimated that there's likely 3.4 million. And again, this is a number that is an estimate based on 2023 data adjusted for inflation for today of 3.4 million. But that does bring up another problem that we might have, which is Due to the age and current value of that building. We will likely trigger a much larger project to happen. So. We just want to make sure that we fully explore what options are available to us during that time.

Okay, so what I'm hearing is that, like, if you're going to invest that much money into this 1 school, you might as well look at other work to be done. at the same time okay okay so a much bigger project for the school deal so it looks like i have some homework here to work with eversource and advocate for my constituents in the budget for the upcoming budget yeah um before i know i have two minutes i do have questions I know that this is a summer-related topic and because of the classrooms getting hot, but does the lack of proper HVAC system impact the colder months as well? I want to know, do we have concerns with when the weather is completely dropped and the classrooms, do we have the same issues, same concerns?

Yeah, so... Climate change, it's happening, it's affecting all of us and we're seeing hotter summers that start earlier. Like, the springs are the falls are more. And that change oftentimes has an effect because. We also work because of the system plants generally are working 1 system at a time. It's not at home where you turn it from 68 to 72 and you're all thumbs up. In our case, it means a major building changeover from one heating system or cooling system to the other. So when we see that it is warm after October, I'm sorry, when it is warm after October 15th, which is our heating timeline, we also see that that has an impact because we've already switched the building over to heat. because that is a regulation that we need to do. And it is the same in May. Okay, so we're seeing that on both sides, this is a problem. Okay.

Madam Chair, I believe I have one more minute. I would just have one follow up question. Before, I know that this is going to take a lot to upgrade a school like the Mozart and it could take years and tons of millions of dollars. What is the plan in the meantime when the temperatures do go up high? What is what does the Mozart look like? What is it? What is the game plan for for school leadership in that type of school?

Yeah, so we always try to put out guidelines every year. My most of the schools that let them know how it's what it's like to operate. That comes from either myself or deputy to peanut. To let them know, you know, limit indoor and outdoor. You know, what indoor and outdoor recess and play looks like. Exercising the cooling zones, extra water on hand fans, air purifiers. If we can forecast it with the New England weather, try to get the kids popsicles, misting tests. Any of those options we try to provide them and then just make sure out of an abundance of communication and also let parents know. when it's hot and you know your child's school doesn't have the proper facility, that they also get to make a judgment call on whether there's students showing up.

Thank you, Chief. I know my time is up, but I just wanted to thank you, and I'll be continuing to advocate for my residents of the Mozart and Bates School. Well, thank you. Thank you for that, Chief Constable.

Good job at banking. Okay, so I'm just going to put a pin here real quick because I'm going to ask when it's my turn and I want to make sure that when it gets to me that you've had some time to research. It would be great to hear a line item budget, like how much money we are spending in these popsicles and all these other things that we're doing to help support the cooling situation. It would be great to know what that dollar amount is in comparison to just... You know, I'm not saying it's a band-aid, and we do appreciate the efforts, but I would like to know how much money we're spending on those additional efforts, so by the time it gets to me, I'd like to get a ballpark figure. Okay, Councilor Fitzgerald, you now have the floor. Seven minutes.

Thank you Madam chair and again, both Brian, Sam, thank you so much for your work. I know this is not a, like. These are not things that can be done in the short term and it's been a long sustained effort to get even the amount you said, I think, Brian, since 2021 or 22, the amount we've been able to increase. And so we hope to continue that going through the final 4 and getting it done. My priority here is obviously the Mather School in my district, oldest public school, oldest elementary public school in the United States. And so with that title alone, obviously, right, you think, well, I probably need some updates then. And so I hope that it, given that distinction, not just in our city, but in our country, that we can make sure that we make sure that that is sort of a... something that we can tell nationwide, but we have the oldest public school and is also one of the best and it will need to have its proper temperature and HVAC in order to provide that environment for our kids. So thank you. Brian, if you could, I know you mentioned Eversource in Councilman Penn's questioning and what more there, could you just describe that a little bit more in detail of what you would need to help from Eversource?

Yes. So the majority of our buildings, the power that is coming into them is feeding into an electrical panel that is likely sized for, again, a much smaller building than the size of our schools. What I'm generally looking for from Eversource are upgrades to the transformers, runs of the laterals that go from the transformer to the external of our building that meets our electrical system or switch gear so that we're able to upgrade those panel boxes to handle the heavier load. And in some cases, very specific three-phase or 208 or some other number that I'm not going to remember right now of exactly what that looks like in order to make sure that we are engaging with them. We see that this is similar work that happens when we are installing electric car chargers, when we're adding the capacity where it was not previously there before, or in this case, electrical. electricity, especially as we're going towards electrifying our buildings rather than using the fossil fuels.

So you're calling it it's more of the panels that need upgrading not a, I know there's talks of substations and some other neighborhoods and where we're going to need more of those to add power to the grid and to be able to disperse it. Um, but so it's not to that level. You think it's more if we can just. That's sort of a, uh, a higher level issue, uh, in, in getting power to you guys, but you guys for the math school specifically, and for any other school, uh, around ever source, it's more the panels that need the upgrades. in your opinion?

Yes, definitely the panels on our side need the upgrades. And then as we get towards exploring the documents, the architectural layouts, blueprints of those spaces, we can see what the two electrical sources or three or one that is feeding our building and then work with Eversource or National Grid or whoever's in the area to upgrade their spaces or run those laterals for us.

And we're looking, the panels are under us, under BPS. And so the cost is on us to upgrade them. And you're saying we're looking to Eversource to somehow help with the cost of upgrading the panels? Or is it just lobbying Eversource to say, hey, get to these panels sooner?

No. So the panels inside the building are our stuff. The power that is feeding the panels from the street or from the power lines, that's Eversource. And we're not saying that they are exclusively responsible for every case in which we're not able to upgrade. That's not what I want to say. I just want to be clear. But in some cases, we need to make sure that those lines are redone to make sure we can size up our panel appropriately.

Understood. So, yeah, almost asking Eversource, saying we need you to do some work before we can do some work. And so let's try not to hold us up, essentially. Okay. All right. No, that's great. That's good to know. I appreciate that. I noticed that the Kenny school, the work that was done, I mean, they had to tear up the front lawn and put what was actually, can you tell me what was actually going in? And is that what has has to happen at these other four schools? It was at the same issue. Cause I know I saw some, you know, HVAC work going up when the, you know, just driving by it every day. But of course my knowledge of, of how the construction piece of that works is, is not as knowledgeable. So what were they putting in and why, I guess I was asking.

Yeah. And in that specific case, we were adding in a new transformer. Okay. So that needed to be submerged into the ground. And again, that's one of the things that allows us to have that higher ability for electrical load. And each one is kind of unique in what that application might look like.

Okay, so what I saw at the Kenny is not actually required amongst all of the schools. That was just sort of for that one, that's what it needed. And was that a more intense one typically, or is that a pretty average, you know, just the manpower cost, et cetera, for that? Was it on the higher end or lower end of what typically needs to be done for any school?

you went on you brian i'm sorry a relatively tough question for me to answer yeah i would say that it seemed like the the dollar value seemed about typical of what is involved yeah but i i i only asked to gauge you know that that's the one i have the most uh and the most intimate with and having seen the most and i just didn't know i was just trying to gauge if that is uh

You know, out of the norm or the norm, but regardless well, guys, I just want to thank you for continuing the work again. Just want to reiterate the matter school and the gem it is for the city and country and that we should. If we can prioritize that, that would be great. and then um however i can help in that and with all schools uh like you said with uh with council for penn talking about how we can look in the budget and where we can be helpful um even though we know there's a tough tough couple budget seasons coming up but chair thank you for the time and again uh sam and brian thank you

Thank you, Councillor Fitzgerald. I just want to note for the rest of my colleagues, in order of arrival shall be Councillor Murphy, then followed by Councillor Lujan, then followed by Councillor Flynn, then Councillor Culpepper, and Councillor Webber, just so that everybody understands the order. So, Councillor Murphy, if you are available and are able to join us, you will have the floor in seven minutes. I know that, okay, I'm gonna wait a second. Okay, I'm gonna move on to, we'll come back to you, Councilor Murphy. I'm gonna move on now to Councilor Louis-Jean.

Thank you, Councillor Mejia. And again, thank you to Brian for the presentation and Sam for the work that you're doing. I want to echo what I think sounds like progress in terms of the number of schools that we're down to. But just can I have for the record again, when we talk about the four schools, are we talking about the Mather, the Bates, Mozart, and Shaw-Taylor? Are those the four schools that don't have HVAC?

When I referred to the four, it is the four not in progress. Mather, Mozart, Taylor Elementary or Shaw Taylor, and Community Academy.

Okay, and so Lee Academy and Dorchester is all set?

As of this December, Lee Academy should be completely set.

As of December 2026? Yes. Okay, thank you. And I want to thank you all again for your work on doing that. As an at-large counselor, I obviously hear from a lot of neighborhoods, heard from the parents, rightfully so, at the Mozart, parents at the Bates. And it's interesting just in terms of when we're thinking about who we do and don't hear from. I did not get any direct outreach from the Taylor, my elementary school counselor. And I think even with, I mean, this is a larger system wide issue when it comes to the city services and who reaches out and who believes that they have power and that their voices will be listened to. And I know that at the Taylor School, things are not great. I was there to give the, graduation speech in, I think, early June and all of the parents and everyone, the students were assembled in the cafeteria and it was extremely, extremely hot. And, you know, in years past, I know that they've had the graduation outside, but it was also really warm outside. outside. And so when we think about alternatives, right, I remember that day, sweating up and, you know, and the students as well. So when we think about alternatives, what are the alternatives for especially when you have gatherings like that, where, you know, especially for them with a shot Taylor, which thankfully, the MSBA funding, but we're still looking at sort of like years out in terms of what the ultimate plan is, what do we do in those situations?

Yeah, typically, sometimes concert. Good morning. First of all, I apologize. What we typically do is encourage schools to work with each other to, like, share each other's resources. So, for example, the shot, Taylor Mildred, I was out of the street. They have AC and AC billionaires. Never decides auditorium and decide space. So they can also maybe host some things. We look at other schools all to say that. And then at times we also work with different different buildings and different spaces around the neighborhood to host graduations as well. So, you know, sometimes we use, you know, we use my stadium when it was available. We use other indoor gyms in gym. Sometimes we use. Other spaces all to say that, so we can work with the school if that's an issue, and we can maybe have a backup plan ahead of time for all these schools. If that's if that's the case.

yeah if we could be more proactive about that i think because i think it is good to be thinking ahead about all alternatives and like the we ensure that there are no like summer activities happening at these schools that have that lack um hvac but um uh i think it's a lack of planning ahead that gets us into situations where people are are in these really warm areas um with and so brian can you tell me again what is the projected sort of timeline for the taylor in mattapan given that it's going through msba for it to sort of get and i i think i have a meeting on friday to talk specifically about the shaw taylor but just would like to for the record right now get a sense of what they're looking at

Thank you, Councillor Luigi. Unfortunately, I do not have that timeline with me right now, but I can get it for you before the end of this meeting so I can state it.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And just again, for the record, we're talking about the Mather, the Mozart, the Shaw-Taylor, where there's no HVAC work, the Mather in Dorchester, the Mozart in Rosendale, the Taylor in Mattapan, and what's the fourth school?

Community Academy.

Oh, is that cash in Dorchester?

No, that's the fuller building in JP, right by station E13.

Okay, all right.

E18, I apologize.

Well, thank you. I know that these issues are not easy and they're also costly. We do love seeing the data and the record show that we're not getting the money that we need to be getting from MSBA, right? And it's an equity issue when it comes to doing the work of repairs. So the more that we see those MSBA applications, I think the quicker that we'll be able to get this done if there's any support that we can provide there, especially because this is money that we're putting into the state that we're getting back. and sort of given the revenue and budget constraints, would love to know what help we can be, what assistance MSBA process can be. I guess that's my final question for these four schools where there's nothing yet in progress.

Yeah, just if you guys can all collectively continue to host the hearings and the schedules, and we need the MSBA votes from you guys, that's also always a huge help. When we have the meetings, continue to publicly participate in those as well, and continue to work with us and our families to help along with the process. So if you guys can continue that, that'll be super helpful.

Is there a plan to apply for MSBA funding for HVAC repairs for these four schools? And what is that timeline?

Yeah, Brian can talk about that. And we mentioned a little bit earlier. We do. There is a checklist of conditions that need to be satisfied for MSBA. And what we've done in all these cases is really run through those requirements to see which schools qualify or not. And some schools do and some schools don't. So, for example, we know at the Mather, we've done that. Just as an example, we've checked that list with MSBA against the Mather requirements and the Mather doesn't qualify for MSBA. So we'd have to explore another option. So why is that?

So in this particular case, the age of the buildings and below was a disqualifier for the HVAC approach that they were taking here. And sometimes it's like a one year difference and not necessarily a condition difference.

Okay. And there's no sort of like letter of exception or anything like that that they would that they typically allow?

We found that has not always been successful. And we really try to work to make sure we're checking all the boxes on each submission just because it is less pushback and very competitive as well.

Okay. Is there a plan for the other three schools? And Madam Chair, if I'm over my time, let me know, I'm not sure. But is there a plan for the other three schools, MSBA, which other ones have been disqualified? Because actually, I mean, what's good about this call, call, I'm on my phone because my computer isn't working. What's good about this hearing is that like four schools, the issues seem probably daunting, but actually it seems like manageable and like we can actually track the progress. that is or isn't happening in these four schools. So you said one is not MSBA fundable, so that's going to have to be through BPS operations of some sort. What about the other three?

The other three, we have our submissions that are coming up for this winter, and we are continuing to put them into the matrix. I know that sounds kind of fancy, but we just have like a checkbox that automatically lets us know which schools are eligible. of which we found that so far none have seen eligible for the HVAC alone updates. And so the program requirements change every year. All that's to say is we also still need to give an answer. We need to give you a timeline and we are going to be meeting with RBT this week. There's a meeting on the books for Thursday. So I'm hoping actually that's very fruitful. And we have a great update for you. And I do want to make sure to be transparent too.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Brian. And thank you, Sam, for all the work that you do on behalf of our kids.

Thank you, Constitution. And so I'm glad that it's very fruitful sounds Enticing so, thank you for that. I'll just know for when it's my turn. I'd like to just note for the record, whether you have the information or not, it'd be great to have very specific timelines for each of these. Projects like, where are we with each 1? I may have missed that. But I'd like to hear it when it's my turn and then I just need a, I need some clarity here from what I understand the academy has been planned for construction and it's, I believe it's going to be closing. So, I'm not sure why the district waited this long to make those upgrades. And then, unless you're talking about the academy. Um, K, through 8. And that's already listed as having central age back. So, just some clarity around that with some of the questions that my colleagues have already asked. And then, according to website, the community Academy closed in June of 2026. And I'm not clear if has moved another school in there. So just. Just for the sake of the exercise, if you could just provide some, some clarity around that. Would be extremely helpful.

Yes. Thank you, Councillor Mejia. I am also going to answer your question about popsicles. We do spend about 12,000 annually on popsicles.

It's not my turn yet, but I'm just putting these things, things that I am, you know, want to flag. So I'm just adding some more things to my list of questions as they come up when my colleagues are speaking. $12,000 and y'all need a sponsor for the popsicle situation because that's crazy. I'm moving on to my next colleague, and it's Councilor Flynn, then followed by Councilor Culpepper, and then Councilor Weber, and then we'll go to me for my questions. Okay, Councilor Flynn, you. Unless Councilor Murphy is available, I know I said that Councilor Lujan went ahead of her, so Councilor Murphy, if you are available now, I can go to you. Going once going twice. Gone going on now to counselor. When you now have the floor. Oh, okay. Counselor Flynn. Okay, moving on to. My friend, Councilor Culpepper, you have seven minutes. Don't even try to take more than that.

Thank you, Chair. You know, it's really funny. Everyone has always talked about me taking more time. But, you know, when I sit and listen to all the other councils, everybody's taking more time than they should. It's just not me. But anyway, I won't take all seven minutes. Dr. DePina and Brian, I know you do incredible work. I know there's a lot of pressure on you to get things done. And I really don't want to minimize the work you do because you do so much work across the board. And you do it in a way that you're trying to please everyone. And so I just want to commend you for the work that both of you do. the way you answer both of our calls and the way you served at Boston Public Schools. I just have a couple of questions regarding what's the total cost for, what are the costs for the four schools that still need the work to be done? What's the total estimated cost?

Brian looks that up. Thank you. Council come up for that for that question. Because that costs, although we have a number until we finally get bids out in the appropriate bid back. It's hard for us to say number. We can give you an estimate.

And so my next question is, When you look at the total cost, is there enough money in the capital plan to accomplish what you need to get done?

Um, obviously we would always want more capital dollars, but the capital dollars is a fixed amount. Typically, what we try to do is work with our city partners and internally bps and just. We have to prioritize what we spend the money on. Right? So is the capital dollars enough for us? No, we would want as much money as possible enough to fix all of our problems. But of course, he went on that situation. Right? So. We would just have to look carefully at the current dollars that exist and really look carefully on how we prioritize what projects we put in and out given the different competing needs that we do have in the district. So we'll continue to work through our capital budget process. We'll continue to look at our priorities. And obviously, is 1 of them as you can see that we've continuously used a combination of capital dollars. And external funds to do the work, and we'll continue to pursue all those options.

But let me just come back to Brian again, if he can, to give us some kind of estimate of what you need now in terms of dollars, whether it's capital funding, whether it's external funds, some idea of what you need now so we can begin to look at and think through how we approach this next year.

Thank you, Councillor Culpepper. With a rough estimate, again, extrapolation, inflation rates, we're looking at roughly $35.4 million for the upgrades of those four remaining sites. If we were to remove the Shaw-Taylor because of the pipeline to the MSBA, we could look at about $24 Million dollars for the upgrades of the community academy.

Mather and Mozart schools, but I'm sorry, but that also doesn't account for any. Code triggers that we may trigger that also would need to be upgraded just to make sure the buildings are up to code. So there's also that. Variable that we also have to get a firmer handle on. So that's just 34.4 just for the. HVAC work and electrical upgrades, if you will, but not any additional code requirements that may be needed.

Right. And so do you have that $24 million now in the capital plan?

Uh, I think the answer is there is $24 million in existence in the capital plan. But the way in which this has been allocated across the many different needs that we have in BPS has not made it all available for each one of these locations. We do have HVAC dollars that have gone to continuing to maintain the infrastructure. And that would be related to the projects I've listed, like the Brighton High boiler that has gone down and needed a repair. right and the lee the um the joseph lee school which is going through a chiller redesign right now um and then uh as we continue to kind of operate the kind of hundreds or thousands maybe approaching millions of assets that we have in the district um how we use those hvac dollars to make sure we're not letting another community down as well

And so if you have the $24 million, let's say today, to complete all of the HVAC projects that you have, you anticipate, because of the ongoing maintenance of all of the other assets, that you would find yourself pulling from that $24 million to upkeep the other assets.

um with the maintenance in other words are your maintenance dollars also coming out of that 24 million dollar capital money um no so there there's a couple of different buckets that we have so we do have our operating dollars which do cover a majority of the maintenance okay and time to time we see that a project is too large for that maintenance which might be a full replacement um or an improvement and that would come off of the capital budget. And in some cases, we see that there would be an overlap in HVAC dollars that are spent. And then I think one other piece that we could address at the same time would be because the capital budget works on very specific itemized budget lines, if there were money allocated for this specifically, we would be able to spend this specifically on what we have in the description of that line.

And the other thing I would add comes to a couple upper is even if we say had having seen the whole 24Million, there's also the level of staff capacity to actually manage the projects and see it to fruition. Right? So there's also a level of there's only so much stuff that we have to manage these projects to the level and extent that we need to. So there's also that factor in determining how much we can get done. Even if we had all the money at 1 time. We still have to come up with the schedule of which we can do and on what pace.

And so that goes to my final question, and thank you for those answers. In the hearing order, it states that three schools are expected to receive new HVAC installations by January 2027. Is that still accurate?

Yes, that is correct. All of which should be wrapping up their projects for the December 31 for substantial completion. That would be at the Lee, Bates, and Kenney.

Right, right. So by next spring and next summer, all the schools will be all set?

Yes. I would say the three schools that are on the Lee Bates and Kenny, yes, they should be all set for the beginning of our cooling season.

And then what's left after that?

We would have the Community Academy, which is a non-degree pairing program for us right now. Right. Mather Elementary School. mozart elementary school and then the taylor shaw taylor upper building which has a pipeline msba core project uh scheduled to be complete in construction and rough estimate for um december 2030. december 2030 yes why so long

And that will be the last question. And I did let you go. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Why so long? The MSBA process is- Okay. Okay. Is- I got it. Okay.

I got it. No, when you said that, then I understood. No, thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you, Brian and Dr. Dupina, for all the work that you do and the hours that you put in that no one ever sees and that you don't get paid for. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Culpepper. I want to note for the record that we've also been joined by Councilor Worrell, both to Councilor Weber and then Councilor Worrell. Councilor Weber, you have the floor.

Okay, thank you very much, Chair. If you can hear me, I guess just following up on the capital budget questions. So, maybe this is for Brian, but so there's like a 23.7Million dollar HVAC. I think it says the HVAC improvement program. So that's a construction. That's the main source of money that we're talking about. In the capital budget, and I guess Brian, there's also a 10Million dollar. Uh, HVAC repair, uh. Bucket in the capital budget can you just talk about the difference between these.

Um, just give me 1 minute where I look at the exact budget lines for you to pull that up. I would say if you could go for the next question, I can come back to it.

Well, uh, okay. Um, and then so. One of my follow-ups to that is one of the $10 million pools with BPS and the $23.7 million pools with public facilities. And I know, Brian, you and I on the Hennegan have had conversations about sort of, you know, where, like, who's in control here? And it was difficult to get some of the things on the pool replaced, whether they were It was a public facilities issue or a school issue and I wonder if dividing those 2. Pools creates like an administrative headache for you. Um. And if there's anything better we can do about that going forward. Um, I guess Sam, I, you know, with the JFK geothermal pilot. Have we learned anything from that? Is that something we can expand. To other schools.

Yeah, we're still assessing that. We're still learning from them, and we'll definitely take that information under consideration as we plan in the future. So I would say that's ongoing, and that's the goal is to just put these systems in place, learn from them, and see how we can replicate it if it works well. But I know with the RBT work that we've done that we've saved significant taxpayer dollars as a result of it, so we definitely want to continue to push and expand and save as many tax dollars as possible.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd say, unfortunately, for my constituents, we did learn a lot of lessons from making some mistakes in terms of like equipment that was used and noise. Uh, issues, um, so, I mean, it did seem to get better as it went along. Um. Uh, 1 thing I would say is when you're doing that kind of work. I think more planning around improvements to like the playground and the space after. The drilling has been done. It didn't seem like there was a. A whole lot of, um, you know, like, okay, we're going in, we're doing this construction. Uh, I mean, Sam, do you think like. When we do projects like that, should we be planning. For improvements at the school too, or is it too hard to add on things?

Each specific project has its own specific goal. So what we try to do is make sure we look globally at what projects are absolutely needed in the buildings and when and how. And then to the extent we can, we definitely group projects together. But again, like with the playground at the JFK, We work with the school leader about trying to expand it is what she was looking to do and just get a new one. But unfortunately, there are other playgrounds in the district that were more and more disrepair that we felt we had to prioritize instead. So those are the trade offs we have to do. So, as we look at schools and projects, they have. To the extent we can, we definitely try to do as much work as possible, but we also have the rest of the schools. We have to balance balance on the workout. So it's always going to be a juggling act and where we can will accommodate, but what we can't, we're just as transparent as possible about what we can and can't do.

Okay, and then Brian, I'll give you a little extra time. But so, for Sam, for these 4 schools that we. We still haven't gotten to, I mean, what would you say the delay was. caused by? Is it lack of funds? Is it just the unique character of these buildings, not enough attention paid to them?

I would categorize it more of like, we have been working in the background to a resolution and we've been looking at this work since about 2021 2020 thereabouts. Um, in with the goal of making it comfortable for all students and staff since 2021. So we have done work around what the options could be, whether it's electrical upgrades in window units or whether it's full HVAC replacements or installation of them. So that's the work we've been doing in the background. And I think as we get dollars from either internal sources or external sources, we had to prioritize the money we had to base it on what we can actually complete. So the projects that we've been able to do, we have done because the budget and the timing and the designs We're able to get done and unfortunately, these are just the last 4 remaining schools that we haven't gotten to yet due to the complexity of them. Right? So, now that we're at this final number of 4. We have the options laid out now. It's just a matter of figuring out. The next steps and how we make the progress. Right? So that's our goal now. So we're down to these 4. We're wrapping up some construction now, as you heard another 3 this year will be done by the end of the year. And we're going to continue to make progress. So I wouldn't say it's a delay. It's a matter of. Getting done what we can done and unfortunately, these are the last 4 that we have to get to again. We apologize for not getting to them sooner as much as we want to. But the, the, we're at the, we're at the final stages of getting everything done and we're hoping to have everything complete as soon as we possibly can.

Okay, I apologize chair. I was trying to keep track and I have not kept track of my time. So feel free to.

A minute and 13 seconds.

Okay. Thank you very much. Brian, did you have any. I don't know if you had a chance to look.

Yes. So looking at a couple of line items now, we do have one line that is HVAC repairs and upgrades. That is the one that kind of is a good relief valve for our existing HVAC infrastructure when we see a large replacement or improvement is needed. There is also a line that is HVAC improvements, which is also RBT. Right that is a program that we engage with with our partners in public facilities and city of Boston environmental that allows us to do projects like the JFK geothermal.

Okay, and then so, in terms of, like, doing what we need to do in the district, like, are. Are you using, like, all of this. You know, is this not like, I guess, between the 2 of these, it's like 30. 3.734M, like, is that. are are you you know is that enough uh uh for what you we need to do in the district or um you know you're gonna be looking like if we wanna meet the needs of our kids here do we need to invest more when it comes to hvac and thermal comfort air quality i always believe we can be investing more even with the rough estimates i gave to councillor culpepper

that this entire fund would have been exhausted on just these three schools. And that would have still been rough without bids, without supply chain, without knowing how much additional work needs to happen in the building.

And we'd have to still keep some level of reserve for existing systems beyond these four schools in case they go down, because that is also a thing we always constantly navigate.

Okay. And then just, Brian, you do also dip into the operating budget for maintenance?

The majority of the operating budget, nearly in full, is maintenance.

Okay. Okay. Okay, well, thank you very much. I appreciate it chair, uh, see the rest of my time.

There is no more time.

Okay. Sorry.

Okay. Um, just a quick. Clarifying a point that I want to make to community academy. Um, I know it is still open. I guess my follow up question is, I believe there's only 39 students who are currently. and it has the capacity for 154. And so it just, I'm sorry for that confusion, but I'm just trying to make sure that we understand kind of like our capacity and the investments that we're making and what those returns are. So when it's my turn, I wanna better understand that enrollment and the capacity issue. And I know, Dr. Lapina, I'm sure you're very happy that I'm giving you all of these heads up before it's my turn, right? Because that gives you an opportunity to do your research in real time. So that one is, you know, I don't put you out on the spot like I normally do. This is called growth. I'm going to, Counselor Worrell, you have seven minutes on the floor.

Thank you, Chair. And I'm not going to take all seven minutes. A lot of the questions that I had been asked by my colleagues. I just want to thank Dr. DePina and Brian for being here. I remember maybe a couple of years ago, maybe four or five years ago, having this conversation and there was, I can't remember how many schools were at the time, but just seeing the progress. and i just want to thank you for making this a priority in bps and i have definitely saw seen the progress just want to applaud you and the whole bps facilities and management team for making such an incredible progress over a short period of time so thank you i have no no questions And looking forward to, and I think a couple of years ago, it was at five, we're at four. So just looking forward to bringing that number down to zero. So thank you all.

Thank you, Councilor Rural.

One last thing, Chair. I have to shout out all the advocates, all those BPS family members, those parents that came out and advocated for this hearing to be held a couple of years ago. I think it was Mike, Ben, Dustin. I know I'm probably missing a few names, but I just wanted to make sure that we shout out those BPS families who advocated for us to start having these type of hearings. So thank you to those BPS families.

Great. Thank you, Councilor Rao. I've seen that we have been joined again by Councilor Flynn. Councilor Flynn, I am going to start your time. You have seven minutes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to ask questions to Brian and to Sam. Good to see both of you. Like Counsel Rowe mentioned, I also want to acknowledge the progress that you've made on this. I also want to acknowledge that you have been So I just want to say thank you. Can you just give me the four schools again that we still have HVAC upgrades that need to take place? I know you mentioned it, but can you just repeat it again, please?

Thank you, Councillor Flynn. No problem. We have Community Academy, Mather Elementary School, Mozart Elementary School, and the shot Taylor upper building, Taylor, Taylor Elementary.

Okay. And when you Brian, when you put in a new HVAC system, I know you mentioned it at the beginning on maybe with Sam. But do you have do you put in a major or a large generator to

We look at the generators on a case-by-case basis based on the overall building load, history of power outages, what it looks like, making sure we have the right infrastructure, and where possible on new buildings. We make sure there's an external generator hookup in case we needed to transport one across the district to serve that.

Are those generators... large, where generally do they go? Are they on top of the roof or somewhere next to the building? Just give me generally an idea where you would keep them.

Um, both both of those are true. Um, in some places where the footprint is a concern, we'll try to locate them on top of the building where we have a couple of spaces, not as much of a common commodity. Uh, we do try to make sure that there are ground level, easy to be serviced, easy to access without disrupting the school day.

And in the generators themselves. Do they need frequent maintenance or how does that work when there are challenges with the generator or with the HVAC system? How do you go about seeking assistance to repair it?

Yeah. With the HVAC systems and including the generators, we do continually work to have maintenance contracts in place that allows our team to service them as needed and routinely as scheduled by the manufacturer's guarantees. The generators, this happens all the time where they do need that level of service. They need to be exercised to make sure that they're able to handle that capacity. And sometimes it will be swapped out as well.

Okay. Do the generator or the HVAC system, if you put a new generator in or HVAC system in, how long, generally speaking, does that last? Is it a period of so many years, 15 years or 20 years? Just give me a ballpark of the lifespan of those.

so for kind of the older systems that exist in a lot of our buildings that did have central hvac we could see 30 to 40 years on some portions or large pieces of the equipment on some of the newer sustainable equipment sometimes we see a slightly shorter lifespan as some of the components are made to be replaced after about a 10 to 15 year cycle with the generators i am unsure exactly what that looks like but on average about 20 to 30 years.

Do you have to buy a generator based on the size of the school and the HVAC system, or can you use any generator, or does it have to be tailored towards that particular school?

It has to be tailored towards the capacity of items that are running on generator power. So any generator generally doesn't work. We generally have to have the appropriate load size that's able to be handled by that generator.

OK. I know my time is up. Sorry to ask these specific questions, but I am interested in this subject. I like to learn about these issues. My final question is, it's not necessarily on HVAC, but how is the maintenance going at the Blackstone School in terms of just general upgrades to the Blackstone? Is there anything that is outstanding that we can work on or you guys can work on to assist the students there?

I think the short answer here is absolutely. We could be doing more. I think our teams try to make sure that aesthetically it looks really good. We're putting money into the lighting, the exterior brickwork. We just finished some work with the Red Sox Foundation that really improved the exterior of that building. I think there's a baby grand piano on the way before the end of the month. And there's just so much that we are trying to do and continually add into that building to make sure it's serving the students as appropriate. But there's more we can be doing.

We have an event, too, coming up about the Red Sox at the field. So we'll make sure you get that information, too, counselor, because your advocacy was important in helping us get that as well. So thank you.

Thank you, Sam. I know I'm out of time. But maybe Sam or Brian, can we just check with the Blackstone? I think they do need some painting inside the building at a couple of the rooms. Some of the parents, teachers were telling me rather. Is it okay if you check in with them just to see if there's any outstanding issues? But I just wanted to do my due diligence to support my constituents. Madam Chair, thank you for giving me an extra couple of minutes.

Councilor Flynn, you were right on time.

Okay. Thank you, Julia.

I don't want to acknowledge that I gave you extra time and then you'd be like, oh, because you still have a few more seconds if you want them.

Do you want me to continue speaking, Julia?

No, I'm just joking. I'm just joking. No, we're good now. We're good. Don't leave it like that. Thank you very much. My turn.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Councilor Flynn, for your outstanding participation. Okay, so I am going to, before, I know Councilor Papen, you're still on, so if anyone has a second round of questions, it would be great to know, because I'd like to have an opportunity for any public testimony, if there are any, before we move to a round of second questions. So for me, I'm just curious about the amount of dollars that we're spending outside of just for the cooling, the harm reduction, if you will, like the popsicles and things of that nature. Can you give me a bottom line figure about how much we're spending on triaging the situation?

Yes. So the popsicle number is not unique to schools that only have AC issues. So the number I have is 12,000 because we like to make sure our kids have a cool treat when it's warm out, regardless of this unique application. So if I were to look at those schools, I'd have to get back to you on an exact number.

So, Brian, I think we, Mr. Ford, I think we talked about a number of different things that you all discussed, like I'm sure the wet towels cost some money. I'm just curious, how much money have we spent on triaging the situation in our schools? What's the total for everything that we have spent on the triage?

Let me look that information up and get back to you.

I think I was asking for more than just the popsicles, right? I think it was, you know, I think you mentioned a number of different strategies. Those are the things that I'd like to know just so that we can counter balance that budget. And I think just for the record, Councilor Pepin, in the future, if we do a follow up with this, it would be great to have somebody from the budget office at BPS. I know, Sam, Dr. Dupina, I know you work across departments, but getting someone here who understands the numbers would be helpful to me in my line of questions. So I just want to note that for the record for the next go-round. And then the other follow-up question that I had was in relation to the schools that I mentioned, the league. The K-8, I mean, are those schools open? Are they operating? What's happening with Community Academy being under-enrolled?

Sure, I'll just start with the Lee and Lee Academy. So those are 2 different schools. The least schools on top of that. That's the kid a school. And that's work is that's glory has a system. We're just doing upgrading work. There. The Academy is the school that we've added units to. And they're in their last year of enrollment. I'm sorry the last year of being open. However, we still plan on using that building for educational purposes down the line. So the work that we're doing there is not going to go in vain. We're going to maintain that building in our portfolio and figure out the best use for it.

So that's good information that we're getting here, right? That, you know, we, we, this is about HVAC in our Boston public schools. And you could just mention that there is an opportunity. There is a slight possibility that the school will be used differently. Does that mean a different grade configuration? Does that mean that you may use it for housing when you say that there is, I mean, what, what does that just for the record, just so that I'm clear.

Yeah, we'll continue to use it for educational purposes. So what exactly that looks like, we don't know just right now, just yet. But given the work that we're doing with our launch and facilities plan, it'll be part of that annual review that we do about what's next for that space. So we will use it for educational purposes, is what I would say.

So, then going back to the question that counselor Louisiana asked regarding the. Taylor, so in that school going to be used for. Educational purposes, and we know that to be true, right? There's no yes. So then my question is more of a process question. So, if we know that. The Taylor shop is going to be operating and there's no uncertainty. Why are we spending. Many time and energy on a school that we don't know.

What it's fate is going to be well, just to be clear, we know that we were merging the shot tailored to 1 school. And that school will be in existence and the question now is. We're in the feasibility phase with MSBA to determine what the options are for the site of where that school should be. So that's the phase we're in right now with MSBA. So right now, once the site is permanently decided on, that new site will have HVAC, I guess is the logic point. But thanks for that clarifying question.

I also just want to add one additional layer to that. began at the Lee also started in 2022. Going through that design process, acquiring the grant, working with all of the architects and engineers involved, it took a number of years for this project to come to fruition. And that was one of the reasons we committed to continuing to use it as for educational purposes because of the amount of effort it takes to make changes like this within our BPS spaces.

Yeah, and see, this is where the, for me, the budget and how we are spending our money and the amount of time and energy that we have spent with studies and architect designs and all of that, just in 2022 to now be 2026, 2027, and that school is gonna like morph us into something else is what concerns me about how we have conducted business in the city of Boston, which in particularly our Boston public schools, which people will then question whether or not we are being fiscally responsible when we are charting in a course of 2022. And now four or five years later, we're moving in a different direction after all those investments have been poured into a school. So I think I just wanted to name that as a concern as we continue to have these conversations about the long-term facilities plan and how we are going to reconcile that. And I'm curious, Dr. Lupino, you have your face Do you want to say something?

No, I'm just listening, counselor.

Oh, man, I thought you were going to give me a reason as to why we spent that much time and energy in 2022 on the Lee. And now we're uncertain about its educational repurpose.

I mean, the goal, the goals counselor was to make sure we have a plan for all of our buildings to make sure we output them. And at the time, we weren't considering the academy foreclosure. So, for us, it was always a matter of all of our buildings and making sure we had a plan to equip them to HBC. And that was again, 1 of the schools we were able to do. So we move forward with the plan to do it as simple as that.

I appreciate that. So I'm curious. I mean, I have two more minutes left. Y'all in trouble now. And a second round of questions coming up. But my question then is, right, how much money did we spend from 2022 till now in regards to the Lee?

I'm not sure about that information right there available Brian, but if not, we can get that back to you constantly.

Yeah, I think that's a really important question just because, you know, we have closed our schools. Um, we had, we heard from a lot of families who were not happy. With those closures, and I'm just curious if the amount of money that we spent on, you know, getting this situation for the lead could have been used differently. And maybe we could have kept the doors open. I don't know.

Again, we're gonna be using our building for educational purposes going forward. So for us, we don't think it's a waste of money, if you will. We think it's money well invested because whatever goes into that space next, we'll be able to benefit from the HVAC that we installed.

I'm curious, when are we having those conversations about what's going to happen in that space? Because I live literally down the street from there and I have not seen any family engagement or community conversations regarding that space. When you say educational purposes, that could mean a lot of things. Are we looking for, it's going to be for students who are English language learners, are going to be at academy for multicultural connections? What's the vision?

Yeah, we don't have a specific vision right now to this day for me to speak to, but I know we're going to continue to do our 18-month cycle of annually analyzing what possibilities are, and we'll make those announcements available to the communities as soon as we know those. Typically, we try to do those in the fall. So right now, I couldn't speak to those specifically, but we will provide an update once we have it.

Yeah, and then the league was closed because of what?

I'd have to go back and look at the details concept. Yeah, I don't have that information ready readily right here in front of me. But what we do know is that for the purposes of the in the building, whatever goes into that space for education purposes will benefit from the work that we did.

Okay, all right, thank you, I appreciate the indulgence in an unrelated topic here. But i'm just trying to poke holes at the leaves because you know, we want to be fiscally responsible, and this is the sort of conversations that people tend to look at waste and so. if we spent all that money, time, and energy on a school that is going to go offline, or you guys are going to repurpose it to something else, and that's when we have kids who are sweating to death, like at the Mathers, right? Those are the sort of things that people then question us about, kind of like, what are our thought processes? So that's why I'm digging in a little bit deeper as it relates to that. But I will... My time has... been up like 30 seconds ago and out of respect for the process and my colleagues, I too will go on mute. And Councilor Pepin, I'm going to assume that you have some follow-up questions. Then I see that Councilor Murphy's still here. If you do have questions, wanna make sure that I get you into the mix here, but I'll go next to Councilor Pepin, Councilor Flynn, and Councilor Murphy. And then my last round of questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I actually don't have follow-up questions. I was able to get my questions for my schools in the first round, and then my colleagues, including you, actually asked some follow-up questions that I had already. What I'm going to do is I would love to give my time back to you if there's any parents that want to testify. I'd rather listen from them directly.

Thank you. Okay, so that all said, Councilor Flynn, we'd love to give you an opportunity for second round of questions or any closing remarks that you'd like to share while you have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just ask a couple of questions relating to some schools in my district. I've had conversations with BPS about Excel High School, which is the old South Boston High School. Either Brian or Sam, can you just give us a brief update on where we're at right now in terms of South Boston High School, Excel High School, and the community engagement process as we go forward?

Yeah, my understanding is that where we met with the community on a different few different occasions as you and your office were attended. We'll continue to do those meetings by now. I think we're in the phase where we're looking over the different parties and suggested recommendations of construction projects and nailing that down. And once we have that paired down, we'll get back to the community around the updates.

Sam, is there any upgrades or challenges at school?

Not to my knowledge, Brian, you want to lean a little bit more here? But not that I'm aware of.

Yes, um, this is 1 of the projects where we are also leaning into our cooperation with the renew Boston trust. To make sure we're trying to exercise, like, energy efficient options. And while we haven't settled on what that looks like yet. Filtration ventilation, they have all been in the discussion as of late. Right. Okay.

Maybe my last question. What's the latest on the gymnasium at the Josiah Quincy School?

Almost done. Thank you for your advocacy. So we did a lot of work over the time with it, but it's pretty much mostly the safety issues that we were flagging last spring have been addressed, and we're just putting final touches on it. So if you haven't been by there, please come by and take a look. We're happy to have you.

Okay. Do you expect it, what, another month or so like that, or...?

Yeah, within that time frame. It should be fairly soon. We can give you an exact update.

Okay. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Sam. Madam Chair, I don't have any further questions. Thank you for conducting this important hearing, Madam Chair.

Yeah, thank you, Councilor Flynn. Appreciate your advocacy on behalf of your district and your constituents. Okay, so I do have some questions regarding community academy. So back in the day, I did some family engagement there when I was in the education space and it was high school and it was alternative high, so it was a lot harder to get families engaged. And so I'm curious about the enrollment. you only have I think 39 or 49 students and it has a capacity of 154. I may be wrong or I don't know if I have the latest data. So could you just confirm that for me?

Sure. Um, so just for just for contextual purposes and for the presentation purposes, we named community academy as the building because most people may not know that it's actually the fuller building and but most people know it as community academy building. So that's why we're saying community academy building community academy. As we know it, we've recently changed it as part of the launch and facilities plan to become life by design. Life by design is a new program that replaced community academy. And that program is a temporary placement program for students that were code of conduct involved or that they're experiencing temporary transition from different programs. For example, transitioning out of or if they were hospitalized or if they need some more social emotional support before they transition back into a school setting. So the design of the program is for tier three therapeutic academic support. So by design, it's not supposed to have a large number of students at the school and program. So right now, the last numbers I saw were about 50 students is planned to what we anticipate to have throughout the year. But again, it's a transition program. So students are not supposed to stay there. They're supposed to come, get the supports they need, both therapeutic and academic. For the transition back to a school, or they are there for the time of their court of conduct consequence, and then they return back to their to their school from there.

I hope that helps that. Thank you for that. I know, having worked in the alternative high school space back in the day, ABCD University. I'm just curious about how creative we're being with the use of our spaces. There's the BCYF. I'm just curious about how we can start really thinking outside the box in terms of how we maximize on our space. I think about 154 students were literally 100 less students than what the school and the building has capacity for, and also cooling a space for a smaller number of students. While everybody deserves cooling, I'm not saying that in case anybody runs with that, I wanna be clear. I'm just going back to kind of like capacity and really thinking outside the box. And Dr. Dupina, I mean, this is an opportunity for us to really start thinking about how we're utilizing all of the buildings we have access to. And so if it's a smaller program, and we have BCYF centers that are not operating during the day, for the most part it's after school. Just curious about what conversations if any VPS has had in thinking about other spaces and places for programming so that we're not, again, thinking back to the league, not thinking back to this particular school, kind of like how are we really being thoughtful about our financial investments?

Sure, yeah, I mean, what I would say first and foremost, Councilman here, is that We wanna make sure that we focus on our most vulnerable populations, and that's been a charge of the superintendent over the time that she's been here, is to make sure we really lock in and give support to our most vulnerable students. Thus, the work that we did at the new Carter Building, because again, that's a smaller population of our students, but we were adamant and insisted that we provide them the best space to learn, and we did that. Similar to Community Academy, We feel that this is a very vulnerable population as well, because they're experienced a lot of transition. They need a lot of therapeutic support. We want to make sure that the students that are there in staff there, frankly, are just comfortable in doing the work in a space that has a thermal comfort that we need. So we're, we're, we're, we're just want to be really good for the record.

My question really wasn't about whether or not they deserve to get to the space question.

Yeah, I will. I got you, I got you, I got you.

I'm tracking hearing.

As am I, I got you. The reason why I say that though is it's just important to note that regardless of the program and regardless of the size of the program, we're going to invest in our students to make sure that the staff and students can operate and have a good academic environment. With regard to the answer around exploring other space, We consult and we work with BCYF all the time and where we can share space, we do share space. So we utilize a lot of the gymnasiums. We collaborate on programming. We share the pools. So we do think about programs that either they want to run or we want to run. And we do have an MOU in place that talks about how we share facilities and what that looks like. So we're constantly engaging those conversations with them. And if there's a need in a neighboring public space in the city near our schools, our city partners are always ready to host us and have us in in their spaces like the public library. the Health Commission and vice versa. If they need space in our buildings and we have them, we try to accommodate as well. So those conversations are always ongoing and just want to reiterate you and the public about.

Yeah, no, and I know that. And I guess the question that I asked was whether or not you all considered alternative space for community academy programming at one of the libraries, at BCYF, at the Boston Public Health Commission. That was the specific question that I asked in regards to this particular situation with 50 students and some stability that I know that we can offer them in any of our municipal buildings. So I'm just curious about that.

Yeah, we landed up, we landed on keeping them there as well as the end of car building for the for the sake of convenience. Right? So, life by design is spread over 2 campuses very intentionally, because the, then the car building is right the corner of blue lab and Columbia road. And that's a high traffic area where most of our, it's very accessible by and a lot of our families are from there. And then the second building over on Fuller is accessible by the Forest Hills train station as well. So we thought about convenience to the families and the students that travel and wanted to make it as accessible as possible. So we felt that it was important for us to house them in our spaces that we have available so that we really maximize the buildings that we do have on stock given the repurposing of the buildings that we've done over the years.

All right, so I'm going to leave that there. Something for us to continue to unpack.

I'm not going to just keep going on here.

My last two questions and just curious if you could tell us a little bit about how are the HVAC systems of closed schools, especially their ACs, being repurposed in other schools? I would love to hear about kind of like how we're recycling. and in the winter what measures will the district take to ensure that all classrooms within bps stay within the minimal um minimum temperatures of 66 to 68 degrees fahrenheit which is set by state um and then i also just want to thank igr for sharing the back to summer projects update memo we really do appreciate that and i'm just curious where can students and families share this information that does not uh begin and end with us having to share it i'm just curious if that already is posted somewhere. And if it is, where we can direct families to it. And if it's not, I'd love to be able to get future updates publicly. That would be great. And then what are the district's plans to ensure proper ventilation in all BPS schools? And that's it.

Thank you, Councilor Mahina. Great set of questions. So repurposing our HVAC equipment, When a building is closed, that is literally the very first place that we start to look to see if there's something we can use in one of our buildings that helps to serve one of our BPS communities, just to make sure we're leveraging the dollars that have already been spent, right? And this might come from taking a pump that's in existence at another building that may be offline or repurposing anything that is in that space, electrical equipment, AC equipment, HVAC equipment, all of the above. um and moving on minimum heat every every building in the district has heat it is our guarantee to continue to provide heat we do rely on people on the ground to also let us know when things are arrived We do have the IAQ sensors that do allow us to see what those building temperatures look like. I get a status report of every building three times a day, even in the summer, even in the fall, when the weather's not changing. That lets us know when we can act quickly. And we just want to make sure our custodian is aware and we get our teams to act on that minimum heat right away. If not, we are in violation of some of the BTU agreements that are there for the minimally heated spaces. And then last, since COVID, we have actually met the minimum and exceeded the minimum ventilation standards in all of our classroom spaces.

And with preparation, is there...

Yeah, I was gonna answer that question. That part of the question, counselor. So that same memo that you received, we're very intentional on sharing it and making it available in a few different spaces. One, we also share it with the BTU, so the Boston Teachers Union knows exactly that information they can share with their staff. we also make it available to the family liaisons at the schools and the school leaders so that they have that information as well and we talk it through with them throughout the process of any upgrades that we do due to the spaces so those are the avenues that we do share it um so um again thank you for helping us share it out to the public as well because i know you guys have a broader um following as well that that you can also um access a lot of our family so Thank you for helping to share, but if you have other ideas, we're happy to indulge, but we do share it with other stakeholders in at the school site as well with different staff members that engage with families. Yeah, I'm sorry in the hotline staff, we also share with the hotline staff that they have aware of as well. So we get calls from the hotline that they're able to share it as well.

And then the bonus round question here. What? What is your level of engagement with the trades? And I always talk about the fact that we are resource rich and coordination poor and so many partners that we have here that we can be tapping into. So I'm just curious, kind of like how are we leveraging those networks? How are we working in partnership with Local 103 and other folks who are in this space to help support this undertaking?

Thank you, Councillor Mejia. That's a great question. I believe that we need to be fully engaged with our trades all the time. Um, I actually sit in a building most of my time. That helps coordinate the trades just to make sure that I am close to the work showing up at 6 0 am. So I have a chance to talk with the guys in the morning and girls. And people are just to make sure that I have a chance to connect with them and see what they're actually feeling as they go through the implementation. But when it comes to the union hall specifically. There is more that we can be doing to have those connections. whether it's the partnerships that happen at Madison Park and getting our students into those schools, or it's the partnerships that we're forming between our staff here at BPS and our students to make sure they can see what we're doing, have those presentations, and know that these are options that are available on a two-way street.

Yeah, I do believe there's definitely an opportunity there for strengthening those partnerships because then everybody wins. The goal is everybody to win, right? So we'd love to explore what that could potentially look like in the future as we continue to have these conversations. Councillor Murphy, just wanted to give you one last opportunity to speak if you're here with us to ask questions. And then also Councillor Papin as the lead sponsor would like to give you an opportunity for closing remarks and then don't want to hold you all hostage for no reason, give you back some of your time. So Councillor Papin, you have the floor if you choose to use it.

Yes, I just want to thank you Madam Chair for providing this space and for scheduling this very important hearing. Like I said in the beginning, this topic is of great importance to a lot of the parents in my district. And just to be able to get this update and share this information with them as a result, it's very helpful. I do hope that madam chair this is a continuous conversation so that we are able to get updates i'm a big believer in working sessions or we do like a policy roundtable conversation once we who knows maybe we could get an update once the four schools are completed and then what can we do after that so i just i'm very thankful to both chief ford and dr dupina for the work that you've done so far the numbers speak for themselves i'm just thankful that we had this time today but i'll continue to advocate for the parents in my district i have amazing schools in my district i'm very proud of what we have so far so thank you all so much for the work that you do and thank you to the parents that reached out to my office asking for these updates

Thank you, Councilor Papin. And so I'm curious, because I'm going to assume Dr. Lapina and Mr. Ford, you took notes on all my outstanding questions. So I'd like to hear from you what you think is still unanswered on my end here that I'm going to be looking for from IGR to follow up. What were they? I have them. I just want to make sure you were listening.

Yeah, so on my side, more detailed funding around what our cooling efforts have been. I'm hearing total cost for the four schools and what that could look like. I'm hearing the enrollment questions around Life by Design at Community Academy. And I'm hearing the, give me a second, I'm going through my notes. And then just more information about the capital budget around how we prioritize that work and what those dollars look like and how we can better utilize and prioritize that. Yeah, I think in the trade, sorry, and coordinated with the trades folks a little bit better was our last conversation.

In the timeline for the Taylor Shaw.

Yes, sorry, I missed that.

Thank you. Okay, go ahead.

I was just going to say, as of right now, the estimated completion of construction is 2030 for the Shaw-Taylor MSBA core project.

Well, we did talk about we're in the feasibility phase, and that's where we are now to finalize what the site is going to be.

Okay.

Okay, thank you for that. And I just want to be really clear that what I'm looking for as it relates to the LEA is how much money we have spent. on the feasibility study, just all of those investments from 2022 until now, and now that we are now pivoting in a different direction. So I'd like to know how much money we have spent there.

I have an answer for that as well, Councillor.

What you do, what is it?

4.2 million.

And how much does it cost to upgrade the HVAC system?

This was all collective. This would be inclusive of the design studies, all of the work that has gone to get us from kind of the inkling phase to the implementation phase.

And the cost is going to change depending on the school, because each school is different and has different needs. So that's just the cost for that school. We can just replicate a number for all schools.

So that if I'm hearing you correctly, was that $4 million, did you say?

$4.2 million.

$4.2 million. And the school is set up for closure.

However, we're still going to maintain it for an educational purpose.

No, but I want to know for the record that we spent 4.2M dollars. On investments. On a school that is closing.

Yes, and we also started that work many years ago, and we're going to continue to use that space for an educational purpose.

If I could just add one additional thing to that is that, yes, the work started in 22 when we applied for the grant in 21, but also at that point in time, just to make sure we were serving the schools that had the highest need, the opportunity index and racial equity planning tool were ways in which we were organizing this work to make sure we were serving the people that were not speaking up for themselves, not have an advocacy voice on a public forum.

I appreciate that. Okay, so it would be helpful And for the next time, Councilor Pepping, if we do a round two here, I'd love to be able to invite the budget office to participate because all of this is about dollars and cents, right? We need money to make things happen. And so we also need to make sure that we're utilizing whatever money we have effectively so that we can have more money to do the things that we still want to do. So that's going to be on my radar. I look forward to the answers and, you know, Brian, the question about how much money we spent on triaging the need. is a matter of it may not be a big dollar amount but it's still significant enough for me to know that we are spending money um to triage and i'm just curious what it would look like for us to redirect some of that money to other things so those are the things that are still top of mind for me i do appreciate you both um for staying the entire time and i wanted to note that we have gotten lots of written testimony. So I wanna thank all the parents for their advocacy. All of your written testimonies will be posted and shared with our council colleagues. But I wanted to see, Megan, if we have anybody signed up for public testimony now?

Yes, we have three individuals.

Oh my goodness. You know what, Megan? I thought this was Megan Kavanaugh. That's why I got tripped up with the last name change. So sorry.

I did technically add a name to my name, so you are still correct.

I changed your whole person. Okay. All right, sorry about that. So let's go to public testimony. And I'm so sorry for those folks who have been patiently waiting, but we can let some folks in unless Dr. Dupina or Brian, any other questions, concerns, things that you wanted to raise. Thank you for your time. I would like for you to stay and listen, or you can listen on your way home or whatever you wanna do, but we're moving on to public testimony. Thank you. All right, so I see Teal. Oh, I saw them, and now they're gone. Okay, who else we have? Okay, Tito. You, and I'm so sorry for keeping you waiting for so long.

Not at all, thank you. It's been great to hear from everyone, so I appreciate it. Hi everyone, my name is Teal Cole and I'm a resident of Roslindale. I'm here today as the parent of a second grader and a K-1 student at the Mozart Elementary School. Thank you all for your time and attention to this matter. I've spoken to many of you via email and appreciate the work that you're doing to help us find a solution here. I'm speaking on behalf of our students, teachers and staff who are enduring unacceptable and unsafe conditions inside their classrooms due to extreme heat. As Brian mentioned, we can monitor the air temperatures in real time through the public dashboard. This past June, temperatures in the Mozart School reached crisis levels. In classroom 103, temperatures soared to 91 degrees. In my daughter's classroom, the average temperature did not dip below 80 degrees for weeks, peaking near 90. She didn't want to go to school, and I can't blame her. I visited her class on Friday, June 12th. The lights were off, two fans were running, and I had sweat running down my back and legs. Teachers had towels draped across their necks, and the principal said she was spraying the children with a hose at recess to help keep them cool. Learning simply cannot happen in these conditions. I don't feel that my children are safe at their school on extreme heat days. Our family has had to discuss keeping my children home on these days to protect their wellbeing. Brian mentioned this option today as a possible solution on extremely hot days. However, keeping them home does not just affect their learning. It means that my husband and I have to miss work, which affects our livelihood. That's not a solution. We've felt forced to consider moving schools, which would be devastating to us because we deeply love our Mozart community. We are ready and willing to partner with BPS to find a solution. And thank you for taking the time today to do that. Parents at our school have offered to raise funds for window units, but as you've heard, the building's electrical infrastructure is too outdated to handle them. Cooling zones have been added, and I appreciate that, but when I ask the teachers how they use them, they're not an effective solution. Teachers cannot move their entire classes or send children by themselves to cooling zones for 10 minutes here and there. They're not a usable or effective solution because they don't allow children to learn in a cool environment. They might be helpful in an emergency, but they do not solve the problem. And frankly, neither do popsicles. I respect the work that you've done, but we want to make an impact on the Mozart School this year. I think it is prudent to look at holistic upgrades as you've been doing so that we can do as many upgrades as possible in the most effective and efficient way possible. An HVAC solution would be ideal, but realistically, from what we've heard today, it seems like that's not going to happen this year for multiple reasons. I've asked about portable generators being a possibility to call the building and we were told that they need to consider the noise impact of these machines in the neighborhood. Respectfully, I think that learning takes precedent over some additional noise for 2 months out of the year. Our teachers and students deserve a safe and equitable place to learn and teach. What will be done on a temporary basis to ensure that the Mozart school is cool in each classroom. Please help us fix this now. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Teal. Thank you for your advocacy. And thank you for staying as long as you did to speak. We really do appreciate it. Okay, so I'm going to go on to Ben. Ben, you now have the floor.

Good afternoon, Chair Mejia, sponsors and co-sponsors of this hearing, and members of the Council. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Ben Engle. I'm a parent at the Mather Elementary School in Dorchester, chair of the parent council and executive member of the school site council. I'm here today on behalf of a school community serving 500 students expected to learn in a building where during the school year we documented classroom temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. At the time of this very hearing, it is comfortable 64 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Yet some of the classrooms at the Mather are registering over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I would ask each of you to consider if the room that you were in was registering over 80 degrees right now, how effective would you be at your ability to concentrate on the work in front of you? What about over 100 degrees? And then consider what we are asking of a six-year-old in the same environment for an entire school day. This is an emergency, not a situation that should be in early discussion phase with no public timeline. The city and BPS have promised to provide school facilities that are safe, healthy, and conducive to learning and have asked to be held accountable for reaching that goal. Classrooms exceeding 100 degrees do not meet that standard. In response to this emergency, our community organized a petition signed by over 160 parents and educators in just a few days for permanent air conditioning at the Mather. Our petition recognizes that the Mather requires significant electrical infrastructure upgrades to support the permanent cooling. We specifically asked BPS for a plan addressing those upgrades, including a timeline, defined milestones, responsible parties, and a path to funding. BPS's formal response to the Mather community's petition was alarmingly quick and lacking in substance. It largely restated the same explanation that Mather has received for years. It provided no timeline for a permanent solution, no funding commitment, no accountable project plan, and no meaningful response to the specific deliverables requested in our petition. After years of dealing with this problem, our community needs a plan for solving it. not another explanation of why it is difficult or an offering of popsicles. In fact, it is precisely the lack of a clear plan that led our community to organize in the first place. I am therefore asking the council on behalf of Mather Elementary to use its oversight and budget authority to press BPS and the city for a concrete funded plan to complete the electrical infrastructure upgrades necessary for permanent air conditioning at the Mather, with clear milestones, identified responsibility, and a timeline for completion. We are not asking for an immediate or unrealistic fix. We are asking for accountability and a credible commitment to solving a problem that has persisted for far too long. Thank you for your time and the attention to the students, educators, and families of the Mather School.

Thank you, Ben. And I want to note for the record that the timeline question that I asked in regards to when it is part of that inquiry. So once we get that information, we'll share it out with folks, particularly with you, Ben, as well. So thank you for that. Okay. I see that we have Catherine lined up. Catherine, you are available. You now have the floor.

Hi, my name is Katie Williams. I'm a mother of two children at Mozart Elementary School. I'm a pediatric nurse practitioner, a lifelong Boston resident, and a former BPS student. I'm here to testify on behalf of my children, my experience as a parent, and my professional experience As a pediatric nurse practitioner, I wanted to share why kids are at higher risk of overheating because it is unique to pediatrics. So a child has a larger surface to area mass ratio, which means they absorb heat faster from their environment. So our kids feel this more than the adults around them. they have less developed sweating mechanisms i apologize for my dog barking in the background so they literally sweat less and it takes longer for them to produce sweat so they cannot naturally cool themselves as quickly they have a they generate more metabolic heat inside their bodies compared to adults and adolescents and they're quicker to dehydrate because their bodies lose fluids faster and their kidneys can't process water as quickly. So for all these reasons, I think that our kids are just higher risk and we really need to keep that health piece of it in mind. As a parent, just to paint the picture of what it looked like when I picked my kids up from school over the last several years on hotter days, my daughter Nora and my son Owen would come out, they looked tired, their faces were red, their water bottles were empty. They had been filled many times throughout the day, but they were drinking lots of water. They would share that their teachers would turn the lights off in the room to cool them down and offer frequent breaks, which was taking away from their learning. And then generally they stay after school and play and that's something they love to do and I think is unique to their school. But they would want to go home as soon as possible so that they could cool down. My hope is that after this meeting, our school can get some updates on what changes are coming. I think that there's a lot of fear among the school that it's not possible to upgrade the HVAC and therefore closure or merger is the only option. I think a lot of us are scared of that because our school community is so strong. It's such a bright and nurturing environment and we want to maintain that. That's my hope and dream coming out of this.

Thank you, Katie. And I'm also a BPS graduate, a BPS mom, and a BPS agitator and supporter. So happy to join you on this advocacy. And so I think that we have our marching orders, y'all. People are very clear about what they want. And I think we have an opportunity to start working on rebuilding that trust. And I think that people want answers. And so looking forward to working alongside you all. to do just that. So I see Councilor Murphy, you're still here. Not sure if you're still here or you're still logged in, but I want to just note that if you do have any questions before we wrap up, I'd like to give you the opportunity. Going once. Going twice. Okay. And so I just want to note that this hearing on docket 1334 is adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay, bye, everyone.