School Committee - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Welcome to this January what is it? Thirteenth meeting of the Somerville School Committee. Pursuant Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2025, this meeting of school committee will be conducted by a hybrid participation. We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City Of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. Superintendent, will you call on roll?

Through the chair, miss Biton. Doctor Ackman.

Here.

Mister Green.

Here.

Mister Biton. Here. President Pinata Neufel? Mayor Ballantyne? Miss Barish?

Here.

Doctor Phillips? Here. Chair Cription?

Here.

We have quorum.

Great. We will start with a moment of silence and a salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We will now introduce our interpreters who are here on Zoom. Spanish, if you wanna unmute yourself and introduce yourself.

And Portuguese.

To

And I'm Creole?

Good evening. My name is Gina Miranda. I'll be your Haitian Creole interpreter for tonight. If you would like to listen to Haitian Creole, even though it says French, you will hear in Haitian Creole. Please click on the blue. Thank you.

Thank you. We will start with a report from our student rep, who I believe is joining us on Zoom.

Hi, everyone. My name is and I'm the student representative. And there's been a few fun and new events that are happening around Summer of High. Starting on Wednesday, course selection begins for freshmen, sophomores, and juniors this Wednesday, along with the introduction of the new, course selection fair on Wednesday, where students will have the chance to explore new electives and classes by roaming around the high school during x block. Further access testing for non English speakers begins next week along with mock AP tests in the mornings, creating late starts all throughout next week.

On the other hand, the Spark scholarship opened their application to sophomores and juniors, which provides a $3,500 scholarship to a summer program of a student's choice. Moreover, the high school's very famous multicultural fair planning has begun, The fair will take place sometime in April. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. Are there any questions or comments from my colleagues? I'm excited to hear about selection fair. That sounds like a great opportunity. Yeah.

I think it's actually for the superintendent. But the I know that there have been questions from parents recently about the course catalog at the high school. And I've I have this vague recollection of it maybe four times before COVID, at least getting a school can at least get a presentation in the spring about the upcoming course catalog. And I was wondering if we could maybe have something like that again at some point this spring just so that we're versed on what's going on on those issues. I think especially in a time of change, just helps us know what what the high school is planning.

Thank you. I definitely can have that conversation with the high school team.

Thank you.

Alright. Thank you for joining us, Ciampa. That brings us to approval of minutes. We have some minutes to approve. I'll entertain a motion.

I move to approve the minutes from the meetings of November 25, December 9, and December 16.

Second. I get the by miss Barish, seconded by mister Biton. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to public comment. We have one public commenter. Do we have anyone for public comment on Zoom? No. K. I will read our instructions. Welcome and thank you to those who have signed up for public comment. Speakers will be allowed three minutes to present their material.

However, the chair may limit comments to two minutes based on the number of individuals signed up to speak. You will have three minutes since we just have one speaker this evening. Speakers should begin their comments by stating their name and address or in case of district employees, role within the district. The chair of the meeting after a warning reserves the right to terminate speech which is not constitutionally protected because it constitutes truth true threats that are likely to provoke a violent reaction and cause a breach of the peace or incitement to imminent lawless conduct or which contains obscenities. Public comment is not a discussion, debate, or dialogue between the public and the committee.

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

Thank you. Good evening, everybody. My name is Daeshon Simmons. I'm a resident of Ward 7, and I'm a middle school history educator as well as the very proud president of the Summerville Educators Union. When the topic of rats and rodent infestation comes up within this body, and we chuckle because it seems ridiculous, and let's be clear, it absolutely is ridiculous that we have a rodent infestation of this magnitude in all of our city buildings, including our schools and our firehouses.

However, I'm here tonight because too many of our educators know the infestation in our buildings are no laughing matter. We are tired of hearing the city place the blame at our educators' feet for not doing enough to keep our buildings tidy. In 2025, we're asking educators to teach math, science, social studies, ELA, social emotional learning, be a mentor, attend co curricular events, coach this team, go on this overnight trip, plan interventions for your entire class roster, and the list goes on. Our educators are far too busy developing our countries tomorrow, so no, we cannot ask educators to also become custodians on top of it all. There's a great group of union folks that do that important work in our buildings already.

What messages are we sending to our educators that their administrators are being sent pictures when a student forgets to throw out a wrapper in their classroom at the end of the day? Our educators are trying their hardest on any given day, and for city leadership to blame them is not only a cop out, it's an advocating it's advocating their responsibilities to take care of our facilities. The solutions the city has given so far for this issue have been lazy at best and neglectful at worst. One of the solutions is ask educators to have plastic containers to keep items away from pests. Nationally, on average, educators spend around 500 to $750 of their own money to furnish their classrooms, to stock their room, and decorate their room.

Now, we're asking educators to spend more of their own money to solve a problem the city is ignoring? No. That's not an option for us at this point. What is more concerning is the city's leadership's lack of transparency regarding any of their processes. The SCU understands there are a number of facilities related issue that this body needs to be updated on and yet I see no one here from the city leadership to explain what caused the boiler breakdown at the Brown School last Monday that caused an early school closure for those students and staff.

What caused that boiler failure? What steps has the city taken to ensure this doesn't happen to our students and staff again? How many times can the educators ask the city leadership to care about them and the lives of their students and families? The SAU is imploring the school committee to do whatever is within your control to ensure the city is being a good partner to the district to ensure the good for our students and staff. If city leadership will be willing to work together, we wouldn't have educators worrying about their students sitting on or getting mouse poop in their mouth, which actually happened, or students being too cold to learn, which also happened. Our students and staff simply deserve more from this city. Thank you.

Okay. That brings us to the report of the superintendent. Doctor Kumar? Thank

you through the chair, and happy New Year. And welcome back to everyone for our first meeting of the year. So today, we have an agenda that reflects, the rich and diverse culture of Summerville Public Schools. So today's agenda includes important updates starting with doctor Boston Davis. Doctor Davis will lead us through a review of the proposed calendar for the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six school year.

This proposal builds on previous successes while introducing some key changes aimed at improving functionality and ensuring the critical elements remain intact. Next, we'll hear from the SFLC multilingual services team. We are fortunate to have a dedicated group of translators and interpreters who do incredible work in supporting our district's families. This team truly embodies the priorities of our strategic plan, especially in the area of equity and access and family and community engagement. During their presentation, you will hear how they meet families where they are using culturally responsive strategies and communicating in their native languages.

So thank you. Also, before we proceed, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate some of our staff's recent achievements. Thank you to the summer to the Somerville Times for awarding us the best idea of 2024, the free food market for Somerville public school families. So And I know where the award is if there's a little trophy, but but I I'll take it. And a shout out to the SFLCS staff and to our volunteers for organizing and staffing this event on the first Tuesday of every month.

Switching gears, I'd like to provide an update on the Brown boiler. As many of you know, last Monday, we had a heating failure with the boiler at the Brown School on a day in which temperatures were below freezing. As a result, we had to make the difficult decision to dismiss the school early. I want to express my gratitude to the students, staff, and families at the Brown School along with our central office staff. Everyone worked quickly to ensure that students were safely dismissed and also received lunch prior to dismissal.

I also want to thank DPW for their quick response. DPW identified that the issue was due to a sensor sensor failure and a frozen pipe connected to the boiler. The problem was discovered early in the morning and resolved by 3PM that same day. If you have any detailed questions, the city has communicated that they will provide an update on the boiler at the next joint school committee and city council meeting on facilities. The date, we don't have it yet, but it will be shared with you as soon as that's available.

And before we continue, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge acknowledge and celebrate Martin Luther King Junior Day. Each year, we honor his extraordinary legacy of nonviolence, justice for all, and collaboration across all walks of life. As we move into today's meeting, I want us to reflect on doctor King's words from his I have a dream speech. We're now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. This carried that sense of urgency into our work. We are tasked with creating the future that doctor can envision. One where every student has the opportunity to thrive and where academic excellence is available to all. I also want to highlight that our director of equity and excellence, Kelly Galletano, is organizing an MLK Day celebration with the city of Somerville on January 20 at 11AM at the East Somerville School.

There will be food, entertainment, and a panel discussion. A big thank you to Kelly for putting this together. And obviously, she worked with the city on this. And I'm gonna turn now to I'm gonna turn this the floor over to doctor Boston Davis. Before I do that, I am gonna change the order of my of my presentation, which is I'm gonna have SFLC and the language team come up so we can actually let you do your presentation and then be on your own. So thank you. I'll have Ruth Santos introduce the team.

Good evening, everybody. It's really nice to be here again, this time with our multilingual services team for the evening. I think we can all agree that multilingual support is an invaluable backbone to the work that we do here at SPS and not just for family engagement. When we look around the district and we see letters, messages, emergency messages, flyers, presentations, interpretation for workshops and assemblies, we can really see the work that we do. And I'm proud to introduce you to the mostly invisible team who does that work tonight.

From left to right on the screen, we have Viviana, Angie who was feeling poorly and couldn't be with us unfortunately, so I'll stand in for her, and Mikaela and Venousa who are here with us and we'll be talking in a minute. Next slide please, Erica. So a brief timeline of where multilingual services has come from over the last sixteen years. Back in 2008, it was mostly parent information center staff who were doing multilingual services for the school district, the interpreters and translators. Regina clearly realized that that was not sustainable.

By 2012, she had developed and trained a pool of local interpreters to help with that work. By 2018, we were able to hire a full time coordinator for that pool of interpreters who worked with the pool and the agencies. And in 2020, Esser Funds helped us establish a consolidated office of multilingual services. And here we are now with our full time coordinator and three full time translator interpreters doing the work. So thank you so much for the support that you do on behalf of families. The office keeps going from strength to strength in terms of professionalization of language access for families and for standardizing the systems that we use to create that access. So I'm gonna hand over to Venusa who will share a little bit of data with us.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Venusa Teixeira, the Portuguese interpreter translator. I'm originally from Brazil, and my two kids went to Somerville Schools. Today, I'm excited to share an overview to an incredible work being done by our multilingual service office. As you know, our mission is to ensure that every family in our district has equitable access to critical information regardless of the language they speak.

The data I'm sharing with you today is for the first four months of the school year. As you can see, we have covered one thirty one events where interpretation services were provided and translated one thirty six documents amounting to around 600 pages. I'm proud to report that we have successfully fulfilled a 100% of those translation requests and 96% of the interpretation requests. The most frequent frequently requested languages this year have been Portuguese, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, which consistently see the highest demand in the order that was mentioned, followed by Arabic and Mandarin, which are the next most requested languages. The charts on the right side of this slide show how both interpretation and translation service were covered.

As you can see, the majority of all requests have been covered by in house staff. Thank you and I will now hand it over to Mikaela. Next slide, please.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Mikaela Yang and I'm the coordinator for multilingual services. I'm of Korean descent and origin and was born and raised in Argentina. As Ruth briefly mentioned before, we are a fairly new created office and though we've come a very long way, we are still constantly working hard to find ways to ensure that every multilingual family in our district has has access to clear information and meaningful engagement through high quality interpretation and translation services. Until recently, there was no specific training for interpretation in education.

The closest we had was medical. But DESE has now started to standardize practices and has created a training program only last year. This year we were awarded a DESE grant that enabled us to provide this training program to our full time staff including special ed interpreters and some members of our pool, making us one of the first districts in Massachusetts to do so. Now all our pool members must pass a language assessment and DESE's introductory training for interpretation in education. These grants will also allow me to complete my training to become a DESE certified trainer by the end of this school year and we are hoping by that that by doing so will enable us to train more staff internally and maybe become a training center for other districts.

Another initiative this year is creating a district wide glossary for educational terms that don't have a direct equivalent in other languages, and we are hoping to share that district wise to ensure consistency. Over the course of this year, we were able to significantly grow the number of interpreters in our pool, lessening the reliance we had on agencies. And by doing so, we were able to cut our expenses by half. This also meant that payroll had to process lots and lots more of individual time sheets. So I would like to take a minute and thank Mary Kelly and all the payroll team, for so graciously helping us make this transition a success.

We are very grateful for the support we received, and I am very proud to say that thanks to what was done before me and what we're still working on, we are leading the way in advancing multilingual education in Massachusetts. Thank you. I will now, bring it back to Ruth.

So I'm replacing Angie here, and I'll try my best

to get it

right. Translation and interpretation are terms that I think that are often used interchangeably, but I want to clarify that translation is always for written services. Interpretation is always for verbal services. I'm gonna talk a little bit about interpretation this evening, and how lucky we are that our office can offer two types of interpretation, both consecutive and simultaneous. So consecutive interpretation happens during a conversation, and the interpreter interprets between pauses.

And an example of that might be in a 05:04 meeting or a parent teacher conference where an educator might speak and wait a second for the interpreter to interpret for the family and back again. Simultaneous interpretation also happens throughout SPS during the year, and this is where the interpreter interprets live at the same time as the speaker. So an example of that might be in an assembly or the moving on ceremony or right here, right now at school committee. Simultaneous interpretation is a highly skilled and very challenging job, and we're really lucky to have people on our staff and in our pool who can do that work. Our full time interpreters are on call to receive phone calls during work hours and very often outside of work hours too, which means that anyone in the district can get interpretation in our main three languages.

We also use the language line for low incidence languages or when our staff are busy on other projects. Since September, we facilitated over a 131 interpreted sessions. Each request of those one hundred and thirty thirty one could be for one interpreter, for example, a principal who needs interpretation for a conversation with a family, or it could be for eight interpreters for a parent teacher conference. And in fact, I believe the number up there says that for each round of parent teacher conferences, our multilingual team is supporting 576 families, which just shows the hours of the work that they put in for that. Looking ahead, people often ask the team about AI, and the team too is very excited about the future and how AI can support us.

They do a lot of research. It's Mikaela's secret passion into into where this could go in the future. And so far, haven't been able to find anything that lives up to the high standards that we need for our translation interpretation services, and certainly nothing that approaches the family engagement aspect of a real live person sitting with a family while we're having conversation to understand a little bit more. Another thing on our minds is our headset equipment pictured here, which is getting really old and is going to need replacing soon, and it's another reason that we keep looking at AI for possible alternatives, but we're not quite there yet. I'm gonna hand over now to Viviana who's gonna talk a little bit about the translation part of the work.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Viviana Toole. I'm originally from Bogota, Colombia, and I'm the Spanish translator and interpreter for the district. Like Ruth mentioned, translation is when we convert written communication into another language. All translation requests come through a standardized form, then they're assigned by order of priority and then, and language, to our full time translators.

To date, during this school year alone, we have processed 103 36 translation requests, which equals to about 600 pages. These numbers tell part of the story, but the real difference lies in our approach. It is common misconception that translation translated documents is a simple task for bilingual individuals or even with AI tools, but which they are really helpful, and we use them. But our process is much more thoughtful. We focus on quality.

Quality. We don't just translate word for word. We make sure the message makes sense and delivers the actual meaning. We think about the audience. We adapt the text to be culturally sensitive and neutral. This can be tricky. For example, in Spanish, our work can mean different things depending on the country or the region even. And finally, we careful edit and review every single document. We are proud to be part of this important work, creating an inclusive community where all families can stay informed and connected. On behalf of the team, we wanna thank you all for your time, and now we we leave some time for questions if you have. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that presentation. I will now open it up to my colleagues for questions.

Doctor. Akman? Thank you. Through the chair, I mean, thank you for your work. Thank you

for this

presentation. I'm inspired. I appreciate the humor of the middle quote there. So thank you for also, you know, lightening us with your humor. I mean, that's like, that's and that someone's comfortable enough to do that speaks a lot.

So, like, kudos there. I I want to note sometime in the spring, I had a copy with senator Pat Jalen, and one of the first things she said to me was, if you could wave a magic wand, like, what is give me three things that you would want for the district. And the first thing out of my mouth was I'd want every educator to be multi lingual. And I didn't know how much closer like, I didn't realize how we're closer to that through you, not every educator, in in ways I I didn't know before seeing this presentation. And I'm appreciative, and I look forward to continuing to support your work.

Thank you so much.

There are no questions.

Thanks. Through you, chair, thank you for this great presentation, more importantly for your great work. We are so lucky to have you. At the midterm organizational meeting last week, the mayor was very excited about the translation services the city is about to start providing, and I would love to know a little bit more about how our work fits with theirs and and yeah.

I'm gonna handle now to Thank

So, yes. The city just hired somebody about a year ago, I think, to do their, the coordinating of their services. We actually had a meeting scheduled for a couple of weeks ago to start developing a community of practice practice between us with the special ed interpreters and the city interpreters translators as well. We had to cancel it for various reasons but that is going to be rescheduled. We want to do a joint glossary so that communications going out from both city and schools are using the same terminology. And we want to make sure that we're on the same page about how we approach different facets of our translation interpretation. So thank you for that. But we will, yes, hopefully be working more closely with them in the future.

Alright. Are there any other questions from my colleagues? You guys did such a great job. You covered everything. So thank you.

Our next topic, which I believe

Doctor Boston Davis. Ready

to introduce to us.

Thank you, superintendent Carmona and through the chair. Good evening, everyone. I will be tapping into their services very shortly once our calendar has passed. So and they do an excellent, excellent job. So I have before you the the first draft of the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six school year calendar. I just wanna note, do you have it printed as well that that I have all the years past as well? Do you have those printed? Excellent. Thank you. So I just wanna note just because helpful.

I found it helpful last year that you do have in front of you as well and in the packet for those that are viewing at home, all the way from the twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three school year. And I just for reference, the first year that I I was assumed this role and then completed the calendar, was the twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four school year. So I just wanted to show you, kind of the evolution over time and also, you know, as you're thinking about dates and, you know, you can kind of see what past practice look like. So the main purpose of our calendar, as you know, is to communicate the days in which school is open and school is closed during the school year. It also communicates when our offices are open and closed.

And our calendar also notifies the community when, there are religious and cultural holidays that many students, and community members may observe. So a couple of notes. The first is that, and these are just some questions that have come up, and may be helpful. We are scheduled per DESE regulation for the time, student learning time regulations. We schedule until the January.

So that's why you'll notice in 06/22/2026 has one hundred eighty five days. Part of that regulation is that the school committee must schedule up to one hundred and eighty five days and then operate the school year for, no less than one hundred and eighty days. So that's why our our one hundred eightieth day is the last day of school, and we're scheduled for one hundred and eighty five days. And so that that's just one question that often comes up. And then I just wanna kind of draw your attention to one piece that you might have noticed, which is the biggest difference from this year to the years over the past two years, and that is there's this is a one-sided calendar this year.

So in the past two years, since I've assumed this role, I've included, a list that you can see from last year and the year before different religious and cultural observances and holidays. And I really wanted to do that, and we wanted to do that in community. So I I partnered with Kaylee Gallatano. We partnered with the SFLC. Ruth Santos was one of the people at the table.

Nomi Davidson was, still in the director role of that department. And we really wanted to celebrate and recognize the rich diversity of our community. And so that driving force in putting that that document there. Since the list of cultural and religious holidays and observances has been added, Kaylee has developed Kaylee Gatano, director for equity and excellence, has developed systems and structures such as a calendar that is emailed monthly that has not only the cultural and religious holidays that are in observances that are on the back, but also links to resources and other kind of helpful tools and events that are happening. And so when I think about the purpose of the calendar and the document and we think about the systems and structures that are already existing, I believe my proposal this year, what I'm I'm opening you know, I'm hoping to get your feedback on this, is that that, kind of list that would change into more of a live document is one that the director for equity and excellence will go forward, will maintain, and will sit side by side on our website website along with our school year calendar.

My hope is that the calendar then serves the purpose more of just communicating when our schools are open and closed and when our offices are open and closed. And if there is an observance that we missed, if there's a date that's slightly incorrect, which happens even when we comb through the document 20 times and I send it to all the stakeholders and everyone, there it always happens. That would avoid us having to send out. And I say us, but I'm looking at Erica Garcia who is really the person who maintains this, multiple times throughout the school year. So the it really is trying to avoid having to resend when there's date, say, a small date on the back or, you know, a capitalization error or something along those lines, which it could very well be in a live document with resources for the community, for our educators, which is really the point of that.

So that is the proposal for the for the new calendar. There may be other questions about dates, which I'm happy to entertain, at this time. So there's the first draft for you.

Okay. Thank you so much. Doctor. Akron?

Thank you. Through the chair, thank you. I I have it has been a joy watching the evolution of this calendar over the years, and I know you've put a lot of work into it. And thank you. The one thing that I guess I would ask from a parent perspective, the the red key for no school, the professional development key also note no like, no school for students or something like that. Like, you know, again, trying to put my parent hat on. Like, what what do I wanna know is when my kids are in school or not?

Yeah. To build off of that, just looking at the calendar, I might guess students come back January 2. Yes. Even though it's green, and and I know it's red and down here, it says five. So just maybe under the key, it could say professional development for educators, no school for students, or something like that. Yes. Miss Patone?

Through you, chair. Just quick follow-up. I mean, you could just I'm not meaning to do any design work, but it could just be both colors, like, with a diagonal of both if you wanna follow the key that you've already created so that you can put both colors on there. Just an idea.

Okay. Other questions questions or or comments, comments, mister mister Pitone? Patel?

Thank you, doctor Davis, for this excellent work. It gets better every year. We've recently had questions in the community about the beginning of school and why Your

mic is not on.

It maybe I'm just not talking to it.

Me?

Am I cool? Maybe I just it's because I wasn't speaking through the chair. Through the chair. That unlocks a lot of doors. So about the start of school, we have traditionally, and I see it here still, having a start date on a Wednesday as a half day or a early release day, a full day on Thursday, and then the Friday before Labor Day off.

I don't know why this is our calendar. Is is there a particular reason why we, through the chair, have this schedule?

I think mister Green wants to attempt to answer this one.

So the short answer is it's in the contract with the teachers. It has been in the contract at least as long as I've been on school committee. My first question my first school committee meeting was actually about this because, like, then it was the first meeting of the year. So we brought our calendar. The leadership at the time actually took the question back to principals who, at the time, unanimously said they still liked this what we call the soft start.

And while that could be changed through contract negotiations, I think this is worth saying just in general. If there are changes to the school day or the school year or anything like that, they aren't reflected in documentation until they're approved. So, you know, if we were to think about changing that, it would not show up here until an agreement was done. But, yeah, I asked this question a decade ago. God, it makes me feel old. And at the time, the unanimous opinion of the administrators was that starting with the half with the half day full day allowed students to ease into the school year, allowed the district to hit the ground running on Tuesday after.

Doctor. Ackman? Thank you. Through the chair, just a yes and what mister Green said from an equity perspective. That hit the ground running is a chance on those days for students who wouldn't, you know, get get their backpack and supplies through the district, are able to get those. I know the backpack program is able to provide food over that long weekend, you know, which we know is a four day weekend because of our calendar to to families. So there's it's, you know, from an academic perspective, but also from an equity perspective looking at the students who who we serve. There are that's just another reason for it.

Okay. And then, miss Patel.

Other reason for all of this is rational climate change. Days in August and September are more valuable than days in June. And while it is true that we haven't had for four years, the feeling the feeling at the time was that we could have another 2017 again. And then 1415. Yeah. Whatever year it was. And so there's also some feeling that starting a school year earlier allows for better educational programming and less likelihood of being in school come June 30.

Thank you through you, chair. Thank you to my two colleagues for sharing some of the history, and I was just gonna add a little bit more. Please. Back in the dawn of time, before this was in the contract, I wasn't even on the school committee, but I was a parent. The date would change each year depending on where Labor Day was.

So some years, we'd start before Labor Day. Some years, we'd start after Labor Day. So there was a desire to have some level of consistency, which I think as a parent, I know it's complicated, but to always know we're coming back the Wednesday before Labor Day, there's just no question mark in anybody's mind, which has some value. Another piece is, you know, the challenges associated with the years that we've had snow. And this change happened one of those years that we had a ton of snow, and it really pushed us, and we were in a risk point where we actually couldn't finish our school year because we can only go so many days after the We'd have to

have school on a Saturday

as I recall. That was from the brown. That was for for the problems with the brown roof. Thank you. I never thought that I would be the the trove of history. So it fortunately, in the last several years or unfortunately, depending on your thoughts on about climate change or if you love snow, we haven't had that as a challenge. But there there was one year where they were like, oh my gosh. We can't contractually, we can't go any further than this, and we won't get all our days in. We were okay. It turned out fine. But this was like, here we are. We have a consistent plan. There's no question mark. We've mitigated a lot of risk. Obviously, it does create some concerns for some families, and it causes things that creates issues that are not ideal for people.

But from my perspective, I feel like the positives have outweighed the negatives. But, you know, if this is something that comes out up in contract, we'll be happy to discuss it. So

doctor Phillips and then mister Bouton.

I'm about to change the subject. Were you gonna say something on the subject? Okay. Awesome. I love the changes to the calendar.

I fully support it. And I wonder through you, chair, if it would be possible to refer our policies that talk about religious observances to rules to think through how we're giving kids space space to not be in school and not do work on their religious major religious days. And I say this so that would be IMD, JJE, and JH. And I say this because every year, I get a call from at least one Jewish family that is really upset that a major Jewish holiday, which is often on the back, is not on the front, and teachers are assigning homework, and we have school. And so just to clarify for them, here is what you know, your student doesn't have to come to school.

Your student doesn't have to do the work. This is how we will support you. Seems like the right place to do it. So hoping we can make that referral.

Makes sense. Chair of

rules? Not Noted.

Okay. I had mister Bittone and then miss Bittone.

Thank you, chair. Through you. So I understand that the director of equity and excellence will be sharing sharing information sort of in a a rolling fashion primarily with educators. I do wanna note that many of our educational partners, including the PTAs and, you know, other people who use the school calendar to inform their programming rely on on this document. So can you, through the chair, talk a little bit about how communication with those partners will work if it's not all in that single place?

I guess it's just online. Is that

Could I make a quick suggestion related to that? Perhaps just on here somewhere, it has a link to and for religious calendar, go here. I don't know if you wanted to respond in in more than that or if you had other thoughts.

Thank you, the chair. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the suggestion. We'll we'll take that. My my, initial idea so was hoping to get some feedback today and before kind of fully fleshing it out. But, the initial idea is that there is a live document, but not necessarily rolling. So I think that we can start the year next year with a similar list. Miss Garcia did an excellent job updating the the list on the second page. So the it's updated. So we can have a similar list, but it will be, maintained by our director for equity.

And, as months go on, we can have an updated kind of monthly calendar as well. And, you know, we can either link them next to each other on the web page. I'll also have to talk to communications about what makes sense, but we can link them next to each other on one another. It could be under the department of equity's web page. This year, though those newsletters that she sends with the calendars at the top have been for, as you know, k 12.

But my, vision for this would be that going forward, the calendar itself is is now public facing to to the exact points that you make. So I think it can be a a little bit of both. One, we can have a list of documents. Love the idea of linking it. And then also sorry. A list of dates that can be linked to this document, but then also as regularly updated, with links to to some, information.

I have miss Patone and then miss Barish.

Thank you. Through you, chair. I just wanted to acknowledge doctor Phillips. I think that was a great idea to have a review in in rules. I I look forward to that. I apologize. I might have missed the end of your conversation, but all I was gonna suggest is that on the bottom, there's a reference to the link to the online. Is that what you already said? Okay. I just wanna make sure that because I know that the calendar itself can change. And so being very clear that, like, this is what was established at the beginning of the year and that the live calendar would be online. So I guess you already

covered that. So thank you. Miss Baerich?

I was just wondering sort of doctor Phillips made her suggestion and then mister Baton made his. And I'm wondering if it makes sense to reference those policies either on this calendar or on that web page with the list of holidays and and observances. Certainly, we will review those policies, but making it easy for families to find those policies might be helpful as well.

Okay. Are there any oh, yeah. Mister Trump?

This is just a minor question. But while I have the the opportunity through you, chair, I noticed a minor change in the wording around when holidays that start at at sundown. I don't object or have a preference either way. I just noted the change, and it may be confusing for some folks. So just I don't know if there was a particular if this is best practice or something, but I just wanted to point out the change.

You're pointing out that the calendar now does not have

The calendar now in the thank you. The draft calendar in front of us indicates that holidays start at sundown on the date listed, which for many holidays, like traditional Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashanah, it begins in in previous years, it says, starts the day beef on sundown, the the previous day.

I see.

So it's it's just a different date listed.

To the chair, that's correct. I thought that was confusing. It said start holidays, start the day before. Even as we're updating the calendar for the past two years. I'm like, okay.

Is this the day before you know, I I honestly thought it was it was clearer to just say, we're gonna put the date that it starts. Some holidays may start at sundown on that day, and those ones are indicated by a star. So I I took the kind of liberty of of making that shift because I thought it was clearer than somebody to have to know so say an educator who's referencing it and realizing, oh, this actually was yesterday, but I thought it was today because I didn't realize the start. So I just tried to keep it as as clear as possible. Though if it feels like it was clearer prior where it was kind of the day before, I can make that shift back.

I just kind of took the liberty of shifting it because I thought it would be a little bit more direct and indicate the exact day of the holiday, whether it starts, you know, at sundown or for that full day.

Doctor Phillips, would you wanna respond? Thanks, sir. You, chair. I think that makes a ton of sense. I really love it. It's way clearer and less confusing, and I think speaks to a point that doctor Ackman made last year to the same point. So.

Miss Patone? Through you, chair. I think it's clearer too. Because I was always getting questions about that. I also just really minor thing on November where it says first quarter eight twenty seven to 10/31. I think that statement should go under October. It's just an oversight because last year, it went through to November. So

Okay. If there are no further questions for now, this will be on our agenda again at our next meeting.

Oh, miss Patel. Just through the chair quick. Was there anything weird in this calendar the same way we had last year where we had to decide to have a long holiday break for winter? Was there anything strange on here that you wanna highlight for us that we should be aware of?

Thank you through the chair. Thank you for that question. Not quite. You know, we are as member green named, we are there are some some contract languages about when breaks start. And last year was just because of where the twenty fourth was, which is always a a day that's closed of December.

And then, you know, it was a choice point whether we bring students back on a Monday and on a Friday. This year, I think it's much more clear. The first day for PD for educators is on a Friday, but the students would come back for a full day, and that's based on contract the day after the the winter break ends. So that's I'm I'm referencing 01/02/2026. But the first day for students is on a Monday, so I feel like that's much more clear cut and easy. So I I don't think there's anything else that's kind of one of those interesting choice points. Thank you for the question.

Okay. With that, this will be on our agenda at our next meeting. That brings us to personnel report. Is there anything you wanna highlight, doctor?

Yes. Through the chairs to the chair, I have some retirements, that I wanna share with the with the school committee. So Shelly Shelly Jarrow, resource room teacher retiring after twenty one years of service. Elizabeth Melcher Hadda, a special education LA teacher at Summerville High School, retiring after four years of service. Michael Michelle Bennett, teacher at Kennedy, returned after eighteen years of service.

So thank you to all of our retirees for all for you for all the years of service and dedication to our SPS students. So thank you for your time. And, also, I wanted to acknowledge the resignation of, our great Jackie Peaks, who was a great asset asset to our community. So, we are in the process of that position has been posted, and we are, already receiving multiple candidates for that position. So I just wanted to, you know, recognize her presence in our district and her contribution.

And also we have added six parental leaves in the month of December. So the system continues to work and to facilitate, the space for parents new parents, to balance the needs of their kids. And we have three new hires, three new paraprofessionals and a dean of students at the east. So that is my oh, and also I have a senior clerk at the high school and two scale teachers with the student enrollment at scale continues to increase. So that is a great gain for scale. So that's the news for them from the enrollment world.

Great. Thank you so much. Are there any questions on the personnel report? Okay. That brings us to some reports of subcommittees. I will entertain a motion.

I move to accept the, sorry, the report of the Rules and finance. Rules management subcommittee meeting from December 16. Thank you.

Second. I have a

motion by miss Parrish, seconded by doctor Phillips. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye.

All opposed? Motion carries. We have another subcommittee. Doctor Phillips? I move to accept the report of the school committee meeting, for finance and facilities on 12/18/2024.

I have a motion by doctor Phillips, seconded by mister Bitone. If there's no discussion, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? And then we should also approve the bill rolls.

Yeah. I I move to approve the November bill rolls.

That is a good question. We've always just done it with the subcommittee reports, but you are right. It should technically be on the agenda. Yeah. No. That's a good point. No. No. That's totally fine. Make sure to add us the next one, and and I'll make sure every time we have a finance and facilities subcommittee report. I'll just make sure we have the bill rolls also on there.

Thank you for that. Okay. That oh, yes. Doctor Phillips. Sorry. Friendly reminder, everyone. Wednesday starts finance and facilities of the whole, 7PM

on Zoom. Thank you for that reminder. Okay. That brings us to subcommittee assignments. In your packet, you should have the list of mice of the assignments. We are technically supposed to vote on it, which I wasn't aware of until now, but so I'm bringing it to you for a vote, if there are any questions.

I have motion.

Motion to approve the subcommittee assignments as proposed. Second.

Motion by mister Baton, seconded by miss Baton. If there is yes. Miss Bausch?

Does it matter if something's missing from the subcommittee assignments? Does it need to be added? Can we just amend it verbally? Let's amend it. We'll have

a friendly amendment, and I'll make sure to add it.

I think I I don't think that the public safety for all task force was listed there.

Thank you for that reminder. You had told me that, and I forgot. So thank you.

And it I I think that that assignment is going

to end in the next couple months. So do you accept that friendly amendment, mister Witton?

With gratitude.

Okay. Now if there is no further discussion, all in favor?

Aye. All

opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to, a collective bargaining agreement that I need to be authorized to sign. I'll entertain a motion.

I move to authorize the chair to sign the SCU unit d integrated collective bargaining agreement.

Second.

I have a motion by miss Barish, seconded by mister Green. If there is no discussion, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to the policy manual. Miss Barish, do you wanna give us

I just wanna recommend that we not vote on this tonight simply because the second set of lawyers' comments were just put in the folder for tonight. I don't know if people have questions about them. I have questions about them that I'm gonna bring back to the lawyer and maybe to MASC and maybe to the administration. So but if folks have questions, either you can share them with me now, you can send me an email, you can email miss Mallon because there's a there's a lot there.

And just to clarify, the comments on the right of that document are comments from our lawyer.

Correct. Okay. Yes. I it is my understanding that the next sections are a bit less legal heavy. I don't think that every section of the manual is going to require so many hours of legal review and so many trips to the folder for these meetings. I hope that's the case. So

K. Yep. Talk. Thank

you. To the chair, thank you for getting this underway, miss Parish. I am wondering the next time we see a version, I'm comfortable not voting tonight, if we can get a either, like, a word doc that we can toggle ourselves or, like, a clean version and an edited version because it it gets a little confusing with the red marks, if that makes sense.

That does make sense. I believe that miss said that she can put together sort of that iteration once we have resolved questions from the lawyer. So you would prefer if the body would prefer that we try to resolve all those questions from the for the lawyer in rules before we bring them to this body, we can do it that way. I'm open to folks' input on that. Mister Bichon?

Through you, chair. I I guess my confusion about the document that's in our packets tonight is it's not clear exactly to me what the proposed changes are and not necessarily that it's not tracked, but there's recommendations from MASC on the document, but not a clear direction about what the subcommittee, which I'm on, is proposing. Unless I'm looking at the wrong document, may be the case.

Miss Patel? The chair, I apologize. I don't have the document in front of me. But my understanding, other than the legal questions, is we passed everything that MASC recommended. So, basically, whatever's written there, unless there's some comment from the lawyer, is what the the committee subcommittee passed. And that's you agree?

I agree. Additionally, the there are notes in the subcommittee subcommittee report that reference some of those policies. But if it would be clearer to somehow incorporate comments from the subcommittee report into the document that comes to this body, we can work on I can work on how to make that something that would be that would not just be more confusing. But I I guess I would like an understanding from this body whether you would prefer that we resolve the legal comments in rules rather than bringing the legal comments here?

My thought would be yes because it seems like it will make it easier. But I'm open to suggestions. Doctor. Akron and then doctor Phillips?

So I maybe this is too much she said she said, but it through the chair, I would like to know, yes, you are capable of it. Is that something you're willing to do? Like or, I mean, I know you're willing, but, like, is that your recommendation as as chair of the rule subcommittee, or do you not have one?

At this point, having gone through one section, I think making an attempt to respond to all the real legal comments in rules first probably would make sense because I suspect that most of us have the same questions or want further explanation of some of the same things. And at that point, I think it would be simpler to produce a cleaner document. I am willing. I don't know that I'm capable. But certainly, it will be it it would be easier to do that if the legal questions are more or less resolved.

And I Yeah. Enthusiastically support it.

Okay. I had doctor Phillips and then miss Baton.

Just a stupid clarification question, but where it says general note on the first page, they're not merging Lowell's policies. Right?

That was a misprint. Yes. They are, in fact, merging Somerville's policies, not Lowell's. We did bring that up. It should be corrected in the next version.

Through the chair. Once we have a clean copy and a red line copy, because I think you you wanna see what the originals were. I don't wanna speak for my colleagues, but we have all the minutes from all the rules meetings. If anybody they're not huge. I really would not put more work on my colleague, miss Barrish, to sort of come up with all the comments on there, and I would really encourage my colleagues. And I know it's little more work on everyone else to, like, look at the minutes because they're really not that long. And I think miss Barrish did a really nice job documenting the questions and the concerns. So that's my thought. But, you know, if miss Barrish really wants to do more annotation, I just don't wanna create more work when we already have a record of everything.

I think the main concern for me and perhaps that doctor Akman brought up to begin with is just when we are ready to vote to have an actual just clean, like, here are what the new policies will be that we are voting yes for. I think that's what's what's really important. In terms of a red line version and being able to read rules, I'm certainly happy to do all that homework. Think it would just be really helpful to have, like, here are the new policies that we would be voting for. Mister Baton and then no. You didn't have your mister Green.

For this one, for section a, I certainly agree with mister Bettone. I do think as we go deeper into it and we see the ones that are that are less well, legal changes are more like value and policy changes. Having a document not just for own, but for share with the community will be would be more valuable for this one, which is legal compliance. Yeah. I think you're you're absolutely right. We don't need to put our work on.

Great. This will go back to rules and then come to us when it's ready. That brings us to an acceptance of some grants. I'll entertain a motion.

I move to accept all federal entitlement and continuation grants and all state continuation grants awarded to Summerville Public Schools listed below. A private Summerville Art Council grant of $625 from for the art department to be used for field trips.

Second. I Motion by miss Parrish, seconded by miss Patton. If there is no discussion, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to donations.

I move to accept with with gratitude the following donation, monetary from Elsa Gomes Bondlow from Arlington, Mass of $2,500 for the Unified Sports at Silverville High School. Motion by miss Baton, seconded by mister Green. If there is no discussion. All in favor? Aye.

All opposed? Motion carries. Thank you to miss Bamba. That brings us to unfinished business. Is there any update update on on the the MSBA? MSBA?

Just a quick reminder. We as you know, we're in the feasibility phase. And the OPM, I believe, has been hired or is in the process of being hired by the city. We also received a

Remind us what OPM stands for.

The owner's project manager. That is something that is managed by the city. And the we received an email from MSBA to make sure that we join what they call the POE, the post occupancy evaluation. This is kind of a a very robust assessment of the lessons learned, if you will. They will be doing surveys around what is the function and the challenges that that the students, families, administrators, and the community has experienced with the building.

Also, they will do a virtual visit, a post visit, and then we'll generate a set of lessons learned that can actually be important as we are actually building the next process for this new project that we have. So we are finalizing those dates to have the POE or the post occupancy evaluation. I don't know if the school committee will part of that process at some point, but they will be interviewing different stakeholders that have some opinion about the impact or or the functionality of the building. So that information is important. I met with Rich talk about Rich Raich to talk about what's the role that the city has in that.

So they are they are interested in learning whatever comes out of this process just to so we can apply it to the new building that is in in the process. So

Miss Petrone? Thank

you. Through you, chair. So the post occupancy evaluation I missed, this is about the high school?

Correct. This is the the the once the project is completed and all close out, MSBA will do, some kind of a postmortem of, systems and impact that the building has had in

in Yeah. So I do think that it would be valuable to include members that were on the building committee. So whether it's a city councilor, school committee member, some of the there's been several members. So I'm I don't necessarily represent the whole experience. There have been student members. I know we might not be able to reach out to all of them, but we also had community members that were really valuable, such as Tom Bent. And so I would really encourage because that will be more about the process than the outcome. So, like, some of it obviously has to be the outcome and how the the use of the building is, but I also think that feedback on the process would be really helpful to the new building.

Thank you. Yeah. And they haven't reached out to me to ask for specific categories of who wants who should be part of that, but that's a good question. And I we we have been back and forth with dates with the city, with this high school and MSBA. So that has been a little bit that has taken time. And with the break, we kind of lost momentum, but that's coming up soon. But I'll I'll inquire into that. Good good question.

Doctor Phillips? Oh, okay. Mister Patel?

Thank you, chair. Through you. I just wanna note that the Somerville MA Dot Gov slash MSBA website, which is supposed to be portal for current information slash on this project, still lists the current status as eligibility phase ending no later than 11/29/2024. In your conversations with the mayor, I I hope that you can relay how important it is to keep this hub up to date. It's really a critical piece place that all of us go for the latest information. So just just a plug.

Thank you. Through the chair, I I I know that that Jackie was having a was a very influential force in keeping things update, and so updated, but I I will definitely bring that up to that is our our combined website you're referring to. Thank you for for letting me know. I I wasn't fully aware of that.

Alright. Is there any other questions or comments? Okay. Seeing none, that brings us to items from committee members. Okay. Yes. Mister B.

Since this is probably our last school committee meeting with the same federal government for a while, and it seems entirely likely that the first, if not one of one of the first, if not the first bills that will be on the new president's desk will be a ban on trans student trans students participating in sports with their correct gender, it feels like this is a proper and appropriate time for us to evaluate compliance with our own gender identity support policies, see where we can strengthen them. And as part of our budget negotiations, really start talking about what does it mean to not take federal money since that's the hook they're they're they're hanging this on. So, yeah, I'm just putting that on our to do list for this upcoming year as a rather high priority.

Mister Vital?

Thank you, chair. Through you. I wanna raise awareness. I know I received information about a letter from a it's okay. From a group of municipal elected officials to governor Maurice Healy about the state's emergency housing shelter policy, and in particular, reductions in funding, time limitations for families being allowed allowed to stay in the state shelter.

A number of our city councilors and at least one of our colleagues has signed on to this letter. I intend to as well, and I encourage my colleagues colleagues here to take a look at that and see whether it would be something you also would like to sign on to. That's it.

Are there any other items? Seeing none, do we have condolences this evening? The

school committee extends its deepest condolences to the family of William h Smith, beloved father of Kaylee Smith Galletano, SBS director of equity and excellence. James Blanchard, father-in-law of Michelle Klingon, principal account clerk for Summerville Public Schools out of school time program, and father of Jesse Klingon, Summerville's war Summerville's Ward 4 city council member. And finally, the family of Richard Craven, husband of Debbie Connell, retired special education director.

With that, we are adjourned. Have a good night everyone.