the e8th regular meeting of the mempis school committee will come to order April 29th 2024 we have executive session at 5: pm and our regular meeting at 6 PM um it will be here at Howard Alden Memorial Chambers Memphis city hall and via remote participation meeting can be viewed live it's a TV from the door meeting can be viewed live on medfi public schools YouTube channel through medfi Community media on your local cable channel Comcast channel 98 or 22 and Verizon channel 43 45 or 47 participants can log or call in by using the following information um the zoom link is on our City calendar and school calendar and the meeting ID is 9266 73127 roll call please member Russo member brandley member Graham here member Anapa present member olapa present member reinfeld present member Rell present mayor ler present seven present zero absent um I believe our student reps might be at our 6m meeting okay great and could rise to salute the flag please to the flag of the United States of America and to the rep for it stands under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have executive session pursuant to general laws 30A section A3 the Medford school committee will convene an executive session to discuss strategy in preparation for negotiations with Medford educational secretaries asme Council 93 Teamsters Local 25 custodians Medford Teachers Association for Kids Corner medford's teacher Association for par professionals Carpenters SEIU local 888 because an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the committee and the chair so declares is there a motion to go into executive session motion to go to Executive session by member reinfeld second by member Graham please call the role member branley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member olapa yes member reinfeld yes member so yes mayor ler yes seven in the affirmative zero in the negative um we will convene as close to Six as possible for regular meeting thank you member and top are you able to join the breakout room good e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e agenda bills and payrolls regular school committee meeting minutes from April 8th 2024 special meeting minutes April 24 2024 recommendation to approve a $1,000 donation to The String Ensemble from the Schmidt family and a recommendation to approve travel to Puerto Rico February 2025 motion to se the donation and the field trip motion to sever by member Graham seconded by member rouso all those in favor mayor oh got do the roll all right sorry fine member branley it means we're going to vote on those things SE roll call please member brandley yes member Graham yes member and tapa yes member olapa yes member reinfeld yes member so yes Marland goer yes motion to sever is approved now motion to motion to approve the consent agenda approve the consent agenda by member Graham seconded by second member Al roll call please member rley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member ala yes member reinfeld yes member or so yes I'm looking around like come on speak mayor L yes 7 affirmative zero and the negative consented agenda is approved is there a motion to approve the recommendation of a hundred of acceptance of a $1,000 donation to The String Ensemble motion to approve the $1,000 donation to The String Ensemble by member Graham second member reinfeld roll call please member brandley member Graham yes member Anapa yes member olapa yes member einfeld yes member so yes may L goer yes thank you for the donation motion to approve the field trip to uh Puerto Rico by member Graham seconded by member branley roll call please member ranley member Graham yes member Anapa Yesa yes member reinfeld yes member so yes Marilyn goer yes seven the affirmative zero and the negative trip to Puerto Rico has been approved enjoy um we do not have any reports of subcommittees we have five reports under our reports of superintendent first up is Maurice Dr Maurice Edward Vincent our superintendent with her updates and comments good evening I hope that everyone enjoyed their April vacation and that the recent um warmer weather that we're experiencing um is definitely welcome spring is here and it comes with um all of the exciting activities we've missed over the winter walks and bike rides spring sports like baseball and softball tennis and crew gardening and barbecues and many other warm weather activities I have some great news to share that over the April break Medford High School ethics Bowl team finished sixth in the nation in the National ethics Bowl we are very proud of our students and send our congratulations to them and their families congratulations on a job well done we also want to thank the community students caregivers all who participated in the Citywide cleanup this past weekend this annual event directly benefits and impacts our schools with many volunteers helping to clean up trash and beautify the spaces around our schools and playgrounds thank you so much for putting your time and effort into supporting our community although we are at the end of April I do want to mark that it is the conclusion of childhood sexual abuse month in 2021 the most recent year in which data is available there were 83,84 cases of child abuse and neglect reported in Massachusetts adverse childhood experiences including physical sexual and emotional abuse and neglect household substance abuse household mental illness and domestic violence can have lasting negative effects on health well-being and opportunities in life at the Medford Public Schools we are committed to protecting all of the children under our care recently over 500 Medford administrators and staff participated in training with mass kids at the start of our school year to identify signs of childhood sexual abuse through the professional development session awareness raising and close collaboration with local law enforcement social service providers and nonprofit organizations we will work all the time to prevent child abuse in our community I also was recently um working on a Ed talk with and I want to say a special thank you to jeda Bernier and to former member mlin um and State Rep uh Gaby who participated in a conversation about childhood abuse last week I have a few reminders this Wednesday May 1st is the Statewide walk bike and roll to school day this great occasion coordinated by the Massachusetts safe roots to school program is a perfect opportunity for students and families to travel to school as a pedestrian as we all know it's good for the environment and our individual health when we can take the chance to walk bike or roll to a frequent destination check in with your school principal to learn more about plans for Wednesday since our last meeting we have conducted our middle school placement Lottery the results are available and posted on our website grade five students and their families are invited to attend an orientation program at their assigned Middle School to tour the building learn about programs and activities meet their principal and assistant principal teachers and other staff the mlin middle school orientation is scheduled for this Thursday May 2nd at 6: pm and the Andrew's Middle School orientation is on Monday May 6th at 6 PM also this coming Friday May 3rd it's school lunch hero day an opportunity to recognize our wonderful staff who work in our school lunch programs so for tonight's meeting we do have another busy agenda we're particularly excited to hear about all the wonderful things that are happening and performing in Fine Arts and we have Miss Haley re and Miss Suzanne fee who will provide us with an update and also recognize our wonderful students um for the wonderful gold medal that they received um earlier this spring by our our our high school orchestra I also want to thank again uh the Schmidt Family for their generous donation to support our string Ensemble we will also hear about the trip to Puerto Rico which was approved but we know next spring our students who have the opportunity to travel will definitely um have a wonderful learning experience also I want to thank um the presentation that will be coming this evening about our HVAC system I want to thank all of the engineers and um environmental experts that are here and thank Alicia hunt and her team um for supporting us this evening we also will share with you a proposed rate card for the next school year and I will present a report on uh the district's report on suspension and discipline data finally we'd like to remind the community that our next school committee meeting is on Monday May 6th which will also include our public hearing on the fiscal year 25 budget this important occasion is the main opportunity for us to receive feedback on the proposed budget that meeting will begin at 5:00 pm in person here or on at at City Hall and also available on Zoom thank you thank you Dr Ed would have been um we have Arts programs update and recognition of Orchestra gold medal Miss Suzanne fee coordinator of Fine Arts and Miss Haley REO coordinator of Performing Arts welcome hello everyone good evening nice to see you all I'm going to share a presentation with you in a moment but this is just going to be a fine arts update about the um visual Arts happenings that have taken place across the district um so far this year across all of our Public Schools I'm want to go over some highlights talk about um our exciting Arts month that is happening and um fill you in about a summer workshop that we're excited to get started um at the high school level we are uh working to increase our course offerings and um for next year on our um schedule we have design two which will build upon what students have learned in design one I've been teaching design one at the high school for two years now so design two is just an extension of that and it's going to focus more specifically on um different careers and career path students may be able to take like fashion design advertising Design interior design and the like the other course we're offering that I'm really excited about is a unified comprehensive art class which is basically a comprehensive art class but it's styled after the Unified sports teams you might have heard about or unified PE where um different students of different levels are going to come together um to work on equal terms through ongoing artistic creative and community building activities so we're really excited about getting that program working um another exciting addition at the high school level is that I was able to through the kindness and hard work of Molly Laden and Anthony Tora we were able to get some of the tus Maxs into the design class for next year um if you could go to the next slide Mr pushing um and so that's really going to enhance our design classes and we're going to have the Adobe suite installed by the Fall so we'll have Photoshop illustrator and in design and that's really going to enhance our work and give some more um real world connections for those students in design class um the next thing I want to talk about and I'll go through quickly um we the fine arts department the visual art teachers and I have applied and received over 10 different grants this year and through these grants our teachers were able to secure funding to support all our art shows that I'm going to talk to you about um our Arts month coming up but a lot of the grant money went to funding some supplemental activities and just enhancements at the shows but that is not all we did with the grants um first off you may know we finished we completed a grant that was a couple years old the rainbow mural Mosaic that was sort of how we kicked off our school year in the fine arts department where we had our first um outdoor art uh installation at Medford High and that was a uh Community project students from every single School across the district contributed to that project so that was a really exciting way to start but looking forward some of the grants that we were able to receive and implement this year is we um received a grant to do a kindness campaign across all of our Public Schools so high high school students designed um a bunch of different posters and stickers promoting kindness and I'm going to leave these here to be hung at City Hall hopefully um but we're going to distribute them across every school and hopefully at um the Medford Public Library and even some small businesses so the students design the posters and the stickers and we're just going to share that message with the community um we also got a grant for an art supply lending library at the high school level where it's just um a a dedicated space in supplies for students who want to continue their art exploration on their own and it's really been nice to see kids who aren't in the Arts programs have an opportunity to interact with the materials and even visit the classrooms to pick up the stuff and it's also really been good in supporting students who have academic projects but you know don't have their poster board or the markers or easy access to them so they can come and borrow them from the library so so far um it's been a great success we're doing an interactive look and find board outside the El testing office it's another one of our grants um we noticed that outside the testing office there's always um you know small children waiting um and we wanted to create like a welcoming experience for them all without any sort of language barrier so it's just kind of going to be this large display board with different objects and then the little sheets to like look and find so it's um just a fun activity and a and a welcoming activity for those students and we noticed a need for that so that's another small Grant we received beyond the grants we're doing a beautification project around Medford High School and it's been great so far students in Mr Kane class um have their artwork nicely framed we had the frames donated um and those are in bu building and they look great we've gotten awesome feedback on it and we are expanding that project we're on the hunt for donated frames I have um reached out to the Target Community giving to try to get more frames so we're extending that to other parts throughout the building um the next thing that I'm really excited about is our murals if you want to bump up one um we've had a total of six murals created this year along with a long waiting list of teachers who are looking for more the mural supplies are funded by a Medford Arts Council Grant from last year and we're sharing those supplies with senior class students who are working on um murals and other school groups I I really want to emphasize that the great thing about the murals projects and the National Art honor syst Society is that it's been a wonderful way of um connecting with students who are in The Vocational programs who aren't able to take the art electives it's it's been a great bridge um and if you these two murals were done um in the CTE one in the classroom and one in the beastro and they were completed by um vocational students so that's really um something we're excited about is involving students outside of the classes into some of the Arts projects on the next slide is just a fun picture of some of the works in progress we're in crunch time here especially my seniors trying to get them done by the end of the year but it's been a lot of fun um we've had we had three Scholastic Art Award winners this year um winning a total of five Awards um this one is Lily verhagen she won a silver key for this and she also won another honorable mention for a different piece that's not pictured here um the next one is Dakota Mahoney for her um pencil illustration she won an honorable mention and lastly um our senior Stella hinig won an honorable honorable mention and a gold key for her ceramic work um we've brought the art into the after school program through the nahs our members developed and led an art activity on the February half day for all the students in the after school program at the mlin elementary school the half day is kind of a long day for those kiddos so um we were approached about doing something to kind of bring a little bit more fun to those longer days and it was a great success they um painted and Illustrated um bookmarks that we had like as free giveaway in the um Medford High School library so it was kind of fun the older kids were enjoying the the bookmarks made by younger students we have a library exhibit right now happening at um Medford Public Library and we're really I'm really um forging a strong partnership with the Medford Public Library so we now have a spot reserved every year for our students and there's going to be a display of 3D work next month in a different part of the library we also had a children's art showcase at the Rivers's Edge and one of our students is a 10th grader who basically puts on this whole show I sort of am her assistant but she um collects the work and hangs the work and promotes the show and we had Elementary Middle School and High School artists participate in that as well so that's everything we have done so far this year but next month is really going to be an exciting month and I'm not going to talk about it too much I'll let Haley um share a little bit as well but we wanted to make a dedicated month to celebrate the Arts and all the wonderful things that are happening so Arts month on the visual art end you can expect to see an art show at every single school um and we have art te Fridays just as a fun way to promote the month where we're asking students and staff to um show their appreciation for the Arts by wearing their favorite band or musician or artist t-shirt um our art shows at the ele level all have supplementary activities as well we're having a ceramics display at menford public library and we're going to have merch on sale and there's a lot of musical and drama events happening as well but I'll let Miss re tell you about those we will also be at um West bford Open Studios this year we go every year and students have the opportunity to showcase and sell their work so we'll be there this year and then lastly I just want to talk about a summer program that we are kicking off that's funded by um the Cummings Foundation and the Metford Arts Council and it's kind of a u partnership with the ccsr so we're going to do a summer workshop for all grade levels grades 1 to three grades four to eight and a high school level and it's going to be art instruction but it's also going to focus on how art can be used as a tool for as a Force for good and um to promote and share um different topics and issues that are meaningful to you and it's sort of just a way to teach kids about finding their voice through ART so at the elementary level it's going to I won't read the whole thing but they'll hone their skills to discover the joy of using art for a force of good in the world um grades 4 through 8 it's going to be split so half of the class will be spent developing artistic skills through direct instruction and then the second half will be spent as sort of like an Open studio time in which students will create a piece that reflects an issue or topic that's meaningful for them and then at the high school level it's going to be more of sort of like a studio or an artists and residents experience where they are going to be um these students will be our you know dedicated students a lot of them I anticipate will be students who plan on pursuing art in college and again they will be working independently but they're going to create a piece of art that is inspired or comments on any social issue or topic that's meaningful for them so we're really excited we're going to be able to offer this for free and we're um in the process of finding our teachers who want to participate in this program with us and lastly I just want to share I'm so thrilled about everything that's been happening at our school um and from our web web page when I was putting this all together I noticed that in our description it says that while recognizing the intrinsic value of the Arts students will also discover how the Arts contribute to their communities and cultures around the world and I really feel like when I reflect on all the work that's been done that's the work that we are doing I think the work we've done at the high school has really helped to build school spirit and connect the two um different programs which I know that's something that's been really important so I feel like we're doing this work and it's working and I'm just so thrilled to be able to share this with you all that's all and I'm gon to leave these with you great thank you Miss V great great presentation if there's no questions I'll invite Miss re up oh sorry there we go thank you it's my theater projection um all right so we're going to start with jump start P pull it up for me but um all right I'll talk about it um we started our a really awesome amazing year with jumpstart Music Camp um when we worked with over 150 students for two weeks providing them with band and Orchestra instruction Ensemble work and technique which would help give them a jump start to their school year uh we also compete in the jumpstart Olympics very important for brain breaks um and we had a very successful group that really rocked the this year our end of Camp showcase brought on our largest crowd yet and also featured members of our high school string Ensemble and the Medford Mustang marching band which came to Pro um surprise our campers as guest performers so there's some pictures from jumpstart um our next slide was the fall play the drama club put on an amazing fall production this year which was the dining room by AR gurnie the entire play takes place in the same dining room across multiple Generations um the students did a fantastic job with character development and comedic timing and I will give them a little plug now that um this weekend they are opening mam Mia which they are currently at the high school right now perfecting for their final dress um and it will be Thursday Friday and Saturday at 7 and Saturday and a mat at two o'clock so if you need tick if you need tickets just reach out to me it's going to be a a super fun time um our next slide is a parade so the Medford Ming marching band proudly represented the City of Medford in the wubber Halloween parade and the North End athletic association's Christmas parade this past year the students really enjoyed bringing holiday spirit to the parade goers and finding some fellow Mustangs along the way we had a lot of alumni that shouted out to us when they saw the truck and the band go by they were very excited to tell us they were Medford alumni and they were so excited to see the Mustangs so that was really nice for the kids to see that you know once you're a Mustang always a Mustang staying so that was a lot of fun um our next slide is districts so we had four students that got accepted to the Northeast districts this year Jaden ve and Samuel Keith um from the high school got accepted to perform with the Northeast senior District Orchestra and Jaden woo and saffron Jacobs were invited to perform with the Northeast Junior districts Orchestra um the Northeast district is very competitive so these students have to practice really hard and study privately and and um work and through all their nerves for auditions and compete against all the other high schools in our area so um we were really proud of them that they they exceled they did really well um our next slide is from the mmea music educators conference um our modern music Ensemble which is a class at the high school um got to perform this year they were one of two Massachusetts high school ensembles that were asked to perform um they got to perform from music educators all around the state the concert took place place at the DCU Center in Worcester and they were able to perform four songs of various genres uh the modern music Ensemble is also performing this Wednesday at the band Spring Concert um and they are performing on Saturday May 25th they're doing a brunch performance at the burn in Somerville from 12: to 2 so they get to play some different venues and what's better than a little bit of you know Mustang music and brunch I think that sounds wonderful um our next one's a lot of awards we won a lot of Awards this year which is pretty awesome so hang on uh the marching band took home nine trophies this fall and won the New England Scholastic band Association Championship Finals with a platinum medal this is the first time they've ever won finals it's also the first time they ever received a platinum medal which is a 95 or above so we made Medford history this past weekend at the music and the parks competition they played second in their division with an overall rating of Excellence the Medford High School orchestra won a gold medal at Micah this year again making Medford history the first time the high schools ever won a gold and this past weekend at music in the Parks they placed first in their division with a superior rating and won best overall Orchestra for the entire event which is pretty amazing uh the meford musang wintergard won the New England Scholastic band Association championship finals this year for the seventh year in a row um and they were moved halfway through the season this year because they were beating their um competition by too many points so they moved them up to a higher Division and I think the kids are little um upset at first but they still ended up taking home the championship they really Rose the occasion and took on the extra works so we're really proud of them um the Middle School string Ensemble competed at Micah this year and took home a silver medal um and they continue to Dazzle audiences with their excellent Talent dedication and hard work um if you've ever seen these students they're always in the hallways practicing and working on sectionals and um for their age group they work very very hard and they're very dedicated um all right Arts month so miss Fe already started talking about this um we are opening Arts month on Wednesday with the band concert um our grades four through 12 bands will be performing as well as our modern music Ensemble and our Color Guard um and then the drama club production will be going up the second third and fourth um at every arts or specialist night at the elementary level in Middle School level there will be both instrumental and art components um the modern music Ensemble is performing at the burn on the 25th the 15th is the uh string concert grades 4 through 12 and we are closing out the month with the Middle School drama club which is putting on a production of Greece so we have lots of theater art and music offerings um some more updates from this year is we did add a new Jazz U Middle School jazz Ensemble Mr kenti and Miss Baptist started that they'll have their debut performance at the spring band concert on Wednesday um we're looking continuing our Jazz program for the future it's something we had in pre-co but unfortunately it's one of those things we' kind of lost along the way so we're hoping to kind of put it back in um we already have 75 students registered for this year's jump start music camp and we are pleased to be offering sessions in band Orchestra and colgard uh the Medford band parent organization which is a 513c that supports our Band program um just received a grant from tus University that will help Supply musical instruments to jump start music camp for students that are on scholarship and we'll also provide age appropriate Color Guard equipment for our new color guard session which we are excited to bring to jumpstart this year so students can sign up for a band session a Orchestra session or a color guard session um and we're hoping if everything goes well this summer we're hoping to eventually um add a theater session in because we know we have a lot of theater goers and excitement for theater here in Medford so um this is the first year at the high school we did bring our theater classes back in Action so we have lots of theater buzzing around the high school right now and we're hoping to continue that continue that growing but any questions I know member inapa has a question sure from Zoom hey sorry I had a question as well for the previous well not a question more of a statement but previous um presentation as well thank you both for presenting all this really wonderful um information um as someone who actually well a bachelor's in an art and design education with with a design degree like this is really huge to see and to push you know the future of our of art design in our schools it's something I've always seen that lacked and always appreciated as Miss knows as I like through the many program she hosts as well um proud product of you know the theater and everything'll be guided to uh Tony bney as well but just wanted to really echo my I I can't say speechless I'm talking too much right now and also apologize I can't be there right now I'm helping out with something here as well but um yeah I just really want to reading through the the the slideshow was really happy also really cool to hear that the band actually needed to be replaced and put in another Division and even then they still did really well so um thank you to both for all the work you do and um yeah that's all I have thank you thank you thank you member in tapa awesome thank you very much for the presentation wonderful job and I love the [Music] t-shirts all right mayor gonna introduce the student reps and then I'm gonna go to you I was gonna make a motion to suspend the rules and take item 202 24-24 out of order Dred if you could good even I just wanted to um make sure that I recognize our student reps who are here today Darren trong thank you for being here in Chambers and Noah yasco Who's online thank you to the both of you yes welcome and thanks for being here a motion to suspend the rules by member Uso second by second member Graham all those roll call please member branley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member olap yes M ryanfeld yes member rouso yes mayor Loker yes s the affirmative zero and the negative motions approved offered by member rouso member ryanfeld and member olad resolution on the end of fossil fuel building equipment purchases whereas the buildings of the mord public schools are exclusively the responsibility of the member school committee pursuant to Mass General Law chapter 71 section 68 whereas the inflation reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law both provided significant opportunities for schools to end our dependence on fossil fuel infrastructure whereas the climate crisis is an exential threat to the survival of our species and countless other species we share our planet with whereas the climate crisis is primar primarily caused by human activity through the release of greenhouse gases whereas today's leaders must take action now to ensure a sustainable future for gener ations to come now therefore be it resolved the mord school committee one bans the purchase of new or replacement fossil fuels powered equipment used to operate our school facilities such as HVAC equipment and kitchen equipment may authorize the purchase of band equipment in emergency situations at a regular or special meeting of the committee and must authorize equipment purchases covered by this resolution regardless of the revenue Source such as Municipal funding or grants from governmental or non-governmental organizations I know we have our team our city team and they' brought some guests with us to discuss the HVAC system I think I was talking to Brenda this weekend about um the process to fixing our HVAC at the two middle schools I somewhat related here so I don't know if you want to hear from them or a member that has this resolution I'd like to speak up member Russo thank you um I um and the resolution does speak for itself pretty clearly I think um and um I I think it's you know um Medford has done things differently than lots of other communities in fact doing things that are W that sun is right in my eyes um and done a lot of things that are frankly not even that are explicitly laid out in the law in Mass General law that should be done differently um and there's sort of a mountain of things in that category um the unlike Somerville where they have transferred the buildings over to the city in which case the school committee has no authority over school buildings also doesn't have to pay for any utilities um and during covid they the school committee could not open their buildings because they had no Authority the city had all authority but in me in Medford and the vast majority communities in Massachusetts the school committee has explicit and total control over our buildings um and um I know that that has not been how Medford has operated but um we should be doing no capital improvements to our buildings we should be doing doing no emergency repairs to our buildings um unless the school committee has authorize them um and so that's a part of the resolution that's not actually stated clearly well I guess it is in the beginning um and I just want to make it clear that this committee um the majority of the folks that ran for office um included in their platforms that we would stop uh using fossil fuels and um I just uh that's what this resolution is about and so um I'd make a motion to approve unless somebody else wants to talk on it member reinfeld do you want to say anything yes I just I just wanted to say that I would like to see the default to be to consider um the non-fossil fuel solutions for our building projects uh which I think is a reverse of kind of historically what we as a society has done um I'm and I think provision three here in particular um is about bringing these decisions to the school committee so we can evaluate um the language in terms of the climate goals that we have for the city the sustainability goals um and and not just the financial goals looking being able to look comprehensively at upfront costs and then sustained maintenance costs and I think that's really important that we're not just making the decisions based on what it costs right now to do this but also to maintain these systems and make them sustainable for the future because we know a lot of our buildings are about to experience some major stresses uh with age and this right here right now is the time to be planning for that director hunt Madame mayor I I assume we call you that at these meetings sorry I'm not usually at school committee Alicia hunt I'm the director of Planning Development and sustainability I been the city's uh essentially sustainability director since 2012 and I've done a lot of work in the schools and I would like to respectfully request that you wait and see our presentation and hear the work that we've brought we've been doing and to understand some of the concerns that we have as you all know I am the champion of renewable energy in our buildings I am the force behind why our police station is all electric why our new library is all electric and designed to be Net Zero and I think that the question about renovating buildings and upgrading heating systems is complicated and we're prepared to share a bunch of that information with you this evening so I was hoping that you would be hearing sort of what our what our findings are in our information before voting deliberating on something like this whether you were to then send it to committee or to vote after a presentation I I would respectfully request that you may want to see what we have first yes is there motion to table May um I certainly am very interested in this presentation I read it and I have a lot of questions um the this this resolution provides an out there are going to be situations for which we must continue to use fossil fuels um I for instance I think sometimes when it comes to the backup options um having an electric primary system and a backup system that's fossil fuels right now might be the might most uh appropriate thing but when I hear that the city's hiring an OPM to do a project that the school committee has not even authorized I can't help but feel like there's a big problem here so I'm I'm not interest if at the end of that presentation we need to have a meeting to discuss approving that project to use fossil fuels that's fine and that would become the new policy of the school committee um putting it ahead of this to me feels a bit like we're going to go ahead hire an OPM and start doing some work and then after the fact the school committee said you can't do that going forward well that that's that's not that's not okay that I mean the law is explicit that we have this Authority and nobody should be touching our buildings without our approval uh so I'm incredibly interested in this presentation and look forward to it and definitely want to know a whole heck of a lot more about the options and the site challenges I understand that we have with geothermal in that area um but you know if in 10 years the federal government says under no circumstance public buildings use fossil fuels anymore did we just blow however many millions of dollars and have to rip it all out um we don't know what the future holds other than the fact that you know from the climate we sort of have a pretty ugly picture but we don't know what higher levels of government are going to do when they finally come to grips and finally start taking very strong action to stop the use of fossil fuels and public buildings are usually the first thing they go for because that's the the stuff they have control over so I I I I respect uh very much director hunt and her work and especially the work around the library and the police station and I look forward to working with her um and lots of other folks on the new high school um but I think we need to draw a line in the sand someday and I don't know when anybody else would like to draw the line but I feel like it should have been done 50 years ago so maybe now is a good time to draw the line of the sand on this um again this resolution allows for us to decide okay we're going to stick another fossil fuel thing in our buildings and just pretend that the climate is not completely falling apart um that that's that's an option but we need to make that vote when we make that decision and today we aren't even being asked about these things thank you um if I may just from the chair and then I'm gonna acknowledge you r um um director hunt and her team have taken on quite a bit to help plus Paul riggy who's our facilities and maintenance director over on the city side and through requests coming from me which obviously are coming through the school committee um they've spent a lot of time working on the light light post on Freedom Way um Keys c new cameras and now HVAC so I I understand you want to move this forward tonight but director hunt respectfully asked that we table table this basically until they at least give their presentation and we can always go back to it so I think out of respect for City staff working tirelessly for school needs because they want to help um I would just like I would ask that the committee respect that mayor member rouso and then um I I everything you said except for one thing I agree with um you do not speak for the committee without us voting and I I really take offense to the idea that the chair who by definition the chair is the servant of the body is not the head of the body that is the definition of a chair and we did not ask you to do this so I appreciate that as the mayor with the purse strings that there's a lot you can do and there's a lot only you can do but we didn't ask you to do this um and so you didn't as the school come forward as a representative of the school committee to get this work done you came forward as a chair as the mayor may you you don't have that Authority so I I mean that's very upsetting to think that you can speak for us if we have not voted because you cannot I have not approved funding I have not signed a contract that's why they're presenting tonight on work that I asked them to do but it was the committee that has discussed it over and over again it's the teachers union who brought a grievance because our air conditioning doesn't work and we said we were going to commit to fixing the air conditioning so this is the the base work and they're here before I've ever even signed a contract because obviously they're going to present to you first so I don't know why fixing air conditioning is so upsetting Miss U member branley and then um Miss Smith sorry your mic's not on no oh there we go um so I'm I can understand everybody's Point here but I feel like if we're going to draw the line can we can we just wait for the presentation and then we can draw the line I I don't see why I feel like it's a little disrespectful to the team um yes motion to table please I mean yeah can can we just can we table until they speak is is that possible yes so let's just table the vote until we can listen to them speak member brandley yes M Graham yes ex sorry I've had my calling a vote member and TOA we calling the vote it's motion to tabl debatable so just hold on for your name to be called M top so we're motioning the table I'm sorry I'm I'm not sure what the motion is U motion to table by member brandley seconded by member Graham yes member olapa yes member reinfeld yes member so yes mayor ler yes seven the affirmative zero the negative motion to tables approved is there a motion to revert back to regular order of business you want to talk on the next paper sorry Bo business by member second by second member reinfeld U roll call please member branley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member reinfeld yes member yes member reinfeld yes member Russo yes Marilyn goer yes seven the affirmative zero and the negative um motion to revert has been approved we're going to go to number three h back update Dr Peter Cushing assistant superintendent of schools Miss Brenda Pike and director Alicia hunt good evening Madame mayor and members of the committee thank you very much really appreciate this opportunity to present today on this very important topic just prior to getting I is we good um just prior to getting started uh I do want to just piggyback on something the superintendent said earlier uh school lunch hero day at the end of this week if you can come out support our lunch Staff last year in April we were averaging over 12,000 meals a week last week we served 16 thou over 16,000 meals I just felt like that's really important for you to know as we move into this really important topic um so I will share my screen um and as you'll see we have uh members of our OPM team uh and our Engineers uh with us here as well including um Alicia hunt and Brenda pikee who we've been uh trying to work with on this so let me just go through our agenda uh first team introductions we'll do uh a look at the comprehensive assessment that has been done uh some viable options that we have some real world challenges that we have as well that um kind of go to the previous conversation around full electrification and really our desire as well to do everything we can to make sure that we're combating the climate crisis uh a proposed timeline and time for your questions as well um so as we move through I'll ask people to stand up and be recognized uh so myself assistant superintendent uh this is the operations part of my title also Alicia hunt director of Planning Development and sustainability for the City of Medford Brenda Pike our climate planner for the city uh John mlin director of buildings and grounds unfortunately cannot be here this evening Paul riggy uh director of facilities for the city who cannot be here this evening um but also uh with us tonight uh is Josh D dittle from our designer representative b2q who also conducted the comprehensive assessment of the aners middle school a little bit over a year ago uh that was in process and then completed uh Gabby Cole designer representative from b2q um Joey Redmond designer representative ative from b2q and then Tom Ellis who's our OPM representative and uh while not under contract yet uh we have gone through comprehensive interviews that myself Mr mlin uh Alicia hunt uh members of the city's Finance team uh and Brenda sat in on to conduct a comprehensive review of those organizations uh who submitted applications for this and to really vet out the type of work that they've done in the these areas and the type of work that they propos to do um so I'll now hand it over uh to Alicia and others good evening um so as I mentioned before I have actually been sorry I have to get not too close it's really echoey out here um doing a lot of um Peter can we actually have this here so it's easier to see thank you because it's hard to see the same words up there um the we can we can work it if you want us to that works um sorry I'm actually used to doing my own presentations when I go to city council um so we did uh do a comprehensive assessment of the Andrews and mlin the Andrews school so we basically we looked at we worked with National Grid to say what could we afford what could what would things cost what would National Grid pay for and so this was partially funded by national National Grid and partially funded by the city to do a comprehensive assessment of the Andrew school as a role model and I'm just going to go I'm going to assume that people don't know so much about the buildings because I realize that also the general public watches these meetings as well so please forgive me if you think that I'm telling you things you all know um but the schools the five what I always call the lower schools not the high school the other five were in fact designed by the same designers and built by the same contractors and the same OPM over a series of two of a couple of years opening in 2001 and 2003 um they have generally the same kinds of equipment they have the same models they were installed the same way at the same time so what we did was we said we were already doing a project at the Andrews looking at solar and battery and trying to make that work and we already had work going on and as that we have been running um a piece of software in the school for a couple of years that gives us like a constant commissioning of it telling us what's working and not working so um b2q is the team that's been working with me at the Andrew school for many years already had a baseline heavy strong knowledge of the Andrew school so we said let's do this assessment we understand what's going on when people came to us and said you know the HV is not working there are troubles with the heat there are ventilation like not ventilation but you know the systems aren't all working correctly um we said look we've already got a head start at this building um therefore it would be most costeffective for us to do an assessment of this one building and it would tell us a lot about all our other buildings because we H we understand that it's the same types of systems in the same way um so we contracted at the time with b2q um to do that so I'm going to ask b2q to actually speak to their comprehensive the assessment they did of the Andrews and their recommendations and then I also have information we had an HVAC technician Go in all of the schools and do some poking at them in understanding of what's going on so I have a slide sort of addressing that and then I'm going to come back and talk about about sort of what some of the the difficulties are with some of the things that we want we would love to be able to do in these buildings so I'm going to start by asking the b2q staff to come up and talk to the assessment that they did in the Andrew school hi everyone thanks for having us tonight uh so as Alicia mentioned we did the comprehensive study at the Andrew school so this slide and the review I will go over will focus on the condition of the major HVAC equipment um there are uh air handling units on the roof that provide Heating and Cooling to mainly administrative spaces the gymnasium in the cafeteria and then each classroom also has a what is called a unit ventilator to do the heating and cooling for those spaces of those units at the Andrew school at the time of our Study last year 2023 the cooling system for the gymnasium was not operational all the compressors had failed and there was therefore no Cooling in the gym the cafeteria cooling unit had three out of four of the fans were not operational at the time of our study meaning there was very little capacity to provide adequate cooling to the cafeteria Additionally the air cooled Chiller that is the machine that provides cooling to all the classrooms in the building that was somewhat operational but it required a facilities maintenance uh Personnel to go up to the unit on the roof climb a ladder every day and manually reset it so each morning when it came on it wasn't able to come on automatically and needed that manual intervention to operate lastly during our study one of the two boilers at the Andrew school had a glycol leak and was valved off and not operating the one boiler was able to provide the heating to the school but in the case of an additional failure there was a lack of backup capacity um so that is the summary of the Andrew school I've also can speak a little more generally to the mlin school based on some information that uh Mr Cushing has provided us my understanding of last year is that similar issues were experienced at the mlin and that cooling was not being provided due to equipment failures in at least I believe the gym cafeteria and Auditorium uh Additionally the chillers providing cooling to the classrooms were operating at about 50% capacity so not able to provide full full cooling on the hottest days of the year there anything you'd like to add all right so I'd like to summarize the recommend recommended option that we considered in detail during our comprehensive study at the Andrews School uh the concept I will start by talking about the solution for the classrooms the concept is to replace the air cooled Chiller on the roof with what's called an air to water heat pump this heat pump would be able to provide chilled water cooling to the classrooms during the summer doing the same function as the chiller uh but the heat pump would also be able to provide hot water to the classrooms in the winter to do the heating so one piece of equipment a heat pump would provide Heating and Cooling to all the classrooms um you know through an electrified method this concept also proposed to replace the failing boilers with new updated condensing gas boilers which are more efficient than the existing cast iron boilers in place the purpose of these boilers would be to provide a few different things a it could provide backup heating to the classrooms on the coldest days of the year or supplemental heat if an air to water heat pump was unable to keep up with the demand uh second there are still some devices in the school that without being upgraded would require a hot water temperature higher than what a heat pump the heat pumping contemp blade could produce in that case um the boilers could still provide hot water to those devices that includes like perimeter baseboard radiation um that provides heat under windows and some of the supplementary Heating in administrative areas like the principal's office for an example and last these boilers would also provide the heating that would be needed if the building were to lose power and not have electricity um so in case of a power outage there is a generator to provide some standby power to the building the anders School is the city's emergency shelter and these boilers could continue to provide hot water to continue to heat the school if there was an outage or an emergency situation I'd like to just conclude by uh discussing the other systems in the building those Air Handlers we mentioned right now they get hot water from the boiler from Heating and then we have those cooling units Up on the Roof that I mentioned that do the cooling so our study can uh considered replacing those cooling units on the roof with heat pump units so these would be variable refrigerant flow heat pumps that would be able to do heating in the winter and cooling uh in the summer with one heat pump device um we're also considering with the air handler Replacements still maintaining a hot water coil for those backup purposes for the resiliency in case of the power outage so heat could be provided to areas where people may assem mble like the cafeteria in the gymnasium so overall this would result in about an over 50% uh Savings in your current natural gas use which is right now equivalent to approximately 39% of the greenhouse gas emissions uh which would increase upwards towards 58% uh with full renewable electricity and Alicia can speak to this but solar power is being contemplated and planned for the Andrews school so hopefully those greenhouse gas emissions would go up over time um so what we didn't mention and I emitted from putting on the slides but I do just ke want to keep putting on the table um is that um we talked I talked with members of the school committee uh preco so I believe it was in 2019 about the roofs and the states of the roofs of the school at that time we uh authorized an uh I want to call it a repair but it was a restoration of the roof at the Andrew school so that roof has a 20-year lifespan on it now and we I actually have in my email a con a proposed contract to put uh solar on the roof of the Andrew school it's actually looking like our best option given the new uh Federal Direct pay incentives is for us to actually purchase this solar which could also result in US saving money my goal is to actually move that project forward this summer if at all possible um but frankly I'd like to read the contract before I commit to something but um the pricing actually is excellent like I'm thrilled um I mention that because we need to start doing our roofs we need to start replacing our roofs the right thing to do is a full replacement that also includes new insulation which would reduce the amount of energy we need for heating and cooling the schools and could actually if we did it at the mlin school at the same time could help us size down the size of the equipment we would need at the mlin school at least because of all the insulation it would add to it would would then also allow us to pursue and I would pursue it sort of as a the roof I think would would make sense to fold into this project pursuing solar on that I would probably just do that as a separate piece to go out and procure solar for the roof of the mlin school and see if we could get some excellent pricing on that as well so I just want to put that on the table that we're really looking at that um there's also always the option to buy uh renewable credits to offset electricity usage so the city also had an had an opportunity and we um employed an HVAC technician to review the the equipment in all of the schools he produced a nine-page report that said um um that the the reports for the Andrews and the mcglen he also agreed were like this is this is failed this this needs new like new equipment this is not repairable the other three schools all seem to be that they needed some repairs some serious maintenance like a little more than heavy maintenance some retr commissioning um but that they could be kept running for several years which would give us a chance to do this project see how the Andrews and mlin go and then to start doing some Capital planning to come back and do because these systems won't last forever but can we keep them another five years possibly 10 yes um so however my recommendation is that we actually have the same OPM and design teams do these projects at the same time so that the things that things that do need to be changed are changed inconsistent with our values and goals around renewable energy around lowering energy usage um and our similar equipment so that we can make it easier on our maintenance staff to maintain similar things it is easier for them when things are on the same control system same kinds of stuff oh this is what works at the Brooks it's the same stuff at the Roberts and it's the same stuff at the mlin it is in fact helpful for them so that's my recommendation is to just rather than trying to have our facilities department or someone else managing what are kind of significant repairs and in some cases replacement we just roll it in and try and move that forward quickly um so then I just wanted to talk about the elephant in the room which is geothermal because we are all hearing about geothermal I have been on the calls with our delegation I have been looking at the various opportunities there's a lot of federal money right now um if we do solar we can get these Federal um it's not rebates sorry the uh I keep forgetting the exact word for it direct pay is what they're calling it but different federal agencies are referring to the term differently but direct pay but what it is is that as a homeowner as somebody with a tax burden if I was to do solar or one of these renewable projects I would get a tax credit like not reduce my income by that amount but actually oh I owe 50,000 in taxes you can take 30% of the cost of your project off the taxes you owe to the government we as a nonprofit as a non-t tax bearing entity we do not have tax liability this new system actually allows us to get a check back from the IRS for that money which is brilliant so for the solar it would be for the solar I do think and I'm pushing on this a little that if we did a roof and solar together that we could get we may be able to get the money for the roof the 30% as well as a solar but the rules for this program while the the law was passed about 18 months ago the rules have just started coming out in January and February and so then people have to sort of like understand what do these rules mean and nobody's tested the rules because they literally just came out um so we are looking at that um but there's also a lot of money for geothermal and if your project involves geothermal then you can start looking at these 30% tax incentives basically um so some of it is that there is a lot of piping in the in the classrooms and I would actually honestly need Gabby and Josh to speak to specifically which piping what would need to be at a different sizing to be able to handle the temperature of geothermal water that would include very disruptive work in our schools would take more than we could do in a summer and would be disruptive in displacement of classes perhaps the entire building in order to do that work we don't have swing space like that so that's one of my concerns although actually the swing space would be your concern my concern would be the work and the saying like the students can the work we're contemplating we do believe we can do a large chunk of it over the summer um we'll get back to the schedule but a large chunk over the summer and that we could do it without being disruptive to classes and that classes could Contin we could be there in the fall doing the work and we would not have to displace any classes to do the work um other things with geothermal though is that um and I have a map about maybe I'll just flip the map up and then then I'll come back to the words um so the activity use limitation means that there is known contamination under the ground and that it has been we've had a licensed Ty professional we've done studies we have done testing um and then there a limitation like this basically says here's what's underground here's what you may or may not do on the property so a lot of this the areas in Orange um you can dig down to six feet deep without having an issue you can't dig deeper than that because of the contamination um and we're not concerned about in anyway about students coming into contact with the the clean dirt on top but if you start digging Wells we would have to deal with that and there are concerns about how that happens and there are uh general knowledge that this entire area different part portions of it have had uh dumping on them and we know that the whole area used to be a salt marsh and that it was created at solid Land by dumping materials from the construction of 93 so there's a lot of concern about what you are going to hit if you start digging in this area and that can is not again insurmountable but when you dig a well and you have to get rid of the dirt hundreds of feet of the dirt and the dirt has contamination in it that is an order of ma order of magnitude more expensive than getting rid of dirt that's clean and in fact you all hope hopefully you've all seen our beautiful Labyrinth it is wonderful I love it um but it is a contamination cap because the Land There was so expensive we couldn't afford to clean up the land under that and so we built this beautiful art piece that people love but it's because the contamination in that corner of the property is actually that bad um so additionally there's a conservation restriction on the entire property this property was transferred to the city it 1999 um from the state and everything inside the red the the section nearest the river has a conservation restriction on it the whole area has conservation restriction and the area closest to the river actually has a conservation easement and I meant to refresh myself on the difference between the two suffice it to say anything that we do in this area we actually have to get permission from DCR um we had to go to DCR for the Labyrinth for the dog park for the mlin playground work for the wind turbine um but it's it's a conservation restriction um one of the things and then actually that includes Hormel Stadium fascinatingly um so one of the things that I've learned about geothermal is that it is extremely disruptive to the area you have to dig up you have drilling rigs that have to go down hundreds of feet and you have to do a lot of holes I sorry we did the math earlier and I have it on this screen but we were talking about about approximately 200 Wells to support the Andrews and the mlin schools and we need the area of approximately two hormell stadiums sort of more than the football fields that would need to be dug up and um I'm understand that one rig can can do about either one one well or half a well a day so we're talking about 200 days of rigs drilling so maybe we can get two or three rigs but still that's a huge amount of time it would be dumb trucks in and out of the area for months taking this dirt out so that's some of our concerns about it that it's not that you can't do it but then also if we hit contamination above and beyond what we were expecting it could slow the project and it could add costs that we were not even anticipating even if we anticipate the expense of the contamination we have not yet determined whether if you're using direct pay and you hit contamination you can get the 30% tax credit on the 30% of the cost of disposing that soil because you could if you were disposing the clean fill definitely but if it's dirty like we we need to I'm not sure if anybody's asked yet frankly um so those are some of the things that have come up around geothermal now to be clear I do think we should be seriously considering geothermal for Medford high school and I think about where should we where are we looking at like what is the location is this possible but when you're doing a massive building construction a new construction you're already displacing students you're putting in new HVAC equipment you're putting in like all new stuff I definitely think it needs to be on the table um for that project I have significant concerns here though um and then the other thing we so we talked about could we do it like hormell Stadium needs actually new Turf in the next few years could you dig it all up and put boring holes under the turf turns out yes we're told that you can put boring holes and put the turf on top of it so that is in fact not out of the question and we do have another giant Turf in Medford that that is perhaps this could be on the table for so so we're looking at these things um but again if you did it you can do it under a parking lots you can put it under parking lots and put pave right over it and that's fine as well um but again that's a lot of time for your parking lots to be disturbed so I feel like we I really wanted to go into that because I think a lot of people are saying why not geothermal um we would still also need to use a lot of electricity with geothermal geothermal does not negate the need for using electricity and your electricity use goes up because of all the pumps that are involved with it as well um I will then just sort of because we did examine geother thermal for the police station and the library and the cost benefit for the Energy savings like the greenhouse gas reductions from an all electric building or an all electric with geothermal was not significant because of the amount of electricity we still needed in the building for the geothermal um like it was a real number but it wasn't like oh we'll cut it by 50% it was like another five or 10% if I remember correctly um so then there are other issues with the full electrification because in addition to geothermal you could use electric resistive boilers and I'm just saying that those use a lot of electricity like a lot of electricity and that is would be in my opinion very wasteful um but regardless if you did a lot of if you did electrification all electrification even with geothermal we would need um upgrades to the National Grid infrastructure in the area that was actually something that we've been butting up against for the solar battery project that we were working on that the cost of the electrical upgrades were going to be um at that time I was quoted around $350,000 and National Grid was putting it on us and I was looking at a million dooll project I was like this is insane um so that that is something that is a serious a significant concern um we would also if we went all electric we would need a significantly larger generator than we currently have at each of the buildings now if we did that a larger building generator would not physically fit into each of those buildings so we actually talked about could we put a an external generator between the two buildings in like a separate out building that would serve both buildings um yes it would be possible it might not actually be a bad idea if we needed a larger generator um we would also need the special permits from DCR because of that um so that's something to sort of like so there were some some of these were the concerns and then we were also um looking at the kitchen hoods which would need a heat recovery ventilator um because the outdoor air hitting the coil could damage the heat pump okay I'm sorry hitting the end somebody one of the other experts would have to explain that at this point because I am aware and I I believe Rea may be here to speak to this that we are already upgrading a lot of our kitchen equipment to all electric um and we are in fact running into electrical problems as I understand it because of that but we are trying to move forward with electric ones um so very briefly I'll just touch on this is the the um our team our current team has the most knowledge about the Andrew school we believe that the mlin school schedule would be very similar but we have to reserve sort of this caveat of we've done extensive reviews of all of the equipment in the Andrew school and we have a lot of knowledge and a lot of confidence in this schedule the mlin school would probably move on the same timeline but once they get in there digging into the details of the building it's possible that there'll be some unexpected conditions that could delay our or off derail us a little there's actually a bunch of pre-work that is needed this is a major project um looking at uh some potentially submetering understanding exactly the loads that are needed in this building what what do we need to put in here some conceptual design there's a phase where you work with the owners of the building to determine the owner's project requirements so um this committee would be involved in determining the owner's project requirements of the project and then the design of the project construction documents um we're exploring the best way to move this forward some of this equipment has extremely long lead times gab's actually been making some phone calls there's one piece of equipment that right now has a 32- we lead time um and one of the key I forget I I wrote it down which one um so there's a recommendation around what procurement process we should use and whether we should actually consider a a construction manager at risk process because that would allow us to pre purchase a bunch of the equipment to do the design and purchase the equipment before the rest of it um in order to hit these lead times um and then what we're looking at here is to start the work we would be ready to start the work with all the procurement actually next summer so we'd be looking maybe at a may start but maybe you don't want to start it during finals we'd have to be able understand what exactly we're talking about would there be disruption if there's no air conditioning we might as well be using the space anyhow and working on the equipment um through the summer and then into the fall with it being ready for the the heating season to be up and running um I originally had hoped that we could do it this summer but that is not possible with the project of the scale and not with the equipment lead times that we're seeing right now so that is a lot um but I also have um Gabby and Josh have also their electrical lead here as well and I've also we've also brought um Tom is our um the representative from the OPM that we are recommending that we work with um who has experience with these kinds of projects um so that once we start to get into the details frankly I'm good at the high level and we hit a point where I have to turn to them for for the details so thank you Miss Smith do you want to come up and speak on on this sorry we tabled it so sorry thanks um I just wanted to say with respect to the kitchens we have a lot of equipment that needs to be replaced um we've been working on borrow time this year I had planned and had hoped to replace all of the gas equipment with electric so I started working on it um in the beginning of October you know getting electricians in saying okay can we do this what equipment what I need to purchase getting it ordered installed so now we're almost may I have three beautiful shiny new pieces of equipment in the Andrews and we cannot use them because we're still not we're not connected yet so there are some real challenges in making this happen I've also had um electricians look at the mlin because I've already purchased one piece of equipment that's there also and they've told me you know that the the board it was a mess from day one like wrong-sized wires things are mislabeled so it's a bigger task than just purchasing the equipment and getting the connections and I'm hesitant to try to continue working towards electrical until I can really use the Andrews as a guinea pig and figuring out once we start using it can the building actually handle the load because it draws a lot of power um so that's just a lot of a lot of concerns and in the meantime I still have all of these other schools with equipment that needs to be replaced and the clock is ticking so that's just what I wanted to share as my experience with trying to make this happen and not being as easy as it seems and that's that's thank you Miss SM Smith that's relevant too if you had to come before us each time you maybe couldn't do electric because of our panels or the work needs to do be done on that that that right yeah respect member rouso thank you um I like the presentation I especially like the additions to it that were spoken because there was things sort of missing I thought from the presentation that you answered um about the backup gas boiler backup is probably the wrong word since it will actually need to be in use anyways um I I this is my seventh year on school committee so I'm just going to be blunt um if a future superintendent doesn't like the electric bill can they turn off that system and just go to the gas system to save some money because that's that's an that's in Medford Mo we're going to cut this budget this year and if we stop using electric at the Andrews and just use the gas backup system and it costs way less money that is a decision that won't come to the school committee it'll just be somebody in facilities or in the superintendent's office no offense to the superintendent but um you know when the pandemic began um or maybe it was just before the pandemic um director hunt evaluated the high school about what it would be how we could save money by installing more efficient equipment to heat or cool the place it turns out there's no such thing as more efficient because all of the equipment was turned off or dead so you can't do better than zero um and so I'm just deeply concerned as this A system that could support just imp perpetuity if somebody decided the electric bill was too high uh yes that is a possibility thank you I I assumed I just you know just thinking about like how we're GNA figure out how to make sure that that does not happen is not for you all um um I'm super excited by the solar on the Andrew stuff that's very exciting um I had a question about what is construction manager at risk process never heard of that hello I'm Tom Ellis with Jones Lang LEL um the construction management uh at risk construction delivery was part of the uh construction reform law of 2004 which allowed for alternative construction delivery over chapter 149 which is a traditional design bid build process sequentially uh construction management risk allows a qualification based selection of firms that are Builders but then can get them involved earlier in the design process so that things like early procurement of long need items can be secured uh many of the um projects in the Commonwealth are now going at construction management risk I actually participated in a uh a session this on Monday where deputy director J Mitchell was really advocating for it and telling process I'll actually I can provide a link which is really a good 30 minute presentation by him on the benefits of construction management risk but it really becomes a forming a partnership with a builder instead having an adversarial condition where chapter 149 kind of creates that low bid process and then and then it also allows the design the Builder to participate in the budgeting uh cost estimating scheduling so it's a you know you agree upon a fee early on it's a competitive process and the legislation requires certain attributes to to happen on the selection process so it's very clear and open about how it's done but it's a more of a qualifications based process but it has proven itself over let's say almost 20 years now of being in place that it's really beneficial the quality of the construction goes up substantially so um there's a lot of discussion but I I'll I'll provide that link it's a really good presentation if you're interested great thank you that's that's nice to hear that it's not the the waterfall approach or whatever it was called where you have to just wait and wait and then you get the low bid and it's the lowest bid by a long shot and everybody's like uh oh like what did we get a bid for um and I'm sure my colleagues will have other questions but um the um I'll come back to my question because I gotta find it member Graham thank you um a couple of questions uh on one of the slides it says um partial decarbonization is the Practical solution for the moment but full decarbonization would be done uh could be done in the future with more time and money um and it looks like the timeline for the Andrews is really through the summer of 2025 so what does that mean for the mlen and what would it mean if we were to pursue full decarbonization like what is the timing differential between what you're proposing and what full decarbonization would look like yeah so um as it relates to the mlin school first I'll do that one uh with the partial and then moving to the full um so you know the mclin school and the Andrew school like Alicia mentioned are very similar um and so we hope that they would follow a similar timeline with this concept that is being currently contemplated and um not to get too technical but in the future additional equipment could be added to this system which would enable it to be you know more electrified more 100% electric however there are certain caveats associated with that U most notably that the electric service to the school would likely need to be be upgraded in order to support you know um more electric resistive loads and other heat pumps um so the timetable for that is really um a similar project to this in terms of you know one to two years from conception to implementation possibly sooner depending on the scope that's contemplated as it relates to 100% electrification um through geothermal um is a longer process it is a process that you know should be looked at um as taking up to three years um in a facility of this size possibly longer you know not I say three years not including um any potential unforeseen issues related to contamination so it is it is certainly a longer timeline while certain um activities during design and construction could be compressed or U performed in parallel um it is still going to be a notably longer timeline to implement so it's so I just make sure I'm understanding so it's about two years per school and if we were pursuing geotherm like full electrification it would be three minimum per school maybe more and obviously cost being the big variable there because of um the potential contamination which I think we all are worried about um dogs digging there and my dog digging there and my kids going to school there like none of um none of that makes me feel super warm and fuzzy so I absolutely understand the contamination concerns um on the property so I'm just trying to understand like scope wise what would it what would it look like and you know frankly do we have could can could we wait six years really for one of those schools to be done or are you proposing that these two would be done sort of in parallel that I realized that that was perhaps one of the confusions we are absolutely proposing that these two schools be done in parallel that we're doing these at the same time that we would start the Andrew in the mlin right now both of them and our goal is that both of them go to construction this time next year um we but we have confidence in what where the Andrews is that we can move it at that timeline and we believe that we can make the mlin have that also going to construction around this time next like you know May June of next year um but we have to just have that reservation of we really have to get in and look at all the details um and there's some pieces that we can things that can be doing in advance some that can't if you've ever been in actually the um those are the boiler rooms right the central the interior rooms um they're interior to the school and on the Andrews I know that there's these big vents that we're going to have to remove and try and get equipment in and out through these Vents and we still have quite figured out how that's going to happen at the mlin and one of the reasons actually to do the CM at risk Pro program is that they would be part of the design team so as rather than us saying oh we are engineers and we have figured out how you're going to get this equipment in and out we work with the people who will actually be responsible for getting the equipment in and out to make that decision about how it's going to work um and that is actually one of the big Reasons I'm very interested in we've never done cm risk in Medford um but it seems to me that for something like this where it's not just well here's a flat piece of land build a building this is an existing building that'll be occupied that we need the person doing the work to be our partner in figuring out how exactly this is going to happen it's there's some interesting spaces in there yeah um so just one more question um if I am understanding correctly what your proposal is the the chiller would be replaced with an air to water electric heat pump and the air handling units would be replaced with heat pumps which are also electric so the remaining gas component would be the condensing boilers is that accurate uh uh in domestic hot water yeah um sorry so uh the Central Equipment which would be remaining gas would be um the condensing boilers and what they would serve would be reheat coils which are are hot water coils in the duct work um Downstream of the air handlers as well as perimeter hot water radiation which basically um heats the uh exterior of the building surface so that occupants do not feel cold got it and so are we saying that the scope of what you're proposing does include the insulation in the roof replacement um where just trying to understand like where those the scope at present does not at the Andrews but hopefully the scope at the mlin would because the Andrews had um a restoration film anyone is glad to join us on the roof of the Andrews prer not to see this white it's a it's a white roof uh film that was put in Google view and Google view might have it by now right and then we also have the mlin roof which is significantly larger um that with a solar and with a project there would probably be the best decision to redo that roof and to see what cost we could recoup through those uh for black of better word direct pay tax credits got it um I do also just want to say though that this when you mentioned scope the scope of this project does not include the piping that runs through the building and it does not include the unit ventilators in the classrooms all right that those that is not contemplated in this I just want to be clear about that and why why are you being clear about that well it's why do I need to know that it's because if something if we come back in five years or so on and we say we now need to replace the unit ventilators all right I don't want you to I don't want people to think that this is a Soup To Nuts okay replacement of systems um and the other problem with waiting at waiting years is in particular with these two schools we need to act um and so when we talk about scope so we have a a pretty solid cost what we think the Andrews project would cost that we've been basing this on we know that the miglin is about 60% bigger we know we we have an inventory of the equipment that's in there so we have a general cost of what this would cost so we've been Banning some numbers about but until they actually do design work it would be September or October when we'll get estimates that are this is how much we should we actually need to pay for the whole project we don't have that number yet um we also have not gone out and gotten what is that number for the roof you can't actually have a solid construction but by the time we get that number in September especially if we do CM at risk it'll be a solid number they'll be like yes this is how much we need like okay we're gonna I I am not your expert on how do we pay for things but so if I were to say okay it's time to go get a bond assuming that's what we did then we would have we would know how big that Bond should be at that window right now we're talking in big round numbers numbers that are big enough that legally require we must have an OPM to do the project right so that's where we kind of are can you give an idea of that estimate like what is that round number year we've been looking at a number between 15 and $20 million to do both these project at both schools um if we we have not really costed roofs when I did that back in 2019 we were looking at one to two million to do a full roof replacement I haven't asked for pricing since then um but that's that was frankly I was looking at orders of magnitude because in my work we go get a grant to pay for things we need to know is that Grant big enough or that Grant big enough so that's those are sort of the round numbers y That's why we actually need to hire the the Consultants to do the design to do the engineering to figure out solid numbers but but these are big numbers this is these are not small I realized that I was on our building projects so um I I think my other question is uh when we talk about like who how would we pay for this I think that's I the school budget has like nothing in it for maintenance we've started having that discussion um we could talk about why that is all day but the bottom line is there's like a fraction of what is even needed to maintain the buildings in there today so where does $20 million come from in terms of of like what procedurally has to happen and how can we support this process because those two buildings need this work urgently and probably long ago um so I'm you know concerned that we have taken so long to like get to the point of action um which is something that I think we have to just continue to work on but meanwhile like we have a project in front of us and we're going to have to figure out how to pay for it so where does that where does that come from in terms of like the broad picture of the city yep no I I think that what you could do for the project is support this plan and let our teams move forward and get it done um OPM is going to be a whole cost in itself so that we'll come out of ARA funding and then we will move forward with most likely a fund okay um that's helpful thank you but we can discuss it more in our financial task force meetings as we map out all the needs of the cities and schools City and schools so we're look so I had two questions so to confirm we're looking at this coming out of the city budget rather than the school's budget or will not out the school budget yeah okay just wanted to say it um then my question uh Dr Cushing you Cushing you alluded to this what does compatibility look like for future projects in terms of what equipment we're going to need and being able to make the connection move transition into the next stage of renovating this what is Mo's and I guess maybe I'm asking what is Moore's law for HVAC equipment how quickly do so this this these are the moments where I have to admit what I do and don't know and that's why I have a team of Engineers here um because in in all honesty you provided the transition I was expecting them to I will say this like earlier this year I presented on these systems and I think I said like I've I dove off the deep end um and again recently I'm is that you know just the size of the pipes in the building feeding the classrooms would need to be different for various temperature changes that geothermal fullet whatever like the the minutia of details that need to be paid attention to in these projects is why it's great to have Engineers now answer that question for me I would love that sir yes um so as it relates to kind of equipment being kind of obsolete over time and becoming obsolete over time so you know what what we are contemplating replacing is our 22 refrigerant 22 uh based equipment so it's been installed since original Construction in approximately 2001 to 2003 um it has worked for 15 to 20 years depending on the piece of equipment you're looking at um parts are you know for the most part still commercially available refrigerant has been phased out so refrigerant is um you know not really available or available in small quantities and so that kind of refrigerant phase out will continue um as there are plans to continue you know lowering lowering the global warming potential of different refrigerants and you know in um incorporating legislation that requires um lower gwp refrigerates to be used so in that case proceeding today there will be a certain refrigerant base of equipment that is available uh and over time the refrigerants may change the requirements for refrigerants may change so I um as it relates to other components of the system there are compressors which the technology has you know improved and evolved but compressors which were made 20 years ago are still replaceable today um there are control boards and other uh kind of micro Electronics which are um integral parts of the these machines and these are probably the um most uh I guess susceptible to Moors law uh in the fact that U technology advances related to uh control boards and pcbs and other types of microelectronics you'll go much faster uh other than you know compared to mechanical systems like uh compressor um so equipment which is reaching the near near the end of its life which is why the considered to be 20 uh 15 to 20 years depending on the piece of equipment um you know will over its life necessitate various maintenance procedures which would include um upgrading or replacing control boards as they fail so um for the most part um control boards and other uh small components of these devices have been widely available for um different pieces of mechanical machinery and HVAC equipment for a long time and so in other words um you can typically go out or one could typically go out and use a vendor to procure and install um a replacement part through the life of the equipment so for 15 20 years and at that point somewhere along the way um they will and that they being the manufacturers will start to move on to newer generations of equipment and which they will stop making those parts when they would uh then uh be susceptible to moris loss so somewhere in the 15 to 20 years is what I would expect okay and then will the do you anti I know nobody can see the future exactly but do you anticipate there will be um more climate friendly more low carbon options yes that and that's kind of what I want to anticipate because I don't want to be in a cycle of replacing things with what we have just because it's the only thing available and the manufacturers are certainly thinking about that that too because um as they are uh kind of working towards lower gwp refrigerants and um kind of continuing to manufacture their current uh Market base or current offerings while you know looking at R&D and developing new offerings they are saying well what happens when I have a refrigerant leak or one of my customers has a refrigerant leak on an old system or needs to repair and you know for example R22 is not for a number of reasons is not desirable so what would you do presently there are options to drop in newer refrigerants into systems and they're being made um in such a way that future refrigerants should be compatible great thank you thank you so I think you're answering my question about R22 which was that when we're done with this there will be no more ar22 in use at these two buildings that's correct wonderful best thing I've heard all night um that's not true our stuff was good but there was also more great stuff um and um scroll up here so I'm I'm particular I just renovated my kitchen and I had to spend a fortune on power upgrade um which on scale probably is less than the $350,000 that we were talking about for a whole school um the um this this cannot this is obviously a problem in probably every municipal building and school building in the country um is there anything going on of Interest around how this is funded because to think that every school building in the country will be able to pop a $350,000 right a $350,000 check for electrical upgrades um that that just doesn't seem like a a scalable or you know we have prop two and a half in this state I mean there's no way every school building is ever going to be electric if everyone has to upgrade their the do National Grids bidding I mean we all look at our bills and it's like we pay this much for electricity and this much for the delivery I don't know what's included in delivery if it doesn't include actually the infrastructure so is this just the way it is right now is there anybody looking at how to change that is this sort of like when I when I upgraded my panel at home like 500 bucks just to install my new kitchen stove um is that what we're talking about so um there aren't uh Grant programs that I'm aware of right now which are funding specifically service upgrades unless it's rolled into a project so if it's necessary for a project presumably it could be contemplated subject to reviewing the rules um but for example uh if a service upgrade was NE necessary to support um a full electrification project that also qualified for the 30% direct pay payment that it would need to be evaluated whether or not that cost could be covered by that incentive when I just when I did this upgrade at home which nobody cares about my home projects but um you know one of the things I'm worried about is like uh you know in 20 years is this was this going to be enough power in 20 years and so when we talk about these buildings we spent $350,000 to upgrade the power is that really enough power no matter what happens or are we going to potentially have to do this yet again because I'm sure that the power that's there now was big and powerful and a lot when the building was built and far more than a building 50 years older um so is this just like a we're on a we're on a treadmill of dumping tons of money to have more power come to buildings or does this feel like this would be an amount of power that like nobody can imagine using at all kind of thing it's I I think there are two elements to your question which need to be considered it's what's happening if you look at it from what crosses the curb perspective what's happening on Medford side of the curb and what's happening on the National Grid or the Utility side of the curb and so there are costs associated with making the building capable of uh I guess accepting that level of demand or having that level of electric demand so the 350,000 is for our side I'm not sure exactly where that number come came from it might have actually been related to some grid upgrades to support the project that was the um interconnection oh the interconnection cost yeah yep um so related to the battery solar project correct yeah so that's not even really the full service upgrade necessary to the building uh switch gears and other electrical infrastructure in order to support a full electric okay so that's not the big number all right thank you I don't need lesson in electricity because frankly that's and I don't have the numbers right in front of me and R would know them right off the top of her head because she's been the costs just on electrical upgrades to move for those three pieces of kitchen equipment have been extremely high all right and you know but it's it's the price we have to pay to move to a decarbonization because um we're moving to 480 volts um which then if that breaker trips requires a service call because you're not supposed to just hit that because of the lethal amount of electricity moving through that breaker a little flip in your kitchen all right thank you I I'll thank you um I think okay I think I might actually just add that there we have been trying to poke at our I've been for a while we actually the mayor and I met with the Greater Boston labor Council Last Summer and the mapc to start looking at grant opportunities are there opportunities for us to pull in um Federal money to help pay for some of these things and what we've been trying to untangle is that the timelines for federal grants don't work for the work that we need to do in these schools right now but we're continuing to try to see if we could set up some pockets of money that could really help with other projects other big school projects the difficulty is when you apply for a Federal Grant and a big Grant it usually opens for a window of time that's usually six weeks to 12 weeks right and then you have to get your application in and then you often don't know that you've gotten the grant for six to8 to nine months and then it takes four or five more months to actually access the money right now I am working through a department of energy Grant actually Amanda Cella in my office is we received an earmark um a year ago we were told like a year ago in March that we were getting an the earmark for car park from the Department of energy we were offered the paperwork for it so that we didn't even apply for that Grant right we just asked and you know uh representative Clark was got us the money so we skipped the whole Grant application portion and this summer we started working through the paperwork with them and we are still working through the paperwork for the federal government to get approval to spend that we are going to spend a full calendar year working through the paperwork work to get the doe money released so we can spend it and actually there was some complications with it and as a result we're going to flip around some some of that Doe money will actually help pay for the solar array at the Andrew school and the arpa money I thought we were gonna I was going to ask for for that we'll put into the the car park project because they can't pay for skate ramps with doe money but they said oh you have another solar array in the school in the city somewhere oh yes that's part of the same project because we don't want you to lose your federal earmark money um so I just want you to understand like this is part of it is the the combersome and the long timelines we need this project done now and we can't wait for the a Federal grant to come in that doesn't mean I'm not chasing them it just means I don't think we're going to get them for this project because of the the way these timelines work so I just wanted you to know that we're not not looking at them thank you member Graham um I just wanted to make a motion to approve the scope of work provided to us in this presentation um and thank the team for being here I know we had a lot of really long um painful questions so um thank you all for doing that but I just wanted to formally approve from our perspective this project um and ask that we get regular updates um from the group um as the process moves forward great thank you motion by member Graham to approve the scope of this work second by he said it first member Russo roll call please sorry um member brandley yes member Graham yes member andapa yes member Ola yes member reinfeld yes member so yes mayor ler yes seven the affirmative Z the negative um we approved the project and again thank you for all your hard work we appreciate it thank you the other last thing I'll just say is we move away from this is that um we've been working to change out the lights um to full LED throughout our buildings we've even done some of that work significant amount at Medford High School because we're still running t12's there um and so even though that building will hopefully sunset in the future um the runway is long enough that it will pay off we're using on Bill repayment uh the missu and the Brooks are the last two schools that will get this treatment and that will happen this summer just so that you're aware thank you Dr Cushing we have number four suspension and discipline report um Dr Edward Vincent superintendent good evening the report that I'm going to present right now is um suspension data and uh discipline report covering the dates of August 28 2023 through March 1st 2024 in working on this project I this report I had the opportunity to work with um several District leaders including School building leaders and staff um When developing this report to have the context for its data in particular we strove to ensure that the report doesn't con convey identifying uh details about individual students the disciplinary the the disciplinary events which have been captured in this report cover a variety of incident types student grade levels and other relevant factors for example some of the suspensions are the result of pending felony charges there are five official categories that the Medford Public Schools uses when addressing discipline the first one is behaviors that are violent which could be exhibited through words or the possession of Weaponry the second category is uh behaviors or language or actions that are hostile grounded in racist or discriminatory beliefs that contribute to an environment that is plagued by experiences of marginalization inequity for students based on their race ethnicity disability sexual orientation gender identification or other immutable characteristics the third category is bullying or retaliatory conduct through words or acts that um have the intent of in of bringing about an intimidating impact on other students the fourth category is for students that have been found to be in possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia or the in uh the intent to distribute drugs to other students and the fifth category is repeated or pronounced disre disregard for the academic Integrity of the school environment through tampering cheating plagiarism or other misrepresentations with respect to their purported work product in this report there is also a category called other which could include violation of social media rules safety guidelines such as posting photos without consent false reporting to Authority forgery trespassing and again as I mentioned earlier felonies without School uh outside of school the data that will be presented shows a variety of disciplinary actions including um suspension days taken in response to different behaviors or or infractions the data does reveal that students of color students with disabilities and English Learners are suspended at a higher rate than their white counterparts this information can help us identify patterns and how schools handle disciplinary cases and highlight areas where additional support or interventions could be beneficial the data also highlights the importance and applicability of implementing effective behavior management M strategies interventions and restorative justice to address and reduce the occurrence of negative behaviors in school some of the things that Medford Public Schools currently uses are detention Saturday detention social probation warnings behavioral plans conferences with assistant principles restorative tasks or meetings in school recommending uh referrals for school um Andor community-based services and all of those strategies are currently deployed in the Medford Public Schools in Le of suspension whenever possible so overall from the time frame that I mentioned earlier between the start of school and March 1st there were a total of 61 students that were suspended um out of school however there were total of 83 incidents or 83 actual suspensions so what that means is there are some students that were um repeat offenders and we counted them more than once but in terms of our entire student population when we looked at our um October Sims data we had a total of 4,147 students districtwide and of those 4,14 7 students 61 students um were suspended over that time frame which is 1.47% of our entire population I provide some historical data going back to um school year 2122 22 23 and 23 24 and so what I will share is that um of our 4,147 students total population again 61 students were suspended during the 6 and a half month time frame which equals 1.47 in 2223 school year we had 4,393 students there were 89 students suspended during that time frame which was a toal total of 2 2.03% of our population and during the 2122 school year we had 4,353 students 90 students were um suspended over the course of that school year which um results in 2.0 um 7% of our population and looking at the data districtwide over 50% of our behaviors fell in or fall in the category of violent or threatening behavior involving fighting um the second largest category uh at 15.7% is obscene language and profanity the third category Falls in what we referred to as other again social media rules violations of social media safety guidelines posting photos without consent false reporting um forgery trespassing or felonies outside of school and the next um area that we are closely monitoring is um illegal drugs and paraphernalia which was 99.6% um as a school entire School District I um share some data about our ethnicity our El suspensions and our IEP suspensions and it's data that we are um closely monitoring um overall districtwide um our Caucasian students 36.1% um have participated or um had an out of school suspension our black African-American students that's 24.6% our Latino Hispanic students are 23% our Asian students are 6% and then other which could be U multi-ethnic is 99.8% um overall incident counts by um grade level as mentioned at our middle schools we had a total of 25 suspensions um combined for both of our middle schools grade seven is the grade with the highest number of suspensions um in both schools at the high school level there were 3 six um suspensions with grade nine and grade 10 students making up the bulk of those um suspensions of the 25 middle school students um 14 students did attend the Andrews middle school and 11 students attended the mlin school and due to fora guidelines um it dictates that we honor student confidence poity by not disclosing um more information about these incidents that might make um certain student populations identifiable again um of the 25 uh suspensions at the middle school level um we had over n approximately 976 referrals with resulted in a total of 41 suspensions so again there were some students that were um have been suspended more than once because um they were a repeat offender at the high school level um we had 2,599 referrals that were made during the time frame of that time frame there were 42 suspensions involving 36 students there were eight incidents where the police were notified and again um referring to the behaviors at the high school level the majority of behaviors um 52% were involving um violent or threatening behavior and the second largest area 19% was OB language or profanity which was the um second largest category at the high school level and other um 16.7% um other at the elementary levels during the time frame that uh we were monitoring there were there was no data because there were no um suspensions so our key findings in summary there are 61 students out of 4,147 students that were suspended which again equals 1.47% of our student population we are truly committed to carefully reviewing our suspension data with the goal to continue to address discipline and employ alternatives to suspension districtwide we notice that 50% of behaviors that result in suspensions fall under violent or threatening behavior written verbal physical threats along with physical fights are included in that category nearly 16% of suspensions involve obscene language and profanity which includes racial or discriminatory language 133% falls in the other category which includes violating social media rules and safety guidelines at the high school again in particular 52% of behaviors that resulted in suspension fell under violent or threatening behavior 19% of those susp suspensions fall within the obscene language in profanity category and 16.7% fell in the other category at the middle schools nearly 50% 48.8% of behaviors that resulted in suspensions in Middle Schools fall under violent or threatening behavior another concern for the district is that 17.1% of the suspensions involved at the middle school level were related to drugs and drug paraphernalia this was seen across both middle schools we are collaborating with our school counselors and social workers in uh collaboration with Missi scholman our director of School counseling and Behavioral Health to address this set of student behaviors 12% of the suspensions involved obscene language and profanity in this area as well we are working on providing students with effective tools to better Express themselves without the use of obscene language or using violent or threatening behavior suspension is used as a last resort at all levels and again due to fer requirements and The Limited number of suspensions the district did not identify any specific School due to our varied populations and their various needs actions out of school suspension and other ways that Public Schools addresses student Behavior do include Saturday detention this is for the high school at at the high school level increased parental involvement conferences phone calls Etc detention student counseling Social Work support meetings with building administrators principles assistant principles Etc referral to and coordination with with community-based mental health care and substance abuse treatment and so a lot of the things that I mentioned earlier do require significant involvement and support from our community-based partners to provide our students with additional mental health care and substance abuse treatment um there were um requests for additional um follow-up information and I did provide that to the committee about onboarding and training um the August Institute for um administrators and staff are trained um through principal meetings ongoing throughout the year where they address at at school-based levels um uh disciplinary uh challenges and issues that arise in each school on different levels and strategies that can be used um to help our students on no nober 7th um all staff participated in a bullying training which touched upon discipline and during the first weeks of uh six weeks of school our Educators at elementary levels and our teachers at um the secondary level set rules and expectations for behaviors for the entire year students participate in morning meeting Nexus classes and advisory classes at the secondary level to incorporate cell strategies to um support our students um we again for the purposes of this report suspension is um referring to out of school suspensions um there was a request for additional data which was provided in the three-year historical data and um there was a question about police involvement the principles do collaborate with the school resource officer sros the sro's help to determine if additional police support is needed in any given situation there were eight incidents during the time frame that was um documented where the police were notified to provide additional support please note that police involvement also takes place after school hours and on the weekends in those circumstances we do not notify by the police the police notify the district since our students are juveniles their rights are protected due to ongoing investigations um that may involve Court matters the school district has um no further comment regarding police involvement um and again I provided some data about Saturday detentions and parent conferences parent phone calls um detentions and conferences that are set up all discipline referrals are taken seriously and investigated while some may require a simple conversation with a student or teacher other referrals may need to deeper may lead to deeper inquiry and um revisions were made to the charts to make sure that the colors were aligned so that is my report for this evening thank you Dr head any questions member brandley um well I have to say nothing makes me happier than to see this because I feel like there's actually accountability happening uh and nothing makes me happier than that so um I appreciate the report um I'm happy that we're still using out of school suspension um and I'm happy that it's a last result um I think I think that it's important that it's not off the table um I think overall um I think it's a staggering number of referrals and that makes me feel sad um 2599 just at the high school alone that is a significant amount of work for staff especially teachers um and so I just want to applaud them for for their due diligence all the time it it it's I'm always um Amazed by it um and then just the followup between you know the houses and everybody working collabor collaboratively to make sure that this work is getting done um I think is something that has been needed um and I'm happy that it's that it's coming to uh fruition here so thank you thank you member brenley we're going to move on to number five rate card by Dr Peter Cushing assistant superintendent R card you're up sorry thank you D yep my apologies um so tonight we're presenting Ray card uh it has a lot of numbers in there we're asking for two specific areas of approval and that's on the facility rates which have not increased since 2016 I did a comprehensive analysis looking at a number of surrounding districts um and we're pretty much in the area that we need to be um I also um um have not included the Personnel costs as we're still working through some of those things and we'll need to come back to this body uh to look at those as we move forward uh and we're also looking at increasing our pool usage fees uh some of which um went up last year um in a modest amount for swim lessons and we've done research on that with surrounding pools uh most notably uh the pool parties for kids birthdays um which just don't cover our costs um and that's why there's such a substantial increase on the birthday parties um but when you compare it to uh a goldfish uh I believe that their numbers are in the seven at the $600 to $700 range for the same time frame um and it really doesn't include much of anything more than we're providing so um I'm happy to answer any questions but it's a 10% bump over our fees for our um facilities rate card um and I don't uh offhand remember the percentage for the pool but it's to move us to a more solvent and operating in the black when it comes to the pool member R thank you very much I appreciate this I like the rate card format very much um where did the 10% come from I just threw those numbers into a couple of different inra inflation calculators or compounding at 2 and a half% like we can do for increases in our property taxes here um and I come come up to a number much bigger than 440 for as an example the elementary school gyms um in in fy16 for the four category I actually don't know the category differences the 400 would actually be 500 and um $20 and you know we're not swimming in cash so um did you just pick the 10% so what we look what I looked at was over the eight years um and realizing that we hadn't had one so um it was the 10% was selected in comparison looking at neighboring districts I also included in your packet a um a facilities rental agreement that has the category spelled out um but trust me I think that's like 133 pages long so I can totally understand um the 10% was to look at we haven't increased in a number of years and what number presenting this in April uh late April uh is going to not scare away our renters uh we've been sensitizing our renters to increases in fees um and really trying to make sure that they understand the Personnel costs that are separate from the facility use fees so that $200 or whatever it is for using a gym for a period of hours um still carries with it a $65 per hour charge for cust stal and in certain instances not all instances a $50 fee so just before you even get to the facility fee uh in many instances it'll be $115 an hour just to open the doors with a 4our minimum wonderful thank you that was my next question but you answered it yep is there a motion for approval or remember right sorry we're and this is just to approve the pool and fac this is pool and Facilities other members of our team we're still doing work around these The Proposal because I have some questions about the Athletics and theater but that's still under discussion so we'll see that at another point it is still under discussion and we'll be seeing another Point yes right then I'll motion to approve motion for approval who end uh facilities rates yeah and we'll look to present this in the future uh in the February March time frame on an annual basis great thank you I can second motion for approval by member reinfeld seconded by member brandley roll call please member branley yes member Graham yes member on TOA sorry I lost my yes member Ola yes member reinfeld yes member so yes Mar Lan goer yes seven the affirmative zero and the negative thank you for the hard work thank you we do not have any presentations continued business new business offered by member rouso 2024 4-20 the me school committee may send a delegate an alternate delegate to the Massachusetts Association of school committees M masc Massachusetts Association of s school superintendents Mas and annual joint conference for the purpose of voting during the delegate assembly on the resolutions of the masc the conference is Wednesday November 6th through Friday November 8th with the delegate assembly being held on Friday November 8th voting is presently only allowed in in person and thus it is recommended that only members who are able to and are planning to attend the conference be nominated are there nominations for delegate are there nominations for an alternate delegate mayor member Russo I would like to nominate member olapa as an alternate motion by member Uso second to nominate membera as an alternate by member Russo seconded by member Graham uh roll call please member brandley yes member Graham yes member inapa yes member Ola yes member reinfeld yes member so yes maryn goer yes seven the affirmative zero and the negative congratulations got the big Alton spot okay are there any nominations for a delegate May I'd like to nominate member Russo as the delegate member Russo has been nominated as the delegate do I have a second second M by member part M right no I'm just ready to vote to vote any anybody else have anything okay so we're gonna move forward with member Russo has analed it um roll call please member brandley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member olapa yes member reinfeld yes member so yes Marilyn go yes s the affirmative Zer and the negative thank you and congratulations M so 202 24-21 offered by member Graham be resolved that the Strategic and capital planning subcommittee will meet to review and update the district's Capital needs assessment and planning document we had further resolve that the subcommittee will devise a process to ensure regular and annual maintenance of plan be it also resolved that the subcommittee will provide a report to the full school committee no later than June 10th 2024 is there a motion for approval motion to approve by member grams second by second member reinfeld roll call please yes that I'm sorry motion thank you uh member brandley yes member Graham yes member and tapa yes member Ola yes member reinfeld yes member so yes mayor go yes seven in the affirmative Z and the negative motion passes 20 24-22 offered by member Graham be resolved that the special education and behavioral health subcommittee will meet to discuss whether the Curtis test should be collocated with the Medford High School campus to approve educational outcomes for Curtis tough students be it further resolved that the subcommittee will invite current and former students and staff to provide comment it'd also resolved that the committee will report back to the school committee on whether the Curtis test program should be Co located no later than June 3rd 2024 because this information is critical to the progress of the me compr Comprehensive High School building committee as it completes the district's educational profile member Graham and then member branley thank you um I put this on and and would love for the um special education and Behavioral Health subcommittee to explore this in a little bit more detail um to provide some input to the um msba committee that gets going um tomorrow evening and um obviously the conversation around what the students at Curtis TS need is an important one um there's lots of things that they um just simply can't participate in in the current structure because they are clear across town um and there's lots of options from a building perspective to bring them on to campus in a way that still works for the students in that program so um you know for example um we we have lots of we have an endless number of options because nothing has been decided yet but what we do need to do in short order is help msba understand our scope intentions so that when we get to the point of talking about like is it a separate building is it a separate entrance is it a stacked building you know there's a million choices and options but the first thing that we have to do um is describe the educational programming that we intend to happen on the campus um and so when we think about the Curtis Ts that building obviously is its own um historic dinosaur we'll call it lovingly um but it is its own sort of facilities challenge um but more importantly um I want to hear from the teachers and the students in that program or who have graduated um you know about their thoughts and reactions about whether this is something that we should pursue knowing that we're five to seven years away from any any of this really being able to materialize because the current building we know is not suitable for the work that happens at Curtis tff so um we're we we are talking about the future here and we need to talk about that um you know in in an important way because if we don't provide for it now it's it's off the table and can't be designed for and planned for so um I'm hoping that the special education subcommittee um can move quickly to sort of convene folks Lori hodon is obviously a non- voting member of this School building committee um we have been working um with um the superintendent and Joan Bowen and they are aware that this is coming and that this is the dialogue we're looking to have um but that is sort of a matter for the school committee to be thinking about as well as the building committee so we really just need to sort of move that ball forward so that before summer um there's some clarity there because that will hold up the rest of our application and it's my goal um for us to be able to move quickly enough that those pieces the application are completed um by June 30 thank you thank you member Graham member brandley then member Anda and then member rouso um so as someone who works in special ed um in sumerville um I had spoken to our department head over at our alternative school um In Sum bille he was nice enough to join us tonight so I don't know if it would be I know it would be beneficial to hear from him um so I don't know also if it would be good for him to come to some of those their meetings um meford resident and you know I don't know how much he wants to disclose of him so I'll let him disclose what he'd like to about himself um but I respect his opinion um and his work ethic so I just wanted to throw that out there yep and the subcommittee meetings would be open to the public so um definitely welcome y member and topper and then you'd like to speak very sorry um just a quick question of clarification in the motion um thank you member gr for putting this forward for seeing this um so should we motion to amend to invite current and former also um parents Guardians caregivers as well with that be something we need to do should I mean I feel like we should as well for police student and staff but I'm not sure if it's implied in the motion already if that is the case but figured I would put that out there thank you member and toer it's a little diff to hear you but I I think you mentioned inviting parents and yes we'll have this will be a open public meeting um where anybody can come and give feedback so it will be open to parents of course oh awesome thank now yeah I knew it was a it was an open meeting but I wanted to make sure that the formal invitation was sent to them as well as along with their students but sorry if it's hard to hear me thank you member Russo and then um yeah thank you um I do think it's important to figure out how we invite people is is a challenge and then scheduling becomes a challenge the more people we add to the list um like in the past we've said we really wanted to hear from principles on something then we needed to make sure principles could be there um it is open so everybody can come but I think um figuring out how to tailor the people that I'm going to try to reach out to so that it's not going to be November before we can hold the meeting is is it's it's it's a battle um and some groups of people will be people that I will have none of us will have any way to actually contact them I'm really hopeful somebody will be able to tell us how we can get a hold of former students um but um Joan shaking her head I don't know if that means she has some way to do that she does good that makes me feel better um but um yeah so I I I hope to hear from lots of different people who have a relationship to the Curtis tff's past um and present um because we we do have a very important question to answer here and the timeline is not on our side unfortunately so um I mean I'm not a fan of rushing anything but um we don't have a choice here so thank you I'd make a motion to approve although I don't know I believe we have a resident that'd like to say a few words is the mic on yeah um so I'm Jack Hy I live on water railroad um been an educator for 18 years last eight years I've been the assistant principal at next wave full circle which is Somerville Alterna alternative therapeutic school um and I feel uniquely qualified to uh talk about this because we just went through the process of going from the edilei uh which was our oldest building in the district to going into Somerville high school and being incorporated into the same Community as Somerville high school so um just happens to be kind of the same situation that is going on in Medford uh and I would say that there are pros and cons to being in the same space but the pros vastly outweigh the cons um since we have transitioned from the Ed Le to Somerville High School we've gone from 60 students to over 90 with a weight list none of those 90 students or all of those 90 students uh have asked to be at our program and none of them have been told to go to that program because we're able to onboard them with visits which are much easier when you're in the same building they're much easier when you know the staff the kids um it's pretty much impossible to have in really really old building in a really really beautiful building and tell somebody that yeah your kid's going to this building and it's the same but it's not um in my opinion if you decide to redo Medford High School which you have and you decide not to incorporate Curtis tffs you are making a conscious choice not to invest in alternative therapeutic learning uh and I would say listening to 2500 uh conduct referrals I a vast majority of those I presume are from cutting class and a vast majority of those I bet are from a small percentage of students who are continually cutting class um in my experience I've realized that between five and 10% of students that are in the same percentage of high needs uh that Medford has need a substantially different uh Avenue to do School uh and so that's where you see 2500 referrals from probably 50 kids that continually cut um so I'd be happy to uh go through the details but you know it's late and I know you guys listen to an hour of HVAC so happy to answer any questions too we appreciate it and maybe a list of Pros even um whether that's emailed to the committee if you can't make it another night or having that ready to speak on the record for next time a good list pros and cons would be good help helpful for us member Graham um I I would definitely love for you I'm not on this on this subcommittee um and I will be listening in but I'm delighted to not have my calendar bottleneck you further because it's a mess but um if you can um plan to attend that subcommittee meeting where the the point of that subcommittee really is to dive into exactly what you said we brought this forward for exactly the reason that you described which is you can't you can't build a beautiful new building and then ask some small number of students to go to a hundredy old building without a floor um and that's real so uh at the same time though the needs that we need to sort of care for for those students to thrive are uniquely different and we need to inform um our application documents to make sure that we're accurately describing like what those needs are so that we can sort of have the best of both worlds so certainly I'm open if the committee comes back and says no no no this is like absolutely a horrible horrible idea that's fine but I think more than likely the subcommittee is going to come back and say this is this is an idea we should pursue but it has to have like these qualifiers to what we submit so that we can really um sort of meet all of those pros and cons where they're at and the students but I would love for you to be part of um member of so subcommittee yes y great thank you for being here thank you for waiting this long to yeah I probably should have done baseball practice and then come but um sorry Jack it's okay sorry the other thing I would say better than uh answering any questions or my input would actually be if any of you want to come visit uh next wave full circle and see our our wing so we have our own entrance at the Gilman Street uh train uh great it'd be more enlightening than asking any questions and answering them I think great yeah thank you so much thank you and and do do you find your the students are partaking in um theater and sports as well where we don't really see that because it's so separated yeah for the first time we have tons of our freshmen going through exploratory which I don't know if you call it exploratory in menford but the the rotation um they're doing we some of our kids are captains of the sports teams now um it makes a massive impact uh so it's great thank you thank you for being here so uh I have motion to approve that motion for approval by member Uso seconded by second second sorry you all want to Second this let's go member reinfeld said it first um roll call please member brandley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes yes member reinfeld yes member so yes M lungo curtain yes s the affirmative zero and the negative motions approved mayor I I would just like you to know that Jack is that calm all the time he calls with chaos and I'm freaking out he's like so I I'm like okay Jack so he seems great he's amazing perfect for the role yeah that's great thank you for um introducing him to us 2024 d23 offered by member reinfeld be resolved that the subcommittee on curriculum instruction assessment and accountability meet with the assistant superintendent of academics and instruction and other relevant staff to discuss the development of a process to review and assess recently adopted CR curricula and assessment tools across the district and to identify the key stakeholders timelines and protocols to be involved in these re in this review consistant with the policies described in section one of the Medford school committee online policy manual motion for approval would you like to speak member rightel I'm happy to answer questions but it's late basically we've had a lot of new curricul come on in the in the district there's um we have a pretty robust process for introducing the curricula and also our top goal on the or the number thing on number one on our strategic plan is to develop this cycle so I'd like to get that process moving wonderful thank you member reinfeld is there a motion for approval motion to approve by member Graham seconded by second member brandley roll call please member brandley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member Ola yes member reinfeld yes member so yes mayor Loker yes seven the affirmative zero and the negative motion passes yep um we're back is there a motion to take take the paper off the table motion to take the paper from the table by member Russo seconded by second member Graham roll call please that's paper 2 202 24-24 member brandley yes member Graham member Anapa yes member olap yes member reinfeld yes member say yes mayor L go yes seven the affirmative zero and the negative motion passes motion to approve 202 24-24 may I before we move approval um motion for approval by member gram before we move approval is there I I know um John ml is in here tonight but somebody from the administration just say if this is feasible how many things would be coming before us or or even maybe any of the three that have the resolution before us is this going to be I'm just trying to conceptualize how many purchases or updates or upgrades would be coming before us each meeting and how that's going to be manageable U member Russo certainly um I did try to think about that in the wording because uh we don't want to have like 15 emergency meetings a year just to approve the purchase of something um I did not include um automobiles are not in there it's too soon I think we don't have infrastructure to even charge um you know if we' replace any of our equipment that way so I mean this is really aimed at Big equipment this I mean I I don't know uh Miss Smith is not here anymore lucky her um but like this equipment that is not actually functional at this point I mean I don't think she ordered it and it was there a week later um and a lot of this HVAC equipment I mean we heard what was that 32 weeks or something crazy for the lead time so I don't Envision this as something that is going to actually gum up the works at all it's more of a FYI again it's only FYI if it needs to be a fossil fuel based equipment if it's not then buy you know spend all the money that we don't can I can chair then could it be somewhere where it's Lo things are located under um like the cons the consent agenda for example and any explanations like say there's 10 things that week the explanation could come to us by email so that we would only be we could approve it all but obviously ask the questions or dis disapprove certain pieces that we think uh we're not we're not comfortable with sure and if I may um I certainly um first of all I mean the kind of equipment that we're talking about is not normally purchased stuff I mean we're not fossil fuel stuff is stuff that has to be installed and like it's it's a big effort um but um there was another earlier in our consent agenda we had a couple items that actually shouldn't have been in the consent agenda because of the policy so I would for the next meeting I was going to actually make a policy change to our consent agenda to include things like field trips and donations so that we can include those I'm happy to include this as well because why not um so sure if I can't yeah the the one thing I'll say is I think as we start the capital Improvement uh planning committee and once we start that work I think a lot of these items will move through that process as they should and will'll any issues will be addressed that's all perfect yeah that sounds great motion to approve motion to approve by member Graham seconded by second member ol roll call please sorry M ol's excitement second I love it it's very not everybody on the audience can see it but it's enjoyable anyways M hry member brandley I'm very hungry too yes member Graham yes member inapa yes yes member reinfeld yes member so yes mayor lungo yes 70 affirmatives Z on the negative motion passes okay next up we have no reports requested and thankfully no condolences next meeting um tomorrow tomorrow night we have an msba meeting that's at six o'clock and our next regularly scheduled meeting is May 6 at 6m here in the Alden Chambers me mord City Hall as well as on zoom and there's also a special meeting uh public budget public hearing here at 5:00 pm same day May May 6th motion toour by member second second member reinfeld roll call please member brandley yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member alap yes member reinfeld yes m