Meeting Recap: 12/1/25

This week’s meeting mostly consisted of follow up on agenda items from previous meetings. As always, my commentary speaks only for myself and should not constitute any sort of official record of the proceedings. 

Agenda | Recording | Transcript

1. For our Mustang Moment, we welcomed students from Roberts Elementary (“the Roberts Rams”) who introduced us to their new, student-driven school newspaper. Following remarks from Principal Crowell and their advisor Ms. Devlin, editor Owen and features writers Kiran, Mary, and Naima spoke about their inspiration and experience working on the Roberts Ram-Page. (Ewe know I love that pun.)

2. Climate Planner Brenda Pike and MPS Chief Operating Officer Ken Lord shared the updated proposal for solar energy on the roof of the McGlynn, with a deadline to sign a contract by the end of the year. The committee expressed support for the request to City Council to approve the contract and asked the City to also explore options for including the recently approved HVAC updates to Roberts, Missituk, and Brooks in the cost-savings deals that come with that deadline. (time stamped video)

3. Dr. Galusi summarized the November 17 presentation about the space utilization study and data from the community survey about a potential middle school restructure. No one raised their hand for public comment, so the only commentary was me rambling on a bit (ram-bling? Get it? ‘Cause I’m a Roberts mom? Never mind.) with a few additional gleanings about the responses and action items for the task force. You can watch the full presentation starting here but overall, I’d say Dr. Galusi did a good job distilling people’s comments into buckets for exploration—student transitions & developmental fit; special education, EL, and specialized programs; space, capacity, and long term enrollment; logistics; equity, community, and ending the lottery—and choosing representative questions for each to illustrate top issues on everyone’s minds. I was also happy to hear that she has already started reaching out to other districts that have worked through similar shifts.

4. Member Graham provided an update on the MSBA high school process. You can watch that starting here, but here’s my best attempt at a nutshell summary. The design firm (SMMA) has completed their extensive walk-through and shadowing process and is jumping into educational visioning with the district. Applications are coming [now open] for advisory groups—educational visioning & equity is full, but exterior & interior design, sustainability/mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, and side, safety & security still need people—with specific focus/expertise and we’re looking at community forums at various points over the next six months as we work towards deliverables to MSBA in February (to start mapping educational vision to facilities needed) and June (to lay out the path forward for schematic design), and schematic design by the end of the year for further community feedback. Also, a reminder that the building committee meetings are open to the public (with recordings on YouTube and unofficial transcripts here.

5. We approved the second reading of the Generative AI policy, which was updated to incorporate edit requests from the October 20 meeting. This passed 6-1 following comments by Member Intoppa and one of our student representatives, both sharing (very valid!) concerns about the messages we send by establishing such a policy and normalizing certain aspects of AI usage (full item discussion starts here). As always, this is an ongoing conversation, and I will reiterate that this is a policy slated for annual review and also that central administration is doing additional rollout (training and community engagement) to really refine the guidelines for what happens on the ground as we learn more about the opportunities and pitfalls of AI in the K12 environment. 

6. Closing - condolences, adjournment, and notice of our next meeting on December 15. See you then, or maybe at my final office hours of the year—next Tuesday, December 9 at Colleen’s (Facebook announcement coming separately).