Meeting Recap: 4/8/24

This will be a relatively quick update, but you can watch the video here (time stamped to start post-executive session) here.

As always, views are my own and do not represent any official opinions of the Medford School Committee. 

1. Superintendent update - Including autism acceptance, Arab heritage month, occupational therapy month, school breaks, Passover, performing arts [well done orchestras and color guard!], middle school lottery, transportation survey, and Dr. Galusi’s successful dissertation defense [congrats]. She also previewed the draft of the administration’s suspension and discipline report, which members will review and send comments on in advance of its official presentation at our next meeting.

2. Approval of donations from Medford Educational Foundation, Medford Rotary Club, and Medford Kiwanis Club [thank you everyone!]

3. Presentation of Substitute Pay Report by Dr. Suzanne Galusi - This includes comparisons to pay rates in surrounding districts, chronicling of coverage needs and fulfillment, description of substitute pool and coverage structure, budgeting and spending, costs related to teacher coverage and loss of prep, and changes being considered (mostly around pay structure and recruitment/pool management) - The committee had several clarifying questions, a request to dive deeper into services not being received by students as a result of coverage, and will be presented with more formal recommendations for actions at a future meeting. [There were more questions than this, I think—you can watch the video for details—but I do want to call out an observation I made when I was previewing the report. Our external substitute pool accounts for 40-50% of the spending but only 14% of the coverage. As such, I want to both thank the teachers and other staff members who cover that remaining 86% and note that this promises to be a more complicated financial question to resolve than I, for one, hoped it would be. Stay tuned, I guess.]

4. Resolution by Member Intoppa around Autism Acceptance Month/Day - This was refined and approved. My takeaways are that updates will be made to change the language on current mentions of this observance in existing documents, further discussion is needed on how such days are presented in the context of the larger public calendar, and the subcommittee on behavioral health and special education will convene to talk with school administration and community members about protocols and services before further action is taken by the full committee.

5. New subcommittee assignments - These were approved and will be reflected on the website shortly

6. MSBA Update - Member Graham presented an overview of where we are in the process and put forward a recommendation on behalf of herself, Mayor Lungo-Koehn, and Superintendent Edouard-Vincent for the appointment of 9 voting members from the applicant pool of 104. These were approved (see video or future announcement for details) and a further motion was made to add three new non-voting members to the committee, including Member Ruseau and two additional applicants to be presented at the next regular meeting. Public comment was given in support of additional high school/vocational staff members to the committee, and school committee members asked questions about the cost of the feasibility study ($2.5 million, partially reimbursed by MSBA down the road), the creation of subcommittees and advisory committees 

7. Approval to accept school handbooks for review [I apologize to everyone for delaying the meeting end time with my new member procedural questions about this!]

8. Condolences

Well, that wasn’t quite as short as I thought it was going to be, but it’s been totality, sorry, totally busy day so I’m signing off. Next meetings are 4/24 (budget) and 4/29 (regular). I likely won’t be posting again until after the break, so have a good one everyone.