Malden School Committee 04/06/2026

001Elizabeth is running in the back. Okay. All right, good evening everyone and welcome to the Malden School Committee meeting. The time is 6:00 p.m. Today is Monday, April 6th, 2026. Our next meeting will take place on Monday night at 6:00 p.m. May 4th will be the next meeting. This evening's agenda will consist of the following. We'll first pledge allegiance to our flag. We'll then have a moment of silence for our veterans. We'll then take our roll call to ensure that we have a sufficient quorum to allow us to gather. Then we'll get into this evening's agenda, which consists of the following. Uh first will be the consent agenda, where we have uh the approval of the January 28th special meeting minutes, approval of the February 2nd school committee meeting minutes, approval of the February 18th

002special meeting minutes, approval of March 9th special meeting minutes, and then we'll uh look at the March 2026 warrants. Uh from there, everyone, we'll go to public comment. This will be an opportunity for members of the public to address the school committee. We only ask that you state your name and address for the record. Public comment will be open for 15 minutes, which we can always adjust depending on uh the comment we receive. After that, everyone, we'll go to our superintendent. He has uh five items for us tonight. First is district strategy for improvement update. He's then going to update us on the grade 9 and 10 ELA curriculum adoption recommendation. Uh from there, we'll take a look at the special education audit and program review initial findings. Uh then we'll take a look at

003the Forest Glen School May 2027 Washington, D.C. overnight trip. And we also have a Canobie Lake Park K8s out-of-state trip. Uh after that, we'll hear from Ms. Batafor regarding the finance subcommittee, and then we'll go to motions and resolutions, of which there are several. Uh first will be Mr. Piazza on the DESSI waiver for the Salemwood power outage. We'll stay with Mr. Piazza for after school program vendor selection. And then we'll go to my right to your left, we'll hear from Ms. Houghty regarding a $500 Northern Bank donation. Uh we'll stay on that side to hear from Ms. Rose Iberg on the revision of the attendance area map and the grade 9 and 10 ELA curriculum adoption. Uh then we'll continue with Ms. Rose Iberg on the program of studies and then we'll go to

004Ms. Spadafore for three items. First is policy DGA authorized signatures and then policy DBJ revised transfer policy and then the DESCI inter-district school choice program. After that, back to Ms. Rose Iberg and Ms. Spadafore for MASC contract policy service. And then finally, resolution in support of a financial management review. Then after that, everyone will take points of personal privilege and then from there we'll entertain a motion to go into executive session for two reasons. Uh first is the approval of the February 2nd executive session meeting minutes and the approval of the February 18th executive session special meeting minutes. And then we'll come back out, we'll move uh adjournment. So, are there any questions? Hearing none, let's pledge allegiance to our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to

005the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd ask everyone to please remain standing for a moment of silence in honor of all those who have fought for our country and continue to do so today. >> Thank you. All right, let's take attendance. Mr. Christensen? Here. Mr. Drummy? Miss Mc- Mr. McCarthy? Here. Miss Battefora? Here. Miss Macklin? Here. Miss Hardy? Here. Mr. Piazza? Here. Mr. Bernard? Here. Mr. Osberg? Here. Superintendent Sipple? Here. Student Representative Gabriella Perini Cordova? Here. So, we have a quorum sufficient to allow us to come together. If there be no objection, why don't we take a few of these items out of order? Uh the first being the Forest Dale School Washington, D.C. overnight trip, followed by the Canobie Lake Park artist state

006trip. Uh the proponents here for the Forest Dale School Washington, D.C. overnight trip. Yes. Do you want to add some context, Superintendent Sipple? So, Principal Waldai is here, along with two wonderful members of his staff, and they're going to be sharing about a trip that's um been proposed for the spring of 2027, um that for which they'd like approval now, so that preparations and fundraising can commence. So, Principal Waldai, welcome. Uh my name is Megan Bow. I teach seventh grade science at Forest Dale. This is Ashley Brattis, my lovely coworker, who we uh teaches seventh grade math. And we're here tonight to seek approval for the May 2027 Washington, D.C. trip, uh which is our current seventh graders and sixth graders. So, next year, so our next year's eighth grade seventh graders. Uh last year,

007we able to bring over 50 students from 7th and 8th grade to Washington D.C. And that was a very positive experience and we're hopefully to create another memorable and meaningful trip. This trip is a 4-day, 3-night itinerary and we'll be traveling by bus this year instead of plane. Uh, the cost for this one is $1,075 per student based on 45 students attending with the option of adding another bus if it trip increases. This is a decrease from the price of the previous trip which was $1,300. Uh, and families are encouraged to spread out payments so part of planning ahead of time is that they can have a monthly payment plan for less payments or more payments of less money. Um, the trip includes visits to many of the free museums as well as ticketed experiences

008such as the International Spy Museum and the Holocaust Museum which we did not get to last time. Uh, it also includes three sit-down dinners including a visit to Medieval Times. The cost covers transportation, hotel accommodations, most meals, and also a security guard. Um, as a team we have already begun fundraising efforts. We've raised 3,000 uh, sorry, we've used $3,750 in early fund raisings to secure a deposit. Uh, this deposit allowed for 45 students the 45 students that we've already uh, sorry, let me backtrack. Fundraising to secure a deposit for 45 students leaving their cost to be $1,000 per student. So this is money that we've already squashed $45. Uh, sorry, sorry. Um, we are committed to making this trip as affordable as possible for families and December students participated in a prize calendar fundraiser which

009raised $2,515. And those funds were applied directly to the students' accounts. More recently we hosted a Super Bowl squares, a hat day, a talent show, and all those money that we raised we were able to credit another $75 for each participants that have already signed up for this. Uh, we have also additionally fundraised we have additional fundraisers planned. We have a trivia night and a puzzle night within the next couple of months. Additionally, the Adeline Breed Foundation was generously able to give us $3,000 to support students that were that might need more financial support than just fundraising. Our goal is to ensure that no student is left behind due to financial constraints. We appreciate your time and we are open to any questions or concerns that you may have. Great. Thank you. Do you want

010to add anything, Mr. Welton? >> that Megan and Ashley put in a tremendous amount of work to make this happen. Two last year last year along with Kendra Brogan and Julia Mercurio, two of our eighth grade team. And they've done the lion's share of the work this time around to try to make this happen for next year as well. So, I'm here to support them and make sure that we can answer any questions that that you have for me. Well, before we do that, on behalf of all of us, we want to say thank you for what you do, truly. Questions from the team. Let's start with Miss Batter. Did you have your light on, Miss Batter? I thought you were going for it. And then we'll go to Miss Forty. But Miss Forty had

011hers on first. I got it. Okay. Miss Forty, take it away. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much for doing this trip and for everything you guys did. Really appreciate it. I think you know that already. Um I had a question for you mostly because um I'm familiar with the eighth grade DC trip and I know that you are mentioning that you shifted from the plane to the bus. Is that strictly cost saving or is there other thinking behind that? There's a lot behind that. Um yeah, so last year we're the same. We build in plane as we were flying it. Um there was a lot of things that went into it. We had um some students with anxiety with planes that we weren't expecting that we had to navigate. It was a $300

012increase to continue the bus to continue the planes this year. So, $1,600 just wasn't feasible for our population. Um there's the world changes right now that we don't want to deal with if we can. The kids were also wiped. Like we were up at 3:00 in the morning and then popped on a plane and then there really wasn't any downtime hotel time lunch time until like 2 and 1/2 hours later after we landed. And so we just thought that between the cost and all the other logistical things the kids would be more able to access that first day if they had a bus ride as opposed to that plane plane ride. And one other question, who's the um tour provider? Is it Close-Up or We've changed. It was WorldStrides last time. Now Educational Travel Adventures.

013Thank you. Have a great time. Okay, thank you. Next will be Ms. Battleford, then from there we'll go to Mr. McCarthy followed by Mr. Piazza. Thank you, Mr. Chair. In just looking over the paperwork we were provided it says "What about an emergency?" It says "We'll work with the company to evaluate the situation and take appropriate action." It just seems a little vague. So, if we could elaborate on you know, I think most of us as parents think about emergencies as in wonder if somebody breaks a leg or needs stitches or we're traveling with um you know, an EpiPen and have allergies. Just what does that look like? Does the tour company handle um you know, making sure you know where hospitals are, who is handling medication for those that need to take it on

014the trip. So, I I am first aid, CPR, lifeguard certified. I'll be able to get that again for next year. Um so, I do medication. Um I know how to administer EpiPens. The nurse has walked me through all of the There's like a lot of forms that go into um what medication's needed, when it's administered. I have alarms on my phone to make sure that gets the kids on time. Um talked to families beforehand to make sure that they know like, is your kid comfortable giving their own medication or what does that look like? Um just to make sure that they feel supported. Um and then, you know, if a leg is broken or whatever that looks like, um we'll deal with that as it comes up. That probably is more of like an ambulance

015than me administering, but you know, it's again case-by-case. So. One of the questions I think parents had the most during the parent meetings last time around was similar to that, making sure that the tour guide had knew uh that they provided us a person who was with us all the time, that they knew where all the local emergency rooms and areas were that if something happened we'd be able to get to medical care quickly. Um there's a bus, even though we'll have one this time, but last time flew down in a data bus, and the bus was able to take you from place to place if need be, like we had a bus to go with a medical emergency. Okay. Great, fantastic. I just want to say I really appreciate how far in advance this

016the planning to make sure that families can start to save and put money away. I mean, obviously anything that has advanced notice is is great for the financial aspect of it. So, thank you. Okay, thank you. Now, we're going to go to Mr. Piazzo sir, and he'll be followed up by Ms. Rose Zybert. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and uh Forest Dell folks, thank you for all the work that you're doing to make this happen. Uh I just want to you you went through a lot of details about the fundraising for it, but I just want to um to make sure that I was tracking and just to put something on the record, which is that the cost of the trip are covered completely by This is a question. The cost of the trip are covered

017completely by the fundraising efforts that you all have done. is that correct? I think it depends on the kid. Yeah, right. >> Sometimes. So, there are kids who are covered with $1,000 for the fundraising. Fundraising. They're done. We have two students that are paid. Yeah, beyond of course the money that the families contribute. Yeah. Um if kids need financial assistance, we are happy to help support them with the grants that Ashley's amazing at writing and the fundraising efforts that we have have um tried to do. Uh we do ask though that if any family is asking for financial support, their kid is participating in fundraisers. And so, if they're going to ask for assistance, then we need to help us out a little bit, too. Right. Um but besides that, we will do our absolute

018best to let no family feel like they can't participate because of cost. Great. Great. But the the money comes from the fundraising and the families exclusively. Those are the sources. Great. Yeah, I just wanted to um clarify that. Uh and then my other question is more of just kind of like thinking out loud with the folks up here, which is that this is such a wonderful opportunity, right? To be able to go to DC, uh to learn about this government, which is an important thing to learn in these days. Um and of course, I would love for this opportunity to be available for students regardless of, you know, across across the district. And just something uh to highlight here for us to think about as a body, but I'm excited for you all. Thank you,

019Ms. Rosa Iceberg. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A question on how accessible is the trip to students who need any kind of accommodations or supports in place? What do you mean by like do you mean like accessibility? >> Either physical accommodations or if there are kids who are used to having, you know, supports to get them from day to day, or if there's, you know, a student who has a one-on-one, would they be able to go on this trip successfully? Is there that type of support in place just so that everybody can actually access it if they're interested in it? We have two Would you want to You can jump in. Yeah, go for it. We had two kids last year um who had one who had a one-to-one um and the parent actually opted to

020come on the trip rather rather uh have a one-to-one go, which would have been a possibility. Um so, that is definitely an option. Um we also have accessibility in terms of we had a student who was uh a little anxious about the amount of walking and had a light condition. He was going to be in a wheelchair if that's if he needed it. Um didn't end up needing it, luckily, so that worked out really well cuz there were enough places to stop and break and there was a little bit of time in between things, but um definitely available. Thank you. >> There also are some opportunities that are like a choose-your-own-adventure in some ways. Like if we're in a museum, you could just go, you know, um sit in in a and have some introvert

021time versus, you know, running around and seeing all the things. And so, I think that the kids also were really good about pacing themselves and and knowing themselves and um I was really proud of just how mature they were all were, so. Thank you. All right, what says let's see any other lights? I don't see any. Uh what say you all? Motion by Ms. Houghty, seconded by Mr. McCarthy. Any questions? All those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? The eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next up, Canobie Lake. Who's speaking to that? Uh Ms. Wilson. Good evening. Um I am pleased to bring forward um a proposal from on behalf of all of our K through 8 schools uh for an annual trip of our

0228th grade students to Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire. Um so, you have um a packet in front of you which details information um related to accessibility, um chaperones having screening, um communications to ensure we have uh medical nurse coverage um fundraising and our commitment to ensure that all students are able to attend the trip regardless of financial status. So, thank you for your consideration of this trip. This is an annual event for our eighth grade students that they really look forward to. Happy to take any questions. Questions from the team. Let's start with Miss Batdorf. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just in looking at the dates, it looks like um BB and Salem would have both going on the same day, which just seems like a large amount of students from one district to be

023um at an amusement park. I mean, it looks like 200 kids, so we feel confident about having that that large amount traveling all in on the same day. Just I'm over looking at the other dates, um you know, it's you know, 95, 57, 79, and then 200. Um Yes. Okay. That's I mean, the parks are used to accommodating large numbers of schools, so we're kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of what the park can accommodate. For us, it is a large number of buses on the same day, but we feel confident that you know, we're able to provide those. And then these are dates that work with the school schedule, the end of year events, that you know, are sort of there's a limited number of days in each school schedule related

024to eighth grade promotion, when MCAS wraps up, end of year testing, all the things. So, these are dates that work best for the school calendar, so we are going to do our best to support that, and we will have sufficient number of chaperones from each school in order to ensure that we're maintaining appropriate ratios. Do you know what the count is for chaperones per student? So, is it a a 10 to 1 ratio or That's a good question. I can get back to you on that. Um we we typically try to have, you know, a pretty low ratio in that regard. Okay. Um and then just the final question surrounding costs. So, it looks like students will be asked to pay $30. Um I'm assuming the district covers buses. Um Yes. And then And Oop.

025The rest of it. Um I know our PTOs do an amazing job at at helping us out. So, I'm just curious on the the full overall cost of the trip, where that's coming from. Um so, diff- It's a little different school to school. Um but PTOs are supporting with fundraising. In some schools, students are supporting with fundraising. Um and then the cost that if students are able to pay. Um I also just received a text. Um part of the uh we do maintain a 10:1 ratio. And um part of the rationale for the dates is that Camp Casey is not open on Wednesdays. And so, there are limited number of days that we can go in a week. Good to know. Perfect. Thank you. And thank you to whoever texted you. All right. Thank you.

026Anybody unsure about this trip will now get their answers by our student representative. Hi, Ms. Vicini. Um I know we just talked about the finances, but I was wondering is there any limit to the financial aid students can receive? Or like does that depend on the school? Or is there any further information about that? Um we've always had a commitment to making sure that we work with each student with their individual situation to make sure that no student has cost as a reason that they could not attend. Thank you. What is your recommendation to us? I hope every student go to the trip. All right. All right. There you have it, everyone. So, not seeing any other lights, um is there a motion to be made? Mr. McCarthy has made the motion to approve. It's

027seconded by Ms. Houghty. Any further questions, everyone? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? All right, the eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Thank you so much. I think there's some very happy eighth graders who I assume are all watching this meeting at this moment. >> Yeah. All right, very good. All right, everyone. Back to the top. Uh let's see. Approval of January 28th special meeting minutes. Mr. Bernard makes the motion to approve, seconded by Mr. McCarthy. Any questions on those, everyone? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Anybody opposed? Okay, the eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Next up, February 2nd. February 2nd School Committee meeting minutes. Motion by Ms. Spadafora, it's seconded by Mr. Bernard. Yep. Uh let's see. Ms. Rosaiber, question on these minutes. Um just

028a minor correction under executive session, if my name could be corrected to be spelled correctly. Sure. We'll take care of that. All right. Anything else? Hearing none, as amended, all those in favor say aye. Anybody opposed? All right, the eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Next up, February 18th special meeting minutes. Any motions? Motion by Mr. McCarthy to approve, seconded by Mr. Bernard. Any questions on those, everyone? Sorry, can you confirm this is the 18th meeting? Uh standby. February 18th. Yes. Uh Ms. Houghty, let me get your microphone on. Go ahead. Um, similar situation when executive session. It's Ms. Rose Eiberg. Sure, we'll fix that. Same one. I'm looking at the wrong thing. Sorry. My bad. No. No. It just says to move to to make a motion. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Okay, anything

029else? All right, hearing none, all those in favor say I. I. >> Anybody opposed? The eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Next up, approval of March 9th special meeting minutes. Mr. Mr. Piazza makes the motion to approve. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Fadafor. Any questions on those, team? Um, Mr. Bernard. Yeah, since I was not able to attend, I'm just going to recuse myself from that vote, so that everything's kind of above board, but uh do know that I would have approved it. >> Sure. So noted. All right, everyone, all those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? And we have the one abstention, okay. All right, those carry. All right, anything on the March 20 26 warrants? Any questions on those? Just shut your light off, Mr. Bernard. Um, motion to approve.

030Mr. Bernard. Uh, seconded by uh Ms. Rose Eiberg. Any questions on those team. Hearing none, all those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? No. Okay, we have one no. The eyes have it. Uh next up, public comment. Anybody wishing to address the school committee can do so now. We only ask that you state your name and address for the record. Public comment will be open for 15 minutes. All right, let me just turn on the mic. I'll start the timer. Good evening. Hello, can you hear me okay? >> Yes. All right, great. My name is Katherine Tarka. Um thank you for allowing me to make public comment. I live at 196 Glenwood Street. I'm the parent of three children that go to the BB school. They're in grade seven, five, and two. And I

031want to start by saying how much I love the BB school and it's got really strong leadership and a wonderful community and I'm so grateful to be part of the BB school community. I want to start by sharing a little story with you about my son. He came home recently talking about Minecraft, which is not unusual for him because he's a 10-year-old boy and he's obsessed with Minecraft. But he was talking about a YouTuber who he was watching playing Minecraft, and this surprised me because I don't let my children watch YouTube. And I definitely don't let them watch gamers on YouTube. So I said, "Where did you see this video?" And imagine my surprise when he said, "I saw it at school." So I'm I'm here tonight because of stories like this to ask you

032to consider putting in place a policy that would control the use of screens and technology in our schools. Most parents I know, including my husband and I, we really do our best to reduce the use of screen time because there's so many ways that it harms our kids. It's bad for their mental health, it's bad for their social development when all they're doing is staring at a screen instead of playing with their friends. Even reading comprehension is worse on a screen than in a book. And you know, I'm the parent of middle schoolers. Many of you on the school committee have middle school children or you've you've had children of that age, you understand what I'm saying when I say I'm in the fight of my life against these screens to keep my kids off

033the screens. They're so addicting. The apps, the video games, the social media, the short-form videos. I'm battling every day to limit the screen time, but I really can't win this battle without you because they actually get most of their screen time at school. Um I was surprised to find out how often my kids are actually in front of a screen at school. Sometimes I get it, a digital device is necessary for learning. I'm totally down with my kids learning how to type, learning how to do online research, separating information from disinformation, um valid instructional purposes for screens, all of those. But there are times that it's totally unnecessary to give children a screen at school, like giving them digital passages to read instead of books, or letting them play video games at recess instead of

034playing with their friends, or putting on a YouTube video to read a story instead of the teacher reading the story out loud. And these are all real examples that I've heard from my children. I'm really doing the best I can at home to separate them from the screens and let them have a childhood, but I can't do this without cooperation from you. So um I ask you to consider how we can keep screen time in our classrooms intentional. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anybody else wishing to address the committee can do so now. Good evening. My name is Lindsey McCluskey. I live at 23 Silver Street. Um I'm a mother of two Malden Public School students, a pre-K student and a third grader at the Linden School. Uh one of my greatest challenges as

035a parent is also navigating the screen-based world uh that uh with my kids. As they grow, I want them to continue to develop curiosity, creativity, critical thinking skills, and a love for reading and writing. At home I try to limit their use of technology, um especially as the research on negative effects of excessive screen time on child development and mental health becomes more evident. I raise the issue here tonight because my individual choices about technology use are only one of the influences on my kids. Um their experiences in school have a powerful impact on the relationship that they and their peers are going to develop with technology. Um I've heard that the school committee will soon take up uh the issue of a district AI policy. Um this issue is really important to me. Um

036I respectfully ask the school committee members to consider enacting a policy that really promotes intentional age-appropriate use of technology um and encourages our students to think for themselves first before turning to a a device or a chatbot for answers. Um further, I ask you to consider a rigorous process for determining what products are used in school um and limit that list of products to those with clear evidence um that there are positive educational outcomes that come with their use um that cannot be accomplished through the live instruction that they get from their teacher. Um a related issue on your agenda tonight is the after school program vendor selection. My family relies on the MOST program um for after school care and also for vacation week care. Um I am interested in understanding what's motivating the

037decision to select an outside vendor um for the program and how caregivers like myself could be engaged in that decision-making process. But regardless of whether the program's run by Malden Public Schools or an outside vendor, I'd like to see an after school program here in Malden that um approaches after school time as important time for kids to be with their friends and have free play, allowing them to make choices about what they do. Um, that limits the use of screen time during after school hours as well. Um, and that continues to be an affordable option for Malden families. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anybody else wishing to address the committee can do so now. Good evening. Hi, sorry I went. Um, Uh, hi, I'm Cara Hogan. I live at 581 Fellsway East and since

038we're talking about all the tech things, I will add my comment as well. Um, so Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other tech executives actually admit to restricting their own children's use of technology, um, often sending them to tech-free Montessori schools or something similar. Um, just the other week, California courts found that YouTube and Facebook were actually liable in court for intentionally causing harm to young people who use their platforms frequently. Products that they would not allow their own children to use. Um, and I am unfortunately not surprised. I'm not only the mother of a Beebe School kindergartner, I'm also a technology marketing executive. So, I have been working in that field for more than 10 years. And I've seen from within these companies how the push for growth matters a lot more than any ethical

039concerns or potential harm that could be caused by these new types of tech. So, while I personally use AI and tech every day in my work, I don't believe that we should take the marketing messages from the education technology companies and AI companies at face value. Uh, while I understand that tech and now AI can be useful in some scenarios to teachers, I think that we should really approach these platforms with extreme caution. These companies do not have our children's best, uh, needs at heart. They are not thinking about what they are learning. They are thinking about profit. So, while they market and sell us on the idea that our children need to use technology and AI daily to keep up in this hyper-competitive world, they turn around and ensure that their own children use

040pencil and paper. So, I do think that it's vital to have these core critical thinking skills first and then move on to applying them to technology. I personally worked at a print newspaper covering meetings like this for years and then I switched into tech marketing and my written communication and research skills were highly valued by every company that I worked at. I was able to teach myself how to use new types of technology because I had the educational background to think critically, learn new skills, and adapt successfully. So, handing our kids a Chromebook, AI, or a piece of software is not preparing them for the real world. It's not giving them the ability to think for themselves. Rather than buying into the marketing message that people like me sell to the world. Sorry. It's intended

041to sell more software to our students. So, let's create a thoughtful plan to phase in technology and AI use in an age-appropriate manner. Thank you. Thank you. All right, anybody else wishing to address the committee? We have about 7 minutes left. Hi everyone. My name is Jessica Nadeau. I live in 9 Baldwin Street. This is my first time. I'm super nervous. Welcome. Thank you all for being here. I just want to preface this with I have a senior at Malden Catholic which I know holds no precedence here, but I'm not a new mom. My daughter has been in kindergarten at Salemwood. We moved back to Everett. She's been in two schools there and you know is going on to college this next year. So, my life is very busy right now. I also have a

042son who's a first grader at the Salemwood. Um being a mom in my 30s compared to my 20s has been a whole new experience, not to mention everything that's changed in the last 11 years. One of the most effective things that I've found since I've come to Malden is the MOST program. Um more importantly, from what I've gathered from other parents and teachers, is not just the MOST program, it's the actual people who make up the caregivers, the teachers, the parents, um the helpers, even some of the younger, you know, college kids that come in. I just I feel like in a sense I was so overwhelmed that I've already lost the battle that that, you know, this is already a decision that there will be an outside company coming in. Um and to each,

043you know, I have to look more into it. That's my due diligence. Um but I really want to stress about the people that are there. I've been through Four Kids Only, I've been through the YMCA with my kids. They're run by a bunch of teenagers. I have a teenager. I've seen the things that have happened. My son came home every day crying from the YMCA. Um my daughter did not have She had some really great times at FK, FKO, Four Kids Only. You know, but I think that the ratio that the MOST program, you guys, whoever has made it, you know, he's gone to um school vacations, the summer program, the ratio they have of teachers to parents, the ages, the experience, you know, retired teachers to some of the the staff, it helps the

044younger generation coming in to do this to learn. Um so, I believe that is like my my big I've said it like three times. I'm so nervous. I'm sorry. >> No, you're good. You know, I jumped into this wanting to be a part of community. I'm from Everett. I was in Everett for 34 years. We moved here in 2020. It was the height, you know, of COVID. It was I literally moved here March 28th, so it was the week of COVID. Um my son had never seen another baby. Um he had never seen, like he saw another baby when he was 2 years old, like and he stared at it like it was an alien. So, getting him into a daycare in Malden was really crucial for me so he could have those relationships and

045unfortunately none of those children go to school with him, but we had some neighbors. You know, I I walked right in and I saw a baseball mom. My husband was the president of Malden East Baseball last year. He's coached for the last this will be his fourth year and he's still on the board. Um, we've made it our pride to become a part of Malden Pride and I would just hate to see that kind of stray away. You know, my decision was not to stay originally in Malden, but we found our home and a lot of it is is the people. You know, it's it's seeing Peter and know that he was running for mayor. It's Dr. Sipple. My son has more Snapchats with the mayor than anybody else in this city. So, I was

046going to cut you off cuz you're at 3 minutes, but keep going. I will end it there, but I appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. >> Thank you. All right, anybody else wishing to address the school committee can do so now. We only ask that you state your name and address for the record. Good evening. Hello. Annabeth Donchmont. I recently moved to Keith Ward. I actually now have I've left Ward 5. I apologize. I'm at 205 Harvard Street, Malden. Um, many of you know me. I'm an active member in both the school community as well as the outside community as well. I'm here today to speak um, on behalf of my child. Also Zion Wood, a second grader. Um, many of you know Jayden, my very hyperactive little ball of energy who never stops.

047Um, we have grown many times over the past few years to like the MOST program. So, to learn that we are now changing vendors suddenly without having the conversation with parents or maybe feedback about how we feel about the MOST program was honestly a really unsettling feeling. Um, especially after years of finding somewhere that my son felt comfortable. My son has a lot of energy. Um, and he will tell me. Um, and he found himself at the MOST program honestly. Between the staff and the community, Um, it being teachers primarily watching from Salem Wood. Um, my son struggled a lot in school academically and he actually was able to thrive academically because of the MOST program. Um, especially with Ms. Whitney in his starting years. She would be spent time and time over all of

048her kids in the kindergarten grade one group when my son was struggling the most. Um, he was actually getting the most help in the MOST program. Um, I was really honestly disheartened to hear that we were going to go with that outside vendor. Um, like Jess, uh, my son also had really bad experiences in other programs such as the Y. He used to also come home crying daily because he was in a program that was not well staffed for a child that has a lot of energy. Um, he was coming home either bouncing off the wall like a ball like a bouncy ball, like non-stop energy. Um, or he was coming home in tears because he was left with kids that weren't always the kindest to him. Because of that, I was very selective on

049the programs I put him in. Um, and and I was really hesitant in kindergarten to put him in the MOST program. I was new to the school and and I didn't know much about it. Um, but Ms. Whitney convinced me to give it a try. She thought that Jade might like it and he's thrived there. He actually now cries if I don't send him to the program. Um, he told me that I he will move out back to my mom's house if I attempt to not give him summer break camps. Um, he really likes the program and to have your child tell you he doesn't want to be home with you, he'd rather be in a camp, um, is kind of really cool as a single working parent. Um, it's nice knowing I have a

050community um, and that group of teachers that not only care about my student but care about me. Um, they also check in with me all the time because they know how much I do. Um, and it's really built a sense of community um, between the parents and the staff. Um, the MOST program is an amazing group of teachers and staff members not only of just our school but they also help our community outside of their work. They're willing to stay late if we have if we have things happen. Um they're willing to help with programs that, you know, other groups want. So, I just really would love to hope that maybe you guys would actually reconsider or come up with a plan that, you know, we can find some sort of middle grounds and have

051these staff. Thank you. Uh we have time for one more speaker. Uh let's see. Stand Uh we'll take you and then we'll do the one online and then we'll wrap it up. Hello. My name is Josh Kusadiana and I'm at 25 Greenwood Street. So, I want to continue the conversation regarding tech and AI in the classroom. So, as a neuroscientist studying learning and memory and artificial intelligence, uh I want to emphasize that how students engage with Oops, sorry. Ahem, excuse me. I'll start over. As a neuroscientist studying learning, memory, and artificial intelligence, I want to emphasize how students engage with information fundamentally shapes how the brain develops. The brain networks responsible for building deep, flexible knowledge, and critical thinking depends on sustained attention, effortful reading, and active problem-solving, not passive interaction with fragmented, algorithmically optimized

052content. Many current technologies, particularly those driven by AI and reinforcement learning, are designed to maximize engagement, not learning. They adapt to behavior by rewarding quick responses and surface-level interactions, which can interfere with the formation of durable memory and deeper reasoning. There's strong evidence that these systems can shape behavior in ways that diverge from a user's goals, including kids, reducing attention, weaker comprehension, and diminished autonomy. For that reason, technology in schools must be used intentionally and selectively. Tools should only be adopted if they are rigorously tested against human instruction and demonstrated statistically to support improvements. Otherwise, we risk replacing high-quality teaching with systems that optimize for engagement rather than understanding. There are also serious concerns around student data and privacy. AI systems rely on continuous data collection, including metadata, so that includes things like timestamps, device

053usage, and interaction patterns, which can reveal sensitive information about students' routines, their home environments, and broader life circumstances, even when the content itself appears limited. So, students should only use platforms where the district retains full control over data deletion, including metadata, and where privacy is treated as a core requirement, not as an afterthought. Finally, every dollar matters. Uh we should not prioritize investments in tools and approaches that are proven to support learning, strengthen cognitive development, and preserve the role of skilled educators. So, I urge the council um to ensure transparency around technology spending and to evaluate whether these funds are being used in ways that truly benefit students' learning. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let's go online. We'll come back to you, okay? Just 1 second. Okay, so I see Amanda Maffeo has a

054hand raised. If you're still there, I will allow your mic now. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Fabulous. Good evening. I'm Amanda Maffeo, and I'm a public school teacher and a resident of Malden. I just wanted to publicly acknowledge Ms. Jen Spadafora for her transparency during the proposition override when many key financial factors were not brought forth. She was transparent with the community at a time when we say safety is most important to our student body, it really saddens me that we were talking about cuts to school safety officers and crossing guards. It is even something um certain people were on record saying, "There are so many other positions that many of us have not even heard of that exist." I am also highly distraught that schools were closed when voting could have taken

055place on a Saturday or during April school vacation. There was zero thought on the effects that this had to do with curriculum, time on learning, and the days we already lost with state testing coming up. There were many houses of worship and community buildings like the senior center that could have been easily utilized for this election as well. This was an enormous burden on teachers and students to take education away from the city when further thought could have been placed. In less than a few days, we quickly heard about grants and a vast difference in a budget. I urge this city to do better, to do better and do right for our students and for our city. I hope you choose equity in further decisions and further transparency. So, thank you again, Ms. Matifor, for

056being an example for the city of Malden in a time when there was a lot of unrest happening. Thank you very much and good night. All right, anybody else wishing to address the school committee can do so now. Good evening. Okay, hi. Uh Dr. Liz Tanagbanwa, 31 Grace Street. Uh so, first I would like to say thank you to district leaders who are willing to take my idea of celebrating Black History in Malden and making it happen. My hope is that in years to come, each school will send groups of students to perform and share their knowledge. My dream is that each school has its own celebration. I also want to thank Assistant Superintendent Bassin for cele- for sending feedback forms to get a better sense of how to refine plans for next year as

057well. I'm looking forward to seeing black restaurant owners be part of that event, too. Now for the topic at hand and one that I've addressed here already, I continue to be concerned about the day-to-day use of educational technology across schools in Malden. I'm here to call on school committee to perform an audit comparable to the one being done to better understand the status of special education services on the scope of programs and the amount of time that our children are being forced to use these EdTech programs on Chromebooks throughout the day that lack any definitive educational benefit. EdTech programs use varies widely between schools and grades based on recent conversations I've had with both students and parents. A few months back, I asked our BB principal at the school site council meeting to what extent

058and how long are students expected to use EdTech programs or Google Docs by grade. I was told that because teachers have autonomy to design their lessons as they wish, students could potentially be forced to use programs on their Chromebooks all day. Given that the use of i-Ready has been shown again and again to have no statistically significant benefit to students reading abilities or even scores, I urge you all to please reconsider this requirement. Between the chatbots that seventh graders are forced to interact with and their i-Ready homework that shows no meaningful gains, I implore leaders to change directions before all students in the middle grades detest learning as a whole. Thank you. Thank you. Uh let's see. We're approaching 20 minutes. You want to come on up? Sure. Good evening. Hi. I'm sorry, I wasn't

059expecting to speak. My name is Liz Betancourt. I'm Audabet's mom, Jayden's grandma. Um the wedding you want to come to the house, too. Uh, I live at 16 Preston Street in Malden, and just a few things I just want to say quickly. The MOST program is a wonderful program. Is she is right. He did not like the Y. He cried bullets every time we picked him up. The MOST program has done a wonderful job with him and all the kids. They love it there. They They engage the kids. They're out there playing. They're doing all kinds of activities. They bake. They do uh, skits. They practice all week, and then they come in on Fridays, and they put a skit on for the parents. And the kids love it, and the parents love it. Uh,

060the high school kids, I believe, are working there. So, there's a lot of high school kids. So, I would really recommend you don't lose the MOST program. I think it's wonderful for the kids. Uh, the second thing, only because of my job, I know of a situation I didn't know about all the programming like they can get onto YouTube and see this. I didn't know the kids were doing this. My kids were there, but they were, you know, before all that. If you are they are allowed to get into see YouTube and stuff, you better be looking for Roblox and blocking it, because Roblox has several lawsuits out on them for child predators. It's very well known. So, I would highly recommend you let look and make sure Roblox is not being allowed in any

061of your schools. Third, um, I'm not sure why, but Salem Wood doesn't have a librarian. Don't know why. All the other schools do, but Salem Wood hasn't. And I'd like to find out why we seem to be keep keep getting skipped out. And she actually has to take vacation time to do a the uh, book fair. She takes a week off two times a year to run the book fair so that the kids can get books. And I think, honestly, kids need to get back to reading books, sitting in their class and reading books, rather than going on the lap laptops or their Chromebooks and you know, playing games. They need to learn to read books. Jayden had a difficulty with reading and I'm listening to him more and more as he's reading and he's

062getting more into it. My sons loved reading and they loved reading at Salemwood all the time and they don't seem to be reading books very much. So, I think they need to get back to reading more books. But, that was pretty much all I wanted to say. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we have one more, I guess. Oh, maybe two more. Um, yeah, let me just take this one online and then we'll close with you, okay? Iman, if you are there, can hear me, I just allowed your mic. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Good evening, everyone. Um, my name is Iman Saeidi. I'm at 30 Parkside Place, Malden. I just wanted to offer a slightly different perspective as a parent related to AI and technology use. Um, I completely understand the

063concerns around AI and tech use, uh, especially around overuse, uh, environmental concerns, or replacing human interaction. But, for students like my son, technology, when used thoughtfully, has actually been a bridge and not a barrier. When curriculum isn't consistently differentiated or modified in the way it should be, tools like AI can help fill that gap in real time. It allows him to access material, organizes thinking, and engage in ways that might otherwise be out of reach in that moment. So, for my son, it's not about replacing instruction, it's really about access. It's about being able to participate, keep up, and feel capable, especially when the system isn't always meeting him where he is at. I think the conversation shouldn't be whether AI is good or bad, because let's embrace it, AI is the future, but how

064we should ensure it's used intentionally, ethically, and as a support, not as a substitute for good teaching. For some students, this kind of support can make the can make the difference between disengagement and meaningful participation, and I think that's worth considering. Thank you for your time. Thank you. All right, sir, you get the final word. Thank you very much. My name is Matt Womer. I live in Ward 5. Uh I've worked in technology for decades. For one decade of those, I worked directly for worked directly developing new technologies at the World Wide Web Consortium for Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. There, I worked to drive consensus for the direction of the web with regard to technology, policy, privacy, accessibility, and security. I worked alongside the very best engineers from Apple, Google, Microsoft,

065Twitter, and Meta. I'm not a technophobe. I'm not a Luddite. But I have seen some of the best and worst that Big Tech has to offer. And I have complicated feelings about AI, especially for students, that I do not have about other technologies. There are far too many problems with it at this point to try to fit into 3 minutes. But we should not reflexively adopt it out of fear that our children will fall behind. That has never worked for past tech. knowledge, and it won't work here. It is clear that we should not roll it out to our schools at this time. The children will miss out is an argument that has been made for rapid adoption of many technologies that were quickly abandoned. The recent New York Times article on the adoption of

066Chromebooks was is a perfect example. Tens of billions of dollars of technology purchased for schools, only later to find a lot of new problems ranging from kids watching YouTube, a problem we already have, and playing video games in class, to a rise in online bullying. And they do not do a great job of re-educating children either. And I believe the same will be true for AI. Anyone who has used a chatbot has seen that they are frequently wrong, often horribly so, often hilariously so, while being incredibly confident in their answers. There have been hundreds of news articles about AI confidently insisting that there are two Rs in strawberry, or that glue will make the cheese on pizza stretch better, or that just a few rocks a day are part of a healthy diet. It The

067fix is always just a few months away, and yet never seems to come. I urge parents and educators try it for yourself. Pick a topic you know a lot about, your favorite book or movie. Ask a chatbot about it, and you will see how quickly it goes wrong, fabricating facts out of nothing. Today, for example, I asked ChatGPT about a book, and by the third answer, it was telling me about chapter 42 out of the 35 chapters in the book. This would be a disaster in many contexts, but it's particularly bad for childhood education. Children are not great at being skeptical, particularly in the face of a trusted and confident authority, such as a school-mandated chatbot. From having a decades-long career in technology, I can tell you that simply using a chatbot will make not

068make you a successful candidate to work in tech. If anything, it is the opposite. For every success case, there are more and more damning failures. Given the uncertainty of the professional world they're entering they're entering, it's important that every child involved in has the opportunity to learn the most crucial skills, including digital literacy, which again doesn't include chatbots. AI's problems are not getting better despite big tech's insistence. We can't yet know what impact AI will have on our children, but we can look back at how we've handled other technologies, what went right and what went wrong, and use that to inform our decisions going forward. Despite what big tech says, we can be patient and considerate. We can develop a clear plan, one that is also free from interference by the very companies who stand

069to profit from it. But we must not deploy AI in our schools now. A knee-jerk reaction is not what is needed here, and it's not what is best for our kids. Thank you. Thank you. All right, everyone, that will do it for public comment. Thank you for everyone who spoke. Now, let's take a look at the superintendent's report. All right, superintendent, take it away. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, and our members of the public who are here. Um before before I go to my report, I want to um introduce formally to the committee and to the community um Mr. Michael Sabin who will be um taking over as principal of Malden High School on July 1st um which I announced at our last meeting. Um Mr. Sabin's currently

070executive director of school transformation and uh Boston Public Schools and brings over uh well, 19 years of experience as a principal and um many years as a as an educator all in urban settings. And um we're just delighted to welcome you to Malden, Mr. Sabin, and uh just wanted to give you an opportunity to say a couple words. Thank you so much. It's great to see you all. It's wonderful to just be here and listen to how much care people in the community care about their schools. It makes me take the responsibility and the privilege of being a principal here in Malden very seriously. I'll tell you that I'll do the absolute best I can to make sure your children have a great experience. I'll do everything I can to listen and support the students,

071the families, the teachers. And it's really a privilege to have this opportunity. So, I look forward to meeting everyone. I thank you for the opportunity. And I look forward to joining joining the team. Great. Welcome. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sabin. All right. And with that, I'm going to begin our actual presentation. So, we have um essentially three items that I'm going to be um speaking about tonight. Thank you, sir. Um we have an update. Um I'm sorry. I should get ahead of myself. Including and collaborating our core value, um lot of including tonight. I really appreciated all of the voices we were able to hear. And um encouraged by the diversity of perspectives that were shared. Um embracing growth, we want to make sure that everything we do uh is um with the

072perspective of students being able to be much more than they are when as we see them today. And our schools and our staff and ourselves being able to grow beyond our current limitations. And lastly, that we everything that we do, everything that we do, we're committed to doing right by all kids. The uh we already took care of the state uh out-of-state field trips tonight. So, we're already ahead of the game. Uh we have three things I want to share about tonight. One is our district strategy for improvement update that we've been talking about the last couple of meetings. The ninth and 10th grade English language arts curriculum adoption recommendation, um which is the result of many nuance of work upon uh from sub- many of our educators and our district staff. And then um

073the final thing, which is extremely important, which is our special education audit and program review initial findings. Um and we'll have uh our external uh consultant lead um sharing about those findings as a part of that presentation. So, uh on district strategy for improvement, uh you'll remember um this as relates to the second goal for um for the goals that you approved for me this for this school year, which is to lead implementation regarding uh improvement in literacy, math, and science. And we spoke about an ongoing cycle of instructional leadership, where we have our district-wide coaches who are meeting together across sites. At the schools, we have instructional leadership teams meeting. We have our principals coming together regularly. And we have all of this happening centered around and supported by non-evaluative observations, uh lesson study,

074and intervention block, which you'll hear more about tonight, coaching cycles, and data reviews, which you'll also hear about tonight. And as I shared over the last two meetings, there's a lot of people in the schools beyond the teachers themselves who are really involved in this in this work. Um and someone I can see already was lift off lift off this list is our assistant superintendent for student services. Got to manage to get the program managers on this time. Um but a lot of people are involved in supporting the work that's happening in our schools. Two things that you'll hear about tonight in a moment related to this work, the PD blocks and how those are being used in one of our schools, and the data reviews, and how those things together are informing intervention that

075some of our teachers teams of our teachers tonight at Ferryway will be hearing about are doing with math intervention. And with that, um I invite you to listen to four of our educators talking about how they're uh pushing this work forward at Ferryway specifically in mathematics. And I want to acknowledge also Dr. Matt Stoll is here, um principal of Ferryway, in addition to Mr. Balday. All right. So, we'll listen into this group of teachers. Violet and I at the beginning of third quarter Um after the seventh grade team met and decided which students were going to be pulled for math intervention. And we used the criteria of being under under 600 on their IXL media diagnostic overall score. We came up with about 30 kids, I believe. We split it between three groups, myself, Aaron

076Coughlin, and Megan Granados. Violet and I met and then established a weekly routine that what we would do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then she and I also went through and based on my observation that seventh graders desperately needed more skills in the measurement strand based off of our IXL diagnostic, we picked topics connected to that measurement stand strand. I can say that we saw gains. Huge gains. Huge pretty good gains. We have We're going to reshuffle our kids. We have eight kids who are going to move out of math intervention into our book club groups because those eight kids are now scoring above 600. And then for the elementary side, um I worked with the third grade team on figuring out what skills are lacking in the third grade and then Violet also

077suggested a couple of skills for us to assess. And then we Violet assigned an IXL assessment to assess the third graders how they're doing with this skill. And based on the results from that, we formed a few different groups that run with Miss Rose two week two weeks at a time. And the kids get pulled for 30 minutes every day, which is really awesome. It's awesome because the kids get an hour of third grade content and then they also get to work with a specialized teacher on the skills that maybe they didn't have understanding of yet, but then now we kind of go back and then they have the two weeks, 30 minutes a day to really hone in on those skills. And I've seen tremendous growth like on those things. It was It was

078really awesome. Get inspired, which is our math curriculum, has a separate separate portion called catalyst. And catalyst has specific mini lessons and activities that tackle specific skills. So, it's part of our high-quality instructional materials. So, we know the kids are getting what they need and getting things that are on rigor, so to speak. So, we look at the skills that they need, we pull the catalyst skills, and then Dot does a great job of using that to kind of push students' thinking more. Um by the kids me a specific topic to use for each of the grades. And I use the catalyst catalyst material kind of as a starting point. Um At this point in the year, especially with the third grade, is I kind of have a good sense of the children that I'm

079working with, what their skills are, and they're doing so good. And they're such good kids. They feel like they're like, "We can do this. We can do it." Um I often with the the younger kids, I'll kind of start with like a little bit of a warm-up activity just to kind of like, "Okay, this is reinforce what you This is subtraction." Yeah. Um So, I think it's been a learning curve for for all of us. It's been a lot of adaptation. I think we'll make great partners this year with um Yeah. We're I often With the kids who come back from intervention, we have intervention in the last 30 minutes of the math block, but day-to-day I've seen the kids come back with a lot of confidence. So, during the fluency, when we do have

080a couple minutes to review skills from previous lessons or previous years, I can see them participating and wanting to show their knowledge and like share it out with the class. They also have just a stronger sense of like, I can do this. I have my foundational skills and I can try to use what I know to figure things out. I see a lot more problem solving and confidence in that, not just, I don't know, and getting overwhelmed. They really try to tackle the problems and I've seen that growth since we've done these interventions, but especially in the past month, like, it's grown so much and I'm just so happy because the kids are happy and they want to participate and they're enjoying math and they are really liking it. So, during that, just talking as

081teachers and with the math coaches and the math assistants, it really helps the whole school kind of Yeah. um lift up and succeed. And we've talked about next year expanding our PD blocks to be more vertical alignment in the middle school and then hopefully getting some vertical meetings for the elementary side, too. All right. Sorry. I'm just Let me go back here just one moment. Um Wasn't that great? I was so happy when I when I saw the video. You can see, uh, you know, good things happening in so many of our classrooms. Um I don't often get a chance and uh sometimes I'd be a big fly on the wall if I tried to sit in on a uh collaboration time or a PD block of a group of teachers. I'll make them make

082make them a little bit uncomfortable. Um hopefully not, but um so great to hear kind of behind the curtain of of work that's happening. Uh one thing I just wanted to share about this and that is all of our schools, all of our K-8 schools, and our high school, too, um have this PD block as a part of their schedule this year. And um all of our schools have an intervention block pre-K to 8 that they're able to use to help students who need to catch up for in different subjects. Each school is using that infrastructure, each school is using those that time and those and the resources in a little bit of a different way and they're innovating, which is great. And what we're excited about is that our modern leadership team meetings that

083we have once a month, that our principal meetings that happen twice a month, that our directors who are in and out of all of the schools, they're able to see how different schools are using these structures innovatively and let other schools know how to learn from from what they're doing. And we've this year all of our leadership team went to Fairway and spent the day there observing classrooms and giving them feedback on what we saw. We did the same thing at Salem Wood at the beginning of March and we're going to continue this this process of not only fostering collaboration within each school, but also fostering collaboration across schools so that we're all learning from the great things that are happening in each building. And with that I'll pause. I want to move on to

084English language arts um adoption, but I'll see if there's any questions, Mr. Chair. Questions from the team. We can also hold them to the end. Mr. Rose-Iversen. Thank you, Mr. Chair. While the students who are needing the intervention during that 30-minute block, where are the students who don't need intervention? What is their program going on at the time? So I believe perhaps Miss Bassin or Mr. Dr. Stall could comment on that, but if not, it's okay. But I think in each in each I know that at the on the literacy side of things, that literacy intervention block is for the students that need the literacy intervention, they're getting something called U-FLY. Um, University of Florida Literacy Intervention, I think is what UFLY means. Um, but they're and they're getting specialized uh, instruction for for the

085level that they need it. And then for the students that are already reading very well, um, they're every every few weeks they're re-sorted um, between the classes and they're reading books that are at their grade level, chapter books, etc. In the math uh, case, um, which is an innovation at Fairway at this point that I'm aware of. I'm sure it's happening elsewhere, too, but it's the one that I know of. Um, the students when they come the ones during that 30 minutes that she described who did not need an intervention, are do you know what those students are doing? Um, yeah. So, um, Dr. Civil covered most of it, but we the district priority as you guys all know was literacy and the literacy intervention block was put in place and we we installed that

086throughout the year. What we did over the course of the first two quarters is kind of really tried to find a way to get the math intervention in because specifically at Fairway, if you look at our data, math is something that we really need to work on and something that we really wanted to kind of dive into, but we wanted to get the system in place first. So, before this launched, as you heard uh, Cat McCusker say, we launched it in the third quarter. We actually did a little bit of an analysis with uh, Ms. Basine as well to kind of separate out the kids who um, needed a literacy intervention first and we made that the priority and then secondarily the kids who needed the math intervention. If there was overlap, we went with

087the literacy intervention until they were ready and stable in the literacy and then can move them into the math intervention if they needed both. So, we don't have uh, specifically the rest of the kids work on math. They're pulled out sometimes during their literacy intervention block, sometimes during their math block. So, it really depends on the schedule and even within the grade levels there's some flip-flopping of the blocks. So, you saw Dot, who's one of our amazing math assistants up there. So, we try and work around her schedule, as well. So, we try and be flexible, so it's not really one thing that the kids are necessarily doing, but we primarily focus on the literacy intervention. Then, secondarily, we're now kind of implementing this math intervention program. Does that answer your question? Mhm. Thank you.

088Thank you, Dr. >> Thank you, Mr. Piazza. Mr. Chair, I realize this might be this The answer to this question is going to be different for each school, but even just from what we heard from the fairy range, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding. Um I What My question is, how um how long are students in intervention groups? I think I heard 2 weeks. Is that Is So, I'm wondering if that's accurate. And then, how are they assessed to know whether or not they're making adequate progress to move out of an intervention group and into another into another setting after those 2 weeks? >> That. How you doing? Long time no see. How you been? Um It It really depends on the grade level. So, it's very different at the lower grade

089levels than it is the upper grade levels. Our primary benchmark, as you heard them mention in the video for the upper grades, especially specifically, is the IXL. The lower grades, we do use a little bit more anecdotal data to really kind of analyze where the kids are moving and things like that. Um but, if you're looking for one measure of how they're kind of assessed, is that what you're asking? Um No, it doesn't need to be one single measure, even, but I'm just curious about cuz I I heard in the video, right, that IXL, the mid-year, the midpoint assessment determines whether or not they're in intervention groups, but then, of course, you know, IXL's just the three times a year, so then, in in the interim, I'm just curious about what other data sources are

090used. >> Yeah, so they do use a lot of the diagnostic components of it, as well. In the lower grades, they do go with the 2-week cycles. And then, again, the teachers kind of will meet about the students and the interventions. Some kids do stay in for another 2-week cycle. Some kids are able to kind of move out. So, we want to get to as many kids as we can, so sometimes we have to make some hard choices about, you know, they're right on the edge. Should they go in? Should they stay out? Um but the lower grades, it is a lot more teacher, like I say, anecdotal input, kind of really getting a feeling for the kid. It is a little bit more data-based in the upper upper grade levels, IXL, unit tests, and

091things like that. And just to be clear, in case in case um I I don't want I don't want to be implying that like the teacher knowledge and feedback about student growth, I don't want to be implying that that is somehow less than a No, there's two different sources. Yeah, exactly. I think that that's good. Nope, I got kicked out. Um the Catalyst curriculum that we use for intervention comes with like a they call it probes. So, at the beginning you take sort of a pretest and then at the end you take a posttest to see if you've mastered that skill. So, and that's the curriculum the sort of intervention curriculum that we have. We also have another curriculum called Equip, which has a similar sort of pretest and posttest. Um and then with our

092literacy interventions, we have progress monitoring every 2 to 3 weeks, which also lets you know if they've made progress if they've made progress on the skill. Got it. So, it is a combination of the diagnostics as well as the teacher input as well. Great. Thank you. But her answer was much better than mine. All right, I don't see any of the lights. Back to you, Sue. All right. Thank you, Dr. Stoll. And Ms. Pessin, before you go too far, um the next uh item is to um talk about our 9th and 10th grade English Sorry, there we go. English language arts curriculum adoption. Um and um I just want to thank Ms. Pessin publicly um and all of her team and all the teachers at Malden High School um across the English language arts, the

093ESL, and I believe special education as well. And I think we had a middle school teacher involved in this process as well. And paraeducators as well. >> And paraeducators. Um this is and this process started as she'll explain many months ago and thank you to Ms. Iber for serving as liaison from the committee as well. But I'm going to kick it to you. Thank you. Well, good evening. Nice to see you again and thank you for the opportunity to speak about the English language arts curriculum adoption process for our 9th and 10th grade. Um I know the committee's aware of this that we submitted a video member memo going really in depth into all the steps of the process and all the data that we reviewed over the course of the past 6 months. Um

094but for the public that video is posted publicly with the school committee material. So we hope that folks are able to to view that to be aware of the process that we've used. I'll stay at a very high level tonight and just briefly recap the process and the recommendations. Um so it's first worth noting that all of this work is in service of our educational vision in Malden which is that students are known and valued and feel that they belong, that they engage in grade level work with the right level of support, and that students are working together to do what we call heavy lifting. So that would be sense making, taking risks, asking questions, considering the ideas of others and dare I say it, enjoying their learning as they work collaboratively. And so curriculum

095is something we're adopting, but it's just a means to the end, right? The work that our teachers do every day to make this curriculum come alive is what's essential to accomplishing this vision. Um so on the next slide you'll see an overview of the process that we used. As Dr. Simple mentioned, we had a 16 member educator advisory committee that really shepherded us through this process beginning in the fall. Um as he said, it consisted of high school English language arts teachers, educators of students with disabilities, multilingual learner educators, paraprofessionals, as well as some representation from our K-8 buildings. Um and they worked throughout the fall to get educator input, family input, and student input, develop our local criteria, assess eight curricula against those local criteria, um and ultimately uh do some classroom pilots or

096test drives, as we call them, um again, convene uh groups of families and students to get more input, and ultimately make a recommendation. Um so, we'll tell you a bit about the result of our process in the lesson trial. Uh first, we started with an initial review of We started with nine options, but then quickly realized that one of the um EdReports recommended curriculum was out of print. Um so, that took us easily to eight. Yes. Um so, we started with initial review, and as you'll see, um you know, that narrowed us down. Um and both StudySync and Fishtank um met some of the criteria for our initial review. The red, yellow, green colors that you'll see here are just a shorthand way of summarizing the results from the curriculum of a curriculum committee of

097green being sort of more favorable responses, red being less favorable responses, and yellow being in the middle. Um after our initial review, we did a deeper review, um and that sort of brought us down to thinking about Fishtank and StudySync out of the eight. Um in that deeper review, uh Fishtank was reviewed as slightly more aligned with our local criteria for a couple reasons. Uh the first is that in Fishtank, the curricula is based around the use of full texts. So, students will read an entire novel or play or work of literature. In StudySync, and they'll do that in addition to reading lots of excerpts and shorter pieces that pair with it. But each unit is centered around a full text. In StudySync, the units are centered around uh many different excerpts. Um so, they

098might It might say that they're reading Antigone, but they may not read the full uh the full work. StudySync does have adaptations where you're able to pull in uh a full novel or a full work of um work of fiction or nonfiction, um but that is an adaptation to the curriculum, not necessarily the way it was originally designed. Uh the second reason um that Fishtank sort of got that green versus StudySync having that yellow um was that it has um a ton of print resources. It was originally designed to be a print curriculum. You get a book in your hand um and you get uh pen and paper notes. Um they also they still have an online platform um but it relies heavily on the use of print of actual books. Study Sync um is

099heavily relies on an online platform and the use and reading uh books online. You can purchase books, of course, and you can print materials um but that's sort of design featured. There's also significant online features in Study Sync including AI-powered tools for providing real-time feedback, um which a district could elect to turn off, but they would be factored into the cost of the program. So, you'd be paying for something you might not be using. And finally, Fishtank in our deeper review, we found that Fishtank is designed around Massachusetts standards while Study Sync is designed around national standards. Both are great, um but as one of our local criteria was really um familiarity with the Massachusetts market. So, then uh we through the deeper review, we narrowed it down to Fishtank and Study Sync out of

100the eight. Um we went on to a teacher lesson trial. We got student feedback. If you go on to the next uh animation, um we got student feedback on that um and also had educator feedback um through this lesson trial um which you can click uh one more time. And so, what you can see here is that our educators and students found Fishtank more user-friendly. They found the resources more streamlined um and easier to use. And students actually reported that they found the activities slightly more engaging. Um we had family input where families could view um different units uh from both curricula. Um we were actually able to share these uh units translated into multiple languages for families to review. And we held um open session where families could give us feedback uh verbally through

101the through a Zoom meeting. Um we had families uh speak to the benefits of both curricula. We heard from families around the benefits of Study Sync and Fishtank, um but we heard general leanings towards Fishtank for a few reasons. One, the use of whole books. Two, the use of print resources. And three, um, we did hear some folks speak to a Fishtank being a non-profit. Um, and sort of that, finding that appealing. Um, so these were all factors that led the English Language Arts Advisory Committee to vote overwhelmingly, uh, to recommend Fishtank over StudySync. Um, cost, which is our next line, was outside the scope of this committee's uh, recommendation. Um, but it is worth noting that we received, uh, quotes from both curricula, and both were within what we had budgeted. Um, so in

102the sort of what we thought was a reasonable realm of uh, possibility for curriculum adoption, a Fishtank is about, um, about half the cost of StudySync, um, over a one-year, a three-year, or a five-year period. Um, so based on the recommendation of the English Language Arts Committee, um, I'm pleased to bring forward, uh, a proposal, uh, to adopt the Fishtank uh, curriculum. This is the superintendent's recommendation, and he's asking for your approval, uh, in the up-and-coming motion, uh, to adopt this curriculum in our ninth and tenth grade. Um, but I think it's worth noting that, um, the real work happens after this vote. Um, you know, of course, we've got to procure the materials, so you know, assuming an affirmative vote, we would, tomorrow, follow up on our quotes, and really work to get the

103materials in well before the last day of school. Uh, we want our educators to have books in hand, have materials available, have a teacher guide, to be able to make themselves, um, familiar with the curriculum, and feel very solid going into the summer, that they know what they're doing in the fall. Um, addit- additionally, uh, there's quite a bit of implementation work we need to take on as a district. So, we have stipends available for six to nine educators to participate in an implementation committee. Um, so these are groups of educators who will continue to elevate staff voice in planning for how we'll use extension block, providing differentiation resources for diverse learners or students with disabilities, um students who may need an additional push, or um multilingual learners, students who meet all three of those

104criteria. Um additionally, we want to be really clear with our educators around how to um pace these lessons, right? How does the Fish Tank scope and sequence work? You know, if the the uh school committee so uh so moves, um how would the scope and sequence fit on top of the Malden High School High School double block, right? Um 85 minutes every other day. So, we really have some work to do around creating uh that guidance, as well as guidance for the use of the curriculum in our newcomer classes, and our honors classes, and our CP classes. Um we also plan to run professional development for educators, a stipended PD this summer, um PD over the course of the next school year, um and um and moving forward. And finally, one of the nice things

105about Fish Tank um is that it actually has unit-by-unit family guides, um that we would seek to adapt to be able to keep our families in the loop. This would be a change um for our high school, and so to keep our families in the loop on what they can expect from the curriculum. Um so, thank you so much for your consideration of this recommendation. I'm happy to take any questions from the committee. Questions, anyone? Let's start with our student representative. Go easy. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Hi, Ms. Piccini. Um I have kind of three questions in one. So, first, uh how are teachers' creativity and autonomy for lesson creation being taken into account in this new curriculum, or is this more of like a strict curriculum that does not allow teachers the choice of

106what they are presenting in classes, um such as the books that can be chosen, and will every class be reading the exact same um content? Great question. Good question. Thank you. So, part of the rationale for the decision was to create some more consistency across our ninth grade and tenth grade experience for students. Um and so wanting to make sure that every student graduated from ninth or was promoted from ninth grade with sort of a core base of texts that they'd read, experiences that they'd had. Um and so there is a driving push for more consistency. Um as we're developing our implementation guide, one of the things that we're looking at is the use of extension block to give students um some opportunity to have choice in what they're reading. And so during our extension

107block, which is separate from, you know, the the core ELA block, um we do have a stipend out for some educators to help develop um some choice-based reading opportunities for students. Um we also um anticipate, and again, we haven't planned the pacing guide yet. Uh we're still waiting uh for approval for which curriculum we select. Um but one of the stipended roles for educators this spring is to develop a pacing guide, which would say, "These are the units from, say, Fish Tank that we'd be using." And then at the end of each unit, there might be some flex days where educators could say, "I really feel passionately about this poem or this text and I want to insert it." Um we also anticipate having some of that time at the end of the year um

108for educators to sort of have a culminating unit. Um so, I do think, you know, to your question, it's not a yes or no. I do think this will lead to more consistency in experience for students, but I do think there is still room for some choice on the part of students and on the part of educators. Thank you. Um I had one more question. Um are teachers going to have to make their own lessons for the material given um by whichever is chosen if it makes it through? Um or will that teacher guide contain lesson planning for them? Um so teachers will start with a teacher guide that has lesson plans. Um and then they will have the resources that our implementation committee are creating, which might say, you know, "Here are some additional

109scaffolds for students who are just learning English." Or if a student has this type of disability, this might be helpful, um this type of accommodation for them reading this text or participating in the discussion. Um that said, the responsibility for planning each lesson ultimately does rest with the educator, right, On a day-to-day basis. And educators are responsible for saying, "How do I use this curriculum with fidelity, but to meet the needs of the students in front of me?" Um and as we've seen in our K-3 8 programs, um we've tried to give educators some guidance for how they can make choices um that use the curriculum, but also best meet the needs of the students. The lessons that are in our curriculum are too long to be fit in one period. And the number of

110units they have are too many to be fit in one year. Um so there's some decision-making that has to be done. Okay, thank you so much. No, keep going. Um Ms. Spadafore, and then we'll go to Mr. Bernard, and then over to Ms. Houghty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um so what is the cost of the curriculums? Um because you said that, you know, once um the approval for adoption comes out of here, the procurement process would begin immediately. So is the expectation for it to come out of the FY 26 budget, and encumber it this year? Um yes, so uh the great Tony Wirtz has helped us find room in this spring's budget, but we would anticipate um putting it into FY 26, so that we can get the books and the materials available for

111educators. Um did you want the specific numbers? I have this. Um so we have a one-year, three-year, and a five-year quote. And please keep in mind these were given to us with ballpark student estimates, cuz we didn't have approval. We just asked for generic quotes from both. So the you know, it might it might be different once we actually submit our specific enrollment. But a Fishtank one-year curriculum is 18,984 for the licenses and teacher for the online licenses and teacher work, plus 17,000 for the actual books. So it's about 35,000. StudySync one-year is 76,099 and 82 cents. Um Fishtank three-year is 53,155 and 20 cents. Uh StudySync 3-year, so StudySync 3-year is 142,744 and 36 cents. Um and then Fish Tank 5-year, 87,326 and 40 cents. StudySync 5-year is 207,732 and 92 cents. Um and

112I think just the difference is in the cost of licenses. Uh Fish Tank sort of as a nonprofit charges less per license. Um another big driver is that Fish Tank does not charge by student for the licenses annually. Um you pay for the books and then a single fee for access to the student and teacher resources online. Um so for a large school like us, it's a really good value. Um StudySync like many other curricular vendor vendor charges you per student for access plus a fee and then you pay that again every single year. Um so they're are just different they price things differently. Um what is the committee's are are are you looking for a 1-year purchase, a 3-year, 5-year? I mean you we have numbers but I guess this question would be more

113for Tony in the sense of where in our budget are we finding this? So if we do the 1-year quote of 35,000 Mhm. uh that's going to come out of the health curriculum budget. If you guys remember at the tail end of last year, we ended up purchasing the health curriculum. >> Mhm. Yep. Right? So that money's still available to be used for curriculum. It doesn't have to be health curriculum. We can move it to the Fish Tank curriculum. So the recommendation is a 1-year. That's what we have. Well, I think the recommendation would be one or the other and as money becomes available, we can probably purchase additional, right? So, it's helping us decide which one the committee wants, and then we'll look at if there's money available, you'd rather pay for the 3-year,

114right? Because there's a cost savings. Not sure we have that kind of money available, but the hope is for with year-end, that that money would be available. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Bernard. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, I was listening and I and just a couple questions that I had. One was I heard that the and I'm glad that Ms. Betterfor brought up the the budgeting of the costs. I heard stipended PD, is that correct? And where's and does the going kind of fall along with that? Do we know where that money is and where that's coming from? Sure. So, we have multiple grants that we receive that pay for teacher stipends. One is Title 2A, which is teacher PD and teacher mentors come out of there. We have an HQIM grant that we have,

115which is 510, the GLEAM grant, can only pay stipends for HQIM PD. So, we have that available, and then within our operating budget, we have a line item for professional development where we set aside 50,000 for contractual obligations in the MBA where we have to pay for teacher classes, and we also have about 50 to 75,000 available for any other additional professional development that we so choose. And then just a second question, I heard I heard the term AI and we've heard it a lot tonight. Um And I I understand that, you know, you said it's optional. Do we know and maybe this is a question for down the road, so I'm not going to ask for any super specific things, but do we Uh, we know how easy it is to turn on or

116off uh, because we have not come up with any kind of policy recommendations on the use of AI yet? Yes, we looked deeply into this. It was very important to us given that we didn't want to get ahead of the AI working group in any recommendations. For Fish Tank, it's quite easy. There are no AI features, so we would not be able to use them. Uh, and so I think this was what sort of tipped some of the leaning of the group. Um, with StudySync, they have an AI-powered um, assistant that um, both that can grade student writing, give feedback to the teacher that the teacher could provide to the student, or give feedback directly to the student. It also appears they have some AI-powered features that allow accommodations to particular texts. Um, when we

117spoke to the vendor about it, they said that you as a district would just say to them, "We want to disable anything powered by artificial intelligence." And they the sales rep told me that they could turn it off uh, for us, but that it would still be something we were paying for as part of our subscription. It's not as if um, it's not like they have the, you know, the AI piece that you add on. It's just your lump sum. Right, it's like you're paying for the office license, and if you say I'm never going to use a spreadsheet, well, you can if you want to, but it's still in the, it's still in the price. Mhm. Um, and it is something that I would want to go and look at the contract when when

118that came through just to make sure that it is something that can be easily shut off if we went that way. Um, but uh, Thank you, Ms. Hordy, and then she'll be followed by Mr. Piazza. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had um, Can you hear me? Oh, okay. Um, I had two questions. Can we stick on budget for just 1 second while I'm thinking of this? Um, so you had mentioned before that this is very focused on full text play print resources. I'm sorry, plays, not play. Plays and things like that. Um Are these Will students have a book? If we are reading a book, will we be giving them a book, a shared novel? Um for Fish Tank, yes. Okay. Um this the budget the as I broke it down into sort of 18,000

119and 17,000 17,000 is actually for the purchase of the physical textbooks or texts, not texts. The actual books um that we would be handing to students. >> So And class sets of those. Because I work in a middle school and because I own high school students, I'm aware of the limited challenges with executive functioning and organizational skills that they possess. Will we, Tony, since you're here, um will we plan and budget for missing books? And has that somehow already been discussed in the long-term planning for Fish Tank, which otherwise reads lovely? Um yes, so part of what the quote when calculating the quote, excuse me, the quote, um they actually have you calculate. So they say this is, you know, the 18,000 for one I'm just going to do the one year is, you know,

120the actual sort of subscriptions and licenses and teacher materials. And then they say, you know, ballpark estimate number of students. For year one, you're purchasing all of these class sets. For year two, imagine replenishment of 10% or >> Got it. So they sort of help you think through how much you would need to pay. For Fish Tank, they actually we actually have to go through they have like a vendor where you buy the books from. So we actually have to do that calculation and budget it in. Um so absolutely. Um it Um Fish Tank also has an online platform where students can have access to the text online. So say your student does forget their book at school, um it's in their locker, they can't they can't get back, their mom is at school committee

121so that she can't drive them back to school, maybe hypothetically, um they could access it online for that assignment. Um there are also maybe reason reasons why you want everyone to go to a particular section for your second read, really highlight it up, mark it up. Um So, there there are reasons why you may want to access it in that way. Um so, Fishtank does have that, you know, built into the online platform, but the use of physical books is um was a big part of our local criteria. It was something our family said was really important, something our educators said was really important. Um and so, something we really wanted to honor uh in this adoption. I agree. I have one other quick question as a sort of a continuation. So, I know that

122for the high school curriculum, there's been changes in 11th and 12th grade ELA as well. How are these two How is Fishtank and/or StudySync merging with 11th and 12th grade ELA? What's the What Where's the PD to help make sure that 11th and 12th grade ELA teachers are prepared for what the the new 10th and 11th grade curriculum, what those students are coming in with, and how it's So, how will 11th grade teachers I'm making sure I'm understanding how will 11th grade teachers be aware of sort of the body of work that 9th and 10th grade students have done and will have done as they come into their classes over the next few years? And where there might be things that maybe now don't need to be taught or should be re retaught reviewed. Um

123it's a great question, and curriculum alignment is just like the ongoing work, right, of of any department. Um so, we're really lucky to have in at Malden High um sort of department time um once a month where we can look for departments meet vertically. Um so, 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th grade. Um and we've already started um to meet about this curricula once, you know, we were looking at it more as what are the two options. Um as we transition to having a specific option, we'll be able to have more conversations with the department about what are the ninth and 10th graders doing. And again, this is not a one-time meeting, right? This is um the work of the next few years of how how our students experiencing the curriculum, what are

124we all learning from this experience, and what can we expect as students um rise through our progression. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Piazza. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mhm. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Now it's working. Just testing the technology. Um and thank you all for the um with for conducting such a thorough review of these materials. Um I I realize that a lot goes into all the steps that you outlined in terms of how we landed at the recommendation that we have, and and so I just want to acknowledge that. Um I have I want to come back to the question about cost. Uh because obviously the cost is tied to the number of years, and I'm wondering tonight are we being asked to approve the curriculum along with 1, 3, or 5 years?

125Or will we're being asked to approve the curriculum, and then the determination about the length of time with the cost will come later. will come later. Okay, I just want to make sure that I was And I think my understanding is we intend to use this curriculum for the next 3 to 5 years. We don't intend to be revisiting this cycle every year. I think the question is is it more Do we have the funds to make a longer investment, or would we be buying a 1-year subscription every every year just the pace depending on the funds that we have available. It is over the long term more cost-effective to have a multi-year subscription, but if you don't have those buttons, then you don't Right. >> make that commitment. And so related to that, what

126I'm wondering is about the first time that we're adopting this curriculum, what role what strategies do we have in place or systems do we have in place just to evaluate how it's going and then determine determine, you know, 2 3 years down the road, do we still want to stick with this curriculum? Do we want to maybe something else has come out in the meantime? Do we maybe want to switch to that? Yeah, just curious about about the sort of like data collection and review as implementation happens. Yeah, that's a great question. So, I mean, we do have ongoing student assessment data, right, that we review annually, multiple times a year. So, that all was presents sort of a consistent data point of how students are performing. But, I would say that from curriculum adoption,

127you tend to actually see results over the 3 to 5-year time frame. And so, it's hard to imagine that this time next year will be like, "Wow, we had a It takes time. Yeah, it's hard to imagine that we would see that on an IXL or an IXL for the for the high school. Um and so, I think there's other things that we do look at, right? So, we have we're lucky to have coaches um and directors who are observing classrooms in partnership with our teacher leaders, so we can conduct classroom observation data. Um we are excited this year. We've started to use um student focus groups to give us some input um into how students are experiencing various change efforts um at various schools. And so, that is something we have started to discuss

128uh using to learn more about our curriculum adoption efforts. And then, of course, meeting with teachers regularly um through our department time, through other common planning times um that are admin facilitated to learn about their experience, learn what additional support they need, and how we can better provide that. Great. Thank you. Ms. Rose Zeiberg. Here. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And just to echo what um I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice. Uh Mr. Piazza had said and just to thank everybody. I was able to be a liaison and go to some of the meetings. And the level of dedication that that team put in was amazing. Um just thank you for everything that you did with that. And then, hearing from the parents as well was uh fantastic to see that how many different groups were

129brought on to look at the two different programs, which I think is really important so that it is not, you know, it was from a lot of different sources and I know it was a very big undertaking, so I appreciate the amount of time and effort that went into it um to get that done. To answer one of the questions that came up um cuz I actually was like flipping through as well going like is there a policy about this? I had I do knew this one, Peter. Um the committee itself considers an officially adopted new program courses when they come to constitute an extensive alteration in instructional content or approach, which is our part of our policy um IGD. Um this departure is def This is a departure from what we have been doing

130that fits under that um policy, which is why it would come to us um for that potential adoption of whatever program we pick. That's all. And thank you for your participation in the process. Um but it really It was so much fun um honestly to be the seeing the enthusiasm in that room looking at all the programs, you know, with with brainstorming and going back and forth was um phenomenal, just phenomenal the level of excitement over participating in it. Um I just commend everybody involved in that process. I really want to thank our educators who spent a tremendous amount of time after hours uh participating in this process, the students who were part of the lesson trial and giving us feedback, the families who came many of you who came to evening meetings, um and

131Megan McCormick, our director who oversaw this process, um and many other directors um including Christina Scarlatos and Karen Livesey who also participated um in sort of supporting the process as well. So, huge team effort um and just really grateful to be part of it. Thank you. All right, Sue. All right. Thank you very much Ms. Berts, Ms. Bessine. Um we're going to transition now to our um What was the third goal? Um which and this is a checkpoint, an important checkpoint because as Ms. McDonald, our assistant superintendent of student services, will share, we were uh scheduled to bring some information to you this evening and she's going to um do that. So, Ms. McDonald. So, as you know, we have been conducting an audit. We brought in Empowered to do the bulk of the work,

132but we did look internally at a couple of different measures that we wanted to really dig into. So, I'm going to present that first and then we will have Jenna Rufo from Empowered give us a very high-level overview. She literally just finished it for us, I think, a week ago. Um, and I have to say did a great job of really keeping with our timelines, which was a very tight one. So, um, this is I just want to put this up there. This is the actual language of the audit request um from Ms. Batafora um back in November. Um So, it was just to do Yeah, so, in keeping with that, we looked at four major sort of regulations. One is IEP students IEP services on their grid, which I'll talk a little bit more

133in depth with, where we um serving our students and meeting their grids. Um, the special ed licensure, how many of our our special ed teachers and related service providers are licensed. Our timelines for evaluations and then our group size. Um, all special ed classes have a um regulatory staffing levels and were we keeping with those. So, these are the services that we looked at. Um, academic pushing, which would be uh um B grid within the gen ed classroom, pull out, sub separate speech and language, OT, counseling, physical therapy, and behavioral services. This was what we looked at for K to 8 and high school. We looked at it a little bit differently for the early learning center just because they don't really have push in or pull out. They're either in an integrated classroom. We

134have um half-day classes, we have sub separate classes. They are speech, OT, PT, and behavior services. Um, and that's how their um IEPs are written. So, we wanted to we had to look at that one just a little bit differently. Um, what we did is we asked all of the team chairs to take every IEP go to the liaison or the teacher and see if they were getting their services at that time. I want to make sure you understand it was a period of time from February 26th to March 11th we gave them to accomplish this. So, I know for instance when we look at it it is going to say at the high school behavior services were 100% in the fall. We had our um we had someone out on a leave. So, in

135the fall that was not the case. But from February 26th to about March 11th when we asked the team chair, this is what we got. And I do know that at other periods of time during the year we were missing and it when we when you'll see when we get to it but it's mostly related services that we are always 100% at. I just want to show this quickly so that everyone understood. When we talk about services, this is what dictates what a child gets on an IEP. If it is A, it is indirect service which means the BCBA might be talking to the classroom teacher or the counselor might be talking to the sub separate teacher. And they talk together to plan for the child. So, that would be your consultation services. B, grid

136services happen in the classroom. So, that is mostly your academic push-in. Um in some, especially at like the preschool level, we do a lot of speech in an in an integrated classroom so that they can co-teach and do lessons together. Um but, the bulk of, you know, what we were really were looking at with this was our C grid services, which is pull-out. It's either sub separate classrooms for children with autism, emotional disabilities, and/or most related services, counseling, um physical therapy, OT is outside of the classroom. So, I just want to put that out there so you had everyone had a clear idea of what we were talking about. So, we really do a good job with academics and sub separate classes. Everyone is getting those. Where we have struggled, and it has been true,

137um since the pandemic, and it is not something that we are alone in in Malden, is that is the related services. Right now, um most of where we're having an issue is the high school. Um we had a speech teacher leave. Um she gave us like 2 weeks' notice, so it's it's hard to turn around a new person in 2 weeks. Um so, we do have a few people filling in. We've been able to borrow, um take some from here and there, so we have some services. OT is also a struggle at the high school to cover. We are able to do our evaluations there, um but, we are struggling. And as a as a um department, what we routinely do is when we know that there is an outage, we'll let families know, and

138we'll have conversations about compensatory services, what makes sense, and how to sort of make that child whole again. Um so, that's sort of our policy. It always has been, um, since I got here when we had all the compensatory services outage. And we work really hard with families to figure out what makes sense. And I always say if anyone has a question about it, give me a call and we'll figure it out. So. Um, so our staff licensure um, we have one special ed admin who is an interim and she's phenomenal and she's working on getting her license and she is on a waiver. Um. So, just so you know, if you can either be completely licensed by DESE, if we don't have licensed candidates we can get another candidate and petition for a waiver

139for a year, which we do have quite a bit of waivers. It is usually someone with a different license, um, maybe they have a social studies license and not the special ed license. So, we can ask for a waiver, which we do, which we've done this year. Um, we do have also have people who are working towards their license. Um, who may they're still trying to pass one test or another of the MTELs. So, that's really what a waiver is for us. And then we do have a few people who have expired license. And most of them, it is people who have professional licenses who just sort of have let it lapse. They haven't quite paid their bill yet. They haven't gone online to renew it. Um, but we're HR does a great job of

140communicating with all of our educators that are on waivers and that are expired on it's started on a monthly basis. I think they're on a weekly basis. Where are you? What are you doing to get your license? I will say, um, the K-8 principals and I have been working really hard. Um, we have been hosting interviews already. Um, together as a group and we've already, um, hired a couple of licensed teachers. We, um, interviewed two more today and we're really excited about one of them that's licensed. So, we're really trying going ahead of it. Um, I think posting early has really helped us. So, I'm hopeful that next year's numbers will be better. Um So, this is um timelines. We have 30 days to complete an eval. The um two places that were not 100%

141were Early Learning Center and BB. Early Learning Center um was because it's not 100% because we have a couple of children you have to bring your child to be evaluated. So, they weren't We have a couple of families that did not bring their child. So, that put us out of the 30-day. In BB, um there were a few students that had illnesses and were hospitalized that brought us out of the um 30 days. So, that it's really more about access to the child. We are very blessed in Malden to have a psychologist at each school. Um so, this isn't really an issue for us. Um I don't think we will get a finding from DESE when we turn We'll have to turn this in these numbers into them as well because the students that we

142weren't able to test were either absent or not at not brought to the ELC. And then Oh, the last one is instructional group size. If you are in a sub separate classroom, there is certain You can have eight. If you go beyond eight, you need two paras. You have to have minimal staffing. All of our sub separate classrooms are 100% in in compliance. Most actually are staffed beyond the minimum staffing levels. So, that is something that we've always staffed correctly. The one thing I did want to point out because it was brought up on School Committee is that we have pull-out support classes that are technically C grade that follow a little out of that. In the fall, we moved some kids around. We moved some paras into classrooms to make it work. Between the

143fall and the spring semester, we added seven kids to those classes, which put four of them out of compliance. Um, DESE also has a remedy for this. You can, um, basically ask for a waiver, which we've done. We've let those parents know. We've asked for a waiver, and we're still trying to tweak those classes to get them to cuz you can have 12 and a para. Most of them are like 13 and a para, 14 and a para, a teacher and a para, I should say. Paraprofessional, so ESP, sorry. So, we're close on them, and we're just, you know, when you add seven kids mid-year, it it makes it a little difficult. Um, but I just want to put that up there to be transparent about those. And I think that might be it for

144me. Thank you, Ms. McDonald. And, um, before we, um, transitioned or to take questions, I want to invite, um, would you just share uh, just a couple words about uh, Jenna Rufo and uh, EmpowerEd and how, well, first of all, we we, in response, as a part of my goal, we issued a request for uh, quotes back in the winter to identify an organization that was willing, enabled, and qualified to conduct an external review of our special education program. And, um, there was there were a couple that responded to that that were very well regarded. One said, "We'd love to do it, um, but the timeline was just a little too aggressive for them." And, um, Ms. Rufo, Dr. Rufo, and the, um, and EmpowerEd were were were able to accommodate our our timeline. And

145so, for which we're very grateful. And I don't you want to say a couple more words? >> yeah, Jenna's done a lot of work in Massachusetts. She's done, I believe, um, an audit like this for Somerville. And I think Worcester or Framingham, I can't remember now. I've heard her speak a few times. She's done some work with us at the ELC around inclusion and increasing our inclusion rate. So, she wasn't a stranger to Malden. She's also worked at Linden and I think Forest Dale. Do we not know? Um and working on sort of doing more inclusive work. I think that's one of the things that since I got here I've noticed that we have a lot of kids that are included and a lot that are sub separate and that sort of middle ground is

146missing. And so, she sort of specializes in that. So, we've worked with her a little bit. And so, when we were looking for an organization to do this work, she was one of the people that put in a sort of proposal for it. And so, we were very happy to have her do it because she came in um within our timeline. So, we were grateful to her. So, with that, Dr. Ruffalo, do you want to speak and share just the highlights from your from the review that you and your organization conducted over the last um 3 months? Yes, thank you. Thank you for having me here this evening. So, just to provide you some very brief background on Empower Ed. As Pam just mentioned, we have done some work in Malden. We do quite a

147bit of work in Massachusetts. We offer professional development and our expertise is really in special education and inclusive practices. We do special education and intervention reviews like we are doing here for Malden. We also offer instructional coaching, some student specific reports and supports, and expert work. So, we've done expert work for different organizations across the country including California Department of Justice as well as formerly the US Department of Justice on the prior under the prior administration. So, what our purpose really was was to take an objective outside review of the special education and the intervention services in Malden. And it's very important to us when we're doing these types of reviews that while you're specifically looking at special education, we're also looking at the general education supports and services and the interventions that are available

148in general ed. Because those two systems really need to work together in order to have those effective systems for our students with disabilities and then for students as a whole. So, we were looking at gathering a variety of data, um observing, and then really putting all that information together into a report with key findings and recommendations. When we complete these reviews, we use what's called a convergent parallel research design. And what that means is when we are evaluating something as complex as a system like special education in a school district, simply looking at data or simply looking at surveys or focus groups or just one of those data points on their own really isn't sufficient to get a really good understanding of what those services look like overall. So, with that in mind, we look

149for patterns and for themes. So, we do a variety of um data collection. We look at your quantitative data, things like achievement data, um staffing, scheduling, those more hard data points, your demographic data. Um we do snapshot observations, which are a series of um no more than 5 minutes in classrooms. We were able to see 54 classrooms across Malden um in early March. And then we also look at survey data, we do focus groups, and really what we're trying to come up with is across all of those data sources, what are the themes or the patterns that emerge? So, what I'm going to share with you now is a very high-level overview in terms of what were the overall areas of strength, some areas for growth, and then what our recommendations would be based upon

150those areas of strength and growth. So, starting with the strengths, one of the things that really stood out, and I think is a a strength of Malden's, is there is a commitment to inclusive special education practices. And when I use that term, inclusive special education or inclusion, I'm referring to the amount of time that students with disabilities spend in the general education environment. So, there is not only a very strong legal preference through the federal special education statute and the Massachusetts state regulations, that preference for inclusive practices, it also shows shows in the research over decades and decades that when students are educated in general education, that they perform better. They have better academic achievement, they have stronger behavioral outcomes, and better social engagement. So, when we look at Malden, just some of the data

151points there, about 74% of students with IEPs spend their day in what's considered a full inclusion setting. Now, full inclusion, that term is a little misleading, it really means 80% or more of the day. But, it's important to note that in that element, that's a federal indicator that all districts, all public schools, and states have to submit to that fed to the federal government. And so, Malden actually exceeds the target for Massachusetts, so that is clearly something that's in place, a priority to committing to those practices that we know are good for students with disabilities. And then along those same lines, um some other just really strong foundational pieces that we noticed are that when we observed classrooms, they were orderly, conducive to learning, um well-managed, lots of structured transitions, and there was really a

152culture of care that was evident. Um so those foundational instructional practices are solidly in place. And then that to elaborate on that culture of care a little more, um that was really one of the strengths that we noted in our observations. So when we observed through those snapshot observations, we use a common form and we look across eight key indicators. And one of them is related to staff and student relationships, uh educational climate, and classroom culture. Um Malden scored consistently high in in that band. Those practices were fully evident in a number of classrooms. Um that also came out in our surveys and in our focus groups where it was noted by multiple stakeholders that there's really a commitment to working together um among staff, viewing students um as a shared responsibility, not so much,

153you know, my special ed students and these general ed students, but really looking at students as a whole. Um so that was really consistent. Um we also had some very positive uh feedback on that culture of care from the parent surveys. When we looked at more of that procedural piece of special education, so things that Pam just mentioned, um the evaluation timelines, uh staffing, caseloads, and really just having those procedures in place. The procedures are in place in Malden. We reviewed some of the documents. We looked at the special education procedure manual. Um that was all clearly in alignment with the regulations that are required. And one of the positive things that um we noted that we don't always see in other districts is that when services like related services that Pam alluded to earlier

154were missed, um when those services were missed, there was notification to the families and there was a plan to make it up. So, it's very hard to achieve 100% compliance on everything all year because things happen, people get sick, they go on maternity leave, they leave. Um but the fact that there was a plan to make those up, I think was was another strength. In terms of that staff collaboration, which I mentioned earlier, um one of the things that was noted by staff was um feeling that those structures were in place to collaborate. So, the PD block times, um there was actually a willingness or a a desire for more collaboration, which I'll talk about when we get to the growth areas. Um but really there was a sense that it's a staff that works

155together. And then when we looked at the staffing data, so what we did was we looked at the staffing, the number of special educators, related service providers, paraprofessionals, and we looked at that um both against state regulations and then also against some peer districts. So, districts that are comparable in size and demographics to Malden. And what we saw is that Malden is pretty commensurate with where those other peer districts are. Um you're meeting the caseloads in terms of the state regulations. One of the things that we'll talk about in the growth area is despite this, there's a perception among stakeholders that maybe there is still not enough staffing. So, one of the things that we'll talk about when we get to the growth is really looking more at how that staff is utilized because when

156we look on paper, the numbers look like they are in line and we just have to think a little bit more perhaps about how staffing is being used. So then some of our growth areas, areas for further investigation or improvement is that while Malden is very committed to inclusive practices, which is evident in the data, the district's not necessarily seeing some of those achievement outcomes that we know through research are associated with placement in general education. So in other words, based on the level of inclusion that's occurring, we would expect maybe a little more growth or a little higher achievement for our students with disabilities. So then we have to dig a little bit deeper to, you know, why aren't we necessarily seeing that level that we where we want to be. When we looked

157at the placement of students in various environments, so as I mentioned earlier, the state and the federal government collects data both on the percentage of students who are educated in general ed for the majority of their day, those fully inclusive placements, and then they also look at substantially separate classrooms. So for the fully inclusive placements, they want to make sure that school districts are meeting a threshold, which Malden is. Malden actually exceeds that. But when we look at students who are educated in substantially separate settings, we don't want that number to be too high and Malden's number is slightly higher than what the state is looking for. So that's an area where rather than having sort of that middle ground as Pam had alluded to earlier, we have most students who are fully included and

158then we have a group of students that are in substantially separate settings and there's not a lot that fall into that in between. So, that placement where they're spending part of the day in general and part of the day in special ed. So, when we looked at that a little bit further, usually if we find something like that, we want to dig deeper, and we did. Um what we saw was that our students in Malden who have um autism and intellectual disabilities tended to be in those substantially separate settings more. Which is not necessarily an unusual finding, um but the fact that you are a little higher than what the state is looking at is an area that makes it a worthy of of some further examination. So, really thinking about are there ways that

159we could provide more opportunities for inclusion for those students in substantially separate settings. Uh third area of growth is around the multi-tiered systems of support or MTSS process. And just to give a very brief description of what that means for those who might not be familiar is MTSS is really a framework where we're looking at first and foremost high-quality core instruction in general education, and then an increasing level of intensity in interventions when students aren't responding to that foundational instruction in general ed. So, um and I think this really lines up to what we saw in that earlier finding that we have a lot of students who are fully included, and then some students that are in sub separate settings, and maybe not as many in between interventions that might support students um rather than

160going straight to substantially separate. And that came out in the focus groups and the surveys as well. Um staff really mentioned that yes, we know it exists, it's in process, but there's maybe some inconsistencies in how that's being interpreted. And then when we're thinking about the instructional practices and this finding was based both on our snapshot observations as well as staff feedback and focus group feedback um through the surveys as well is that while we saw lots of really good solid foundational instruction there's a need for some uh more differentiated instruction to meet the range of wide learners in the classroom. So teachers really expressed um even through the surveys that they would like some additional support and training on this um that they know it's important but it's something that they would like to

161grow in. Um so that's an area where um some more investment in in the training and and support for teachers would be helpful. Um a few other things instructionally. So when we are educating students in general education classrooms often times models like co-teachers or paraprofessional support are being used. And in Malden um and again I have to just caution that it's a moment in time data. We're looking at snapshot observations. But what we saw in those snapshots was that just because an additional adult was in the classroom didn't really translate into increased instructional access or differentiation. So while that person was there they were really in more of a supportive role rather than working to tailor that instruction more to the individual needs of students. And there's lots of reasons why this can happen. It's

162a pretty common finding that we see in a lot of districts. Um so we do have some recommendations around that. Um and then the last two so really looking at um clearly defining some of those district-wide practices and procedures. So there was a feeling among multiple stakeholders um parents staff administrators that there wasn't always a consistent understanding of different programs among schools um or what the process for being referred to special education looks like among schools. So really trying to get some consistency there was an area of need. And then as I mentioned earlier, while Malden is on par in terms of actually the number of special education staff, a deeper analysis is probably worth investing in just because when we look at some of those concerns of staff, when we see that maybe the

163co-teachers, the paraprofessionals, it's not translating into those increased achievement outcomes, we want to look a little more closely at how people are being used and if there's an improvement in some of those structures that could better support that. So when we then come up with our recommendations, we really look at those areas of strength and growth. We think what can we build on in terms of strength and then in areas of growth really trying to offer some concrete suggestions for what the district can do moving forward. So this is a very high-level overview. In the report it is spelled out in much more detail. But the first is really looking at a coherent multi-year professional learning plan that would support those inclusive education practices. Things like differentiating, looking at how to meet the range of

164a wide of many learners in a general education classroom, accommodations, modifications, building up teacher strengths that are already there and that willingness that they have expressed that they want to learn more about this. And then the next one is really looking at that MTSS process and how do we expand the use of some of those targeted interventions? So instead of thinking, you know, we have a really good solid instructional practices tier one that we can of course improve on, but the foundational pieces are there. And then we have sub separate. Where's the middle ground? So, when students are, you know, not experiencing the success that we want to see, how do we provide an increasingly intense layers of intervention? And I just want to be clear to you that it doesn't necessarily mean take all

165of these children out of general ed and give them interventions in special ed. When we think of multi-tiered systems of support, we're looking at interventions that are available and accessible to all students. And then how do you blend some of those special ed and general ed resources looking at your staffing again to think about how those two areas could merge better so that we're not losing that real priority and focus on inclusive education. That's a strength. We're just bolstering it. And then we're thinking of if we have a lot of students, not just our students with disabilities, who would benefit from those interventions, how do we bring that into the context of general education? So, that's all part of this idea of refining that MTSS process. And then in terms of those sub separate classrooms,

166really looking specifically at individual student profiles and determining where are the opportunities for these students? So, we have some recommendations in the report about different tools that can be used for that. Using an IEP program planning matrix where we're looking at student IEP goals and then different portions of the day to figure out where those opportunities exist. And then really looking at just the communication piece and clarity. So, I think it's communication, clarity, and consistency. So, a lot of these programs and structures that are in place, um, but people might not be aware exactly of what is the criteria for a certain program in the district. Or how do we make sure that the experience from one school isn't radically different from an experience at another school? Um and that was something that came out

167across stakeholder groups. So, really looking at ways as you're building this plan for improvement, how do you then communicate all of that out to the different stakeholders? So, that is my high-level overview for you in terms of the strengths and the areas of growth. And I think the one thing that I just wanted to really mention and highlight that's not in that PowerPoint is that one of the things that I think is often challenging when you are working to improve services for students with disabilities are staff attitudes and beliefs. And if you have a system that is not willing to kind of let go of some practices that maybe aren't effective or doesn't necessarily believe that students can with support, it makes that process of change much harder. And it was really worth noting to

168me and I think what came out very loud and clear in the focus groups and even in our observations was that this is a staff who really does believe in kids and it's a staff that cares very deeply and has that belief that students can rise to high expectations and that is just huge. And I think that that is a huge strength to build upon. It's not something we see everywhere, so I just wanted to make sure that I highlighted that as well. All right. Thank you very much Dr. Rufo and Pam McDonald. One last word? I just want to say that you do have much more comprehensive executive summary and a summary from me in your packets, I believe. Yes. Yes, they were sent they were they were sent uh last last week. And

169we will also host these on the School Committee website. I I wanted to just also acknowledge and and thank you um Dr. Rufo for sharing your slides through Teams cuz everyone was able to see what you shared here and also online. Um I learned um too late this evening that the slides that we were all looking at earlier, including the earlier parts of tonight's presentation, were we all enjoyed that here in the Council Chambers, but the folks who were on Teams were not able to see any of that. Um I I just wanted to um apologize for that oversight, and um those slides, the report of the superintendent, is on the School Committee meeting website. Um and you can see all of that content um in addition to the slides that Dr. Rufo just presented.

170But with that, um I just wanted to also just reiterate that uh we received this uh the report uh last week, and our work is just begun um to really uh fully read through and appreciate all of the insights and the feedback that we're getting through this this report and through and through the audit as well. And um as you will recall, our commitment was to take the results from this program review. Um we want to get more feedback from our stakeholders and members of the community to see how this resonates with their experience. Um those that participated in the process and those who were not able to. And also that will be integrating um our next steps into the strategic plan as we promised. Um all of these recommendations fit within all of the

171priorities that we've outlined for the strategic plan going forward and so we look forward to doing that. And with that, Mr. Chair, I'll turn it over to you. All right, let's do this everyone. Questions? Queries? Qualms? Let's start with Ms. Horty and then we'll go to Ms. Macklin. Thank you, Ms. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um I just wanted to highlight a couple things and ask questions. One, um the expired license of the educators, I just wanted to let people know that it is not like a driver's license. As someone who holds an educator's Yes, yes, yes. I just wanted to be really clear with you about that. You do not get notification. It just expires, so you have to know when your 5-year date is. It is not connected to anything other than when you

172applied for it. So, it for someone's to expire and them to not realize until a nod it was done by an administrator. So, that is not their lack of paying attention to detail. It's It's very easy in the midst of working and living and existing to forget something like that when there's no notification for um for that expiring. But, I wanted to put that out there so that people understood why that was pretty easy to happen. >> I actually am one of the speech therapists called me in a panic and was like, "Oh my goodness." I'm like, "It's okay. Just get your paperwork together, get your PDPs, and you'll be fine." >> It is It is usually really easily remedied, but it does happen where you you miss the mark. Um one of the questions

173that I had, and it's not even necessarily for you, Ms. McDonald, but also more for the superintendent, um because this really stuck out to me as something that I think we see in Malden and I think a lot of districts deal with this as an overwhelming issue that I think when we think about the day-to-day of the students in the classroom, we forget that often times it it affects everyone, right? So, administrators and program managers and it all comes down that way. So, one of the growth areas that Empower Ed highlighted was um staff special education staffing is commensurate with peer districts, a deeper analysis of how resources are allocated. But, when you go down into the paragraphs that are there, a concern that they had, a concern that I've always had for you and

174your department, is specifically the fact that and I'm going to read this because I think it's important. A relatively small central team is responsible for overseeing a broad and complex set of functions, including special education, related services, compliance, and student services. This structure may limit the district's ability to focus on instructional leadership, program development, and system coherence because administrators are often pulled towards compliance demands. That's not a Malden only problem, but I think if we're going to take this these recommendations seriously, I think we also need to look at how much time the administrative special ed department is being pulled towards compliance so that you don't have this time for creative thinking and also putting yourself into these classrooms and the other folks that are involved in the tier. And I and I think that's

175true. I think compliance is actually, let's be honest, the easier thing. Check the box, figure it out. Um and this year we were stretched especially thin um when the high school program manager left for most of the year. I have I can't say enough about Tanya McDonald who stepped up and has really um taken on a challenge there and is doing a good job, but it is hard. It is hard to be in classrooms. It is hard to be the instructional leader we want to be when we are also doing so much compliance and and so many other things during the day. Um I just wanted to highlight that because I this report clearly shows that there are a lot of strengths and areas to grow, but if we're really truly looking to plan effectively

176for a growth plan, we have to alter every little aspect of it. I also think the key is is a plan. I don't think over the last few years there's been a coherent plan. It's sort of like, "Ooh, let me see if I can make this work." Oh, me and one of the program managers saying, "Maybe let's try this here." And there hasn't been an umbrella plan for moving services forward as a whole. It's literally piecemealing it and I think that's what I'm really excited about is to have a more coherent approach to improving special ed as opposed to doing it in small pockets. You know, me working with one principal to figure out how we can make this work here and can we do this here and does this make sense? And I think

177that's also reflected in the fact that, you know, I'm being honest, we don't have you know, a comprehensive program sort of for special ed that we're disseminating information about because it's not coherent. It is what we're putting together at that moment to make it work for kids and it's not part of an overall strategic plan that we've had for the last few years. And I would just add that that's what we're aiming to address. Um the that that statement that you read that you from the from the executive summary definitely been marinating on that for the last for the last week and a half. Um and we're we're definitely taking a look at that. We do think um we are are beginning to build structures and build um teams that are able to move things

178forward for all of our students in in our schools. We want to make sure that for students in in special education that that's as true as it is for anyone else. And I I think I would also just say that we're excited to have the opportunity as Ms. McDonald said to to really use these findings to inform the strategic plan that we are that we're building so that it's intentional and not haphazard. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Fordy. We're going to go to Ms. Macklin, then we'll go to Ms. Batafora, and Ms. Rosa Weinberg. Thank you Mr. Chair. Um just one surprise um or something that really surprised me is that the co-taught classrooms um are not translating into additional instructional support for our special needs learners. And I with a grandchild

179on an IEP always fought for the co-taught classrooms. So this is really surprising to me and I'm wondering how how we know that the the IEPs are being implemented and followed as they should be. So I think the letter of the law and this goes back to the compliance. I have a co-teacher that is covering that service. I think that we have very limited PD time in this district and I don't think we are doing enough for co-teaching to be truly effective. And Jenny, you can um step in cuz this is I know your area of expertise as well. You really need to invest in that relationship. Um you know, so that both teachers are teaching, so they're differentiating, so they're taking a group, they're taking a group, and they're seamlessly going back. What we

180really have is the in most of our classrooms is is one teacher model with the co-teacher assisting as needed because, you know, we're not doing enough PD around how to do that. We're not building those relationships with our teachers, and they don't have enough They're not doing enough co-planning to make it a seamless differentiation um of instruction for all students. Shannon, you want to Sure, I can elaborate. So, first, I want to assure you that we're not seeing that there's anything necessarily wrong that's happening in there in terms of, you know, students aren't making the progress because things aren't happening. I think you're not seeing the full potential of what could be. So, while there are co-teachers or paras in the classroom, for a lot of kids, that's really important because even just having that

181assist piece of someone extra who is there to help and support is necessary. So, um that said, we want to take it to the next level. So, generally, there's six models of co-teaching that are considered um to be widely adopted. And rather than relying more on that assist model, how can we move towards some of the more um sophisticated models, like Pam had mentioned? Do Just one follow-up. Do we know, on average, um if you can speak to this, how many 504s or IEPs we might have in a particular classroom? So, um I actually I can see those grids with Stephanie Scalise with all her spreadsheets. I think it depends widely. Like, I was looking at a number where one One of our fifth grades, I think Ferryway, he left, had 15 kids in fifth

182grade, but then we can have a second grade that has two or three. Um Generally speaking, um our K-8s have about 100 students on IEPs in them. Uh Ferryway has the most with about 120-ish and a Ferry Far- Far- Hill has the least with about 80-ish on IEPs. So, the it um that's for the, you know, mostly B grid services. So, it varies widely. It really it's um the funny thing about a K to 8 is that your kids are also spread out K to 8. So, we have some real bubbles in different places. We tend to have higher amounts of special ed kids in the higher grades, but generally speaking, K to 5, I would estimate that we have literally thinking of my spreadsheets in my head, five to eight at any grade level

183and then 6 7 8 it gets more like 12 13 14 per grade level per school. And they're spread evenly our special needs learners or My concern is that perhaps one classroom may have several and that the teacher um is not able to implement that IEP as required. So, I think um there it depends. If there are 10 kids in a grade level, then they're usually put in two classrooms. If there's only four, they'll probably put them together so that the teacher can push in to support them. Um but, you know, I don't think our caseloads are exceptionally high in Malden, so I don't think that's that is the issue. And I I think that our teachers work really hard with our kids, so. Thank you, Ms. Macklin. Now, over to Ms. Spadafora. Thank you,

184Mr. Chair. I just want to as I was the one that requested the audit, I just want to say thank you um to the Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent McDonald's for really pressing on and and prioritizing this and having I really want to elevate having sat in one of the focus groups, hearing that our teachers are really dedicated to this work. Um and and that was highlighted in in our strengths is just having amazing educators that um really truly care about the students and care about the work that they're doing. So, I just want to I um I had a conversation with Ms. Laidley at the high school um a couple weeks ago and she's like, "Pam, and I'm trying and I'm trying." I'm like, "I know. We just got to work smarter, not harder." cuz I

185I'm looking at her and that woman could not work harder if she tried. So, Pat Laidley, if you're listening, thank you for all that you do for our kids. But, that's I think I think that's the point of what we need to do now. We have to figure out how to work smarter because I I will say it. I have some of the best teachers working for us here in Malden and I see them every day working hard and the things they do are amazing and I And I just, you know, I'm here to support them and my principals, I'm always in the buildings with my principals with our principals and I just I have we have to figure out how to get better because we can't work harder than we do. Or they can't.

186I probably can. Well, it shows. So, I thank you and um just a few things that that jumped out at me um and I'll be 100% honest um Jenna, I think everything that you compiled was spot-on to what I have seen. Um and this started from walking through all of our sub separate classrooms um earlier in the year to get a better understanding. Um For myself, there was one particular spot that um deep into the back. Inclusion increases steadily through elementary school and peaks in the middle school where full inclusion rates exceed 80% and substantially separate placements reach their lowest levels. However, this trend reverses in high school, where inclusion declines, and substantially separate placements increase significantly, particularly by grade 12. It seems so regressive, all of the work that we put in in the

187lower levels to really get kids into the general ed setting, and then we're reversing course in the high school. Um I did not deep dig deeper into the executive summary to see if there is a a why this is happening, but we all know I have a child that's in a substantially separate placement in the high school. Um that a lot of times, too, we questioned, like when we walked through some of these these classrooms, we're like, "Hmm. Some of these kids, I don't think they necessarily belong here." Um and and seeing that highlighted um in the the recommendations, review the placement of students with low-incident disabilities in more restrictive placements. Um And it's funny, cuz at the high school, we they have um a block together to do common planning. So, it I think

188it's um I think that um the program manager who was here for a long time was a sub-separate person, and so that's what she knew. Um so, it'll be interesting with the a new program manager and and a new administration to really dive into that, because I think there's a ton of potential at our high school. I really do. Agreed. Um and then my only other um And and it did highlight on our internal audit, which I I'm I'm to be completely honest, I think there is a lot of um it it doesn't line up. But, you know, we talk about meeting, always staffing correctly. So, that is our sub separate rooms, which is like the ILPs. We always have a We are able to staff them. We have a teacher and a paraprofessional, and

189we will use staffing agencies like we work very heavily with Precision HR. If we have a para that is out or leaves that we backfill with a Precision person. Um I will say our related services, we use two very small agencies, and they're very good to us about Oops, sorry, about finding us replacements when they leave mid-year. Um so, I actually think our rates um of compliance with speech and language and OT is better than our other districts because of the smaller agencies we work with. Lynn Andrews um does a nice job. And she'll actually like she's a speech therapist. She's actually pulling double duty and doing um speech services at the high school. If we have like um we had someone at the ELC that left for a short time, she went in and

190pitch-hit and did some um evaluations for us here and there when we're missing some. But, um I we work really hard at keeping our staffing levels consistent at our sub separate in our sub separate classrooms. What I was going to tie that to was the presence of additional adults, co-teachers, and paraprofessionals in general education settings does not consistently translate into increased instructional access or differentiation. So, no matter the staffing, are we utilizing them to their best potential? So, I I think when you're using agencies like Precision HR, they don't have the same level of training as our own staff. So, we are keeping our kids staffed correctly. We're getting them through the day, but the actual rigor and instruction level is not. That is for me the biggest thing. It is not where it needs

191to be. And we talked about this in budget last week, the use of contracted services, and maybe a time to look at really pushing for you know, NPS staff rather than uh heavy reliance on contracted services cuz it does build more personal um Yeah. >> relationships with the students. Yeah, there's definitely pros and cons. I mean, yeah. Since I've been here, this that's We've been It's been the MO. >> Yeah. So. Um I think I will send an email cuz I think I have a lot more questions and I don't want to take up the time of the rest of the committee, but again, I just want to say thank you for all of the work um that was that was put into this. Thank you for asking for this cuz I think it's really

192um important to move. And that's what I wanted to highlight was just you know, an We're not highlighting what we're doing bad. You know, we're bringing to light where we can improve, and that is to the benefit of the students. Anytime that we see something that's not going the way it should, it's not a bad thing. It's about just correcting those actions and being better at what we do, whether it's teaching, whether it's a peer. So, thank you. You know, I I say often, "Listen, if I'm I'm I'm wrong, well, then I'm right." And if you can't admit that, it's kids that suffer. So. Ms. Rosenburg. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um thank you for putting these these together and bringing in Empowered Ed. Um I do want to start with just saying I know that

193this is just a very abbreviated amount of time um that we're looked at because the compliance portion that we reported out as 100% is not the experience of quite a few of my constituents. Uh they're not notified or called when things are missed. So, I understand this is a short thing, but also I want to make sure we don't lose sight of that, that I know that for the people who get in touch with me, it's because they know things have gone missing. Um so, just to put that out there and tell that folks know, I know that you'll all be getting in touch with me tomorrow. Um send me your emails. Um the portions in um with the MTSS, which I started to look into, um and this is something that I do hear

194a lot from parents about wanting their child to be able to be in a more inclusive setting. So, hearing that was extremely important and I hope hopeful for where we can go um within the city. I even had one parent who um had advocated for their child and they were they were in an inclusion classroom though, but also thought they just needed a little support. And reports to me very sadly that their child is frequently removed from the classroom and that they feel that with support in that classroom, that would not happen. Because they'd be able to spend more time on learning because people would be clued in to, okay, you know, what's working for this child. So, I hope that we can move towards that model where we really are being able to support

195kids and get them um adjusted um a little bit more. Um uh with that, um I had highlighted the bottom portion of what Ms. Perafore read because this struck me as really disturbing. Across all grades, partial inclusion remains consistently low, reinforcing a system-wide pattern in which placement decisions cluster at the extremes rather than utilizing a more balanced continuum of supports. Taken together, these patterns suggest a structural model in which early placement decisions, program availability, and service intensity collectively shapes students' long-term access to inclusive educational environments. So, obviously that's a recommendation for what we need to be working on. Um again, this supports so much of what parents have reached out to me exactly about this, feeling that they want their kid into something but they're basically told it's one or the other. There's no in

196between. Um and that that does not serve the child and we always have to elevate that. Um another thing going forward cuz I know this is a first step. I would like us still to be addressing. I'm glad that there's compliance within doing the evaluations within 30 days, but I didn't see and again I have to go more through this. Um we have a lot of parents who show up and have spoken about that process when they actually have to go through their meetings, their IEP meetings, um and are dissatisfied with how those go. Um so I just would like still that to come >> We um come up. I have um it's about ready to roll Okay. out. Um we're going to hopefully maybe after April vacation do a trial. Um we have a

197survey. It's um I think CPAC will be happy to hear this. I have a We're putting together information for CPAC how you can sign up and then there'll be a QR code that you can log on and it's a simple little survey that kind of says, "What school are you from? Was it an annual, an initial, or a reval, I believe?" Um and then you know, were your question It's like were your questions answered? Did you feel heard? Um It's three or four quick questions and then anything else you want to tell us, open-ended. Um and then would you like someone to an administrator to call you to discuss your concerns? That's perfect cuz I know people have been asking for that for a long time. So again, there's just different things that I This

198is There's some great things here to move us forward where we need to be. Um but I hadn't seen that one addressed, so thank you for that. I think that I mean parents have been asking for that, so that's perfect for that one. I just want to mention my directive is to have team chairs send out a letter. I have a template letter if we if we know that there's missing services. I will completely um ensure that that is happening the way it is supposed to. I'll put that on the next team chair agenda to review that expectation with them cuz that is my expectation that we are doing that as a district. Okay, thank you. Um one question just to find out. So, when we have ESPs assigned to classrooms, um how frequently are

199they assigned to a classroom? I know in our younger grades like over DLC they are or and then when they get beyond that, um is it typically only when they are assigned one-to-one through an IEP or their classrooms that get additional support? Is it How does it get How do ESPs get So, divided up? >> for as a as sort of a a general rule in Malden, um we have the preschools all have two paras, I believe. All of our kindergartens have one paras except for our integrated which have two. Um beyond that, we don't have a lot of para support in general at Um if a student has a one-to-one, then they would have um a para. However, I an ESP. I want to be clear though, um DESE considers a one-to-one to be

200the most restrictive thing you can have. But other than that, all of our sub separate classrooms, um Salemwood, Linden, Ferryway, BB, all of them have all of the sub separate classrooms have a uh are staffed with a teacher and at least two paras. If someone in that classroom if there are seven kids in that classroom and there is one of the children have a have a one-to-one on their IEP, they will have a teacher, the two classroom paras And the one-to-one. Mhm. We also actually I will say we've we've in invested heavily in some other supports this year through Constellations, which is also a staffing um outside agency, but to bring in some extra behavior supports into those programs um uh to make sure that they are staffed correctly. Thank you. Uh seeing no other

201lights. uh If I might just from the chair on the internal review, I'm just curious what made you choose those dates? I just so for the evaluations, DESE is going to want that from us in by June so it made sense to pick the same dates as DESE wanted from us. Because we have to turn those into the state. They look at some of what's called indicators and the evaluation timeline is one of them. I just needed to give my team a finite time to get that information or I could be standing here without nothing tonight. So I said I we talked to them. We explained exactly what we wanted. We wanted to take each child's IEP. I want you to look at their services, make sure they're getting their speech. Is if they have

202you know 30 minutes of B grid support in the general education, is there someone in there for 30 minutes a day during the math block. If it's ELA, is it during the ELA block? So we had them do that. We gave them I think it was like three weeks to get through it and that's why I picked that time. And this is for Dr. Rufo. On the areas for growth, is it me or are those more protocol-based than they are financial-based? So in terms of the the areas for growth, I think that you know there's always going to be some level of investment that's required. So if you're looking at someone to bring in for training, you know there's going to be a cost associated with that. The process piece, so MTSS, could there be

203a financial component to that? There might be. So if there's a need identified that there are some interventions that are necessary that maybe the district doesn't have, that could come up through that process. I think with the staffing, the recommendation is really to look at what's there. The one area Um, one of the the committee members noted that we did see as pretty lean was the um administration for the oversight of the programs. Um, but besides that I think it's really looking more at the allocation. So, I think there's always can be a cost that comes up through that process. Um, but overall it is more as you had mentioned um process based. Thank you. Also. So, with that I just want to thank Dr. Rufo. Thank you for being here this evening and um

204and also Pam MacDonald. Thank you for your leadership of our department. And um as I said, our work is only beginning. Um, we have a lot of information to um to further study, but also um to receive more feedback from our stakeholders. And then to really figure out um what our priorities are as we move forward with the strategic plan. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And now the school committee is going to be in a brief recess and I hope you'll all join me in uh stopping by to congratulate coach Freker who won the GBL open today. And not only did they win it, but they beat Everett so bad they had to stop it after five innings. So, congratulations coach. School committee will be in a brief recess.

205>> Mhm. >> All right, everyone. Ms. Macklin has spoken. We're now going to come back to session. All right, everyone. The home stretch. Yes. Where's Where's Mr. Piazza? Oh, yeah. Okay. All right, let's do this everyone. We're back. We're now at item four. Subcommittee reports and discussions. Uh let's go to Ms. Badafora. Just turn this on. There we go. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, very briefly, um the finance subcommittee, I still have to get used to saying that, no longer budget, we're finance subcommittee. We met on Thursday, uh April 2nd in City Hall. Uh the agenda included um some continued discussions um surrounding some financial policies. We had started um talking about that the previous meeting. Um which we will actually be taking up some actions, down in motions, and resolutions. A review of the

206March 2026 warrants, transfers, and adjustments policy, and then the FY2027 budget, including where we're at with that. Um And some added topics um from the members surrounding concerns with equity and athletic funding. And um financial look at expanding language offerings at Malden High School. Um We did talk about some net school spending that had been docketed to discuss the impact of the underspending, but the committee had received a memo memo from the mayor and superintendent indicating that um some incorrect health insurance premium figures had been used in reporting to DESE. So, thankfully, um the city had notified the finance manager in mid-March of the corrected insurance rates. And um that affected the figures um that were in discussion. Um from that, the committee members did agree that um inviting the city CFO to our next

207meeting makes sense to better understand how municipal costs are added to our net school spending. Um and and just how it works overall. So, we will be meeting again further towards the end of the month to continue discussions um and as central office continues to work on our FY2025 budget. Um 2027 budget, my gosh. Thank you. All right. Any questions of the uh chair? Uh if I might, I I want to publicly thank Ron Hogan and Tony Mertz, who was here tonight, for fixing this. As most of you know, through the memo, this occurred last fiscal year. And uh when you close the books, typically you never go back. But Mr. Hogan always felt uncomfortable, I believe, when those rates were finalized. And he never lost focus on that. And so when we went to

208start to build next year's school budget, he revisited that item. And that's what led to this being addressed. Now, contrary to what some say, this does nothing to address our long-term problem in the city. This is just a ledger shift. You know, it was on the city side, now it's on the school side. It's not a a realization of any new revenue. Our problem remains, and um it will be addressed in the coming weeks with the municipal budget. Uh we estimate the overall deficit to be roughly the same, the structural deficit, of uh 8 to 9 million dollars. As you know, we did attempt an override. It failed. And we respect that, and now we're going to act accordingly with the upcoming budget, because I still remain convinced you cannot run a municipality on reserves.

209So we are going to have to make an adjustment. And it will mean dozens of positions across our organization will be at risk. But it has to be done. As I outlined at these forums, at a run rate of 8 million dollars, give or take, you're out of reserves in a couple of years. You just cannot do that, and we will not do that. So, that's where we are from our end. And I again, I want to thank Tony and and Ron for staying with this issue. With everything involved with municipal finance, this could have been one that just got lost in the shuffle. But, um you know, you two stayed with it and were able to address this. So, thank you for doing that. All right, everyone. So, let's take up some of these

210motions and resolutions. Uh let's start first with this DESE waiver for the Salemwood power outage. Let's go to Mr. Piazza. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh folks may remember that um in our last regularly scheduled uh School Committee meeting, we had uh brought up the topic uh well, we approved the new school calendar with a sort of asterisk, right? On Salemwood. And um at the end of that meeting, this is the March um meeting, uh we uh we left unsure. I personally left unsure about the process for seeking that waiver, whether it's something that the superintendent can do directly in conversation with DESE, or whether it's something that the School Committee uh needs to vote on. And what I would like to do is just get some clarity on that issue on that issue tonight. As

211everybody knows, I'm a Salemwood parent. I want to know when the end of school is. My my um my fellow Salemwood parents, I think, uh share that same concern. So, just putting that out there for our discussion tonight. Okay. Do you want to add to it, Sue? Um so, thank you. So, um the statute it's uh like most um uh many Massachusetts general laws, uh it cannot sometimes they're a little bit unclear. In general, my reading of it and and consulting with Dassy is that in general for waivers of overall structured learning time requirements for different innovative models and a lot of a lot of other purposes, the school committee needs to request a waiver and then the commissioner needs to bring that to the state Board of Education. However, for the length of year,

212the number of days, and for circumstances like this one or for weather weather closures due to inclement weather also it says the district shall request and in that case, if you look in the the definition the glossary the definitions section of the statute, it says at one it says district, it's the municipal school committee or superintendent. So it's not necessarily that helpful. In practice, from what the commissioner's office says, they usually receive requests like that from superintendent. However, we have the time for the the committee to discuss it and I I would prefer for the committee to to um to do that. So do we have a motion, Mr. Piazza? Well, yes. I'd like to make a motion to seek the waiver for that power outage day and I can tell you a little bit

213more about why if we'd like to have open up for conversation, but I'd like to make a motion to seek that. If it was a 9:00, I would say yes. Yeah. But is there a second? Seconded by Mr. McCarthy for purposes of discussion. So any questions on that? I think we discussed this at our last meeting. Hearing none, all those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? The eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Next up, we're going to stay with Mr. Piazza after school program vendor selection. Well, we heard uh we heard a lot about Thank you, Mr. Chair. We heard a lot about this um in public comment tonight. I I just want to kind of join the voices from the public commenters. I uh am a MOST We are a proud MOST family.

214My daughter's in third grade right now um at the Salemwood. When she was in kindergarten, family members would ask her, "What's your favorite part of school?" And inevitably, for every answer, she would say, "My favorite part of school is after school." And I think that that matters a lot because she had something to look forward to at the end of the day, and she had staff that um that that genuinely cared for her. And so, we heard both about the MOST program itself and the people of the MOST program. And I think both of those are really unique resources for our for our district. So, um what I wanted to do was uh raise this as a um as an agenda item tonight for us to have public conversation uh about the process uh for

215about the a little bit of the background for select why we're selecting the next the the a new vendor, uh why we why we've come to this point in the first place, and and about what the district plans to do to involve parents in the decision-making process. Now, do you have a motion? This is under motions and resolutions. Uh this is something that I offered more in order to provide clarity for the folks like those who came earlier, and I've also received emails from my constituents. Um so, I don't have a concrete motion here, just uh something that I want us to discuss publicly so that parents have answers to questions about the after school program. Okay. Superintendent, briefly, do you want to address? Yes. So, thank you, Mr. Piazza. And you and I have

216had several conversations about this. So, the the what we've said publicly is absolutely true. That we have a desire for the after school programming in Malden to be available to more students than it currently is. And we have an interest in seeing it continue to improve in all that it does. I know that there are many parents that have had a very positive experience with the after school program. And then many families who haven't had the opportunity at all. And I'm And I Please believe I I've reiterated this with our current most leadership and the staff through both myself and Assistant Superintendent McLaughlin that no one's done anything wrong. But we do believe that there are other organizations in working in other communities that that do this really well at a larger scale. And we

217want We felt that there was an opportunity for us to build that capacity here in Malden. As far as the involvement of So, I guess a couple of things. That the the process is outlined through the procurement office is a request for proposals that was launched in mid-March. Proposals are due by April 15th. The vendors are reaching out directly to the city procurement office with questions and clarifications. The the request for proposals, the actual document with all the criteria are um sent to each vendor when they request it from the city. We And And again, I I have also received many inquiries, as have our after-school staff and Dr. McLaughlin as well have received inquiries and clarifications and requests for information. And also an interest in being a part of what the decisions are coming

218forward. And so, what we actually have prepared to go out to our families tomorrow are three ways for them to be involved. One is a simple survey of what they appreciate about the current program that they would like to see continue, what they would like to see change or improved about the about after-school program in the future, and any questions that they might have. And that's kind of the the most accessible way for parents to be involved in that in that process. Secondly, we'll be having a virtual listening session for parents to basically ask them those same questions, but give them a chance to actually speak and feel more more heard in that respect. And that'll be scheduled for next next Tuesday, the 14th, I believe. And then lastly, um we There's an advisory committee.

219This was a part of the original request for proposals. An advisory committee that will actually review those proposals. And we have invited I've invited the the school committee to inform me whether they anyone was interested in being a part of that. And I know that Ms. Rose Eiberg and yourself have have indicated you were interested. We've invited two of our principals to be a part of it. We've invited one of our current site coordinators, um, to be a part of it. And we've also in um, we want to make uh, the opportunity available for two of uh, of our parents and caregivers to be on that panel as well. And so in the communication that'll be going out from my office tomorrow, um, to all of our most families, they will have an opportunity if

220they're interested and available cuz it does require some some time. Um, the advisory committee will be meeting the week after uh, Easter, not Easter, excuse me, April break. And um, in in for we don't know how many proposals we're going to receive, but so the but we're going to be asking folks who are interested to earmark some some time in their calendars. And then the they would potentially be in the first week of May making a site visit to um, the community where the organization is currently operating a program. And um, we can't we have two spots on the advisory committee. We can't have it too big, um, but um, but we do want to have it at that voice of parents involved in the process as well. And so all of that is something

221that um, again, based on the feedback that we had from a lot of parents and caregivers. And I want to thank you, Mr. Balderas, for your um, asking a lot of questions about this and understandably um, but we are we're looking at um, we we want to make sure that that that uh, as we consider um, the the proposals that are being put forth, that it's responding to the concerns of our current um, parents and caregivers as well. Got it. Great. That's is extremely helpful. So I appreciate those details. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Ms. Hordy, $500 Northern Bank donation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That pretty much says it all. Northern Bank has graciously agreed to donate $500 to help defray the cost of the Maldonian or the Malden High School yearbook for students

222that may need financial assistance. They have a check that they would like to give to us on Friday. I really hope it's one of those giant ones. I'm guessing it's not, but um I would like to present a motion that we accept this donation to defray the cost of the Maldonian. Seconded by Mr. Bernard. Any questions, everyone? Hearing none, all those in favor say I. I. >> Anybody opposed? The eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Next up, revision of attendance area map, Miss Rose Zeiberg. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um this came as a request from Superintendent Sipple. Under our policy JCA, attendance areas for the various schools of the city will be drawn by the superintendent and approved by the school committee. Um we've already received a proposed map change and I will turn it

223over to Dr. Sipple to go into the details of why we're requesting um this to be accepted, the new map to be accepted. Thank you, Miss um Rose Zeiberg and thank you, Mr. Chair. So, um last year the the committee adopted this policy, which was a a a shift from what um we've been doing in the past and uh established um attendance zones for each of our five K-8 schools. Um that um those zones are are in the document that um I circulated to you on Friday, which was a revision of what I circulated to you on Thursday, which was a little more complicated than it needed to be. Um but this uh the the the this the the one the first map, those those large dots of the various colors, that shows where all

224of our current kindergarteners uh resided um back in October. And um what we uh have found this year um is uh and what I think we'll find in coming years also is there'll be a need to tweak these boundaries from time to time. Um and in particular this year um our kindergarten classes at Forest Dale are the smallest in the district. Um and we have um classrooms at Beebe, which are quite full. Um even the integrated kindergarten uh classroom has been quite full this year. And so the proposal that I had a chance to discuss with uh Mr. Welday and also Dr. Murphy, the principal of Beebe, um is a proposal to uh shift um a portion of the Beebe attendance zone that's essentially the the east of the Fellsway and north of Glenwood um

225into the Forest Dale attendance zone. Um and I want to be clear that it would not affect any of our currently enrolled students. Um our currently enrolled students um who are uh enrolled you'll see there are already a couple of Forest Dale students there. Um but any any students who are enrolled at Beebe who want to remain enrolled at Beebe, they can they are able to do so. If they would like to uh to transfer to Forest Dale, then that's something the policy already allows for um for them to request. But uh we this is a one tweak that um it's seemed like it could help alleviate a little bit of pressure at Beebe and also um better allocate um or better use the the space that we have available for kindergarten um in future

226grades um for that matter at Forest Dale. And so with that, that's um the reason for the proposal. Okay, Miss Rose Aiberg, you're making the motion? I'll make a motion and just um I guess we make the motion and then discuss a little bit. So yeah, motion to accept the map revision. Seconded by Miss Houghty. All right, any discussion? Please. Thank you. I just want to I mean I've had discussions already with the superintendent, but just to review um and if the policy says if there's siblings who are already in one of the different schools, you're allowed to stay there or request your sibling to go. Um and also just to confirm that students who are registered, some students that they are registered but have not been assigned yet, those assignments will be going out

227cuz some people had raised concern that you know, did assignments already go out and kids are now going to be changed? That is correct. We have not yet assigned students for this coming year. Um they may have gone on the website with our handy-dandy find your school locator and um seen that they were going to be in one school rather than four others. Um but no students have been um officially assigned to a school for next year yet. Thank you. Um just a request when we put this online, I think we we had talked about this before that who I'm not sure who does it, um but to be sure to include a line about that this map may be revised. Um so that people are aware that you know, it's not a lock um

228because it's obviously it's just due to a fluctuation where people are living. Thank you. Now we're going to go to Mr. Piazza. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm just wondering about um how the shift or if we have data on how the shift in the attendance zone would affect the enrollment or the proportion of high need students at either school. Um, I realize it's not a big shift geographical area, but um, if we have like a model or any sense of is this changing the population of high need students or English language learners or low income students in any kind of noticeable way across these two schools. That's an excellent question. I don't have that data um, tonight, but I can certainly provide it. Um, based on the number of students that are in the area,

229I don't anticipate that it'll be a large shift and the I mean, I drive through those areas, so I I know they look very similar at least Forestdale and Forestdale if you will. Um, and and obviously it's a maybe a very it's a very large part of the western side of town. Sure. Yeah, getting access to that data going forward I think would be an important thing right for us to keep our eyes on. >> Yes, I I agree. And and I I will say that there's a lot of our other uh, boundaries are much tighter because the the distance between the boundary to the school itself is uh, it's it's very it's it's really difficult to shift things one way or the other. >> Right. But I think in those areas also the demographics

230um, may be more um, the there's more diversity I would just say. Right. Got it. Uh, next up Miss Houghty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, Forestdale would love to have more kindergarten students. I know this Mr. Welday and I have discussed this before. We would love that. We would love to take any student into Forestdale. Um, aside from that, I just want to point out um, on top of what Miss uh, Rose Ivery said, um, because I know that I have had this discussion with constituents in the past. If you are someone who is on the line, kind of on the border on this map, please feel free to reach out to your school committee rep. Ms. McDonald and I spoke about it, you know, any of us because there's this is not set in

231stone, no discussion, this is the way. Like this is a conversation. Um, we obviously have certain rules that we need to work under um and within, but um I know that I've met with multiple families who were literally on the Forestdale Salem Wood line where this half It wasn't half of the street. It was more the street that backed up to each other. This side went to Forestdale and then folks on this side were supposed to go to Salem Wood. They go to Forestdale now because it was a convenient for them in terms of child care and community help. Um, so please reach out to us if you are looking at this map and your student is in kindergarten and you are worried, we are here to help. Thank you. All right, thank you. Uh,

232no other lights. All those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? The eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Uh, let's stay with Ms. Rosa Iberg. Uh, grade nine and 10 ELA curriculum adoption. I don't think it needs any discussion, just a motion, correct? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, this will be a motion to adopt the Fish Tank um curriculum for grade nine and 10 ELA. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Houghty. All right, any questions, team? Ms. Spadafora. Thank you. My only question is because we're discussing the budgetary surroundings with that, when we vote on this and if we vote for Fish Tank, do we choose if it's the one year, the three year, the five year? Thank you for that question. Uh, the way I read the policy on the curriculum adoption, no.

233Uh, we're we're just getting the committee's approval to make a significant change to our curriculum. Um, and then the details of whether it's a 1, 3, or 5-year would be more um, what the funding is available to accomplish. >> I was going to say, "We'll see you in budget in the finance committee." All right. Thank you. Okay, thank you. All those in favor, say I. I. >> Anybody opposed? Okay, the eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Program of Studies. Back to me. Uh, this is a motion to adopt the Program of Studies that was submitted. Um, again, this came through uh, the superintendent that I will turn over to him to review items we all received an executive, um, summary that highlights the changes that are being made, um, because the book is extensive. So,

234it was very helpful to have the any of the changes that are being made, um, are already highlighted for us. Motion? So, a motion to to adopt the, um, Program of Studies. Seconded by Mr. Bernard. Questions, queries, qualms of the team. Uh, Ms. Bettencourt. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just because we just talked about this in, um, the sped audit review and we were talking about strengthening communication clarity, transparency across Malden Public Schools by establishing consistent district-wide processes, clearly defining programs, so on and so forth. And the RISE program is not listed in the Program of Studies in the high school offerings. Thank you for raising that. Um, I will say, um, that typically the program of studies is set out as a document for families to refer to so that they can advise their students

235when they're making course selections for the next year. And the RISE program would only be available to students through the IEP team process. However, it should be affirmed as an appropriate and and legitimate program. >> grades. It's not listed for the high school. >> Okay, that's a mistake we need to correct. Yeah. Other questions, queries, qualms? Mr. Chair, I just say that is a mistake we will correct. Ms. Betancourt. Thank you. Mr. Piazza. A question about the the addition of courses on stocks, bonds, and how to invest. Um I'm thinking about the new state graduation requirements for financial literacy, and I'm wondering if these courses will satisfy the students' financial literacy requirement. So, Mr. Piazza, I'm not familiar with the new I I know that that's been in discussion. Um but as far as it

236being an actual graduation requirement, I'm not Right. Yeah, to be clear, it was proposed. My understanding is that it was in the initial list of proposals for the new graduation requirement. Of course, the board hasn't voted on those. So, it's merely in proposal stage at this time, but please correct me if I'm if that's wrong. >> As I was walking up, you said it. The state has released this as a proposed Right. addition to the graduation criteria. They've released no details on what would constitute meeting that criteria. So, as soon as we find out that information, we will, of course, adjust course to ensure we are in full compliance. Yeah. It'd would obviously if those course if the courses listed there could satisfy that requirement, but I realize state. And I think we have a

237good foundation here such that if there were to be requirements around this we could easily shift given that we already have um such a strong team in place and some type of coursework to build off of. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Houghty. Thank you Mr. Chair. Speaking of stocks, bonds, and how to invest, Mr. Piazza, um I was I was under the impression that my child took that course. So, it's just a name change or because he took intro to financial literacy also to answer your question, Mr. Piazza, that's an offering as well, a half-year course of intro to fin lit. So, like then there's my understanding is a second half option is stocks, bonds, maybe it was called something different. So, those have been offered. Those were in an addendum um cuz they

238were they were Okay, thank you. >> we just included them in the full program of studies. Those were courses um we didn't put them into last year's program as after the school committee approved the program of study, we then realized um end directed studies we needed to um add some additional options for students and we included them in a in a addendum to indicate that they were added to the document um and so, we've now included them in this document for your approval. So, now they're just going to be part of the math elective offering section or something alike. Now that they've been included into the content area. >> Business elective offering. Thank you. Thank you. Perfect. Appreciate it. Thank you. Anybody else? Seeing none, all those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? Okay,

239the eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Next up, policy DGA authorized signatures, Ms. Spadafora. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um so, at the beginning of this meeting I voted no on the March 2026 warrants just because policy DGA reads that all warrants submitted for payment must be signed as approved by majority of the school committee. We discussed this in the finance subcommittee and um as we have just recently started post docketing these, uh wanted to dig into this item to ensure that as a committee we're doing our jobs properly. Um the I was informed when first asking about this process that the chair was granted the authority to approve on the school committee's behalf. And that was due to the Municipal Modernization Act of 2016. However, there are no minutes that support a formal vote um

240of that action happening. So, without proof, I move that policy DGA requiring that all warrants submitted for payment be approved by majority of the school committee be referred to the policy subcommittee for review and recommendation and the committee adhere to the existing policy as written. Questions. Uh if I might just from the chair, uh are you are you saying that you would refer it to policy? Yes. Yeah, okay. That that would be great if we could take a look cuz I was here in 2015-16 or whatever it was and I I was certain that we had adopted that provision from the Municipal Modernization Act and the reason we did that is um I hate to admit it, but I've been in public service now for nearly 30 years. And when we had a majority of

241the school committee signing the warrants, it was, believe it or not, one of the most difficult task to do. And there were times when um bills were close to not being paid or people being paid. And so when this act became available to us, we instituted it and there hasn't been an issue since. Uh Tony Martz is in my office average of two, three times a week sometimes having these warrants signed. So, um I hate to go back to how it used to be for that reason. And I think if the committee was at least able to discuss this, I think it would be helpful to all of us where you hear from Tony herself as to what it used to be like to what it's like now. So, I'd be okay with that. Ms.

242Spatafore, just confirming just referring it to policy, is that what you're saying? Yes. So, we did hear from Ms. Martz. She joined us in our finance committee meeting. We heard about, you know, the majority of members having to come in and everybody signing it. Um again, it's just about being thorough with the policy. There's no formal It's not listed in any meeting minutes that a vote was taken either in a subcommittee or in a full committee. Um the only member that was here at that time um from 20 um 16 to 2017 was Mr. Drammey who did not He remembers a change but didn't remember taking a formal vote. So, we're just asking that the committee look at it um to ensure that we are following our policy. Ms. Rose Ivers? I'd be happy to

243second this um as all things policy. Um and I had just been going to comment on how Mr. Drammey had said that he does remember literally having to come down and there'd be rows of paper. Yeah. And you'd walk down the whole row and have to sign every single one on a regular um basis. Um which in part was obviously why it became simplified so we can look at this and I can look at other um recommended policies that um MASC puts out. Um and happy to take that up in non-policy. All right, there you have it everyone. Any questions, queries, qualms, concerns? All those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? Okay, the eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Uh let's stay with Ms. Better for. This is revised transfer policy. Thank you, Mr.

244Chair. So, policy DBJ states that the superintendent of schools has the authority to make two types of transfers without school committee approval. The transfer of funds from one account within the personnel services or operations maintenance budget to another account within the same personnel services or operations and maintenance budget with the same department and responsibility codes. However, um our policy actually contradicts and in speaking with MASC and per the Department of Revenue's opinion 94-660, only school committee has the authority to transfer amounts between line items in its budget and cannot delegate this authority to any other. So, uh I am moving to refer policy DBJ to the policy subcommittee for amendment to comply with Massachusetts Department of Revenue opinion 94-660 and align with the Massachusetts Association of School Committee guidance affirming that only school committee may

245approve line item transfers. All right, questions, queries, qualms. If I might, can I just ask the policy chair, will you look into whether or not the Municipal Modernization Act address that as well? I thought it did, but I can't be certain. But there you have it. So, motion by Ms. Better for. Was it seconded by Ms. Rose Eiberg? I Okay. Any questions on there, everyone? And you'll have uh Ms. Merton, I presume, to see what the impact might be and Um sure. You're welcome to come. All right. All those in favor say I. I. Anybody opposed? The I's have it. That carries unanimously. All right. DESE inter-district school choice program. Ms. Patafora. Thank you. So, you might think that I'm looking for a vote tonight for us to choose whether or not we are a

246school choice district or not like we've done in the past. However, it seems as though we've been doing it wrong all along. So, under school choice law, Massachusetts General Law Chapter 76 12B as amended in 1993, all school districts in Massachusetts are presumed to participate in and admit non-resident students through school choice. See Chapter C General Law Chapter 76 12B. A receiving district can withdraw from school choice only if a school committee holds a public hearing on this issue and then votes to withdraw from the school choice program prior to June 1st. That hearing and the school committee's vote can occur at the same meeting and may occur at a scheduled school committee meeting provided there is noticed to the public that this item will be discussed and that members of the public are afforded

247an opportunity to participate and make their position known to the school committee prior to the vote. The key is we've never formally docketed this as a public hearing. It has only been on our agenda as an agenda item. So, I move that the school committee schedule and hold a duly noticed public hearing pursuant to Massachusetts General Law Chapter 76 12B on the district's participation in school choice prior to June 1 with the option to vote following that hearing. All right. You want to do that May 4th, I presume? That would be perfect. Yep. All right. There you have it. Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. Bernard. Any questions? Mr. Rose-Iversen Um just as a possible explanation for how this came to be, um looking at the reference policy from MASC, um it says a

248public meeting, um which actually should be public hearing. So, they used a model policy, but the model policy has it incorrect. So, there you go. Just as an explanation. All right, any other questions? Mr. Piazza Yeah, I'm looking at Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm looking at the um the uh the document on JFBB. It says that by May 1st of every school year, the administration will determine the number of spaces available in each school to choice students. Will we have that information ahead of the March the May 4th meeting where we'll be discussing this in more detail? So um we uh to my knowledge, for years Malden has not participated in school choice. And so, I've never been asked to provide that information. Sure. Um based on our projections now and the amount I mean,

249I think that that's something that's done as a matter of course if in fact it's true that that's going to be the case that we're going to be admitting students we'll be participating as other most districts many districts do. Um we can provide that information. We have our current enrollment and we know how many seats we have in various grade levels based upon the capacity of those schools. Um but that is um and so, that is something that I could provide. Um That's great. I think that'll be helpful for our conversation on the 4th. Anybody else? All those in favor, say I. I. Anybody opposed? Okay, the eyes have it. That carries unanimously. Uh MASC Contract Policy Service, Ms. Bettencourt and Ms. Rose-Iversen. So, as we talk about policies, this is probably the crux of

250it all. Um I've been working or talking with Ms. Rose-Iversen for months now on every time we come across something, it's like, oh, this is out of date. This is um it doesn't match Massachusetts General Law. Our policies are the operating framework of the district. And if they're outdated, inconsistent, incomplete, decisions are difficult to defend and implement. So, um having reached out to MASC, they offer um it's called the MASC Contract Policy Service, um in which they will take our entire manual, um make sure that our policies are up-to-date, make sure that they match any and all of our contracts that we have entered into, make sure that they match Massachusetts General Law. Uh they really just dig deep and I'm going to say set us straight. So, um Before I go further, Ms. Rose-Iversen

251Thank you, Ms. Bettencourt, and um Mr. Chair. Um I've been on policy now, um chairing that for a while, and um consistently find that there have been errors, things that hadn't been updated. We were looking at a policy that was still talking about the um Lincoln School. Um so, I've been updating them as I can. This would enable us to have that comprehensive look at them as one. Believe it or not, but one of our policies is we have to regularly update our policies. Um I kid you not, but that is a policy. Um these policies do come in in handy even when we were in negotiations and working on different items that were brought to us. It was very convenient to be like, "Oh, wait, we already have a policy on that." Believe it

252or not, yes, pest control, we have a policy. Um we need to bring them up to date. They're also some that are just so outdated that they only refer to everybody as committee men. Um I don't know when that one was put into play. Um before us women folk got on, I guess. Um So, I know where we're going with this. We're hoping um I We're trying to set the best place to to do with this. If we send it to policy to look at this um Ms. Batafor was able to get a proposal from um MASC that outlines costs. I am just looking though, they wrote Peabody School Committee um on it, so here is this one. Um but a motion to send this to policy to take a look at it. Um there

253are figures involved. The the fee for the whole thing is $10,500. Um it takes a long time to go through this. Um I have been warned that it is months and months. This is not an easy process. We do have a lot of policies. One of the things about our policies, we refer to other policies, we refer to MGL. It's also tricky because very frequently, which I'd like to stop us doing, I like us to start adding when we amended things so that when you go and look like in this case where we don't know when did we make the amendment that maybe we did when did we change it so that the mayor signs off. We don't have any way of finding it currently in the way the policies are kept. So, anything that

254we can do so that as a legacy of people being able to make those connections, I think would be vital right now. Um and just getting in that outside eye to make sure that we are aligned with um all of various things from the federal government down. There are different things that I know I worked with Pam McDonald's um for months to get different things updated. Um Um, it's time, um, I would say, to get them all in, um, in order. Okay, Ms. Wady. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, should this be going before That would be your office, policy or finance? That's what I was just going to say. Should this be before finance, too, as well? And I don't know. Sorry, it's getting late. >> So, my motion, well, my motion was, if I

255may, refer the proposed contract, uh, with the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, um, in the amount of $10,500 for a comprehensive policy review and dev- and development of a working policy manual to a joint meeting, um, the budget and policy subcommittees for further review. Motion made, seconded by Ms. Rose Eiberg. Any other questions? Is it budget or finance? Both. Joint. Oh, finance. >> Finance and policy. Finance. We know the hour is late. Thank you. All those in favor say aye. Anybody opposed? Okay, the ayes have it. That carries unanimously. And then finally, under motions and resolutions, resolution in support of a financial management review, Ms. Badafora and Ms. Rose Eiberg. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Ms. Rose Eiberg actually brought this up in our finance meeting, um, where the City Council recently, um, what's the

256word I'm looking for? Um, it was an order, um, to conduct a financial management review, and, um, we assumed that that encompasses the entire city budget, um, and we fall underneath that. So, realistically, this resolve, and if I may read it into the record, states, "Whereas the Malden School Committee affirms that transparency, accountability, and responsible stewardship of public funds are essential to effective governance. And whereas the residents of Malden have a right to understand how their tax dollars are allocated and expended expended across all municipal departments, including the public schools. And whereas the City Council adopted an order requesting that the mayor apply to the Massachu- Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services Financial Management Resource Bureau for a comprehensive financial management review. And whereas such a review would provide an independent and professional

257evaluation of municipal operations, financial practices, and organizational efficiency. And whereas the Malden Public Schools represent a significant portion of the city's budget and play a critical role in the community making financial transparency in this area especially important. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Malden School Committee hereby expresses its full support for the proposed order to seek a financial management review of the City of Malden. And be it further resolved that the School Committee strongly encourages that the scope of this review include all municipal finances, including those allocated to and within the Malden Public Schools. And be it further resolved that the School Committee looks forward to reviewing the findings of the Financial Management Resource Bureau review upon completion and working collaboratively with city leadership to implement any recommendations that improve transparency, efficiency, and service

258to the residents of Malden and the students of the Malden Public Schools. So, motion made. Is there a second? I presume Ms. Razi-Burk. Okay, questions. Mr. Piazza. Um, I have a question that is not about the content of this resolve, but it's about, um, policy. We've been talking about policy, um, a fair bit. Uh, tonight, um, as a new school committee member, I rely on policy to to understand how to how I can um you know uh execute the duties of this office effectively. Um now I learned an important lesson about policy uh at the um at the March uh school committee meeting. And the lesson was that at that point in time I had sent a resolve to the school committee that violated the policy that I'm about to read here, which says that

259all documentation should be submitted to the clerk of the committee by close of business at least at least 6 days prior to the meeting. Packets should be delivered to the school committee members at least 5 days prior to the meeting. At the time, the the resolve that I had submitted was did not meet the specifications there. And as a committee, we decided to table that resolve in order for folks to have time to read and review, and then we held a special session. Now I I look at this resolve and it's the exact and I see the exact same um situation. It's uh this resolve was uh not included on the agenda that was sent to us on April 12th April 2nd, excuse me. Um it was added to an agenda today, and the text

260of the resolve was um was emailed to us at 11:05 at during the day of the actual meeting. Uh I realize that we just read the the text of the resolve into the record, uh but again, I believe that policy is important, and I believe that we should be consistent with how we're adapting uh how we're um implementing those policies. Um Mr. Piazza, hang tight. Let me go to the chair of policy, get her take. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, I would say that this it did come late. I had the same I wasn't not sure it would make it on, honestly. Um for different reasons. Just I didn't know if time-wise I got in. I would be saying I would make motion. Um and which is at policy BGF suspension of policies. We've done

261this multiple times before when facing things like this. It could have been made the that evening. Um because I was abstaining, I did not make the motion that night, but thought maybe another member would if they had wanted to or were aware of it. I know Mr. Piazar after the meeting I went and told you there's this policy in place that we can make a motion to suspend, temporarily suspend by 2/3 vote of the committee, members present in a regular special meeting um to set aside a policy. So, I would set aside policy. Now, I'm looking up the number of the policy. Um I think it's with BEDB. I'd have to look that one up. Um which is the agenda policy. I thought I had printed it out. I believe it's BEDB. I could look

262it up. Well, what about a compromise? What about if we table this until our next meeting because in anticipation of this our chief of staff, Maria Louisa and I did reach out to DLS today and they have agreed to do exactly what this resolution asks for. Um so, if that would work where we table this until the next meeting knowing that DLS has agreed to do the review. Yes, and to be clear Uh hold one second. Uh one second. Please. Thank you, Mr. Chair. To be clear, this is not a comment on the content of the resolution. >> Yeah, understood. But under the circumstances that you just outlined, I would make that motion to table. All right. Does that work for the sponsors? Cuz the wheels are in motion. I would make the motion also

263to suspend I think table and gets top priority in view It does, but just in effort to compromise, Mr. Piazza has raised something that you know, I think if the sponsors were willing we just hold it over till May. The wheels are already in motion today with DLS. I think everybody walks out of it okay. I defer to Ms. Bedford as well. Ms. Bedford, do you want to comment? Let me just get your light on. Stand by. Go right ahead. Thank you. And I I just want to um I completely understand Mr. Piazza's because obviously you weren't aware of the motion to be able to um suspend docket rules to be able to have taken that up last uh meeting. Um I did reach out to um the mayor um Friday. So while this didn't

264come to everybody um till today, I did reach out and um noted that um for amending the agenda would under emergency circumstances you can add which is not reasonably anticipated 48 hours in advance for our meeting. So the information in regards to net school spending and that change was not reasonably anticipated and that's why it wasn't docketed um in a timely manner. But I'm willing to table hearing uh information from the chair in regards to this to the May meeting. All right, there you have it. So motion, you made the motion, right? Ms. Bedford was seconded by Ms. Rosa Iberg to So now they're going to move to table it, all right? Right, just to be clear I thought I I made the motion to Oh, yeah. Post it table. I'm sorry. You're right. You're

265right. Do you Is there a Second to table? Ms. Spadafora is seconding. And okay. Thank you for the clarification. Uh let's see. Ms. Forty, you want to add something I believe? >> Uh yes. Uh given all the information that we just got, I'm wondering if we're considering having a special meeting in between like we Sorry. Like we did last time, if there's going to be new information provided, if we should be calling a special meeting when you have more information, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, we won't. Uh they told us today that uh we're in the queue and they think the soonest that they're going to get to us is in the fall. And I can tell you this. Last time we had them in here, it was more protocol-based. You know, I don't foresee them coming

266in uh telling us how to raise new revenue or identifying new sources of revenue. It's going to be more about how we operate. You know, so 10 years ago, whatever it was, they said, you know, you probably should have a CFO above the treasurer, assessor, and uh controller. So, I think they'll do things like that. But we'll see. You know, who knows? But the larger issue is what I said previously during the subcommittee report and that is uh we have some major decisions to make in the next couple of months. And uh what what I wish what the state would review is chapter 70 because it should not be lost that last year they went from 5 million in aid to Malden to 500,000 this year going into next year. That to me is the

267real crux of our problem. But I think we have a a solution here. So, um and I'll forward the um information Sharon to you and Jen. Yeah, we did get confirmation from DLS today that we're in the queue. So, you have that. And we'll take this up formally at the May meeting to address your concerns, okay? That's great. All right. So, the motion's been made, it's been seconded. All those in favor say I. I. >> I. Okay. Any opposed? None opposed. So, that carries unanimously. So, Madam Clerk will make a note for the May meeting. Yeah. All right, everyone. Believe it or not, we're at personal privilege. Let's go left to right, and then we'll entertain a motion to go into executive session. Anybody on the left personal privilege? Or not? Mr. Piazza. Thank you,

268Mr. Chair. I have an email from the principal of Salem Wood School announcing a few events. Uh So, first I'd like to wish a happy assistant I'd like to wish assistant principals happy assistant principal appreciation week, that's April 6th to 10th. We are truly, and I mean this, truly grateful for the assistant principals at the Salem Wood, Jane Wright, Kristen Reedy, Lauren McGonagall. They have been wonderful resources for me as a parent. My students know them well, and and so thank you for all you do. And then a few Salem Wood events, Wednesday, April 8th. So, that's Wednesday of this week. The Family Teacher Organization is hosting K4 Bingo Night. That's from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in the 5:00 to 8:00 caf cafeteria. Friday, April 10th, also this week, there's a K4 Art Show. That's

2692:30 to 3:30 in the K4 Cafe. And then on Thursday, April 30th, we have the Family Teacher Organization K5 movie night. That's in the K5 That's in the 5 to 8 cafeteria. I don't have information about the movie that we will be screening, but uh stay tuned. Very good. Thank you. Over to Ms. Houghty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This Friday at Forestdale, April 10th, from 5:30 to 7:30, is Forestdale's biggest fundraiser of the year, Walk the Rock Rock the Walk. Please join them. Um they will do their two laps around the building and then have a party after with food and music. Um I apologize for my tardiness to the meeting this evening. I was at the Malden High track meet over at Macdonald Stadium, where we were against the Lynn English, and I believe,

270if I was paying attention closely enough, we got the most points. Um I'm not 100% sure though, because I missed I missed at least one race my son was in. Um so, we'll we'll check that tomorrow. Um also, happy assistant prin- principals to week, sorry, to Carrie Carpenito and Cara Hovanesian for all they do for everyone. Thanks. Thank you. Ms. Betterfor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick um update that SEPAC uh will be hosting a Understanding Your Child's Rights in Education Matters. Um They're inviting parents and professionals to a free virtual workshop, Basic Rights Understanding the IEP. The session will walk through the IEP process, break down uh the sections, which was very helpful that Ms. McDonald was actually pointing out in her presentation tonight, and help just better understand how to support students.

271So, that's April 16th at 6:30 p.m. Um there is a link on my social media page as well as a C-PAC page as well as I think it might be coming through Parent Square. So, um mark your calendars. All right, very good, Ms. Rosaiberg. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For um over at the Linden, um they report out the Nature's Classroom went absolutely great. Um there are field trips that are ongoing. They're clapping for that. Um it's they did say it was fantastic. Um the PTO will be bringing in a science magician show um this week for for next week, I'm sorry, um for students next Thursday. Just sort of as an appreciation, giving them something fun um after testing. Um through the bike grant that they received, fourth and sixth graders will be having a

272bike assembly on Tuesday about bike safety. Um they will be also they will be acknowledging and and congrats also and thank you to the assistant principals. Um appreciation week the PTO will be working on that. Um spring portraits will be coming up, so be looking for that. Um they wanted us to me to start promoting already in May. Um Cinderella will be um the musical be put be being put on May 1st and 2nd. Um tickets will be $10 for that. Um on May 9th, they will be having a cookie class at $10 per person. Um teacher comes in and um teaches them how to decorate their own cookies. Um the Model UN students who I like to keep um track of, they got best paper at their competition at Northeastern and they will be

273heading out again. Um again over at um Northeastern um in May. Um and this one's very is wonderful. This um student, Valentina Brown, who is an ambassador for Project 351, she's an eighth grader there, and she's doing a clothing drive um which is through this Friday. Uh clean, gently used clothes are accepted. No shoes or undergarments. Clothes of all sizes are being accepted. There's um collection things right in the the lobby. And just on a very personal note, I do want to thank people who have reached out with prayers and good wishes for my family over the last two weeks as my husband is in recovery from having a kidney transplant. So, thank you very much for checking in on all of us. He is doing very well. Very good. Very good. All right, ending

274on a high note. All right, now we'll entertain a motion to go into executive session. Motion by Ms. Macklin, seconded by Mr. Bernard. Clerk will call the roll. Mr. Drummy? Mr. McCarthy? Yes. Ms. Bettencourt? Yes. Ms. Macklin? Yes. Ms. Fordy? Yes. Mr. Piazza? Yes. Mr. Bernard? Yes. Ms. Rose-Iversen? Mayor Christensen? Yes. School Committee will now be in executive session. >> Mhm. >> I will now entertain a motion to stay. Mr. Bernard to adjourn. Seconded by Uh, I think I'm going to I saw your hand first. Uh, Ms. Macklin. Um, all those in favor say I. Anybody opposed? The eyes have it. School committee is hereby adjourned. All right, good work everyone. Good work.