Good evening everyone. Can we please stand for the pledge of allegiance? I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God
indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Veronica, can I get a roll call for attendance, please? Miss Hernandez, present. Mr. Organ, present. Miss Enriquez, present. Miss Cabraw, present.
Mr. Dr. Gomez Pereira is out today. Miss Balderas present. Dr. Neville present. Miss Kovas Carabayo present. And Miss Al Faro is absent. Oh, she's here. Eight in the affirmative and one absent.
Thank you very much. Um, can I make a motion for the approval of the minutes of the regular meeting on April 9th, 2025? Motion. Second. Thank you. We'll move on to public
comment. Does anyone have any p any comments they'd like to make? Please come up and write your name um on the on the sheet and come up to the podium. No public
comments. Seeing none, we'll move on to presentations and I'll hand it over to Dr. So we do have one name strength and we do have one name strength and story
award and this award was actually nominated by our students. Do you want to read what you wrote? I'll I'll hand it over to you so you can give the award. Um, so I sent this email to Dr. Ala and
I wrote, "I heartwarmingly recommend Miss Lima for the name string story award as my AP Cal teacher during my junior year. She was not only an exceptional educator with an outstanding AP passing rate of
84% but also a deeply supportive and caring mentor. She consistently went above and beyond and connected with students on a personal level. I especially appreciate the moments we shared during lunch where we would both bond over our mutual love for hiking.
Miss Lima's strength as a teacher comes not only from her academic excellence, but from the genuine relationship she builds with her students. [Applause]
Yeah. Yeah. [Applause] Yeah. With the kids. Yeah. And And then Yeah. Sorry.
[Applause] So I believe that there's no greater honor than being recognized by your students. So this is very true. Thank you. Um our next presentation is actually our presentation on um social emotional
learning in Chelsea public schools. And just to frame it a little bit for everyone, we are doing a series on school safety and security. And the reason why we're sharing out about
social emotional supports is because we know that many of our students will need to feel safe in schools. And part of that is knowing our students, as we say in Chelsea, by name, strength, and story. And it's
also reaching out to our students who are struggling with some social emotional issues and and all of us do and need the support. So, we have a myriad of social emotional options for our students, ways for them to plug in.
And I'm very proud of this work that we've been doing over the last several years, especially during the pandemic. And during the pandemic, we as a team became very concerned about the mental health of our students. And with our student opportunity act dollars and our
SR funds, we invested heavily into mental health seal. And so I'm going to turn it over to our amazing chief of staff, um, Dr. Aaron Jennings and our director of student support, um, Miss Brenda Pena. U, this is an all-star
team. I couldn't be prouder of the team that we have leading this work. So, um, just going to go ahead and let them have the floor. um I'd like to say that it probably took a collective over 20 degrees to get this mic on and
so at least we're well educated. My name is Dr. Jennings. what a joy and honor it is to pres to be um present before you all on this evening. I first want to give um massive kudos and accolades to Dr. Beta who has been leading the helm of this um um this
charge for us and who has given my colleague Brenda and I um the support, encouragement and push to make sure that we respond to the needs of our students in an innovative way, in a timely manner. um and ensuring that we have the
resources and supports to do it in such a way where we meet our students where we are. And so um on that note, I'm happy to um be a part of this presentation to present to you all. Um just a quickly a quick frame up. Um this will be a high level
presentation. Um we're going to stay in the rafters or be on the balcony. Um in this presentation we if you for those of you that have the school committee members have the presentation in front of you. You can see on slides five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, and fourth. There's a lot of information on the
slides. Um, we purposely wanted to give you as much information as possible so so that you can have in your arsenal and your toolkit. We won't go over um everything on the slide. We just want to make sure that you have the information in front of you. Um my colleague Brenda
will be um going through the slides and going through a high level marker for you all as well. All right. So once again, we're excited. Um as Dr. beta share this is presentation is called social emotional learning in Chelsea public schools and as another orientation I just want to share with you four points
of of this presentation um post presentation you will have an understanding of the foundational elements um of a district-wide social emotional learning model um both explore the strategies um that we um embed across our school school and school
classrooms within the system um define leadership roles we're lucky to have um individuals in um positions to do this work and then lastly apply practices that build emotional safety and academic growth in our schools. And so at this
time I'm going to pass to my colleague Brenda. Um thank you so much. So unlike Dr. Jennings, I have to pull down the mic because I am short. So good evening everyone. Um and again thank you for allowing us to present um this
information. Uh we are an incredible district. We are a well-resourced district. We are also a trauma-informed district. So I just want to uh thank you all and thank Dr. Beta and Dr. Jennings for their continued support um and their continued uh collaboration when it comes
to really trying to be innovative within the district, bringing in more resources and supports. Um so I am going to be going over um a couple of slides. Again, very kind of a quick um overview. Um, however, if you do have any questions, feel free to definitely reach out. I'm more than happy to continue this
conversation. Um, so we really are comprehensive. Um, when you know, you look at comparable districts, um, we have CPS really has a large support team. We really think about supporting students at all levels. Um so here you can see all of the support teams that
exist um in the MTSS model. In terms of our staffing and numbers um since 2019 to 2025 um we've continued to increase our support staffs within our buildings. Uh school counseling staff we have 19 counselors in total. Um and we've recently
introduced four within the elementary level and continue to expand. Um and within our social work department, we've had uh 21 social workers um to across the district and then we've within the last two years have implemented two IEP related social workers to support
students with gritted related services. In terms of our commitment to SEAL, we're looking at a multi-tiered support system. Um, so just to kind of give you a breakdown of what that looks like, our tier one is our universal supports. That is accessible to 100% of
all of our learners. Our tier 2 is our targeted interventions that usually will reach 15 to 20% of our students. And then our tier three are more individualized crisis interventions, more connecting with outside providers when they need those resources and
supports. Um, so we really are all encompassed. Um, and one of the things that I can't stress enough is that we have very strong community partnerships to allow us to continue to collaborate and provide resources, supports. Um, and also part of our tier 1 universal supports. I am going to mention Maida.
Uh, she participated recently. We had the opportunity and the pleasure to present to families about the MTSS process about social emotional learning and how to collaborate and how to be thought partners when supporting your your children at home. So looking at our tier one universal
supports, this exists across peak prek through 12. Um so really looking at our panorama surveys, our trails curriculum um is used prek through 12 as well. Um and really our alongside app um we've had the opportunity to introduce the
alongside app. It is a mental health AI app that allows for journaling. Um allows students there's journal prompts, there's videos, there's the opportunity to interact and engage. um and really for students to to self-regulate. Um and I can tell you it's been going very well. We are in year three with
Alongside and 89% of our students are using it actively and they've participated in the last three years in over 25,000 activities. and looking at our tier 2 supports um here it's targeted interventions um family support initiatives such as the
presentation that I presented with our families um and really continuing to utilize support groups and curriculum. So one of the things that we do grades 3 to 12 is our ARCADS which is our annual screener um and that is something that we facilitate every October grades 3 to
12 and it is our anxiety and depression screener that allows us to identify students at need. Sometimes there's students that we might not necessarily be able to immediately identify and this allows us to do so. We're also in comparison to comparable districts. We've been doing this for 5 years. Um
and some of the districts, you know, this is kind of year one and year two for them. So we are definitely ahead of the curve in terms of providing those supports. And then looking at our tier three uh intense individualized. So again, trauma-inforced cognitive behavioral therapy that does happen with
our social workers, our crisis interventions if we have to connect with our outside crisis providers. Um, and we also have our teleaalth related services through cartwheel care. So we're able to connect our families um and our students with teleaalth therapy after school if
they need it. And one of the things that I'm extremely excited about that just came out as a press release is our new partnership with Perea Health and the LEGO Foundation and they will be supporting our neurode divergent students, not only students that fall under special
education. It supports all of our students. Um, and what's really exciting about that is that they develop play kits. It is play therapy. So they specialize depending on the need of the student. They will customize their kits to allow them to provide that support. And it's also a push-in model where
we're able to use within the classrooms as well. And now I'm going to briefly go over our SEAL district framework. So here, you know, it really for us is really marrying the two, right? I think traditionally and historically there's been curriculum and
instruction and then social emotional learning. And one of the things that we're doing really well in Chelsea with our teams is we are embedding curriculum and instruction with the social social emotional needs. and making it part of the day-to-day curriculum. So, I have the honor and the pleasure to work with
uh Matt Msina, who is one of our curriculum coordinators as well, and we work closely together in supporting our teams. So, just to give you a little bit of a brief overview of what our district model looks like. So, we are the coordinators at the district level. Um,
and then we continuously have 11CAL leads, one per school. Um, and then we also have school-based teams. So, what's really great about that is that we also have the opportunity to hire four additional members within the school setting to comprise of a team of five to
do individualized planning within their schools. Um, this past week I was doing related walkthroughs, meeting with principles, meeting with our leads, and really focusing on developing a rubric as well that will help us look at the classroom to ensure that we are
embedding within the day-to-day instruction. And you know just focusing on some of you know in in terms of the overall work we want to do it's really embedding in daily practice using common language across the classrooms. We want this to be part of our culture. We want everyone
to be able to identify um and making sure that we're doing peer-to-peer coaching and that we're doing these walkthroughs and that we're having these conversations and that we're building the capacity of our team to be able to do this work um in collaboration. And that was very kind of a quick brief overview. I could probably
talk about this for hours as Aaron knows and he said keep it short and brief. Um so I'm taking his directive. Um but if you have any questions definitely we are open to questions. Um, I just want to say thank you so much for the presentation. I think um, we
really need this. Uh, especially when I went to the Chelsea High School. For me, it was amazing to hear that. I mean, I'm not alone because I going through through with my son and and hearing talking about your daughter is kind of like connecting me to the same thing.
So, I'm really thank you so much because that helped a lot and especially to understand that I mean issues that happen and we have to look for you know support and this what you're doing right now it's really like amazing because
it's really um helping parents and students too. Thank you so much. Thank you. Um I want to thank you guys um both for putting this together. Um I think it's very insightful. I know of some of the community partners that you work with
because I've taken um some of the um advantage of both some and I've mentioned this in the past of the school resources whether it's through um like cartwheel or um the inperson um social
emotional um learning which again I think to you know uh collaborate as well um it's one of those things where I think the most important thing that you guys mentioned right now is to normalize and to create a consistency within um
the language and um not only in the curriculum but to norm you know to normalize the social emotional um and emotional support um ac across the board. um and the classes that um the staff provide also
engage in play um day-to-day activity, but it reminds us that we're not alone. Um and that um no no child is either the same and a lot of the hurdles that we're going through might be just basically trying
to address our child's need while simultaneously healing our own um childhood trauma or unadressed trauma and and tackling the stigma of what that is mental health. Um I would like to know uh you mentioned our community
partners if you could just elaborate on what some of those are because there seems to be in some cases a disconnect of what our community partnerships are. So, if we could just elaborate on that because I know that you guys do so much behind the scenes works and again I know
that you know with um some of the the privacy laws we can't really get too much into it but just so that there's a little bit more information on um on what the services that you do provide because I know that it's non-stop and I always mention that social emotional
work is not only physically tasking it's also emotionally tasking for the um the group that does it because you collect with the students, the faculty and um the families. Um and then uh for the sake of just kind of getting an idea of
how many you you gave us a couple of numbers, but how many families um participate in some of the um the surveys just so that we know more or less on how many uh families were um servicing again broadly speaking. Um and
then uh yes, as far as the cartwheel is concerned, I I mentioned earlier that I got notifications. The nice thing about cartwheel is once you partake in one, you will continue to get notifications on the next upcoming event. So even if
because there's such a long wait list for um mental health services, it might not be the same thing as inerson therapy, but you're getting um additional support and you know it gives that
um you're not you're not alone, but it's you know it's almost anonymous too because you know it's more of a you can ask a question but you don't have to necessarily engage. So um so I can answer um some of those questions. So some of our providers that we're working very closely with and actually three
providers that are actually going into our schools after school. Um so North Suffach Mental Health um Mindy's program um has been working with us for a number of years. We also have South Bay mentor um at the middle schools level as well and at the high school level. Um and then we also have Healthy Chelsea. So
we've been working with those three partners um really to come into the schools after schools. We have girls groups, uh we have therapeutic programs, um trying to reach and then our external providers, you know, we work closely with MGH, um and we've been doing some work and we're going to be doing some
work more around restorative practices um especially around substance use as well is something that we're thinking about and working with. Um Harbor Cove, we did healthy relationships recently. Um so really trying to make sure that we are extending and utilizing uh we have a wealth of resources here within the
city. So really trying to make sure that we're leveraging their expertise so that they can help. We know we can't do it all. So we got to leverage our partners. And I don't know what was the other question you asked about the parents. Oh, and I know that you guys also worked with um I believe Youth Elemento too. Yes, Youth Elemento. Correct. And um and
then I and you mentioned the instructional rounds which I did see some of the um the social workers walking in and out. And then I also received the as a parent um I received the monthly uh social emotional worksheets which is again to to you know
continue upon the um you know it gives us an update of what the students are learning books that also help to um reinforce the information of you know the learning activities that the students are learning and um as far as
the language in the classrooms you know my uh son will come home and he'll just you know randomly do his breathing and that has nothing to do with social emotional at that but it's just yeah um so thank you for all of that information and to you know reinforce that um you
know the calm corners and all of the healthy spaces that you know are helping our our students um regulate because it does help so that the curriculum could take place. Um and um other than that is uh more or less like how many families we are
servicing and that's what we're doing inside and then directly after school not counting like I know that you guys also set up the mental health fair that has been taken. Yes, I was going to mention that. So it's May 29th um from 3:00 to 5:00 at the middle school complex. Um you are all invited um and I
will definitely have um Dr. Beta and Dr. Jennings share that information with all of you. I know Maida and I are talking about having a family table as well um for families to be able to participate um and we really want to increase the family engagement and then one of the things that we're doing that we want to offer families um I'm partnering with
the family liaison so we're going to do you know we're trying to do it whether it's once a month we haven't figured out how often we're going to do it but we want to do something for our families as well in terms of mental health whether it's a walking club whether it's something that we can engage together so that's something that I'm doing with the family liaison
And I was just going to chime in with the cartwheel care that you had mentioned and it's on here. Um what we found is that our students sometimes are very shy and asking for help but this is something they can do privately in the privacy of their own home. And so
there's a uh that stigma if you will is there it's so private that they're there they can they there's ease in doing in having the mental health support and somewhere private too. Yeah. And alongside as well has allowed us and one of the great things that we were able to
do this year for alongside was we now have alongside for educators. So we're able to also offer that resource and support to our staff. share how alongside if there's something that's alarming. I I will say when when Brenda and Aaron came to me to implement
this several years ago, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Because um I was scared to be quite honest because what about the weekends? Like, are we going to expect our staff to be pinged and like supporting students even during their off time? How do we do this? So
there is there the Longside app is on on the weekends, but if there's like a severe alert, we get a ping and then we we can reach out. So if you could explain how that works because that's something that I I remember saying,
"Whoa, time out. Are we ready for this?" So I would love for you to explain. So we are on with Alongside from 8 to 2:30. After 2:30, um they then put in all of their safety procedures and measures. So they have 988. They're able to contact their families. they're able to contact CPD, so they're able to make those those
connections um if needed. Um our staff doesn't get alerted until the next morning and it just gives them a a report. Um and then they follow up with the student, they follow up with the family. I think one of the things that Alongside has allowed us to do and to do well is to really we're we're capturing
those students that are like you said, Dr. Abda, the kids that don't maybe feel that they're able to speak out and speak up. um and they're able to connect through the app and really it it coaches them um you know and it it's really
great to see I can see the dashboard Dr. Beta can see the dashboard Dr. Jennings and it's really amazing to see the amount of journaling that the students are doing and the goal setting. It's huge. And then when they, you know, they reach a goal, it gives them an award,
right? So it becomes, so it's part of their kind of daily routine. And I'll give an example at the hooks, they're using it as part of their journaling activities in the morning. So students are able to come in and they do their journal prompts. Um, this year we had a huge number of students at Chelsea High
School use it. um we are over a little bit over a thousand students are using it at the high school. Um that was not the case last year. So really seeing this kind of students are now becoming familiar with the platform um and becoming more com comfortable. It is confidential uh with the exception if
there is a major crisis or safety alert than we are in. Um staff doesn't get to you know we we have safety measures in place as well. So like Dr. Speda said so that we're not inundating staff during their personal time. Um, so we we do have kind of shut off. During school
vacation, it shuts off. I mean, I always say I'm always on, but other than that, my staff is not. And sorry, and you said uh Chelsea PD. So, would that go directly to our um our CPD? Like, yes. So, they would actually call. Okay. So, they would call
and connect with dispatch if they needed to. Okay. Thank you. And I can tell you we've only had about safety alerts 1 to 2% out of all the students that have used it. Okay. Um Brenda, thank you so much
for this presentation. I think the feeling or the word after hearing this presentation um is robust. We have a lot of robust resources within our district. And I'm curious to hear if you can give us a a pulse check from your experience um doing walkthroughs and being on the
ground. You know, where are you seeing the greatest needs in our district as it relates to social emotional learning? I would say, you know, one of the things that we we are continuous working on is really building the capacity of our teams to do kind of that that universal tier one, right? I think there is if
folks feel they're not equipped to do the work or like mental health, you know, kind of destigmatizing that level and really trying to know that we yes, we are a trauma-informed district, but that we can have these conversations that we can use common language. So, I would say, you know, that's the work that we're doing right now on the ground
is really doing peer-to-peer observations, right? We're kind of we have other peers looking at exemplars and modeling um modeling the language. So that's a lot of the work that we're doing right now within our tier one practices. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thank
you. Any further questions? One comment. I want to say thank you to Brenda and Aaron. Our portfolio and what we're doing with SEAL has definitely expanded. Um I'm very proud of the fact that we were the first district to use
Cartwwell Care. We were their guinea pig district and I still think they should pay us. Um, and the first for Alongside as well. And we were also the first for Alongside. And I actually went to an AI conference at MIT a few months ago and we were the only district using
Alongside. And I was like the the presenter was talking about it and I'm like, we use alongside. But um, I just want to say thank you for thinking out of the box to really meet the needs of our kids. And this we do have so much. And often times I don't even think our
um our students know that we have. So please help get the word out because we want to make sure that our students are using them the resources that we do have because we have online we have in person. We're we're so fortunate. I'm
actually reading grants for a for a friend that works in another state and he asked me to be a grant reader for SEAL and I was reading one from the American Samoas and and they were talking about how they didn't have any social workers and I'm like oh my gosh I
have we have over we have 17 and we're so fortunate to have the resources that we have that we've invested year after year during student op during uh our with our S SOA dollars, we made sure that we added social workers and
counselors to the middles and the elementarymentaries because that's what we heard. So, we really do we we we hope that we're listening and and we wish we could have more. So, um inflation fix, let's please go is that that's tomorrow,
but I just shameless plug. Um we could really use that money. So, but thank you to both of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, thank you so much for this presentation. You know, I love this stuff cuz I do social work,
too. Um, I love seeing how, um, has been so integral to my son's education at the ELC. Um, you know, as a kid with autism, you know, that teaching him emotional regulation skills and social skills is just like just as important, if not more
important, than um, his academic learning. And I can definitely see that coming through. Like last year when he was only three years old, he came home from school and he he started saying whenever he was mad, I feel frustrated. And I was like, yeah, you you learned that from
school. And yeah, it's been really great. And um I also really appreciate that um his team at the ELC and especially his speech pathologists, shout out to Jared, are are very um like neurodeiversity affirming and that's
been um really wonderful just hearing that language in the in the IEP meeting and I'm like, "Okay, yeah, you get it. You get it." Um, so I have to ask, um, I'm just, and I only have a surface level understanding of this, but I've kind of heard that like PBIS, which is
positive behavioral interventions and supports, um, tends to be a little more like rewardbased and like potentially a little less um, trauma-informed and um, neurodeiversity informed because it's so
like carrot and stick or whatever. And that's like a particular criticism of PBIS. Um I I'm sure of it that PBIS is much bigger than that, but I'm just kind of curious what your take on that is and how you've used it or how you've been thinking about it lately. And I would say we blend the two. Um one is I think
we have very strong MTSS. Um but then we also you know part of our discussions is right kind of incentivizing students right motivating them. Um so we really try to use a combination of both. Um I wouldn't necessarily do PBIS alone. Um I do think it has to be handinand just
like the and the curriculum and instruction. Um because each you know each area sometimes might lack right and then I think it makes up. Um, but I would say, you know, that's something that we do, um, you know, at our elementary level, that was something that we were actually talking about was
trying to con continue to increase the the level of incentives, um, so that students feel motivated if they're demonstrating a particular, you know, um, characteristic or if there's a particular value and they're demonstrating it, how are we rewarding students for that level of modeling? Um,
so that's part of the PBIS. Um and then our MTSS is really related to our interventions and supports that exist. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I think my very surface level understanding of PBIS which mostly comes like from like Instagram posts or whatever is like is
like it's a very like oh you're going to move your clip from the green zone to the red zone when you're being bad or whatever. Like got it. Brenda and Aaron, thank you. This is amazing. I don't see this elsewhere like Elmy was saying right now. Like I work
on other areas in in out of the Chelsea and I and I don't see this in Lawrence. I don't see this in Roxbury. I have a lot of youth that sometimes will come to me as their representative and I will be like uh let's call the schools and see what they have there. But they don't have something. We are so unique. I am
proud to be in this city. This is so unique and something that as um I'm not a doctor but I would like to No, I'm just saying that because I would like to see this also. I love the fact that you said you was going to be working with the PA professional to break it down a little
bit for the parents because this is great. I know my grand my two grandsons benefit already, especially Evan who plays with the Legos like there is no tomorrow. And uh it helps to also understand the connections that you have with the CPD with the um the healthcare
facilities and then the followup after because it can prevent a lot of the things that are happening like the shootings because you kind of like triggering those moments at this early stage. So yeah, and I think you made you made a very valid point. One of the things that I
think we focus on within our department is prevention and really starting early on so that we know that our our young people right are developing those skill sets so that when they graduate high school they are prepared for the 21st century. Um and that's really we want you know yes the curriculum is so
critical and important but also that social emotional well-being um is also critical for their success beyond high school. And I was just going to mention that um when Sarah was asking about um the reward chart like you know my so one of
my child my kids has um a 504 and you know even within my 504 meeting um one thing that we ended up doing was you know to reinforce at the behavior both at home and at school. It was, you know,
very empowering to be able to have, okay, this is what we're doing at at at school. This is what you could do at home so that he feels supported. And I think, you know, again, it it it speaks volumes when you have a team that's not
only helping the student at the the school, but you feel that the wraparound care goes all the way back at home because if if you know it, we kept on saying this today, it takes a village. So it can't just stop at one place. You
know, you can't just do the the academic work at school and not continue with homework or not continue with additional work. So if if you're know you're empowering the teachers and the educators and you're empowering, you know, the the parents and the caregivers um and your
um uh respective affiliates and and collaborators, then it just means that everybody else is going to be able to further support. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. So, and our next piece is of
course our indicators of success with Dr. Tamar Blake Kanty. Hi, good evening. Um our indicators of success as you know are tied directly to our uh district strategic plan. Um
tonight indicators that I will be sharing out all connect with rigor and culturally responsive teaching and learning. Our priority number two I will be sharing out daily attendance high school dropout rate and our um
mobility for high school dropout rate. As you know, high attendance equals success for all of our students. When our students are consistently attending class, they have more access to their learning. Their discussions are deeper
and more engaged, and they're also building relationships with their peers and with the lovely teachers who teach them daily. For grade band one through eight, there is a high attendance rate in the 90th percentile or more. For
grades 9 through 12, it's in the 80th percentile on average. For our preK and kindergarten groups, they're also in the 90th percentile for the month of April for our dropout rate. As of
October 1st, we have um 1,827 students. Currently, that number is 69% I'm sorry, 69 students who've dropped out, which gives us a percentage currently at 3.78.
Our last indicator, our mobility rate for the month of April for the ELC, we had three students in, seven students out. At the elementary level, we had 12 students in, 11 students out. At the
middle school grade band, we have eight students in, nine students out. At the high school, we have eight students in, four students out. And overall, as a district, we are even 31 students in, 31
students out. However, uh, since we've been tracking our mobility rate, um, from October, we have cumulatively 694 students in, 549 students out. Thank
you. Thank you, Dr. Blake. Can't see. Right. Okay. Then the next is our personnel up personnel update or I always do this.
Student rep update. I'm going to get this right. Good evening, Madam Chairwoman Hernandez. Superintendent Dr. Ala and to the rest of the school committee members. Um I'm going to start off by talking about the acceleration academy. They just finished the last one of the
year and um students within the academy were able to build bridges, study about environmental science and so much more. Um, students through grades 1 and 12 experienced enriching STEM instructions during the school vacation and they went
on field trips and were able to work on their student showcase. Uh, good evening, Madame Chairwoman Hernandez, Superintendent Dr. Aveda, and the school and the rest of the school committee members. Um, AP testing has already begun for Chelsea
High School. Um today we had two AP tests. Uh AP English AP no AP English literature language and literature and AP computer science
um a right. Yeah. Tomorrow we'll be having AP stats statistics and on Friday a push uh AP US history. um AP tests will are being held at the
blue gem at the high school and many students are taking them. So they get they get the opportunity to take to get college credit while in high school if they get a three or above uh which they can then submit in their
college applications to colleges. This Friday at the high school, there will be a job fair during all three lunches and students will be able to go right outside the redside doors and there will be stores like Tat's Bakery,
Chelsea's Dental Lab, Market Basket, JetBlue, and a bunch more. For events, we had the youth rice festival Saturday, last Saturday, May 3rd. Um the many teens attended and got to do many activities including uh
making their own uh self-care goodie bags, making stress balls, bracelets, paintings um and much more. La Collaborative Juice Element and other organizations that are centered around
uh teens and young adults also attended and had the uh and had their own stands where teens were able to get um information and get to know other resources available to them. Um and then on April 17, 2025, Chelsea High School
had their first student summit hosted at the Boys and Girls Club. Um hopefully it's not their last, right? Um a total of 120 students participated with 22 student facilitators, 10 breakout rooms,
three of which were in Spanish. Yay. The um the themes discussed included instructions in class, belonging, student safety, and student empowerment. Uh students were very thrilled uh with having the opportunity to have their voices heard. And
after after it ended, we also got the opportunity to take um what's it called? Photos. I mean, yeah, that it was very nice. I liked it. I got to take photos with my teacher, Miss Romero, and my
friends. And it's I felt personally cuz I went it was a very nice opportunity to make the students know that they their voices matter and that teachers and staff and
administrators are willing to hear their voices to make a change for a better change in in the future. In addition to um listening sessions. The city manager will be
having a listening session um on on actually tomorrow, May 8th, at Chelsea at the Chelsea High School at 3:00. Um Chelsea students are able to attend and they can ask him any questions that they have about the
community or any visions they have. Um, students are invited to share whatever ideas or concerns and possibly even talk about building a bright future for the next generation of Chelsea students. Um, within this they can talk about
activities for youth around Chelsea, sports, um, city events, um, also just like open spaces within Chelsea. And they will be providing pizza and drinks for students who attend. Um, there's also going to be a blood
drive which Alena Taylor worked a senior worked with MDH to organize uh for students and and staff on May 9th. Uh, students are able to donate blood if they are 16 and older and the drive will be from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Um, by
donating blood, students and staff are uh saving lives and helping people in need. And in sports, uh, spring sports have been coming along very well for many students as they are enjoying the lovely spring weather, which not this
week cuz it's been raining a lot. And I mean, it was still nice, but it was too rainy. And um, there today there were three games for baseball, softball, and boys volleyball. Um, so hopefully it went
well to them. Um, regarding senior um, updates, our prom is actually in 10 days now, which is really exciting. Um, we're really excited for the whole setup and it's and
going to be in Danver's Port again. So, it's a really nice waterfront um, venue and we're definitely excited to end off our senior year with such a nice place and area to celebrate this special moment. um including weekends, seniors have 16
days left. Um and the last school day being May 23rd for seniors and senior sunset will also be on May 23rd. And lastly, um just to shout out teacher appreciation week and just
appreciate our teachers and Chelsea staff who have taken Yeah. Round of applause. Um, it's important to appreciate these these adults who have put so much of their time and effort
towards basically raising like children and growing like literally forming us into the adults that were going to be leaving the high school. And it's definitely in my opinion one of the hardest jobs to ever have is to be a teacher and to really understand how to
work with each student and indiv individualize each one and yeah but yeah definitely thanks to every teacher even not even in Chelsea but around. You always do a very nice job. Thank you. Okay, so we'll go on with our
personnel um report. Um, we've hired 37% Caucasian, 50% Hispanic, 23.5% black, and 0% Asian AsianPacific Islander. And as far as enrollment
numbers, we are still at 6,129. And I'd like to commend these two reports to the record. And that completes my report. Thank you, Dr. Aveda. Um, I'd like to
make a motion to commend um the committee reports. Motion second. Okay. And with that, we will move on to new business. And our first item is consideration
action to approve a budget transfer of $50,000 to move funds from extended learning contracted services to the Chelsea High School unclassified line for fiscal year 2024 to
2025. Can I get a roll call? Miss Hernandez, may I ask a quick question? Yes. Um, so because the the budget um transfer is related to yonder pouches, I just wanted to if someone can refresh my memory, when we pass the cell
phone policy, did it specifically talk about middle schools or was it left vague enough to apply to the district? It was secondary. Oh, secondary. Okay, cool. All set. Okay, roll call, Veronica. Okay, I'm going to start from Yes.
fresh. Miss Hernandez, yes. Mr. Organ, yes. Miss Enriquez, yes. Miss Cabraw, yes. Miss Valdes, yes. Dr. Neville, yes. Miss Kovas Carabayo, yes. Miss Alaro, yes. I'd say in the
affirmative and one absent. In the affirmative, one absent. Motion passes. Okay. This was our only item. Um, I wasn't expecting that when I turned the page. Um, does anyone have any announcements
that they'd like to make at this time? Dr. An announcement, very exciting announcement that next week is the Chelsea Research Festival. Um, it's on Thursday, May 15th. Um, we are going to
have 30 uh research posters. again. Um you can come by in the red gym in Chelsea High at um 1:30 to 3:00. That's the first session which is happening during the school day so that students can access it. And then we're going to have a break and then all of the same
posters will be presented again at 5:30 so that people who are working adults have the opportunity to come check it out as well. And um we're really excited for this year. Um we yet again are having um the amazing middle schoolers
from the uh the right who are going to be presenting their research. We're going to have Chelsea High data visualization students presenting theirs. Again we again have youth from Lacla Retiva and youth from Eco as well
as um researchers from Northeastern MGH um Beth Israel and other uh other research institutions. So it's going to be really great. Um it's been really a joy to see all the different um research projects that are going to be presented.
We have a lot of environmental um environmental research this year, more so than previous years. So that's going to be really fun and um yeah, it's going to be really uh a good time and I encourage you guys all to come. And my second announcement is that um for
anybody who is interested in um engaging in state house advocacy um Senator Sal Dominico's bill that would um remove the inflation cap for future years is going to be heard on Monday at 1 p.m. at the
state house along with several other bills that relate to fixing this inflation problem which is affecting our budget um pretty strongly. Um, so there are opportunities to either come and testify in person, to testify on Zoom
live, or to submit written testimony um to the joint committee on education. So if anyone um would like to submit testimony, I think that would be really great and uh come find me and I'll I can send you all the information. So thank you so much.
Thank you so much. Anyone else have any other announcements? Um, I also want to invite you guys um I part of an organization that we help uh poor people and it's called in Los Frontteras and we're going to have an
event on Tukasa Restaurante on Friday u May 23rd. Um the ticket is $25 but includes food and drink. So it's very excited to be you know helping other people especially people who is very
poor. Uh we do um these events maybe twice a year and we helped um El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. So we really um do our best that we can to kind of like help these people who
really needs the help. Um, so if you you wanted to come, uh, you can contact me, um, and you can let me know. I'm selling the tickets and, um, thank you so much. Copy. And then I just have a brief
announcement and reminder that tomorrow we'll be celebrating the educator diversity act um which uh passed last year to s um to support you know additional lensures and certifications apprenticeship and also a data diversity dashboard. So if you want to know more
about the educator diversity act um it will be the celebration will be in river AC wayin elementary school um and that's going to be beginning at 6 pm. So there will be a lot of um lawmakers, policy makers um speaking there and if you want
to learn more about this initiative and how we can continue to diversify our workforce um they'll be present there too. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you everyone for all your information. Um I wanted to give out a big shout out to
teacher appreciation week. Um, like the students said, we would have no idea what to do without teachers, and it is one of the hardest jobs next to being a mom. Um, and I
think I think it actually may be even harder than being a mom because I went to read for a second grade class and after I left there after 20 minutes, I said to myself, "Wow, this teacher deserves
um a gold medal. I mean, it's just so many personalities, so many different um you know, 22 of them. I couldn't deal with one, but um but I don't know what we would do. And we are so lucky to have
such an amazing group of educators here in Chelsea. And we are we've I had a an interview today and and I was speaking about the fact that I've been doing this for 16 years and the growth that Chelsea
as a school district has made has been phenomenal. Like it just I just think back and I say we have grown so much and we have so many services and we have so much that we are offering our kids and I
think it is so important that we are giving so so much effort to being proactive and preventive because I I'm a firm believer that we need to fix things before they break not allow them to
break and then try to repair them. Um, I think it's it's really hard to repair things once they're broken. Um, but one but to get things working correctly from the beginning and find ways to make them work in their way. Um, everybody doesn't
work the same way. Everybody doesn't operate the same way. And I think it took a long time for the world to realize that that every student functions in their own way and that it's not necessarily all the same way. And I
think Chelsea's done an amazing job. And I think that's all majority has to do with the amazing teachers that we have. So, I want to give out a huge shout out from the school committee to all of our wonderful teachers and um and just say that we couldn't thank you
enough. Thank you, Glatty. Sorry, you you said services and I just remembered um you guys mentioned prom and um the chamber of commerce uh did the uh prom promise along with the police department and if I'm not mistaken, they still have
dresses. So, um, just as a reminder, if there's anyone that still needs a dress, if I'm not mistaken, um, I believe you just have to call the Chamber of Commerce and potentially schedule an appointment, um, to be able to, uh, either schedule like a fitting. Um, so,
if you guys could either morning announcements or something along those lines, pass it along as well. Um, and I'm sure that they'll be happy to help. That's all. Lucia, I would like to ask you to, um, call moment of silence and on behalf of the um cable award
director. Yes, sir. Ricky Petra's u um Ricky's um mother. Mom. Yes. I'd like to call for a moment of silence um for Ricky's mother who was laid to rest. Um and Yolanda also um if we could just
take a moment and ask for their resting in peace. Thank you. Thank you so much everyone. Very excited to get ready for graduation.
Um my favorite favorite time of year is graduation awards ceremonies all this. This is my favorite time of year. I actually was going to have knee replacement and postponed it because I decided I couldn't miss all this stuff. Believe it or not, this is I I just said
I can't this is my favorite time of year and I can't miss out on on all this stuff that comes at this time. So, I can't wait to see everyone. Thank you very much and see you all soon. Oh, yeah. And the most important part,
sorry. Motion to adjourn. A second. Do it.