--------- Right. So, um, as our normal chairman because our normal chairman is not here this evening, um, I will be calling the meeting to order. That was fun. Sorry. And now we have to, I guess, have a vote to determine who will actually
uh, chair of the meeting. I move that Andrew Grimes is chair for tonight's meeting. Seconded. Any commentary? All those in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Right. First thing is any public comment one here. Um so we're going to
discuss the policy on lending to residents of municipalities with descertified libraries. Um, so we did a little quick background search on this. Um, Wakefield and Melrose do have
um, policies about not lending to residents of descertified libraries. We also checked the other towns bordering Stonem which are Winchester, Wuburn, Medford and Mel and Malden and we could not find any C uh, policies. we can dig
deeper and call contact their actual library library staff. Um, but to that point, I just wanted to to say that it looks like right now Stonem uh they think they have enough money to stave off descertification, maybe getting a waiver. They're still they're
still under threat, but and also Lynfield looks like they passed an override, so they may be all set as well. So, um, it's still an urgent issue. I mean, it's not it's still an issue. It's just not an urgent issue. Um, and you're welcome to discuss it today. You could, if you want to wait
for Cathy and Pat, you could you could defer it. Um, or if you have any other things that you would like us to research, we could do that as well. Waiting for I think it's worth waiting for Cathy and Pat to have a real discussion on this. Um,
move to table. Is this a an issue that's cropped up as of yet? you know, not that the neighboring libraries have officially been descertified. No, no, no one's been descertified. Right now, it looks it what looked like Sonum was going to be descertified. So, now we just think that it will be um possibly
they'll get a waiver, which is different. Um and we did um we started to talk discuss last week like once you get the waiver or once you already certified, how long it takes you to get back into the back into the certified status. So, it's something that's not
taken lightly. Ours came online in I think it was 2003 or or might might be on that in the packet. 2002. Yeah, 2002. And I believe that's it was a another noble library that was descertified and um I don't think we had a policy prior
to that. So, um it was sort of in response intentionally. Um and you can you can go either way on that. So, and if they were to be descertified, Sonum or another library,
is that effect July one? Yes, sort of. Um, certification actually doesn't come out until usually November or December. So, they they technically would be having access, but once they're descertified,
it takes a long time to come out. So, um, they'd have to finish out that year, do another year being certified before they'd be eligible again. So, it's not necessarily a July 1st because we don't know July 1 whether their C what their
certification status is. Okay. But they do notify us. Well, even if the waiver is granted, no, they are not. If you receive a waiver, you're you've you've been given a pass. And
um so a waiver is good. Waiver is a good thing. We could probably share one. Yeah, we can. Really? Okay. Do you see any issue in us tableabling this for this meeting? No, I don't I
don't think so. Um my only my only thing is if there's anything you want us to research, you could um or a specific library you want us to look at, we could definitely do that. Um, so you don't have to do that this meeting. You could send an email just to
me or Megan or Michelle saying, "Hey, can you see what's can you can you give so and so a call and see what the status is there?" I think Amy, there is something I I have on the top of my head is um for the libraries that you said do have um policies in place. I'd like to
also understand what they do about programming, not just borrowing of materials, but what they do about access to programming. Yeah. To be clear, those libraries I mentioned, uh, Winchester, Wuburn, Medford, and Malden have no policy. No, no, the ones you mentioned Wakefield.
Wakefield and Melrose. I will dig in deeper about programming and other services. Yeah. So, those other libraries you said you you called and they just they don't even No, they just don't have it on their website, but we we will follow up with a call. Okay, great. So, it seems important, excuse
me, to me that our policies do match those of Melrose and Wakefield going forward. that would sort of head off. Yeah, I mean Melrose and Wakefield are in our our consortium. Um it's possible there's something um because Winchester, Wuburn, Medford, and Maldon I believe
are all in uh Minute Man. So there may be something within the Minute Man network that we're not familiar with. Um but um that's why I'll give them a call. Okay. Thank you. Hello. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you.
Motion to table. Second. Discussion. Any discussion? All those in favor? Unanimous. Right. library terrace update.
Oh, this is mine. Um, so I just wanted to give you a quick update. Um, we've been working with Activitas. Um, they had uh the landscape committee worked and sent U and we've signed and approved a a proposal for them to do the landscape
design process. And um once they got going, it's going pretty quickly. Um, next Thursday night, May 22nd at 7 o'clock, there's going to be a an open forum on the library terrorist project. So, we'll be inviting the community and
um probably hand delivering some invites to our local butters to come sort of see where the where the project stands, you know, see if there's any additional feedback. This is on top of additional meetings and surveys that had been done for, you know, about over a period of a
year. So, it's sort of a last call of any other thoughts. We'll also invite the foundation. Um probably send an invite to the friends just other stakeholders that might be interested. Again, this project is funded through the uh Reading Public Library Foundation. After that meeting in late
May, they hope to actually have bid documents ready by late June with bid opening in mid July. Construction going on starting in September and hopefully ending in December. So, they have a very ambitious, very tight schedule. Um Ryan Persville is the town engineer is
working very closely with them and is managing um things like the minor site plan over review with CPDC. He's overseeing you know all the engineering side of things. So um we basically just have to sit back and let them drive the
drive the cart. I'd love to see us um set aside a little bit of money to be able to have a plaque that says, you know, this has been this is a gift of the Reading Public Library Foundation. Just something that recognizes that gift. I
think a lot of people are very generous to the foundation and know sort of large scale that the money is being used for great library things, but it would be nice to see something noted for them. I mean, the foundation does a lot of great work. group just be really nice to know to give them that
recognition. I think that's a that's a great point actually they donated money when they donated after the building was done it was in benefit of basically these rooms for example we used it precious chairs to upgrade the AV system and one of the
things they had the auction for naming this room and they chose not to and so they are I think it is time to recognize the amount of um funds and big projects they we do put their logo on some things like the book bike and I think on the lockers but um I think it would be nice to have a a plaque or something that
really just said um yeah, it doesn't need to be over the top. I just think something nice. I can tell them I can tell the designers that would pay for that subly. Thank you. Financial report
so soon. It's a short meeting. You're with me. Okay, so the budget passed. Um, it it was a little bit slow at the beginning, but we kind of went through it. There were very few ch there were actually no challenges or questions
to the library budget. So, I was very pleased. It was the second year in a row that um our increase was at 3.6% over the previous year. I will say that um I don't think that's going to happen again. We'll be facing some um tighter budgets in the next couple of years.
But I it's also just a good time to remind you that our budget is 1.5% of the total town budget and 6% of the municipal government side of things. So kind of gives you a a scale. Um yeah
um and that's pretty much it for finances other than we're doing fine this year. We're looking to, you know, just finish off the year and if we can return some cash if we can. If we can't, then we'll use our supplemental funds.
Any discussion? Right. Director's report. Um, couple things I wanted to mention. Um, first of all, I put at the top uh some a reference to opening up the patio this summer and we just got in some new
furniture. It's some nice recycled polywood furniture. It's like a kids picnic table and some aderonduct chairs on a regular table. So, the patio is going to be much more um welcoming and it will be open. Um, we're still sort of finalizing what
those hours are. There's um right now we're trying to keep it fairly loose and sort of today it's open and tomorrow it's not. Um it it's obviously a barely threeseason patio. There's um so we're trying to determine
does it stay open after dark once it starts getting darker in the day. There's not really any lighting out there. Do we have to invest in lighting? Does it close at sunset? Who's responsible for closing it? that kind of thing. The biggest impact is on the children's room. Two things of note is
we have promised the children's room. They are not responsible for policing that. If it's going to close at 5:00 or 7:00, then the custodian will lock that and be responsible for that. And that it is not um children's only. Um, it is a
space that you have to kind of go through the children's room to get to, but if you are a solo adult or a solo teen and you want to go sit on the patio and enjoy some space outside, you're totally welcome to do that. And by the same token, people with young children
shouldn't be letting their kids just willy-nilly run around. It's not really part of the children's room. But it's really exciting. It's been eight years. We haven't really had it open to the public, but it's looking really nice. If you have a chance to go up there and look through the windows, we have brand new um uh wheelchair accessible or
accessible planters that um Megan White is using with her plant lab and they're planting herbs and vegetables and things like that. So, it's a really nice space and um you know, if you have any thoughts um we don't have any policies per se on any
of our other spaces, so I don't foresee having to need a policy, but if you have any thoughts or concerns, you should feel free to send feel free to send me those thoughts and concerns. Um just as a reminder, we're open till 9 Monday through Thursday. We close at 5 on
Friday and Saturday. We live in New England and once daylight savings kicks in um or stops gets dark early um and cold early, it would definitely not be open any time that it was below a certain temperature. I think we would just automatically close it. It would
also be closed when there were actual children's programs running out there or if there was a an adult program, it would be not closed, but it would be only for if you were attending the program. So, that kind of thing. But if you have thoughts about that with other safety and security or whether it's just
an idea of how to make sure that it's not a burden on the staff, um please send them to me and we'll hopefully get something in place. It's going to be a soft launch. We just might open the door and say now open and see who who uses
it. Maybe take a few pictures, put it up on social media. But we're very excited about it. Do any of our cam existing cameras we have in the building face out that way or anything? No. No. No. We don't have any cameras in that
area. I I could probably ask. Would you like me to ask see if it's how much it would cost to add? Yeah, that would probably be the so that somebody can sort of police it from downstairs or something. Actually, those are all We don't have access to those. You don't do it. So, it's they're what do you call
them? um they're not preventative, they're um forensic. They're forensic. So, they're used for afterwards, probably less. Okay. Can I can still look I can still just inquire about it, but um so you have some so you have some
information. Um just another comment about the studio. So, if you haven't been up there, the new exhibit um is a student exhibit from the high school. Um the students um in an art, I think it's a series of art classes researched
endangered and threatened species in Massachusetts, Massachusetts alone. And then they created using recycled materials artwork representations of those animals. Um it was just a really great project. It's been really
exciting. It's the um third uh exhibit in as many months that we've had up in the studio. And then we have another fourth one coming up for June and I think probably in through to July with um one of our presenters who'll be teaching a class on uh comic um drawing
and things like that. So please stop by and see it. It's really lovely. Kids did a lot of research. Um I also wanted to just give a shout out. I kind of highlighted the uh mid-year rooted in reading project.
This is an LSTA funded grant. Um grants such as this might not happen in the future if uh IMLS funding is cut. So that's just to let you know we have used $20,000. Um we're actually more than halfway done with those funds. who are
into already using inkind funds that we use um whether it's friends programming money or whether it's our collection money to help support this initiative. The idea is that we become a place where you think of when you think of reading you think of a green community and when
you think of the library you think of green community and reading. So it's sort of all immeshed in one. So, we've done a really um fantastic job, I think, of working with some partners and creating links, not where the library is necessarily the center, but creating
links between other groups and getting them to work, helping them work together. Um Sarah Keelso, who's our librarian too in public services, has done a great job spearheading it. But it is a project, it is a grant that's really run across our divisions at
multiple levels. Um, it's been really, if you've been outside, the front garden is looking really nice, I think. Um, we have, uh, some sensory uh, plants there as well as native gardens. We have a lot of plants
inside that are now being maintained by Envirro Greenery. Um, we've added to our collection. The seed library is been a smashing success. Um, we used to have it housed up in the children's room. it was difficult to find and this year it's just really taken off and they can
barely keep it um filled. Um I mean I think that will slow down obviously now that it's past past seed season. Um see 49 programs already. We only promised to do 26
um or 16 or something some small number but uh we have by far surpassed that then things were um the tree planting that we did. We had over a hundred people show up on our rainy Saturday and
plant trees. We planted 200 trees. We had hoped to plant 500 but only 200 came in. the other 300 did show up and DPW went out and planted the other 300. They were there. I can't say enough great things about that um program. Um but we
are going to do it again and again and again and again until the 100th birthday of the town forest. We learned a lot. We're having a debrief meeting next week. So, we're pretty excited about that. Um, so I just uh included um some of the feedback that we'd gotten. Um, Sarah and
her programming crew are doing a very simple feedback loop after um all the programs and I think it's like a three question thing like did you like it? Did you learn anything and any comments? It's fairly simple. gets some really good feedback and so I just included
some of the comments that she she's gotten here. Um any questions about the rooted and reading grant, the dig in grant? No, I have to say the value for what we're getting and the the um excitement that we have for them from
the staff being involved is um I don't want to say in not invaluable, but adds to the value of of this. You could have a you could have a grant project that doesn't affect as many departments and or teams and it's kind of just running along on the side,
but this is something that's really front and center library and people are really excited. So, it's been a great great project for us. Um, finally, um, some highlights and things to look forward to. Um, and uh,
one other thing to discuss, um, MLA conference, as Michelle mentioned, is down in Falmouth this year. We're sending about six six people, I think. Megan, does that sound right? Eight people. About eight people. Um, actually, and in addition to leadership positions, we have people that are
presenting as well. So, it's actually a really great representation from a library, for our library. Um, summer reading is going to be kicking off. Summer Sizzlers is coming. I think it's June 13th. It's a Friday. Um the Juneth festival will be
Saturday the 21st. Michelle has worked on procuring new shelving for our Library of Things. And kudos to Michelle. This is not an easy thing. These are lockers um not like our other lockers. They are different lockers. They are not
electronic. They don't require any data. They are just oldfashioned lockers with locks on them. Um, but finding the sizes. These will go um I don't know if you remember where the express books were, but they're sort of across from the selfch checkout station. Right now there's some regular
shelving there. And these lockers, there'll be a set on one side and a set on the back side. Um, this involved a lot of careful measuring. It involved um getting quotes, getting quotes after tariffs came in, getting, you know, and and running everything through the pro
procurement department. Um, am I correct in saying that some of the prices were changing changed after? Yes. That so um so we were able to lock in what we think is a very good price. So there's a a purchase for that
purchase order for that coming in. Um and a portion of that, not a large portion, but a portion of that will be used from with grant funds to help house the Library of Things. And then the rest will um come from our general uh I think
some of our general gifts. It's either gifts or state aid. Um the next trustee dates. So I I think unintentionally um or I accidentally put in June 9th as
the next meeting. If you look at the schedule that we approved last year, we actually said June 16th. June, yes, June 16th, uh, which is the third Monday instead of the second Monday. Um, I did check with our town
clerk and it doesn't matter. You can pick either day. Um, but if it makes any difference, um, the room is reserved for June 16th and there's not a lot of space on
June 9th. So, um, we could just say this is an error in the director's report and the meeting is on the 16th, but if every one has it on the 2nd Monday and you can't attend on the third Monday, um, this might be a good time to talk about that. So, are is there is there a
difference between the 9th and the 16th for any of you? I don't think there's a difference for me. Was it something pertaining to uh Junth being the week of the 16th? No, it we I I think we just put the wrong date down and everybody put their
hand up and voted sure, let's have it on the because we do that in June. We set the we and I'm not I I did actually when I was talking with Laura Jim about this, I said, "Do you know, is this something we have to do according to a bylaw and we have because we send it we CC the town clerk, we CC the town manager and
she's like, "No, I'm not sure why you why you have to do that." But it also may be that our meetings have often conflicted with things like town meeting and so maybe it's maybe it was just sort of done as courtesy to say that we recognize etc etc. But um it does help
us normally because we know what the meeting dates are all in advance and if you ever wanted to say agree to cancel a meeting like not meet in August or something like that or not meet in December you as a group could decide that but you could also decide that on
an ad hoc basis. I have no issue with the 16th. No issue for me either. I would probably have to attend by Zoom. For which date? June 9th. What about the
16th? I'm more likely to be available in person. Okay. Happy to do either. 16th. I think we'll keep the 16th and just say that Amy made an error in the director's report and make errors,
but it does bring up the um that does bring up the June meeting. Um the June meeting is when we set the um library closing holiday calendar for the next calendar year. So for 2026 January through December, we'll present a um
list of proposed dates. Some of these are federal holidays and were closed. I guess technically you could decide to be open on a holiday. Um and some of them are traditional closings like um closing the day before Thanksgiving at 1:00. Um
the board I mean I'll say this again in next month, but you obviously could change any of that. You could add or take away um any of those dates. So you'll do the calendar year 2026 holiday schedule. So, you do the fiscal year
2026 trustee schedule and it's also when you um if when you uh vote or revote in officers. So, that'll be something that um Cappy has to do. He's the he's the I guess the it's in the bylaws, but he
puts forth a slate of officers um to be to be considered. So, he may be in touch with any or all of you in the next few weeks. Um but June's generally a packed and plus then we'll do the summer summer reading uh update as well a summer
programming update. So June is generally a very packed uh meeting and other than other than uh always an interesting list of things that people are taking um and doing for professional development. Um that's the
end of the director's report. Can I just um say one thing about June 9th versus 16th? What is the last day of school in Reading? It's like the 20th. No, it's the week before. Oh, yeah. We have it there
somewhere. Well, it's either the It's either June 13th or June 20th. It's the 16th. That's what I was wondering. Because Kappy has young children. Oh, okay. He has young children. So, can we
Okay. Um, how about I leave it to the discretion of the chair and fill him in on this conversation and get back to everybody. Okay. Because I think what I heard is if it's the 9th, three of us can attend in person. One is available, but it would be by Zoom. Correct. So,
the four of us are available. Okay. I will I will I will inform the chair of this discussion and um let the chair make the decision as the chair is probably most impacted by those dates. Yeah.
Ice cream in a far far away place. Um thank you. Yes. So, approval of minutes from our April meeting. Any comments or corrections on the minutes? Looked amazing as always. Thank you,
Megan. Y as always. Right. Um, move to approve the minutes of the April 14th meeting as presented. Second. All those in favor? minutes are
approved. So, it's future agenda items. We will add the um continued continued discussion. Yes, policy discussion. Um and I don't think there's any policies on top, but I will let you know if there are.
Motion to adjurnn. Second. All those in favor. Unanimous. Part: 2
[Music] I still [Music] remember to go to school. You can see heard all the way around. So take a seat. [Music]
Curtis, I have your name plate if you want to come back up. Sorry. [Music] If you hear my stomach right here, right? [Music] The
[Music] whole All right. Aaron Aaron, you're on, right? You can hear us? Yes. Okay. Perfect. Okay. So, all right. It is 7:01 and I'm calling the school committee meeting for
Reading Public Schools to order here in Metro Headquarters in Boston. Um, we are strictly virtual, so we have to do a roll call. Um thanks call. So I'll start with Aaron here. Carla here. Laur here and Tom
here. Uh Sean and Sarah send their regrets. Unfortunately they both were not able to be here today. Um so before we go too much further, we'll just drive our way through the agenda and then jump in. So of course my name is crashed with my
computers. I apologize. Um, but we got that. It's the most important. Um, we will uh public comment. So, if anybody wants to give public comment for anything not on the agenda, that's where we'll start. Um, basically two to three
minutes. Your name, your address, and the topic of conversation is not on the agenda. Anything on the agenda, we'll take Q&A throughout the agenda and move it through. Uh we then have a consent agenda um which we'll go through um for review and approval. We'll then move to
reports um starting with our student and Tamia seems to be here to support that plus the conversation. Um we have our superintendent report and then any leaison and subcommittee reports from the committee themselves. From there we'll move to our regular business portion of the meeting uh which will
start with an ACE update and we're here to help us with that provide some feedback on how that's going. Uh we then have our friends of reading mechco discussion team here will get us going in that regard including a series of questions they've sent to us to provide some feedback on we'll then move to the state of the
mechco program and our co-leads here are here to help us with that. Um and then we have the mechco search timeline and process and Dr. Milky will give an update on that he is a member of that search committee. Um uh we'll then move to any old business which is an upgrade
update on the metco program director search process. Again Dr. Vilch will do that and we'll conclude with the school choice update and the second modern process in the pardon me. So that is our order of operations proceeding. So uh with that said a little bit blind because of the
zoom issues here. So raise your hand. I'll do my best to take I love it. Maria, I love that. We do have many members of the greater committee on Zoom as well.
So, um you know, as and when you have a question, please raise your hand. I'll try to see it um so we can address it in order as necessary. Uh and with that said, um we'll start with first things first. Does anybody have any uh public comment
for anything not on the agenda? Okay, seeing none, um the agenda does have a focus on excellence, but I understand that is that is in part of the presentation. So, we're going to go ahead and wait for that until we get to that part of the presentation. Um so, then we'll move on to the consent agenda. And do we have a motion?
Motion to approve the consent agenda. Okay. Seconded by Carla. Any discussion from any members of the committee? Any concerns? Dr. M, you want to make a point? You'll see uh in the packet you'll see number six is acceptance of funding transfer from the opioid opioid revolving fund to read local schools. I
would just like to thank the reading coalition. So received one-time funds as a result of an opioid opioid settlement and then they decided to wanted to partner with us to use some of those funds to move what we have as a part-time health teacher into a full-time health teacher. So we have for
years had a 6 which is you know 60% of a full-time position. they will be for three years funding the additional 40%. So now we're able to have a full-time health teacher who's going to be shared across our two middle schools. So just like to thank the coalition so much for our community but also for uh helping us
to fund this position which you know is both is a need in our community. So huge thank you to Erica Mcamera and her team. Great. Thank you. Okay. Any other points of discussion? Okay. We'll move on to a roll call. Uh so again roll call uh in
in favor of the motion. Um, Aaron, yes. Yes. Laura, yes. Tom, yes. And passes four to zero. So, we'll move on to the next portion of our agenda, which is the student report. And Tamia, um, looking
to you, can you have a report for us? Um, yes, I do have a few. So, at RMHS, we have the dance team triyouts. that will be held on June 4th and 6th from 3:30 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. at Coolage. And we also have the RHS Chilling team
triyouts that'll be held June 3rd, 4th, and 5th from 6:00 to 8 also at Koolage. Um, that's about it what I have. Okay, thanks for the update.
There's a lot going on over the next couple weeks. Certain subject definitely is not. So, all right. Um, Dr. M, I'm moving on to you. Great. Uh, Sarah,
sorry. Okay, Chris. You have Okay, please go for Um, so as you know, one of the things in academics we often are looking at are different groups of students to ensure success for all of our kiddos. Um, and one of the groups in particular that we
keep a very close eye on are our Boston resident students. We had the opportunity this winter to apply for a grant from Echo, Inc. to provide some additional early literacy tutoring for our Boston resident students. And we felt that that was um a great opportunity and needed because we have
seen that some of our youngest Boston residents kiddos cater to 2 could use some additional support. We partnered with a company called Ignite and they're sort of a unique model. It's a 15minute a day online tutoring and they um
specifically just target those early literacy skills. Now, you might say, well, what's different about this from what the kids are already receiving through our um intervention program? Uni, Ignite has some unique features. Um, for any students that might have
multiple languages, they will pair the student with an instructor that also speaks the languages the student speaks. instruction is still in English, but it gives that tutor an opportunity to pretty much with the student and in their downtime and when they're engaging the student um a way to really like um
build a connection with them. Additionally, for all students, they try to connect with the tutor that in some way matches their identity or in some way will help that student want to show up for tuning tutoring and feel motivated to do the hard work. Um we actually have a meeting with them I
think tomorrow to get our latest data update. Um we have six classroom resident students that are participating. In our first meeting we're really encouraged with about half of the kids making really good growth goals which is amazing. Tomorrow I'm moving towards our next meeting hoping to hear that all of our students are
doing that. You know with anything we pilot we know it's not always going to be a good match for every single child based on their learning styles. But this seems like a promising practice and something that's a little unique and different that we um we're really lucky to have the opportunity to offer to our
youngest foster resident students to live on the flip. More to come on. Great. Thank you. Any questions for Dr. saying Dr. interest a little bit on that too is also this Google that Johns Hopkins uh
Ignite study that came out that uh what showcas what is some of the impact across the country uh of sort of the online tutoring through the Ignite radio which is really encouraging uh I would just like there's so many people in the room here uh parents school community members staff who will play a role in what is going to be some recognitions
and celebrations we have tonight of students of schools of programs I'd also like to give a unexpected thank you and shout out to Curtis Martin who came back to be here too. But a lot of the work that you did here you'll see reflected will be a part of our students lives are you know our community even as
you transition on to it. So nice to have you here today. Thanks. Thanks. Okay. Um moving on to the updates from a subcommittee or leazison perspective. We'll start with Aaron. No report tonight.
So, um update on Kellum School. Tomorrow is the vote. Um we're really excited about where we are with the project right now. Um we have a threestory building um with a
very efficient building um very um durable and safe building on a wonderful site with a lot of on street parking um off streetet parking onto the site. Um the the traffic patterns we've looked at
the traffic patterns. We are getting a um 44 plus million grant from the state. If the vote does not pass tomorrow, we will beg the MSBA to let us put it to the voters again in a very
short amount of time. If that does not pass, then we're out of the program. Um we the current condition of the school um enabled us to get into the program. this um you have to have a pre um you
have to have a school that is really in dire straits to get into the MCBA program. So the good news is that we're in because it's a very competitive program and we're really appreciative to the state for the funding that they have put forth to us and so as a town we need
to prove to them show them within 120 days that we um we would like to move forward with the program as well. So, um, the vote is tomorrow. We'll know tomorrow night which direction we're going in. Great. Thank you. Any questions for
Carl? You're seeing them tomorrow. Do you have it up here? I do not have any updates you got some of our conversation with. We'll assign it all to you. Perfect. So I guess a quick update not really
less on our subcommittee report this for everybody to be aware two very important took place town meeting over the last couple weeks. One is by a vote of 158 to1 vote um financing was approved by town
meeting which is aligned to the vote that Carla just mentioned. So presuming the town does vote tomorrow in favor of Kllum town meeting has already approved the funding alignment with that as well. Um and the second one is the budget was
voted I think unanimously uh in favor of the entire budget for the 2026 FY26 year as well. Um so that starts July uh this coming year. Okay. Other two pretty big updates there. Um all right
so let's move on. Any questions on that for the month? All right. So, we will move to our new business and start with our ACE update. And Ryan, you my friend. Hey, good evening everyone. So, um my name's Ryan Johnstone. I haven't met any of you before, so I'm really happy to be here
now. Uh so, I'm on the uh the ACE committee, which stands for Hey, I'll pop here real quick. So, uh, the ACE committee, it's the ad hoc commemoration establishment committee, uh, colloally referred to around town as the Bill Russell Committee. And so, I just wanted to go
really quickly who we are and the purpose before I provide the updates to make sure we're all on the same page and for other members of the community. So, um, we're created, we are an ad hoc committee created under the select board and under their authority for the specific purpose of a developing a
long-term action plan to implement the select board's proclamation on August 9th, 2022. That was nine days after Bill Russell died. the select board issue a proclamation um talking about how pretty Phil Russell was his legacy and uh kind
of directing the or directing telling the town manager to come up with a Bill Russell uh day around town. Um eventually this committee was established to try and do that. Board had to uh deal with some other
priorities around town. local community members got this ad hoc committee established. Um and so and so a develop a long-term action plan to actually implement that um that statement. Acknowledge and express accountability for the mistreatment of Bill Russell and
his family in reading. Establish funding and infrastructure for that long-term plan. uh that first issue uh ID the barriers to participation, engagement and representation for black and brown people in all aspects of writing life and honor Bill Russell's legacy by
striving to create the vision of inclusive, equitable and welcoming community. So that's the committee that's the purpose under the charge. It's currently has nine voting members of which I am this school committee's designate. Uh there's also a designated
from the select board, the board of from KO from the office of equity and social justice, two reading residents and there's a non member right now also um social dist. So status update now
of so we've had four meetings uh they were monthly January, February, March and April. We are now going to be kicking it into two meetings for May and two meetings for June. Um as we're going to have a table at the ready and friendly family day and uh we're also
eyeing Junth not we will be doing something at Junth in collaboration with the office of equity and social justice where we'll be giving a little bit of a speech there. We haven't quite figured out exactly what that's going to. Um, but prior to all that, we kind of kicked everything off in January and
February, Reggie, uh, assisting with one of the other members on the committee, Eddie D, who is actually a voting member of the committee, uh, put together a nice timeline and representation of, uh, background of Bill Russell's life, growing up in the Jim Crow South, and then moving over to California,
eventually with his career, and really identifying some of the, um, themes of racism throughout his life, different ways he experienced it at different times. kinds with different aspects of where he was now finding himself in the community and talking about how Bill Russell
revolutionized the game of basketball which um I really appreciated because honestly as much as I've always known all the wanted to help the devel started playing at a time when you did not leave your feet on defense if you left your feet you're immediately kicked off the But he eventually
realized he can't play unless he leaves his feet. He's taller than everybody, jumped higher than everybody, they want to shoot and he can stop that from that. So even against coaches pushing back on it, he kept doing it and doing it and doing it because it was the way he could play and the only way he knew how to maximize that he could want to get done.
And as a result, years later, all of a sudden, everybody's doing it and following it later on. And then, you know, he he could have really took a step back in the community, but instead he stepped forward became the first black coach in the NBA as a player
coach. He refused to have a white coach with him because he knew, having been in Boston for so long, and as well as just being a black star in in sports, he knew if there's a white person next to me, they will always question whether or not I did it or they. So, he wanted to be
out there on his own. and that so we got that background to really get understand what legacy of Bill Rush are we trying to h so in the last couple of months we've been really talking a lot about what are we going to do around town we've spoken about some easy lifts
so far we're going to work with the library to put on like some movies or show um sorry u documentaries about Bill Russell interviews there's dozens of hours worth of videos of Bill Russell talking about civil rights basketball growing up.
There's uh books that he wrote, books about. So, we want to work at the library to create the little area to help educate our town about Bill Russell as well as a little more interactive, maybe like a like a mixed media club where, you know, we'll have these discussions and and hopefully, you know,
members will keep on coming. And then the idea might be for that to then go into other topics uh that that springboard off of Bill Russell now as a person to his legacy in civil rights. Um, but we're still trying to talk about
what more we want to get done. And so that's why May and June we're going to be having a lot. And one of the reasons I wanted to have make sure I was here today u which just happens to coincide with Neco and I think it's great to be to be good timing for it given the conversation is we we need to start
getting a lot more public. We want to hear from our the boards that we represent. Right. So, I hung it here with what was the purpose of our committee. Hopefully, you guys can come up with some ideas that you might like to see, but we're also the school keeps
coming up, right? We keep wanting to figure out how we're going to get the whole town um involved and so ideas of some art projects and schoolish. So, the next couple of months we are going to be at the writing friends and family day. want to use that for a lot of community involvement and
just to have people understand who we are see if people want to talk to us kind of an ad hoc uh um at that time get some ideas but Junth uh we are going to have a pretty big presence there and we are open to give an actual statement at that time if we are able to get it through it will be the statement
acknowledging accountability um and expressing um uh regret for that may not be able to get something that impactful full done by that time. We have to work with the select board on that, get everything lined up. Um, so it may end
up just being like a statement of intent, more about who we are for the town. Uh, but we're hoping that we can at least have some more of our programming actually lined up at that time and roll out. So that's where we are now. Uh, the next two meetings in May are going to be about tightening up
that June team. Um, and then I think we have a meeting right before Junth and then we're going to start dissecting information lessons learned and figure out what what we want to do for the next six months actually. Um, so anything from you guys like put you on the spot
now? Absolutely not. But at some point if you guys want to start thinking about that and and please engage me about any thoughts uh because I will be coming back with some ideas 100% about how we might want to utilize the school system and some ideas about what we can and can't do.
Any questions? Yes. So the the committee was formed last summer. Yes. So the the the vote happened on Junth last year is when the committee was that's when the site for approved it. The committee just got uh
VAS didn't get around to doing their interviews for people until September October and we got appointed around December. So January was our first move. Okay. Because I'm I was saying what was the delay for all those months. Um and
is so one thing that you said when you said funding just make sure I don't know if you can do funding as a ad hoc to the select board. You guys have got to check that out. Correct. Uh correct. So our goal is to make a recommendation to the select board on how they might be able
to follow up. Um and then be careful of your sunset date too. So do you have a sunset date? We have a sunset date. It is 12 months from the January from our first um meeting from the first from the first
meeting. Great. Thank you. Yeah. So, so actually to piggy back on that, we do have a little bit of a burndown plan heading down to that which is why we kind of ided Junth hoping to do something so we get lessons learned so we can spend the next kind of six months trying to come up with what a long-term
program might look right. So, it just struck me as I'm looking around this room, right? Um, just an idea. I don't even know if we could do it. So, that's whether it's schools or whether it's library or something, but I could envision a room
like this that does a lot of Bill's life, the challenges he went through as well as successes and accomplishments. Um, that could speak in of itself, right? And it could be a permanent thing to a degree. Whether his family would
approve is another another question, you know, whether whether it's the library that it's in or one of the schools or something else is another question altogether. Um, but this room seems to speak in a very similar way to what he might be able to display about
Bill's life and commemorate it. Um, so for those of you that can't see it on the on the Zoom, it's it's essentially a timeline of various different critical events that have happened and and you know, quotes and and key events of of of METCO as a
program that's happened over the years starting back 1963. Yeah. Right. Um, and it doesn't it doesn't accomplish the full timeline, but it's it does something. So that's just an idea in addition to the art project idea or something else. I've always thought of one particular idea, but
sort of pigeon holes him into a certain space too and I think we all know what that pigeon hole might be but um you know something else to think about too is what that might be. Um so as you come in through that as you you know you and I can maybe trade notes about whether we
want to have a brainstorming session from a school committee perspective put that on the agenda so it's not a full deliberation we'll have an update but let's uh let's discuss whether that's viable or if there's any you want to bring that's being brought under the ACE committee as ideas and whether or not
you know funding wise or physical space wise yeah I I agree 100% by the way the the first thing I saw in that wall right over is 1960s Boston school committee was a starting point of appointed to black community activists. Well that Bill Russell was one right in the 60s
around here in Boston at that time. I I agree 100%. I was thinking the same thing looking around here how great this room is set up and and how much it's you know think why would Thanksgiving we're trying to establish. Okay. Is it appropriate to have a question or comment?
Thank you. Thank you. Um thanks so much Ryan. I I re I appreciate what the committee is doing. I really think the super super important thing as a white reading resident is to have conversations in the reading community,
true conversations about, you know, how Will Russell and his family were treated because there's such a silence around that, a deliberate silence. So, I was I was at something recently, an arts an arts consultation about the arts plan in
town and talked with someone from the history commission. I'm an Australian person who's been in town for six years and I knew more about the history of his family in Reading than this person did who's lived there 40 years. That was a deliberate not knowing, right? So I'm
I'm I really encourage that we have to have conversations in town with people to really really talk about what happened and accept responsibility for that. I would say before there's an apology or regret so that it's a true
community conversation where people are really reconciling the past before making a statement because we've seen in town before we can have some leaders make a statement but if there's not community understanding and support behind that it's actually counterproductive
because then people get super angry about this statement because we didn't have to do all the ground work and actually looks pretty similar to something we're going to say from friends of reading mechco about conversations that need to happen in town about the value of the metco. So I
just wonder whether there might some Yeah. No. Yeah, I appreciate that feedback. Um I agree. We've been trying to figure out the timing and what we can or can't. So um yeah, so I I don't think Junth will be that deliverable in addition to the timeline is also we want to use the friends of film. We want to
use Junth to try and have those conversations to get more feedback. Um, so no, yeah, I appreciate that there. Well, a couple of quick comments on the Zoom. Joy, fantastic idea for the library installation honoring him. Maria agreed to recal happens that could be a place in addition to down the line. Oh
yeah. And then Joy, you know, this may fall in the rain cultural council's domain as well, which certainly could. Um, just editorial comment. Um, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make the brain, right? Right. And I think ultimately we see that in a lot
of the conversations around writing is there's there are people who will join those conversations because they want to and there are people who will not because they don't, right? Um so there's only so much you can do and Ryan you and I sort of talked about that when we were going through the appointing process as well as how do we figure that out,
right? What is the right way? Um what is the right way to have the conversation without feeling like for the person that's having the conversation they're being hit in the head? So it's how do you engage without lecturing, right? for lack of better way to say it. It's it's an interesting balance at times. Um so
that challenge there, but you know ultimately people have to want to engage. They have to be an interest. I would just add though that I think that um theformational component is really crucial. You talked about having
constructed this timeline. Um and I I speak as someone who didn't grow up in Massachusetts, let alone reading, and who didn't know anything about it. said, you know, I've moved to Reading in 2015. I don't think I learned about Bill Russell's connection to the town and the
history and everything like that until I've been here for at least 5 years. And so, I think there's relevant to your comment, okay, I think there's probably a lot of people in town like me who just don't have the background and don't even aren't even aware of the history. And so
I think that um that would be something worthwhile to consider is sort of how to just do a general education campaign separate from any sort of um accountability campaign just so that people are aware of the history. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree 100%. It's um anecdotally I I would almost always anytime I met somebody new kind of talk about have you heard about these committee? Have you heard about or else? Yeah, probably only one out of every 10 people I spoke with um had any real understanding at all. A couple other
were aware that he was here, but they didn't they didn't really know the history, you know. I think um the Netflix books documentary coming out revive a lot of the conversation. Yeah. I mean, if you want to involve the school, it might also be an interesting project to see if student volunteers could write a series of articles for one
of the local newspapers or something like that. We have it in high school. Okay. Ryan, thank you so much for giving us the update and keep engaged. Yeah, thank you everyone. So, um, moving on to the next part of
the agenda and this is our friend Metro discussion and I hand it over to our esteemed colleagues. School committee are here for a war time to answer questions. way to
start here. Good evening. Um, I'm Leanda Abs. I am co-chair for our friends metro introducer is thank you for having us. Thank you
for adding the additional date as requested because we were expecting the dates to meet and have changed. native. Um, great to have the community on Zoom as well. That's a larger Zoom presence than we had last year. So, thank you.
Um, and thank you for hosting us and granting us a space to speak and we join in. So, I know that you all you send us some questions. We sat with Tom and um Jar Vindy and we received the questions early on prior to so we want to leave
the opportunity to speak for those questions. Last year we did a one by one and it took a lot of time so we don't want to do that time and I'm not going to skip it. Everyone everyone
not the only one [Music] I'm half and half I'm like oh sorry you're going to be a winner just um so any um questions that you want to
speak to and if you don't touch upon any of them then we'll circle back. I'll defer to any of the other school board members first because you all know I can talk too long this is too loud. So Erin, Carla, Laura, anybody want to start? Do you have the questions available or do you want me to recount
if they have questions? Good. Go ahead. Sure. Um, so I um I'm going to credit Curtis to to a lot of this and uh and really defining what a a model
medical program should be and with the success or these two that it's it's in good hands. I will tell you, Curtis and I have had many parties together and um I won't say the sport, but last
Tuesday, one of the sports, we had a pasta party at our house. Um, we have a Boston Red Band as president on our team and the captains of the team made sure that she attended both pasta parties and
we were able to get the home to her parents and that her and I talked about that is there has to be um organic type of friendships made with students so kids feel comfortable
coming from home with someone and uh in building those relationships. So to me that was a huge success. I'll take it a step further that I would like um I would like us to have
uh direct awareness and with our coaches um and even our captain's parents to make sure that that that's included. Uh, so I I I think that's a step in the right direction, but I also think that
we have a more correct role just in in trying to form those connections and make sure that those things are happen happening. But um I think that you know there was a lot of emphasis and there was a lot of
um there was a lot of talk about the medical program the the uh with the video and everything that we did and I feel like it's kind of died down a little bit and I want to be able to kind of see it be brought up. I I and we were
talking about it earlier for the students who are graduating because I know it's a big class definitely want to fill those spots and we can um and and to have more of a representation in all of the schools one
side sometimes you know one school may have more than the other but just to try and do that um I'm proud of the program I feel like a lot of people in the community. There's been a lot of discussions about it. There's always more to do. There's
always things to enhance, but um I feel good about where I kind of just gave you. Lauren, do you want to jump in next? I'll let Aaron speak first just since the longer standings. Oh, why thank you.
Um, I think there's been a lot of successes for the program. I'm proud of the growth and the way that we've integrated uh a much larger population. Um, I'm really proud of all that, Curtis, you
accomplished in your in your time there. It was nice to see you there tonight. Um, and I'm especially proud of uh the transition to the METCO coordinators in each of our schools. I I think that's
been really monumental for helping our Boston residents um feel supported um feel recognized, feel valued. Um, and it's and it's a very necessary step toward
uh diversifying our our RPS staff more. There's obviously more work to do there, but um it was still it was a big step from where we were. So, um you know, I I think those are definitely some of our successes.
Um Sure. Well, I'm coming into this as the newcomer on the committee and so my history with interacting with the program is not as extensive. Um, but the questions that st stood out to me the most were about the need to educate the
broader community about the importance because coming in as a member of the broader community and now as a member of the school committee, I've already learned just in the last several months more than I knew about Bedco from living in town for 10 years. And so I think
there is definitely a space to be filled to just educate people more broadly about the program. Um the other thing that stood out to me in terms of improvements and
again I'm coming at this only from my own parenting perspective here. I have a seventh grader and a fourth grader and um my in my experience so far my observation is that at least in the
younger grades there's not necessarily as much integration as I would like to see and so um I think that if we don't make an effort to help the kids form those kinds of connections
especially at a young age, then none of them is really getting the full benefit of the program because they're not really learning about those kinds of interactions and the importance of diversity and all of the kind of things
that spiderweb out from that. And I've come from an anthropology background as well and so I I think about things in those in that framework. Um, but I think that, you know, just having different populations from Boston residents and resident residents
existing in parallel isn't necessarily the same thing as as really forming those kinds of connections that make a whole community. And so, um, again, this is purely based on my own observations for my kids experiences. Um, but if I extrapolate from that, I would imagine
that that is the case at, um, beyond my own experience. And so, um, I think that's something that's worth brainstorming about is really how to, um, from the bottom up, from the kind of grassroots perspective, how do you let these kids form connections and build
relationships in in ways that will be then magnified as they continue to go through all the grades together? That is the second part of the question. If anyone could add or speak to it or maybe come back circle back to it, but how can we do this together?
come back to it when I'm saying we can um what am I most I'll start with the proudest part right and the improvements that have happened so far but that we can still see um we go back and I'll back to Carla's point and Curtis being
in the room we first got here Curtis first got here we were a fledgling organization that was the bottom of the barrel um 40 kids or something along those lines and within a year we got to 100
kids and within a year and a half or two years Millie and others were holding their reading up as a model you know community and a model school system. So that growth um expansion um and all of the strategic thought that took that
came with that inclusive of you know school adjustment counselors and and u whatnot is something we all should be extraordinarily proud of. Um and you know I think we've said it before but we'll say it again. Thank you for that for those of you who really invested to
make that happen. It was not easy. Um it you know took a while right it took a lot of effort um it's not where we need to be right uh last year when we were here or the year before time flies on me I said I wanted to be the top program in
the state I still do um you know then somebody educated me well Newton has 400 kids Tom is that really what you want top program in the state doesn't necessarily mean number of kids although I think we can grow in number of kids
should grow in number of students. Um, but if you think about it, 100 kids out of 3,800 is too small of a number in the grand scheme of things. Especially if you talk about what Laura is talking about about true integration and true relationships and things along those
lines. The number needs to be a greater percentage um, in the grand scheme of things. You know, I think back in Curtis and I when he first started, we talked about, you know, when I was in Denver public schools, I was bus across the city from the white neighborhood to the
black neighborhood. So, we had our integration in the reverse sense at that point in time. Um, but it was a much greater percentage uh than what we're seeing here in I don't that's part and I think that's what we see across many districts. The percentage numbers are
still like relatively small. Um, so I'd love to see more growth and more improvement in that space. Um, you know, I would love to see more growth and more improvement at the state level in terms of funding, right? I mean, ultimately a lot of it ties back to that. Um, and Carla and I had the
the opportunity to attend an event last year for that. Unfortunately, even with the school's recommendation and advocacy, we didn't see a rise in the money last year. This year might be a very a modest rise I think coming forward, but there needs to be even
there needs to be more there. And I know Millie was trying to work hard with Jason to get some of that done, but we need to do more, right? We need to figure out how to do more, what that can look like um and and what that what that can be. So going to the advocacy role, that's that's part of our job from a
politics perspective, for lack of a better way to say is is the advocacy. That's the works the funding. Um the question of success and how How do I find it? I'm I'm an academic focused
person, left, right, and center. Looking at the end of the table, they know that I focus on that. Um I'm I'm really happy to hear and we've already talked about it a few times, the Ignite related work. I think that's six kids out of 100, right?
Um I as much as the social and the relationship stuff is important until the academic stuff matches we haven't succeeded right um at least in my mind so whether you want to call that closing the gap whether you want to whatever you
want to call it I don't care what you call it um but until we see on the only measurable score we have available whether you like it or run don't like it until we see the MCCAST numbers not showing a 40 50% gap between our different populations we have not
exceeded uh or met met the goals as necessary um and understanding what drives that getting behind the research what we can do to help close that whether it's ignite whether it's other options last summer we tried something else with various degrees of success um
but how can we help the population um improve academically as well what do we need to provide from a school home relationship perspective. What do we need to provide from an after school or before school perspective? What how else
can we help close the gap? Um for me a lot of it is an academic related side of it too. Social side great 100% on board with what Laura assigning but the uh the academic side of it is. Um so now to your question of how can we do this
together? That's the harder stuff, right? That's the hard work. I mean it's my to to be to a degree it's part of my last answer like you can lead a horse to water can't make a drink right um and I think it might tie back to Carla's answer social right um the social
alignment of this is but then ladies please jump in and others please jump in right um the social alignment breaks down barriers lack say it there's there is a natural barrier from a physical location
perspective for some of our students, for almost all of the students in the program, right? So, how do we break down that barrier? Um, and Curtis, you've tried multiple things, uh, you know, whether it's the kites at the park or other things. We, you know, the roller skating, I think you all did, you know,
earlier this year, you know, code switching, you know, video, and hopefully there were a lot of people that were there that kind of had aha moments. We need to figure out how to get to that aha moment for different people. Um and right, wrong or indifferent. Um one of the benefits of
having a committee like ours is we have different political persuasions, right? Which, um hopefully can help figure out what those aha moments are for different people. Um you know, and you know, whether it's onetoone conversations with some of us, whether it's, you know, us
bringing different people together, we have figured that that out. I don't have a clean and clear answer. If we did, we wouldn't be here asking the question. Um but the brainstorming ideas parents probably next. So, anybody else want to add anything to that? How often do the students have
opportunities to have frank conversations about this and to to say, you know, we feel more or less integrated or we have ideas about ways that we could try to um Yeah. or coordinators, too.
Thank you. So I I mean again I'm the newbie so I apologize for lack of creativity. Um but you know are are we listening to what the students themselves are to what degree are we listening to what the students themselves are saying in terms
of those kinds of suggestions in terms of the high school? I know um Dr. Hardy correct me if I'm wrong. And for there was an intern Barbara Barbara Best and so um she did a lot of focus groups um speaking to students about their exper
experience the um impact of the program and things that they would um like to see move forward and that was shared um I think with uh with us in the community. Um, as far as at the at the elementary level, um, which where I am,
um, we do have those conversations, um, me as a coordinator with the, um, Boston residents. So, it hasn't really gone outside of that. I do know actually that, um, some of our teachers, specifically at Birch Meadow, um, they
attended the MDA conference in December and that really motivated them. And so, um, some of the teachers decided to purchase a book, um, that kind of describes and talks about the writing medical program and they kind of read that in class as a whole class and kind
of did like a reflection piece on it and had the kids kind of write up like something important like most of our medical program. Um, but I don't think it I agree. I don't think it's happening as frequent as it needs to be. Yeah. Well, and especially if it's only happening with the Boston residents, um
that's putting the onus entirely on that. It shouldn't be. And so I think it would probably be important, I don't know whether from a curriculum perspective, whether it's something that you could intern for internalize, but um to be able to have something systematic
in place that that forces all of the kids to be participating in that kind of conversation. Um because you know again I'm dealing mostly with the younger kids but at least at the elementary level my guess is the kids just don't even stop
and think about it like they just you know they kind of know that oh these kids come in from Boston but they don't know what that means. They don't know what that entails. They don't they don't know the challenges the same. I mean I took me took me a really long time to drive down here today and I was thinking about the students who have to back and
forth every day and I was thinking how how challenging that must be just from a not just from a logistical perspective from you know you know limiting perspective in in terms of the time they have to do school work and the times they have to do extracurricular activities. And I think that probably a
large percentage of the white student population or the running resident population is just not on the radar. And so I think that one thing that maybe we as a school committee could try to do is interface more with the with the coordinators and
with um you know the individual teachers to come up with some ideas for how those topics can be directly addressed so that the students are are maybe forced into thinking about them a little bit more critically. Maybe to that found family
in reverse agency. Yeah. All right. Sarah, Charlotte, I see your hand up. I just want to get some one more thing in the room and then we'll come to you, Sarah. Yeah, I appreciate everything you're raising. Excellent point. Work to
do. One thing we did add in where we thought it might be helpful um starting 20 years ago, all of our new staff attend a designated meeting about a month into the school year where we take them through what the network program is, what its history is. We talk
specifically about some of the challenges that our Boston might face and we talk with them about, you know, how to address it in the classroom with students and how to be supportive of all. So, a small step, but that's something that we felt was important that as new staff come into our our school, that
part of the culture, we honor that with district and one of their responsibilities as a staff member to make sure that they're supporting them. Yeah, that's fantastic. Okay. Shirley, you have your hand up. You want to add something? Um, yes. Um,
I forget who it was who asked uh about are we listening to the kids? Um, to be to be honest with you, um, I'm one of the adviserss of
the only student of color club slashg group in writing public schools. And the students presented not only to school committee but to their student body and
to their students to their staff members um four years ago. We are now four years running um as a SOA club and talking to the students on a daily basis not much has changed for them. you
guys see what you see on your level and yes we bring in more kids. Yes, we bring in more numbers. Um yes, there is has been some changes in Reading Public School. Um, we've
gotten staff in each of the buildings, but that staff that we have in each of those buildings, let's just say they work for the MECO program. So, outside of if the
MECO program was to leave Reading Public Schools today, would you still have staff of color working in your district? one, we have been saying that we are putting out, you know, openings out
there and we're trying to do recruiting and so forth, but again, there's no other other than the quote unquote staff that work for the for the MECO program. our students are not exposed to other staff that look like
them, that represent where their their backgrounds or where they come from, their cultures or anything else. And so when we ask, are we listening to the kids? Yes, there was um a woman who did
talk to the kids, but again, they talked, they heard, but are they listening and are they actually making the changes and implementing the things that the students talked about that is
wrong with the program? That's my concern because I'm I'm happy that we're bringing in numbers, but it doesn't make any difference if we're bringing in numbers and we're not giving quality to these
students because they deserve it and the families deserve it just like anyone else. And so when we talk about um you know building these relationships how how how are we planning the these activities? How are
we planning events? when we host uh when we have sports or extracurriculars that families are hosting things um and they're doing things early in the morning or late in the evening um and our Boston resident
students are getting the information on the lather end of things and they're kind of having to make do or make make way or we're getting the information late. So then we're trying to implement
things into our children's life so that they feel like they they belong, so that they feel like they're part of the community, so that they feel like they're part of this program, but they're not really being taken into
consideration on the larger scheme of things. Um, thank you, Shirley. I don't I don't know that that's necessarily something that can be directly addressed in in this conversation per se. There's a lot there that is to a
degree operational from an execution perspective. I do believe that that what Barbara listened to, she she did properly listen to execution after listening is a different question than listening though, right? The ability to execute after listening is a different
question as well. Um, you know, we have had conversations about some of the challenges there are with hiring. It's not straightforward in any way, shape, or form. Uh, one would like to be able to say, "Hey, here's a position and you
have a ton of qualified applicants and they all want to come to Reading and that's just not always the case. Um, you know, hopefully that that will start to change over time and I think the reputation of the district has a lot to do with that, right? Um, It's a little
bit of a chicken or egg type of conversation and Curtis, you and I have had a little bit of that conversation in the past. Um, it's not an easy conversation. Tom, I know you and I have had that conversation. Um, so it's not I'm trying to say that it's not for lack of effort, but maybe
there can still be more or better effort for lack better way to put it. Um, so that said, it's easier said, but I'm sure there are other relations or portions of this conversation with Anything else?
Tom, I thank you for saying that. Um, because it's it is true. Um, but we also have to think about the staff that we're bringing in. Uh, and not leaving them out on an island by themselves where they don't feel supported or they're I
mean, just cuz you're you get older in age doesn't mean that that isolation goes away if you are the only one in your building that looks like you. And anytime that something happens, you know, you're the person that they're
looking for to fix the issue or to deal with the problem. Yep. And I think that was a that's a common theme I've heard in the past as well, Shel. So, thank you for sharing that as well. And Erin, your hands up.
Go ahead. Hi. So, I apologize. I I didn't realize we were addressing all the questions at once. For some reason, I thought we were going in order. So, you were probably like, "Why did she stop talking there?" Um, I I'm I'm like trying very hard to
follow everyone and and hear everyone, but I can hear some of you better than others. Um, I I just want to say that I I agree. I I think the diversity in staff h has really plagued us, for lack
of a better term. I'm not sure I know a better answer to it. Um, but I think it's vital that we continue working aggressively to better diversify our staff so that our staff reflect our
student body. Um, and I think it's vital to the ongoing success of the METCO program. Um, as far as educating the broader community, I I think um I think there's a disconnect
with a lot of families, too, like Reading residents. Um, I think it it goes beyond the students, the work that we need to do. Um, you know, Curtis did such a phenomenal job of of getting the
message out that we are all MECCO. Um, and I think that that took us that took us further than we've been in a long time like like Tom said. Um, you know, but but it we were at such a low bar um
back then. I think that um there's still a lot, you know, people will come to me. There's still a lot of confusion over how kids get into the METCO program, why kids are in the METCO program. There's there's I still hear a terrible
sentiment of um the idea that we can send them back. Um which is horrifying. Um so I you know it's it's out there. It comes up every year um sometimes with
multiple kids. Um, so to me that that shows work to do with with the families as well as the students in terms of just really embracing that everyone who attends Reading Public Schools is a Reading Public School student. Um, so I,
you know, as proud as I am of of as far as we've gotten, I do agree. Um, there's more work we can be doing. Um, and I think it's my role as a school committee member to to continue to push the administration
um to continue to prioritize this. I do believe that they do. Um, but that that's where I see my role as the advocacy to to make sure that it remains a priority for the district. So, I apologize. I didn't I sort of cut myself
off short, but um this is a good conversation. It's one that I'm glad we're having. You too wanted to have a few words to me. I think actually uh Erin, thank you so much for what you've said then
because you brought us home. Uh Leandra and I as co-chairs had some prepared remarks we wanted to share about what we see as the achievements of friends of Reading Mechco over the past 12 months and what we see as potential
improvements. Everything you've said you want to improve is what we really want to improve. Uh I don't I don't want to go through these prepared remarks because what I've sat here and heard is there's
a proportion of our staff that are potentially feeling isolated. uh that there is a proportion of our students that don't feel they belong, that feel isolated, that are not being served the same way for institutional
reasons, not because any one person is deciding, but for institutional reasons. And it's actually not okay. It's not okay. And so I'm asking following on from what Erin said, I'm asking I believe it's my co-chair asking fellow
board members and so is can you take charge of this? Um because we I really appreciate all the things you've said. They are all true. I I want to ask myself if I heard
this about a group of students who all look like my own children, but I think it's acceptable and I would not So I want to ask the school committee to as Erin has said please take charge of this. We're a group of volunteers. We
have a as you do we as I know school committee is volunteers. We're also volunteers. We're also volunteers also less wellresourced volunteers but still volunteers. So so can you can you take charge of these things so that next year
when we come back there is some movement. There is we yes we listen to the students yes we've heard from teachers and we've done something because we take responsibility for all of our students and all of our staff we will help you we will be alongside you
but can you please take charge anything else anything else from other members anything so just real quick on that just because I don't like having a question unanswered It's a foil
of mine a better way to put it. Um, so you all know this I think but I'll just say it for anybody who doesn't know the role of the school committee is basically three-fold policy, budget, goals and reviews, right? So when you ask us to take charge that's in one of
those three categories um budget to a degree is is what it is. Um, you know, and we've with the help of Curtis and Meccco, we've secured pretty significant funding, but could more be done in
advocacy to the state to get more funding. Yes, I think there's something we can do and continue to do. Whether it yields any fruit is a different question from a macro perspective, right? But we can certainly ask and push for more as a collective body, not individually, but
as a collective body. um goals and review. We absolutely could put some things and we have historically put some things in there. Um the measurements are the challenge. The you know the so what how you achieve that is the biggest
question. Some people know that when I first joined there was a goal even before any of the other school committee members were here there was a goal it was called was the closing the gap goal right um which was completely undefined and if anybody really pays attention you can close the gap in many ways right you
can close the gap by lowering the bar for everybody which is what was happening or you can close the gap by raising the bar and then raising it faster for those in the lower scale so the bar is higher which is what we're trying to do right that latter part what we need to do is figure out how we do
that um within a construct and what supports and services and scientific methods support that that portion of it. Um but then there's the there's other goals being put into this from a a sense of belonging perspective which is in our current goals from a um you know and
that's part of the reason why Barbara did what she did right um from a staffing perspective which not in this current instance of goals to my recollection but in previous instances of goals. So we can talk about those kind of things and figure out where they fit. I'm not sure I see a policy fit
here frankly off the top of my head. I'll keep thinking about it. People know I think about policy more often than I should probably. Um but I think there are those two natural progressions to help own it as your suggest. Thank you. And when I said I'll throw away our prepared remarks, that meant that I
threw away something that's super important is actually those conversations about the goal of students belonging and then looking at which students feel like they belong and which don't is a conversation that Landre and I had started with Curtis and with Dr.
Mileski 18 months ago I think and since taken up very briefly Derica and Cindy post and then I think that's the we do have we actually do have all of the tools we do have the tools it's the will and the leadership
which we've definitely seen from Dr. from the test and from the and co-directors I I think we've talked about there needs to be there needs to be more resources and they're just a charge from the school to say this is the next segation all of our students need to feel they belong all parents
need to be engaged and who isn't and really I know you like to ded some people and address that it's not just the physical stuff that yeah um just Mr. Maria, I see your hand on the air. I'm
going to say yes, but I want to limit you to a limited time so we can go to the next bit of agenda. So, you have something you can share in in a minute or two. Who who me do you think I talk a lot? I don't know why you would think this. Um, I want to throw out that I just want to
throw a success story. I feel like um you know I was on the CPAC board a couple years ago and I feel like we got the message that it would be really good to have someone who was a Boston resident family on our board and at the time I was like oh are there kids in
Metco that even have IEPs? Like I similarly was very ignorant. I did not know. Um but that I mean personally that was really good for me. I got to know a lot of the wonderful people here and we had that commonality of like it wasn't about just like artificially trying to
bring us together like we literally had a commonality and like a common mission of helping our kids with extra needs. Um, and so I'm thinking of other committees, you know, I'm just trying to brainstorm here, like PTO's, like how much um encouragement or pressure is there to make sure that there is um, you
know, somehow a Boston resident member family somehow represented on the various committees throughout because I feel like CPAC is like a good example. Um, thank you, Zia. You know, of having just having that voice and that proximity and I'm done. That's it. I'm
muting myself. Thank you. Your job description. Okay. I think I mean I think that sort of feedback don't be afraid to say it. Let it out. Right. Let me tell you. It's just Then
yeah, we went through the whole first round and first round there was not person on that and all 10 of us rejected. I rewrote it. I wrote the job
description. Then we got five like me. So I sent you to the previous um supercharger for Tom. They did some some more editing, but it went with what I wrote
and ended up with. So maybe I don't know. I don't know what it looks like. I think that's that's valid feedback. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, Michelle will be happy to sit down and look look at that and see if there's language that can be adjusted and whatnot more
appealing. All right. So, I said she was going to close it, but apparently Curtis wants to close it before something real quick. I'll make it short, but um a lot has been done and obviously it's not where everybody wants him to be, but a lot has been done and
we're moving in the right direction. I think it's moving in the right direction. Um, from some of the comments that's been made about staff and belonging, there's 32 medical districts and I know for a fact that when those police comments are
made in every district, but they're not every district isn't actually being taken in. So steps in that's actually being taken in, it's just going to take time and we all don't want the time because we all want everything to happen tomorrow, right? So when I hear Sarah
says, you know, for new employees coming in, we making sure that they're aware of what MECO is like that's the step and trying to make changes to make sure people belong. uh you know are the fact that Reading and Mechco combined to pay
the for Mechco sats those are the steps to attract more people because one if it was just on Mechco like the other 30 31 districts we wouldn't have eight staffs right we would have only had two or three so we're all doing a lot of
everyone's doing a lot of work we all wanted to have it now um we just got to keep put keep pushing at it and it will it will happen. Uh, and we'll get what we we're looking for. But I just want to acknowledge that the information is
being taken in. It's just it's going to take some time to actually deliver on those things. Uh, but at least it's being taken in where I know for a fact that's not that's not even being taken in in every district with the other 31 district. So, I'm happy to see what's
continuing to happen. And you know, little birdie told me about some stuff that's going to continue to happen, which will also emphasize like the work is happening. So, I just want to say in a good place and everyone just has to try put their hands together and get
working together and continue to build. But it's a lot of work. It's a misnowledge that it's a lot of work. It's going to take time. Okay. My my attempts to stop us from moving it forward is not working, but that's okay because input is important. So Ellie, your hand is in the air. Let's
uh please let us hear what you have to say as well. Um so in order for us to help um build the school and make it look a little bit like us, um we should be allowed to have links of those opportunities and job opportunities that
are open in Reading. Um I attend a church here in Boston that we have individuals that are looking for work and have the credentials to work in a school. Um, so if you allow us to spread the word, we can help fill those spots up so our kids can have individuals that
look like us in the building. So allow us to help you, Ellie. That'd be awesome. And that's an avenue. We we have all these like professional networks, but sometimes it's the networking, regular human human networking that will help close the gap
as well. So thank you for that, Ellen. Okay. Um, and with that said, we'll finish on that topic. Thank you ladies. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you everybody else for the discussion on it as well. Um, let's move on to the state of running metals. And uh, and Jericho, I think you guys have been while we're
ready. I'm I'm really sorry. I hate your attention, but I offage. There's a person off stage who's going to stay off stage. But we're super lucky that one of our Boston parents whose son is a sophomore at the high school, a junior at the high
school. Yeah. See, Tracy Gamble, who is also a member of the Metco board upstairs. She's been sitting there quietly. So amazing to have a Boston parent who's
a reading parent and also a member of the MECO for just the last three beautiful. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here. Am I supposed to follow the video? Yeah. So we're going to share a whole presentation video. The only problem is
I don't Is it this one? We're going to share with you. We apologize. Quick uh it's a good find. Oh yeah. All right. I mean logistics. It's fine.
this down. No, I just saw it. Look at that. Okay. We're on a quick break. You want to say hello to everyone while you're here? Uh, sure. Sure. Hello everybody. Um, I'm
Darnell Billings. I am the current board chair for the Mechco, Inc. board of directors. Glad to see all your faces here. Um, so if you ever have any questions about anything medical related, feel free to find me. I'm easy to reach. I'm a real estate agent by day and medical board chair every other
hour. Pleasure to have you guys here. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, that's what we got. All right, good evening. We are excited to get into what is going to be a fun part of the
present. They're set in us. Got to get this back to the So, this is actually shared on the zoom as well. Otherwise, they won't see anything. So share. All right. Now, sorry. All right. Uh we are excited
tonight to present an overview update of what's been happening across the MECO program this year. Before we dive in, it would be nice to share just an update of everyone who's in the room who's part of our staff and team internally because we have a bunch of folks on the zoom as well from our public schools team. So for those you haven't met, I'm Tom, the
superintendent schools. Hardy is dire teaching. Jerica Santiago, I'm co director and school adjustment counselor for the middle schools. Cindy M, coco director, school adjustment counselor at Birch. Sonia Lumba, I'm at Killum. I'm the
medical coordinator and school adjustment counselor. I'm Mike Darren, medical coordinator Middle School. Uh Luke Ulissi, medical coordinator at Red and High.
Hi, I'm Shaquanda Brown, uh MECO coordinator, school adjustment counselor at Barls Elementary School. Awesome. That's everyone. Uh, and I I just want to thank everyone for that conversation before too. I think it's great to feel both things at once, which is some enthusiasm and pride about
things that are going well or progress we made and a continued focus on uh doing what we need to do for students to improve their day-to-day experience. And there's a long way to go despite, you know, progress we made. And I think it's great to feel both of those things simultaneously. That's where many of us
feel. Um, I'd like I want to give a shout out. Oh, look. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. I just wanted to throw in something real quick. Uh the track meet's about to be over and uh the boss kids all about to leave. So I can hear them making a lot of noise right here. So I'm going back and
forth. So I got to make sure they all get on a bus. I might have to step out on a few. And I'd also I'm going to speak about the the counselors a little bit, but I'd also just like to say uh I know that there was some credit and acknowledgement gives like myself to Curtis our team. Obviously, the
day-to-day work that's happening, why our program is improving is staff? Yes. Families, yes. The ones who I think are driving the improvement the most is our counselors and our coordinators who are day in and day out. Uh not only improving our our experience for our Boston resident students, but our
reading resident students, our staff, they wear so many different hats and do it all so well. So, while I'm going to speak about them later, I just before Luke left, I want to give a huge thank you and encouragement. You are the ones really moving the needle in our district and our community. Thank you. Um, but we are going to uh jump our
agenda tonight, go to our senior spotlight. Super fun to celebrate uh highlight our graduating seniors. We'll then talk a little bit about program enrollment, just what our numbers look like across uh different schools. Here's some updates from 2425 through a lot of pictures. Then you'll hear from students
and staff, what's going on in the program, a little video that was put together by Cindy and Jerica. I will take a couple of minutes to do a little bit more of an in-depth thank you to our Mechco Saxs and coordinators talking about impact what they do in our community and then I will this is the one Curtis said the little birdie told me we'll do a little bit about the
future of the MECO director position two here. So, I'm going to turn it over. We'll actually we'll start with the program enrollment. You can see just broken down by school uh where we are. This is for this current year. These numbers will shift next year. I will say Cindy and Jericho are very thoughtful about trying to balance across schools, but as you know, it is tricky just in
certain, you know, grade levels and staying in an appropriate uh like to go back to this number that was jumped 22 to 23. We would like to make a similar uh jump in the future, but unfortunately at this point uh Mechco has told us that they are not uh
entertaining any expansions beyond sort of what was within our cap. Our cap is listed at 106. So we are not allowed to go above 106 to be able to receive funding as well. We are continuing to push and advocate, but that is something that at this point we're we're
stuck. All right, now to the fun part. We're going to highlight our seniors. We're going to start with Deja Grant. She'll be attending Framingham State University to begin her journey in the medical field and she is currently in the process of enlisting in the Air Force Reserve and she's been a part of the writing medical program since she
was in kindergarten. Um then we have Kamia who will be attending Bunker Bunker Hill Community College to become an ultrasound technician and she has been a part of the program since the first grade. We have Jeremiah. He is attending Wentworth Institute of Technology. He
was a football captain for Reading High. He is a participant of track. He is a part of SOA and student government and he has been a part of the program since kindergarten. Then we have Miss Tama Jones. I don't know if she's still on, but if she'd like to speak to herself, that's
awesome. She'll be attending an H.B.CU this upcoming fall. And she's been a part of the program since kindergarten. And she was also a cheer captain for Next we have uh Jamal Palmer Jr. He will
be going to Dean College. He is also a participant in football and track and he's been in running med since 11th grade. So just two years in the program. Next we have Devon Mercy. He will be going to Indico this year. He was a powerhouse on the football field. So
holding it down for the football team and he's been in Ready Michael since second grade. Next we have Mr. Tavon. Tavon actually just called him today. He told me he got a scholarship to attend Wentworth Institute of
Technology. Tavon and he's also been in Reco since first grade. Next we have Sydney Smiley. Sydney is still undecided between two schools. Um but she's also been in Reme since the first grade. Right. Can we give up all of our
[Music] We're going to talk about um the things we've done in our across our program. This is honestly one of my favorite things to do is um family and parent outreach and engagement. Um so when Cindy and I took over this role, we were like, "Oh my gosh, we have three weeks to put together a fall event with some
remaining funds that we had." with the help of Sonia because she's the president of Boston and she herself with Be Healthy and we were able to host this awesome event where I think we had like just over 50 families um and we even had some reading residents come out to
Roslandale. Um we had a fall event that turned winter event because of the time of the year was buying arts and crafts. So we um there was a lot of engagement there and there was a lot of food. I forget which parent catered. Oh, Miss Wine Daily. Yes. From March Meadow, she
catered our event and it was delicious food. Soul food persuasion if you anyone's interested. Um, so Jerica talked a little bit about our family event in the fall that took place in Rosinddale. So what we tried to do is we try to make the events accessible for both Boston
and Reading residents. So what we did was for in March we did we hosted our skating night at Roto World in Wuburn and we had over 120 students and families in attendance. Wait, hold on. It was definitely a successful event. Um
the event was open to from elementary all the way up to high school. So we had engagement from all levels and it was really nice to engage not only with parents but we can see staff um engaging with the students as well outside of school. And it's always so amazing when
when faculty attends these events because the kids are like, "What? You exist? You're an eater." And it it definitely means a lot to them. Yeah. Absolutely. Look at the hug right there with just and and principal Burnham over at Birch.
So, at the middle school level and high school level, we do what's called honoral lunches. Um, personally for me, if a student gets to see, and I know they worked, they're behind off, I'm allowing them to be a part of that honoral lunch because they tried their best and their hardest. Um, so here we
have the students pictured who have earned their um, honoral lunch. There's more students who do earn this. Um, that's just the pictures we have. Oh, and then we had the MECO advocacy day. Sorry. um which was really
nice for students and families to come together. I think a goal of ours in the future is to get some more um members of the community involved and our Boston resident families involved in this as well. But for last minute, I would say we had a good turnout. Well, we were recognized at Mechco Advocacy Day as as
one of the districts that had the most um attendees and because of that we got a a pizza party from one of the state reps which we still have to organize. Florida. Incoming pizza. Incoming pizza. Yeah. Um so next I know Dr. Hardy shared about
Ignite tutoring. So we just wanted to provide some pictures of some of our friends um doing their tutoring. And then towards the right we have some after school tutoring specifically in middle school. So what we did this year is that um so in middle school uh one
day out of the week there's a leap bus and so on that day we provided um after school like tutoring um and assistance for um the students to access. So we were able to provide stipens to the teachers to provide that after school
support um to the students after school in in school both Parker and Kohage. Last year we started um an end of the year celebration. Um as we all know in this room, our students are waking up some as early as five o'clock in the morning. Um so we wanted to make
sure that we really highlighted all of their efforts and successes. So last year we had an end of the year bash for them. We had parents donating food. We provide them with food. Kurt knew some folks and he got us the bouncy house. Um so we're looking to do that again this
year at some point in June. And then something to note is that this event was for both um elementary and middle school just because we wanted to provide them with the space to engage with one another, especially fifth graders going on to middle school. Kind of making
those connections early on. Um so one thing that the MECO team across the board does is really support our students not only in school but out of school. So, I know many of us have attended their football games, their basketball games down in the corner. We
had a student who broke his leg. So, my Kell and I went to his house, brought him some food, brought him his homework. Then you have Miss Cindy supporting our students in a dance competition they had. And then to the far right, um, Miss
Laura and I, um, I enabled her, but we completed that project in a short amount of time. It's an animal cell that she's holding. And we also support our staff who are who do their own extracurricular outside of school. So the students are
seen here. We um went to Miss Sonia's um dance recital um fundraiser. Yeah. And so she was able to get us some tickets. we were able to make it an event with some of the kids as well. So, we were able to bring them and support
Sonia, but also um bringing the students as well. It was hilarious. The kids are like, "I didn't know Miss Sonia could move like that." But she moving like that in Boston. Where's the theater? The theater.
And then um so here we have some images from our code switching documentary which we did in partnership with for reading mechco and that's something that we definitely want to continue moving on is fostering that partnership um with them. So we were definitely proud of hosting this event. It was a great um
turnout that definitely started some very important conversations which we um want to continue moving forward. Right. So, not only would we want to do more community events, but also partner together in different events, you know,
encouraging our Boston and resident reading residents to attend their events. I know they also um reach out and do some kind of uh incorporate tried to reach out to families to get to get to our events. And so what we did also this year is
during our enrollment when we were doing interviews with new families um Lavanda and ILA were so gracious enough to um be able to kind of meet with families, right? So kind of included them into our
um initial um interviews. So after Jerica and I did the initial interviews, we kind of did a warm handoff to Ela and Lab so they can just have a parent have that connection, kind of ask some questions that maybe they will, you know, feel comfortable asking us, right?
And kind of creating that connection already prior to um coming into the district. So that was definitely something that we loved and we want to continue moving forward. And next is just a little video of um students and staff talking about importance of mechco and what they want
the community to know about here with great and he's going to share with us how the mech program has impacted him and how having his coordinators in the building have has impacted him.
It had an impact on me because in sixth grade I've been sixth grade. In sixth grade, no one really like no one really knew like like the struggle like being from Boston from England or really talking to
nobody. But seventh grade came like my behavior started going like it started going good. I was still last. I started playing but it was better because I still I had a better mentality. I was scared more often. So when I was like
last show, she would pull me to the side and chill to me before I even last year when we had a medical creator here all like all day at bar helped me a lot because like
um it helped me a lot because someone in the building was here 24/7. And I can I felt like I can go to M or any like me that was here 24/7 and go to them and like tell them like this I'm going through cuz I feel like they
will feel it more like a guidance teacher or any teacher that that talk like that teaches here. So I feel like my career is really is really helpful being in a building where with with kids all at all times. What do you want the
community to know about the program? It's really fun and it brings a lot of opportunities like especially going like school and it brings like a lot of friends and it's like going district schools. I love school. I love going here. I've been going since fourth
grade. It's been a really fun experience. Um the importance of it is like she's really helpful and will focus in class. It's nice to have another readjustment or just someone to talk to especially this one our building
is really sweet to me and I feel she actually takes care of the problem that I say the coordination of the buses is going really well the program make sure the buses get here on time and if they're not going to be able to get here then they'll let the office know so they
won't be uh penalized for being late. All right. All right. What do you want the community to know about? It takes even though they have they have to get the kids have to get up earlier than most of the kids here in Reading to
make it to the bus stop to make it to school on time. So if they're obviously going to be real tired. Hi, I'm Marielle Mucha and I just wanted to share that as a fourth grade teacher in Reading, how impactful the METCO program has been in this community. I
believe it broadens our community, our perspectives, and provides students with opportunities and staff to build relationships with people outside their most um close writing community. I think that all the staff is nice. They make sure that the MECO kids are on time in
school and they're very supportive, too. Okay. Okay. And what has the impact of a medical? Well, Santiago is one of the counselors. She makes sure that all medical kids feel welcome and safe and she makes sure
that all kids are like, "Hey, doing well." Hi, I'm the principal of Birch Meadow Elementary. There's a few things I want our community to know about the MECO program. First of all, it's not simply a
program. It's a partnership. And the MECO program isn't just beneficial to students who come to us from Boston. It broadens our perspectives. It deepens our understanding. And it challenges us to grow as educators, students, and neighbors. As a principal, I see how
MECO strengthens our school every single day. It brings vibrancy to our classrooms. It deepens our conversations and it creates friendships that exist well beyond the playground. It's a powerful reminder that diversity is one of our greatest strengths. I'm proud to
be a MECO community. Love that I've made many connections and I love the trips that we went on and I love all the teachers and the coordinators. They're all nice. What has the impact of a mental shot building?
Um, I feel like that it's one of a better class and I feel like about it. Thank you. I love the nicity of the teachers and the people around me. And I also love the support that it gives you.
What I love about Meco is we get to make new friends. We got to go on really fun little field trips and we got fun Fridays with the city. What I like about the MECO program is that I get to meet new people and make new friends.
at Birch Meadow Elementary School in Reading. And what I really enjoy most about the program is getting to know the students and they're really fun and um it's nice to have diversity and
differences in the classroom and they bring a lot they bring a lot to our classroom community. Um they are funny friends, they are energetic friends and um they're a hoot. They're a hoot. Um, the one thing I would wish is that they
could stay after school. So, I'm doing a drama club and I have a student in my room that would love to do the drama club, but she doesn't have access to a bus or something like that to be able to stay after school to do that. But they're awesome. What I love about Meco is that I got to meet new friends and
um, uh, we go on fun field trips over Cindy. I'm here with our service teacher, Miss F. and I'm here to ask her what do you want the community to know about the program? Um what I would say uh to the writing community is that um
we are the METCO program that the entire district has uh agreed to be part of this program and so every student is a member of the MECO program like we're all in this together and I guess I would
want to know that want the community to know as well that um students that come from Boston really make a huge sacrifice in terms of travel time uh coming to school and going home from school. It's lengthened and that they've really made
uh a serious commitment to be here a part of the reading public school system and that we're all in this together. Hi, I'm Caitlyn Valente. I teach fifth grade birch meadow. My favorite part of the MECO program is the relationships
that I get to form with Boston resident students and watching the relationships that other students get to form. I've really watched students grow and develop in really meaningful ways and form these great connections this year with other students that they normally wouldn't
have a chance to form these connections with. And that crossover is just so important in forming this society um that we all hope to have. Um, I've really got to watch my Boston resident students grow in amazing ways this year and develop amazing show really amazing
leadership qualities um, in ways that are really beyond their years. What I love about having the Metro program here in Reading is that it gives us a chance to have um, diverse um, and um, different perspectives. um because I
think that it helps not only staff but also students to be able to hear um and understand different perspectives. And I think that's a skill that we need going way beyond elementary, high school, um college, and just in those worlds is
that we need to be able to hear different perspectives and not just live within our own but understand each other. So Valentine, we're going to show them what their experience means to them and what them to have their micro in the
building with them. [Music] I feel like they match our energy and I like how like they'll talk to the students and when they think bad on the bus or whatever. And I just like having
them like coordinated here. Oh. Um, like it's good because like when you're struggling to like do something like projects, you help me. So, I feel like it's good because then
like the bus or need help in here or like a quiet space maybe and relax and then we cool down. We go back to class. Say something. All right.
[Music] Great. So I hearing some of the students perspective, staff perspective. Um, we wanted to take a minute just to I think the the most common theme I heard through those two was the impact that school counselors had, Meccosax on our
students and our school communities. As a little bit of context, so as the community knows, a few years ago, we had only one staff member for the entire METCO program. That was the Medco director. Uh, and at this point, before I make an announcement in a minute, we have six of coco sacks plus two
metcoordinators. Um, and and we know day in and day out these are the roles that have made a a really difficult to quantify impact in such positive ways. The the relationship they have with students, staff, families is absolutely tremendous. would just like to say thank you to our Meccco Saxs for the role that you play in our school. I'd also like to
say the thank you to the school committee who helped us think creatively outside the box to have this funded through both half out of a district operating budget and half out of the uh MECO budget and there was a question earlier what would happen if the METCO funding were to go away. I would have a hard time believing that these roles
would go away. I'm sure that this would be at the top of the list for the district finding a way to keep uh our school council roles given the impact that they've had on our our school community. Um, we have a couple of quotes here come from students, the staff. They may be a little difficult to read. So, I don't know if we can just if someone can read out that first quote we
made. There's six quotes total. I'd love to just hear them out of the room. Ryan, you mind taking the first one? Sure. Uh, the MECO coordinator, Sack, now in her second year as Mechcoordinator at Barrows Elementary, has made a meaningful difference in creating a more inclusive and supportive school community. Through her compassionate
presence and insightful advocacy, more students feel seen, heard, and empowered to succeed. She helps staff better understand and respond to the experiences of our Boston and Reading resident students, ensuring their voices and needs are part of every conversation. Thanks, Ryan. Still might
take the middle one. Our Met cohort plays a vital role in supporting the social emotional needs of our students while building strong meaningful connections between our reading and Boston families. She is an integral member of our leadership and crisis scenes helping ensure all students feel
safe, supported, and seen each day. Garbage. Oh, I can't see that. The NECO coordinator has been a game changer for the culture of our school. He meets the students at their level. He talks to them about their goals both
inside and outside of school and he partners with families to support students. He is a team player. He's kind and his heart is always in the right place. We have loved working with him and he has been a wonderful addition to our team.
My gosh. He's taking that one in the middle. I can see the one. I think I can do better. The I can do the first one. Second one. So, so our medical um our medical
coordinate is a valued member of the of the Parker school community. He is always visible and approachable and has has made um strong connections with students uh with staff and students. He serves as a role model and liaison
between school and home. Go ahead. Next coordinator sack plays a pivotal role in fostering a sense of belonging and advancing equity within our school community. As a member of both instructional leadership team and school council, she helps build
meaningful bridges between students, families, and staff regardless of their backgrounds. She coordinates school assemblies, partners with our PTO to ensure events are inclusive and accessible, and collaborates with staff via the SST process to develop culturally responsive approaches to her
student behavior. In addition, she supports students directly through small groupoup sessions and one-on-one meetings focus on social emotional learning. We've seen growth in our our student connectedness data since we've had our mech coordinator staff with 97%
of students reporting a strong connection to a birch to birch meadow last year. She also has made an impact in our attendance team helping us move from 10% chronic absenteeism to 5% last year. Metco has formed solid relationships
with Boston resident students has been maintained an excellent balance of holding students accountable to high standards while also being flexible and available. for that too. So I just want to make sure that the community whoever's watching here and in
person just understands just the day-to-day impact that our Moso Sachs and coordinators are having on our students and on our staff. Those were a lot of the way that I also say if you you know take some time to talk to some of our staff too, it's not lost in us that they have chosen to lead in a predominantly white community. a lot of the different dynamics they all have to
navigate in their leadership roles we know can be really challenging and really taxing and just the reason they're in it is for our kids for all of our kids just thank you for showing up today uh so that's going to bring the next uh button I'm going to share a little bit about what the future is uh and I
haven't broken down into three headlines uh one we are thrilled to share we'll do these one at a time that and Cindy Marte will be the full-time co-co directors. Shann, we'll add an additional MECO school counselor at the middle school level. So, all of our K8 schools will
have a full-time Medco uh school counselor. And we are also thrilled to share Mike Kell is here with us who's the current Parker Medcoordinator given will now be available to support all district schools with a schedule based on school school and staff needs now that Park will have a full-time sack. Mike Kell
will now be available to all of our schools as well. I'm going to share a brief context on each of these. First on Sydney and Jerica, thank you. Thank you this year for stepping up in a pinch and thank you for also wanting to continue to answer the call to leadership. uh you have done an incredible job in our community build
relationships, you problem solve really well, you listen, you have a great vision for where the program should go. Uh you stepped in seamlessly and brought the continue to move this program forward. So a huge thank you to both. They will remain in their role. So Jericho will be full-time at Coolage uh and city will still be at Birch and both
will receive a stipen for their work in addition to their day-to-day work. I feel very very confident that both that's the directors of the program. The second though, one reservation many of us had about this model was the fact that especially for Jerica, she would be split across two schools, two larger
schools, wearing multiple hats and then taking on the director role. We just thought that that would limit her ability to impact students the way that we all know we want the role to. Therefore, this additional MECO sack will now allow Jerica to be focused on Culage and also the director role which
she feels confident she'll be able to do well and hire a full-time SAC at Parker which we know that those roles and given the impact now having them in all of our Canadian schools is the model we eventually wanted to get to. Michael, if you haven't had the chance to meet him,
he has done an incredible job at Parker jumping in building uh relationships, rapport, connections to students where you saw Trey speak has on him day in day out. That's common for Boston and Ready resident students to hear about the impact that Mike has had on them. Mike
just graduated with last year did not have a formal counseling background, but this year, as he said, now he wants to go back, get his counseling degree, and wants to Oh, we think that having Mike held impact in all of our schools will just be a value ad to all of our schools. And
Sonia was saying today just already he's been over kilome already supporting students and I think that it's just again a huge lift for our community. So we feel excited about what we think is an addition to our program for next year and appreciate all of our everyone involved for your commitment to our
community. Any one of our mech sack team want to share anything today that we didn't share in the presentation. Great. Right. I think Tom that brings us to MECO CEO search jump right that a pretty brief update too. Uh couple of
things on the MECO CEO search process. Uh I'll start by sharing um first one thank you to Millie uh for her service. Millie was the CEO of Mechco since 2018 and then this March announced that she'll be stepping down from her position. I have a little bit of behind
the scenes curtain. I am the superintendent representative uh on the screening committee. So one of seven members in the screening committee. Uh we've met a couple of times to give you a little bit of context on where we've been, where we're going. First meeting was a month ago talking about just here's what to expect, get to know each
other. uh meeting two weeks ago was to look at all the feedback they've gathered from internal staff, external stakeholder groups, big families, some students, uh some community partners about what the what leadership characteristics are needed in the next MECO CEO uh and president. We then
compiled all that to put together a job a profile of the right candidate and also put that into a job description. We posted the job description on last Friday, so May 9th and now applications are starting to come in. start interviewing candidates in the beginning of June all the way through
July and that screening committee of seven will then also be making a recommendation to the medical board of either two or three and them to be able to make a final decision by late July early August on the preferred candidate with the hope that that candidate will then start on the beginning of
September. Any just questions or process? Just a statement real quick. Um, I I've appreciated Millie's engagement, her leadership as well. And those you don't know, she joined us for the right to read film viewing panel back in October
as well. Um, you know, in that process, she jumped in without necessarily knowing, but adding her own context, which I thought was really important for that conversation. Uh, and then she became an advocate and she was connecting various different committees, communities together. You know, she's
like, "You got me already. hook line and sink her in. So, um you know, her her involvement in in in even that level, you know, I very much appreciate the way that she connected things and made things possible for multiple medical communities.
[Music] Thank you, Millie. And this uh second piece I want to share with the community is one of my biggest disappointments with Met Milliey's departure was a worry that I thought Medco had strong momentum around the Metco 2.0 0 vision which there spent a lot of time from various
stakeholder groups and mapping out what METCO should look like in all of our communities. The good news is that work is going to continue and I think the the the work's in a really good position and I want to tie that to what we talked about earlier. Medco 2.0 maps out what we think we being parents, students,
community members think a high quality METCO program should look like. That vision is distilled down into 13 commitments to say if you're going to be a Metco community, you are going to commit to these 13 practices and commitments. What I like even more about
this is that in each now in each of those commitments, there's a spectrum of practice which saying that this type of if you're looking at say the commitment around academic outcomes, practice 1.0 looks like this. Obviously, not where you want to be. Practice 1.5 would be
you're making some progress in moving from one to two. Medco 2.0 would look like this if it's implemented fully. I think that helps move us away from the conversation of I think we're great. I think we stink at this. I think this to actually say well what does it actually look like for our practice to be
effective in certain areas that all netco stakeholders are said are important about a high quality program. So, as the uh summer moves on, I'll start sharing on you know uh that document and what some of those commitments look like in practice. Our team as a metro district has to choose a
few of those focus areas for us and say we currently rate ourselves here and now we want to move our practice to here by the end of the year. So, all of those conversations earlier around program improvement, I think they can be a lot more tangible now that we have something in front of us that is standard across
all uh Meco community. So thank you everyone who had a voice in mechco 2.0. We look forward to sharing more about that as we move forward. Any questions s process. Great. You've already jumped the shark on D1.
So we can move on to D2 which is the school choice update. Second school choice. So for those who are maybe not familiar with school choice, school choice is a process where uh we as the school committee to decide each year to opt out they so choose uh of a process that allows families to enter into a
lottery to enter into the reading public schools with the seats that we say are available. Starting FY23, so a couple years ago, the school committee for the first time uh decided not to opt out of school choice and we enrolled a small population of students from neighboring districts. We think that this is and has
continued every year to increase the amount of seats available. I think this does a couple of things. One, it's a revenue generator for our district. It's 5,000 students per $5,000 per student, which is additional revenue we can invest in our community. Two, it
continues to add in students from all different, you know, communities, backgrounds, interest, perspective, which again, I think more diverse communities are better communities. And we've seen that our school choice uh lotteryies have increased the diversity of our communities. And uh and then also
third, it allows us to have our staff members children join in the ready public schools if they want the lottery, which a lot of our staff members now have their students in uh through school choice, which is a way to be able to recruit and retain staff as well. So you'll see in the packet, if you're
following along, we just did a lottery. We had 27 students entering in for the start of next year. We listed out all the available spaces and tonight we said uh we wanted to ask the school committee uh to say that we'd like to move forward a couple extra seats for kindergarten.
Uh kindergarten we opened up 10 seats and we had 21 students apply. We are currently at 307 students for the enrollment. We think we can comfortably get to 330 without having to add any additional staff. So therefore
tonight we listed that we wanted to add six seats. I'm actually going to scale that back a little bit and say four given just what some of we're seeing with enrollment and we think if we do that we can still comfortably ensure that our class sizes are in appropriate space. So open up to questions or
so the table at the back of the packet you want to make it or the rest of the rest of the stuff be the same as what 0312 correct this is in addition to the 27 that we've already correct um so just a further context in terms of that
um this was also a very big topic conversation at town meeting um as as Dr. mentioned it's revenue producer for the district in a year or a couple of years that we're facing some potentially pretty large financial challenges coming to reading. So the more we can fund some
of these things through other means inclusive of as Dr. Jesse mentioned it added diversity as a result of it better off we'll be um and you look at it it doesn't really move the needle in terms of classroom size across the board in aggregate which is a big thing school
committee not policy technically but guidelines are 18 to 22 for K through two to 25 for 3 through 5 with no guidelines after that really for 6 through 12 we don't really have anything over 30 any class bus class bus class bus class bus class bus class bus class bus class bus class bus class bus class
sizes above those Um, so that's just background in case you maybe didn't have that background. I'm supportive of this personally um for multiple reasons of which you've already outlined, but if anybody else in the committee wants to add any feedback, I'll just say that um in the newspaper
every other day is an article about a community that did pass an override and um and the cuts that are being made in the school system. So, um, kudos to to this administration or just
these little things is what makes little difference and and it's just it's awesome to watch. Your hands in the air. Can we stop the share? Yeah. Um, I just want to make sure I'm
understanding the numbers. Um, so based on the chart, you accepted six kindergarteners. Is that accurate? And you want to accept 10? No. So we ex This chart is how many seats are available left over from the first
lottery. Oh, okay. For kindergarten, we had listed six because our original intent was to open up six seats. In the past 48 hours, I decided to think we should probably scale that back a little bit. And there's not really a huge downside of scaling back because we can then keep a weight list and then we can
let students into space if it allows to. So in so you want to let in four instead of six. Correct. Okay. And how many have you already accepted for kindergarten? 10. So it would be 14 in kindergarten.
Correct. Okay. And that would hold that wouldn't put anybody over 22 and it wouldn't impact the need to trigger hiring the teacher. Correct. So I will go through just really quick to say if we do 22 as a class size which I
think is a little higher than what we would want. So I actually I'll do but we did 21 is a number. We two seats left at Baros. Uh three seats at Birch, five seats at J. 16 at Kllum and two at Wood
End. So you can guess where we'd probably have our four school choice students go as well. But it does those class sizes. So I'd say a little bit behind the strategy. That's a little too big for three classes, right? 16 because that's 22 22, you know, 20 23s. That's a
little 23 23 four classes there, right? Yeah. So four. So we have 38. So you're down to 72 basically. You have between 72. Correct. Yep. But 72 in four classes is relative.
Correct. And we're at 68 over 42. So we have some space there. 72 in three classes. Yeah. It's Yeah, that's not not terrible. It's 24 cost, right? So not that's that's over non-starter.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. I'm sorry. I needed to wrap my head around what you were saying and what was in the chart, but um yeah, I would support that. So, we don't usually move the motion here. We'll just do it formalize it. Um
I'll move to approve the chart as written in the packet with the amendment for for kindergarten as second by Carla. Any further discussion? Let's do a quick roll call vote. Yes. Yes. Yes. Tom, yes. Four to
zero. We might approve it soon. Great. Okay. Yep. Anything else in closing? I just also one group we didn't get to thank tonight was a thank you to our staff. We said thank you to school committee parents. I think the partnership from the parents at all levels. I know the coordinators and counselors speak about it daily. But
also I get to meet every what's it three weeks maybe with check that is excellent we are super grateful for excellent time leadership support could not be more grateful is that's
going to definitely be on the record now but thank you to our families for continued partnership and uh at every level of our of our district. Okay. I'll just go back real quick. There was a question on Zoom that we didn't get to answer, which is can the school committee fund a consultant? And
that's from a looking at perspective. I think the question we have to just discuss is what what is that consultant? What would they want to do? What would the focus item be anything can be funded? We just have to figure out what the source would be, you know, what the focus and goal would be. I'm assuming that's with regard in particular to
staffing and you know uh making sure we can hire the right things. But if that was the question I think want to say Shaqu that might have been your question but I I apologize if I didn't get it right. Um but the answer
to that is yes with a yes but for what? Right. Let's clearly define the what for. Let's clearly define the duration. Let's clear define how they're going to achieve that goal. So it's not just a an open-ended consultancy. Okay. Okay. Anything else from anybody
else in the committee in the room? All right. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Seconded by Carla. goes like the roll call. Um,
yes. Yes. Yes. And we are ajourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everyone. We're going to hang