Good evening and welcome to this meeting of the Boston School Committee.

I'm Chairperson Jerry Robinson.

We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

I want to welcome everyone who is joining us in tonight in person on Boston City TV and on Zoom.

I'm going to ask everyone here in the chamber to please turn off the volume on your laptops or other devices so it does not interfere with the audio for tonight's meeting.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Tonight's meeting documents are posted on the committee's webpage, Boston Public Schools.org slash school committee under the April fifteenth meeting link.

For those joining us in person, you can access the meeting documents by scanning the QR code that's posted by the doors.

Any translations that are not ready prior to the start of the meeting will be posted as soon as they are finalized.

The meeting will be rebroadcast on Boston City TV and posted on the school committee's web page and on YouTube.

The committee is pleased to offer live simultaneous interpretation virtually in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and American Sign Language.

Zoom interpretation feature has been activated.

Zoom participants should click the globe icon at the bottom of your screen to select your language preference.

We'll begin the meeting with the approval of minutes.

The parents of twelfth graders will receive an electronic communication from us on Thursday tomorrow, April 16th, with local and statewide resources, as well as information on school counselors and partners available at their home school for support.

The Massachusetts Financial Aid Priority Deadline is May 1st, which maximizes students' eligibility for state aid for those entering colleges in the fall of 2026.

Completing the FAFSA or MASFA by this date is very important and a key step for students in terms of accessing grants, scholarships, tuition-free opportunities, and other supports.

Please email the Office of College Career and Life Readiness at CCLR at Boston Public Schools.org with any questions.

So I'm proud to share the winners of this year's Aspen Challenge.

You may remember that last year, BPS began its participation in this two-year national education program that challenges high school students to design solutions to social justice issues.

This year, teams of eight students from 13 BPS schools, as well as students from Lawrence High and Somerville High, spent 10 weeks developing their ideas, including how to address food insecurity, make resources available to immigrant communities, address the connection between academics and mental health, create more green space for youth, and connect students to work training opportunities.

Those ideas were presented to our panel of judges composed of community leaders, educators, and experts at the solution showcase last week.

Thank you, Chair Robinson, for being there to chair our students on.

The grand prize winners are headed to the annual Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado in June, where they will have the opportunity to learn from global leaders confronting the most pressing issues of our time.

So the drum roll, congratulations to Boston International Newcomers Academy, or BINCA, and Tech Boston Academy on this well-deserved honor.

Additional awards included Brighton High School for Originality, another course to college for collaboration, Charlestown High School for Community Engagement, and New Mission High School was honored with the People's Choice Award.

Lawrence High School was also recognized with the Resilience Award.

For me as superintendent, you know, just to be able to see the talent, the creativity of our young people, I was so impressed with the quality of the projects and just the excitement and enthusiasm of the students.

And I told them the first day when the competition kicked off, it would be a life-changing event if they put hard work into it.

And then in talking with young people the day that before they knew who was going to Denver, they all sort of agreed it was, in fact, a life-changing event.

I couldn't have been more proud of them, as I know Chair was, and so many different people from the city and the district came to chair them on.

Similarly, for the two teams that will go on to Colorado, we'll be doing the same.

This marks this is sort of a tradition, it marks the arrival of spring and the start of the baseball season.

And you can see from some of these photos just the joy, the excitement that happens in this event.

And one of the highlights was seeing all of the kids find out that they were getting tickets to a Red Sox game in the future.

They literally just jumped with joy.

Thank you to Chair Robinson and Member Peralta for helping to disrepe the Red Sox hats to the students.

Also, thanks to our mayor for making all of this happen for us, to Red Sox President and CEO Sam Kennedy, Red Sox partner and Foundation Board Member Linda Henry, and really just the whole organization of the Red Sox.

They show up for our kids always, and on this particular day, it's just one of our best times with Wally and Tessie.

In all, the Red Sox donated 40,000 hats across the BPS to all of our schools, our CAID schools, and we're just incredibly grateful to them and to Jet Blue, who also was a sponsor for making that day such a wonderful day across our district.

Lastly, I was honored to attend the Dever Elementary School's recent digitizing day.

This was a special opportunity for the school community to come together to contribute to an on like our an online archive that will hold many of the school's memories as their last year comes to a close.

Um and really uplifting the community.

The attendees contributed photos, apparel, notes, recorded interviews.

These will all be uploaded to a new collection that's in collaboration with UMass Boston's Healy Library, University Archives, and Special Collections.

The DevRas truly been a cornerstone of the Columbia Point community for nearly 70 years.

The event reflected the connection, the the different kinds of connections and memories that have just been created across so many different people.

It was incredibly meaningful to see and hear from former students and families and staff members who gathered to share stories and really celebrate what the schools meant to them.

By preserving these memories, we're honoring the legacy of the DevO, and we're ensuring that its impact continues to be felt for years to come.

As part of the event, a commemorative City of Boston street sign was unveiled, the Devor School Drive, all roads lead through the Dever.

This was installed to honor that legacy of the Devra's decades long impact to the community.

I also want to extend a heartfield thank you to those who came out to share memories and preserve and make available for the Devers Elementary's legacy for future generations, especially project manager Megan Schroeder, parent leader Cheryl Buckman, and principal Margaret Rearnon.

Going forward, the BPS Capital team will continue working with our merging and closing school communities to determine the best way to celebrate and honor them.

Each school community is different, and many have their own ideas of how to commemorate their story and their history, and just huge applause for the DevOver for really expressing to us the importance of this piece of closure for the community so that we can then take it and be able to build this set of closure for the other communities as they go through closures and mergers.

Later this spring, we'll share an update with the committee on where students from the closing schools are going next year and report on the progress of the long-term facilities plan implementation.

So with that chair, many, many bright spots.

Wanted to call out a few, but um I will turn it back over to you.

Thank you, Superintendent.

Um, I'll now open the floor for questions and discussion.