10.25.2022 FRSC Technology Subcommittee

the technology subcommittee meeting and I'm secretary can you call the role Please Mr Egg yeah yeah Mr Bailey yeah Miss Laramie here can we please arise for our tribulations

under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all first went to the open meeting law any person they're making audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting to any medium attendees are therefore advised as such recordings while Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unconceived by those present in a themed acknowledged and permissible we don't believe we have any citizen

input correct no we do not uh so I'm going to ask that we take out of order of the executive session which is item number five is there any creative executive session yes there is okay and uh we're gonna go into executive session to discuss the deployment of security Personnel or devices or strategies with respect via two which is Mass General Welfare chapter 38 section 21 A4 we will ring

could mean in a few minutes once the executive session is over motion to go into executive session made and seconded all in favor all right so he's going into executive sessions okay we're going to call the meeting back to order um secretary please call the roll let's drive here Mr Bailey here miss Laramie here okay we're gonna just proceed with the uh 3.01 discussion to vote for refer

communication specialist job description okay before you um you have a new position that we'd like to bring 2022 and up until this point all facets of Florida schools.org Facebook Twitter have been being done by a myriad of different people right right down to press releases the whole nine yards we're looking to bring in a position that would Encompass all those pieces to be the liaison from central

office so that everything is funneled out to Media by one person so Maria's office would say the press release they would be the person responsible for that piece they'd be the liaison with Fred TV so that we can start to utilize Fred TV to market the you know the district more we're not marketing ourselves like we could be and then the last piece of this would be to oversee and it'll go

kind of go into another 3.3 over C4 of a schools.org right now we have members of the instructional technology team myself some different secretaries out there working on this there is some stale information on the website but we're at the point now where covert has showed us that this is kind of the backbone of the district people use this to get into Google Apps the power school

there are district resources on there we need somebody to be able to take the technology piece the integration piece the teaching and learning piece the marketing the HR piece bring it all into one umbrella so we have one go-to person to move forward and to get our information out there in a more timely and effective manner so it's a very basic job description it's in front of you um I was involved in

media for a long time Channel 12 channel 7 so a lot of this has some pieces of that it also has some pieces of the marketing as you can see parent Square District calendar there's a lot of collaboration with this position so this position would be um housed out of the technology Services Suite however they would be the one that would a ribbon cutting for the newville's lab at Talbot Middle School they would

coordinate internally for us and then we would have the event they would coordinate to get resources from Fred TV FRG TV we have that one person that we can rely on and start to move ourselves and Market ourselves in a more positive creative manner any questions no not right now motion to approve second made seconded let's try again yes Mr Bailey yes Miss lariman yes very good thank you

uh 3.02 was uh any updates from the technology department on prior uh meetings and the requests so I have a few items but if you have anything based on the your own research shop feel free so um we talked about Chromebook numbers and we were a little curious about Chromebook members so I have some information for you so since July we've retired 1519 devices those 1519 devices were

boxed up and sent to AGI repair and what they do is they give us funding based off of conditionable devices and or parts so they have initially gone through about 750 of them and that was able to purchase 1800 type usb type-c chargers no funds so they sent us the charges we had a massive need for Chargers this year they sent them to us the next day they're going through the next 750. now there's

going to be questions oh I see a you know this type of model these are models that have been in the district for quite some time that were ready to be retired so Google gives you a license and at a point they say no more you can't update us so these devices are going there the next 750 or so devices we're going to use to purchase screens keyboards um a big piece is the sound the earphone

jack so they send us those no money changes hands and then they send them to us and we repair in-house we have also started to use some of those some of that Monies to send out the special education department iPads because in the past special education department personnel were putting it on their credit card because it was a quicker turnaround because there are no vendors that work in the purchase order world

but this company company now with some of that slush fun one that I have we're getting them back in forty dollars so we're getting a device back into the hands of a child in 48 hours because of this you know I anticipate a probably another 800 devices are going to be going out in the next six weeks and again slush my money to buy Chargers to buy parts to do repairs

um so that's on the retired devices and then we were curious Kevin had brought up the question about um damage so I can tell you that malicious damage has come down quite a bit and since around July 1st we're at about 30 devices okay there are about 11 at cuss um there were about three or four at Stone and then there were a handful at Durfee um and I'll go into that but the

majority of our repairs are not malicious they are accidental and they're also Chromebook screens just not lighting up anymore they're LED devices the more you use them the more you open and close the device there's going to be points of failure um so since July our internal team has repaired 3245 of our district devices most of which the school does not even see downtime because they're given a spare

when the device is picked up this device gets power washed it's called it gets updated in the system and then when we go to the next building for repairs these devices are then kind of swapped through um so that was my question how quick is it right away the second that the student brings in a laptop and it's not working the only the only buildings that it's not as quick are the ville's

buildings because those are sent out to Samsung however spares on hand they get a device right away right away so we've cut down we were seven to nine days repair but with new Personnel new systems in place new procedures in place we're at 3245 and I'll share this information with the committee you can see so this Chromebook here damage ports ports damage okay so housing cracked and

a lot of the times the kids are just closing them they're not mate they're not they're cell phones they're cheap bigger cell phones um so we're moving in the right direction there and then this is our new incident IQ dashboard so you can see right now we have 241 tickets assigned across the district this could be the gamut of cell phone security it could be anything but I just wanted to show you

that we kept talking about this software but this is where we are the end users are using it all the time I can come in here I can pull up what we have on hand for parts inventory the whole nine yards so we're getting to the point where I can give you more detailed information moving forward because we're getting that information in we're past opening and we're able to start finally catching

up on this but for me I was floored that my team was able to fix just on the 3 500 devices since July so kids are not without them and then the last piece that I wanted to show you is Durfee is doing it a little bit different biggest building 2500 Chromebooks as of this morning there were 90 devices ready for pickup and 104 had been repaired in-house so this actually goes one further student

name so if we get a repeat offender I don't want to really be doing classwork I'm going to keep damaging my Chromebook we do it by day at Durfee and then you can also see it's broken down by grade so right now if you toggle over year 2026 there were 34 damaged Chromebooks not malicious like I said about seven to nine there so now we have numbers the whole time and this is actually

available to any staff member when they click on it they can go in and say hey I'm John I'm a senior I need a loaner they do this it goes right to the tech team they're given at more um so we're moving again in the right direction this piece that Durfee is doing Marcus Hoffman has done an amazing job with it I'm toying with the idea of using this exact system at the Ville

schools because it holds everyone accountable the admin admin team at the buildings can see who the Heavy Hitters are what the reasons were and it also if you see on the right hand side I know it's tough to see because it's small on the screen it's going to give you a date ready so they bring it in one day and they're going to say oh it's a screen we're waiting on screen to arrive

overnight you'll have it on September 28th and then in my Tech Team there reach out to the student in the office and they get their Chromebook right away so we're finally starting to be able to put some systems in place um I believe unless you have other information on data oh this was the last piece this is a software that it actually kind of um goes through the mass q1 that we have

we've been looking and members of the committee have been asking for data based off all the software pieces that we use and they're out there we debt we are in the process of demoing the software and there's a cost to run per year it's about 2.83 cents a student but moving forward we're going to be able to tell you real time what applications are being used what the usage is what the

return of the investment is what the cost is the licensing so we're going to be able to go in here and put in Imagine Learning DreamBox it's going to calculate for us real time and I apologize that I don't have any information in here but they actually are doing something for us by giving this to us free for six months to trial we're not going to have to worry about data anymore when you want data based

off of a certain platform we can click on it and it will give you real-time data students and staff it will also go further to say it was used in school or home so we can give and this will be great for us as a teaching and learning piece as well because DreamBox may not be hitting the thresholds that we want and we may want to go to a different vendor eight net

may not be doing what it wants but we'll have that data now at our fingertips the other piece that's nice is it also looks at what you're using in that software suite and say it's a math standards-based program if you're not hitting those thresholds it may recommend to you you may want to look at this vendor it's cheaper your return on investment is more but it will hit all those markers that you've identified

when you set this piece up so I am hoping for the November meeting to have some real data in here so that we can just show you what it does and moving forward this is something that I am going to Budget on the technology side because this is It's just such an unbelievable tool so you started using it so this is our dashboard all of our information is being imported as we

speak and we're doing a PowerSchool dump tomorrow afternoon of students and staff and then the possibilities are endless here I'll be able to show you some pretty impressive data and the November meeting any questions no the only question I had was on the damage so RNA said some things are accidental but at some point we they need to learn to take care of the equipment too so a broken screen can

be an accident but you should have to pay for it in my opinion so what we've done there is we've started to charge we've collected just over 333 dollars from the high school we have a process in place um I'm a parent so I kind of err on the side of the first time let's look at it if it looks like it was thrown against a wall then we're going to charge you but

if the kid comes in and says I had I was at Durfee last week and he came in and he said sir I'm telling you the truth it was in my bag and look at the size of this book it run against the book in the and it's cracked oh but we're tracking that so we know that little Johnny came in with the screen we put the reason and if it happens again the next time you're

going to have to carry a book exactly and we've worked with a few families where they admitted that they destroyed the Chromebook and they owe us 250 and they said listen can we do 100 now 100 and then 50 and they sign it but the digital device policy has been being followed in the buildings had a great um return with the high school signature we sent it out via parent square and it

was so impressive because we got digital signatures and we have almost 96 compliant with the digital device policy at the high school it's good it's awesome that's awesome you know we said that's actually really great awesome great numbers yeah I think that's good thank you for the updates moving on to the next one is on the website I know you mentioned some of it the reason why I put it on was because separate from

hiring anyone I find that with this way too many sections that it does not updated and I think we need to streamline who's responsible and I would think it's like the pencil of this code should be responsible whoever they whatever like the units whatever it is departments I find personally going through not the website itself like I think it's a good website like the vendor or whoever but there's things on there that

are just woefully not up to date well this position My Hope and intent would be to streamline and to kind of standardize the school pages so that we're getting out there there's going to be different information but standardize the way that we present it on the website so this position with red TV and with Mr Faris and instructional technology and the principals we'll be able to start

streamlining that process I I I'm for the position I get it but to me we need tomorrow to be able to tell people that needs to be updated in three days by Monday we better at least take some stuff down if it's not accurate there's wrong names in there there's people in that the ESC I was looking at some of the results the principles names on the reports are the wrong reports like it

you know it just if I'm not outside of looking and I'm saying they're not taking this serious so my pages aren't as well as they did the special ed we had the problem so I don't want to believe the point at this point my thing is let's not wait let's just try to get it done put it off being under a formula yep and with the well you talked in here about um

doing the media and is there any stipends at all to anybody I know in the past day with some stipends that the school Community never knew about with a superintendent was paying the people to update the Twitter pages to do this and that to my to my knowledge we have no one everybody that's doing any updates is on their salary to my knowledge if there is someone out there I I don't

know about it right now we have Mr farius our instructional Tech Team I've been jumping in to do some stuff and then we have a list of people that were trained in the buildings but other than that to my knowledge but and I was I would Echo that to update the site now actually we've had Nikki and Christy that have been um instrumental in helping us to add information I have communicated that to principals that

um I I agree there's some the stacking at minimum all staff should be current um that needs to be updated that the clerks go in there also and do it but where we haven't I mean in my since I've been here we haven't said are we going to pay stipends for people to update the site no yeah yeah that's uh it happened before so I'm just curious on that I think you

addressed the mass queue piece like some of the things you've had I just wanted to we send a lot of people to this big conference and that was what the result of one of those good networking try to get drops of this the only reason why I put that on here was to get some sort of acknowledgment of we send people but we actually got a deliverable on it 305 fret TV uh do you want a

Promethean boys 304 yeah yes yes well my 304 says Mass Cube the Promethean boys I asked the study on because we spent um I don't know five 700 000 a lot of money on those so all I was looking for for this committee would be to get a report on are they in are they being used uh people being told they need to use them and I think with the other

thing is probably going to help to know who's doing what kind of software are we are we in and up today so is there necessary training so training is ongoing okay Promethean is going to be coming in and doing training um in front of you on the screen um I can make it a little bit bigger we have um three buildings that have to be finished uh there are four built boards at Henry

Lord that have to be installed I'm actually going to do that with our team tomorrow because the vendor's not able to do that piece and then we have the two biggest lifts of more and then costs you can see 58 and 59 boards then I'll have about 27 boards in storage my plan is to be thinking forward right so if a teacher says hey my Promethean board is not

working I want to be able to take two texts as soon as school gets out swap the board out and then Mr Cabral has his board as soon as he gets back in in the morning no delay on learning and then promethean's been great they send us a replacement so the other piece is so is that the number you're thinking about 15 being stashed I have 27 right now as a stash so is that

a good number right so that's lower I'm gonna actually probably go a little bit higher because what I did with the principles is I said I want teaching and learning spaces first and then we'll double back and do it as a conference room because during covet every school got a Promethean conference room so if there's a space that there's a need we'll look at it we use some of those fears and I'll Water more

um the only place that we're not doing anything with Promethean right now is the Early Learning Center because I can't drill into those walls so they have led they have 55 inch LED screens on carts in every room there and they're doing a mirroring off of their Chromebooks um so that's the Promethean numbers and then just to show you this is a software called Radix that I had purchased at the end of last year

what it allows me to do is go into every Promethean board in the district real time and I can see memory storage external storage if there is a technical issue with that board and a teacher calls in a technology person at the main office can say do you mind if I jump into your board now we can't get into a board unless a teacher okays it so if a teacher is in the middle of a lesson

it'll pop up and say Scott Cabral would like to assist you with your board um if they say yes they can do it we can fix it remotely if not we send a technician after this allows us to keep the software updated it allows us to keep the board secure because they're really a computer and then it also gives us some nice data because I can manage I

can turn off I can send a message in an emergency so we can tie all these boards together in the district if there was going to be an early release day because of snow I could go in here and say early release day here are the times for the buildings stay safe we could put it on every board if we wanted to probably won't get there here but that's just an

example of how powerful these tools are are relationship with Promethean has been phenomenal I had a broken board and they've already sent a replacement you don't get that from many vendors so that's where we are with the Promethean boards we are scheduling more and more training as we as we go my team at the instructional technology side we just installed a board in their office because if I want them to teach the

piece they need to know the piece so they now have a tool with their fingertip to be able to work with the district you know classrooms now did you say all all the the boards have to be updated through your office that the teachers canceled so the teacher you could do the update that's what I thought they could do the update if they wanted to or we could do it remotely

um it's a little quicker if the teacher does it but I've been doing them after hours as a matter of fact so this software um during the Patriots game yesterday I updated green school because they were behind the software yeah and I did it remotely so this tool is just phenomenal for us nice and it's important to note that Morton and cuss they're the last because they had the old school

projectors in the ceiling and they were so reliable and they have to take those down well and that's going to be a big lift so that's why those are what we'll do there is we'll go and we'll remove the interactive board the Whiteboard we'll take it off the wall we'll install the new Promethean board and so that teachers can start to get to use them the projectors will remain in the

ceiling and then my team will do 10 or 20 a night off hours so that way we can just remove them from the ceiling and then my plan is to put some of those in storage because you never know just never know Marketplace well if you have a presentation going you can hook up the projector okay the last item is Fred TV okay so on this piece here I have a

document that I will share with you that Renee kochman the director myself we put together um you can see all of the um positions in Fred TV the only problem is I can't I'll I'll zoom in and out for you um it goes by classes taught so right now at the high school level we have two instructors two licensed instructors and they have a full load so they teach

three of the blocks on the four blocks a day when they're not doing that they're assisting with other buildings doing Spencer board and pieces all of that they've been instrumental on their side as far as other teachers we have a staff member at Morton who is not licensed but he is there as the instructor for their elt program and we at one point had a you know a position um at Cost but it's no longer there

because elt they're not using that position they're doing other pieces um so this is an all-encompassing piece of the the actual positions and then there were some questions by some of the school committee members about quality on the cable channels so just to give you the 90-foot overview when we send our video out goes from here down to Warren Street from Warren Street out to the houses that's all done via copper

wiring um Renee and his team are actually working with um the negotiation committee to try to get us on that digital Spectrum so when we send out digital video it gets to them digitally that's probably going to require correctly if I'm wrong they're going to have to run fiber from us to them so that it's Crystal Clear that's why you notice such a big difference in Facebook on YouTube because we're

recording in high def and our equipment our foresight from within is able to send that out at that quality so on Facebook it's Crystal Clear audio is Crystal Clear you go to channel 9 or Channel 18. it sounds very tinny it's very distorted that's not our video that's the link that we're sending it and they up until this point haven't given us the digital site if we get digital channels then it's going to look

just as clear there as it's going to look on Facebook and Renee and his team are working on that right now through the negotiation process so I'll share this video I mean I'll share this document with you again I put something together just so you all could see it and the full committee can see it as well um you know if we decided to bring Fred TV to another middle school or another

building we would have to post positions Renee would be able to internally you know equipment wise they'd probably be a lift a little bit of a lift financially that we would have to do on the city Side um but the program is phenomenal um just so you guys know I'm a student of the program that was where my route started and now I am at the helm of technology for the district so

we do raise I mean we have students all over the country working in media because of this program you kind of get when you get to high school you don't know what your Niche is going to be I was always a geek that was my Niche and you know so we're building our capacity from within because we actually have students in Mike Ferreira and Alex Mello who were students and now

are helping us run the district who are instrumental during covid so this program is strong always room from Improvement I would love to see it and out to other buildings but that's something we would have to work together with the school committee and centrally to make happen any questions no I think the only question that I have a question for comment I've said it almost every meeting that we need to expand this

program into the other grades so it's more meaningful like um Hands-On Hands-On stuff like whether we have to expand it and then morph it into something else like well not only Fred TV like what we talked in the past about the high school wanted to do it vocational and then for whatever reason I didn't I think we need to revisit all of that but and like you say whatever

that you said a model elt this at elt like I think it needs to be embedded to instructions across the whole school system at all schools that it could can't just be and then when I don't see I see a lot of people that are uninstructed and to me that's not Fred TV that's more the government Channel which people don't understand it is a government Channel piece but I I understand a little bit of that because

I've been around for a long time and and understand that but when you look at the look if you look at the percentage of non-instructive versus instructors it fails in comparison I think we need to start to look into the future have some of those folks that are even not instructors per se they can provide um instruction and Leadership and Tool you know oh they do because they do so they do

kids on The Daily yep so they're not instructors per se but there are kids that like to go into the technical aspect that Alex does the behind the scenes piece and he takes them under their wings so like maybe I think it's more formal I think we need to structural yeah Mr clutchman can you do me a favor and just come up here just so everybody on TV can see uh but I do think that Morton

is a good example right so Jacob is it's built into their schedule so we have to figure out because it would be a scheduling piece that other schools like today uh tablet did their first they have an after-school 21st century and they have a little program a little Grassroots little program but they were so proud that they actually produced their first you know they had the news they had the end it's on and Pauline

went over there exactly after school to work with them on that right and you know those programs are are vital as feeder programs to the program at the high school I think the students said have gone through the programs that Morton have gone through the cusp program when it existed and even the elementary school we have summer camp that the elementary school kids go through they wind up being Fred TV

students in the long range um it's very popular so I would Envision that it would be almost like another specialist class you know how we have PE art music we we could have you know um whatever we call it but it would be um treat it as such right in every Middle School at minimum start there and then filter down because this one's important kids you know they look forward to that every year and we need

to expand that but it would have to be treated as such in order to be in corporate so whenever we say can you run your schedule you need Specialists to run your schedule like Jacob he's doing it at Morton that's one of the classes kids are filtered into and and it Sparks that you know interest and and they grow it grows from there so I I do think that that's something that we need to expand

and number two is that I see this it doesn't have to be a teacher like a licensed teacher so we get pigeonholed I think sometimes they're not paying somebody the right amount of money so that we can keep people who train people and we give them legitimate teaching jobs you know but like diamond has different certifications to teach than what we have like we need to I think think outside the box a little bit some

people said when it's 21st century you don't need it whatever it is I think we need to just have someone might have the greatest skill set to do this work they've done it they've done all this and they can't get a job because we're going to say they need to have a teaching license or this or that so I would like you to come back to the full committee with a Fred TV expansion

program both for like how are we going to expand and how are we going to keep the people that we currently have which we've done in those other areas because we say the market is X we need to the same thing applies to the teachers or the instructors or even looking at after school points so we have people that are going to help out but what what are their hours I would like to look at that

and say well if we got somebody that can come in at 10 o'clock and they're going to work every Wednesday for two hours at a school after school as part of a team we don't have to come up with the additional resources but like do they all work hours do they we don't necessarily see and it's never fallen under a committee like this that's why I think it's good that okay so what do

they do what are their hours okay we got to know so we can support you then people can and we have to do something with that wiring or whatever they like you know what I mean in order to do that if they say hey you know what we'll do it and we need to pay a hundred thousand and they pay a hundred thousand please come back to us okay sure because I think it looks

foolish like you said when we're our channels are like less than Facebook live and then that becomes a problem the other piece is live when we have an event I think we need to make our events live not just on Facebook other channels so I think it might help to do both okay but if we're doing something and that we want people to see it why we just got to go to Durfee to have

it live and I know it's a more complicated piece but we can go live at any of our locations now with conrex that was a piece that we had the foresight to bring into the district we can actually go live anywhere in the city with comrades as soon as Scott said we're negotiating with with Comcast now through the mayor's office to upgrade those channels um that's that's been a tough tough

issue that's that's going to be the the contract and the the new license uh when it's signed hopefully that will be a part of it because I agree with you I mean to to watch Fred TV and g-tv on cable TV I mean it doesn't it doesn't look good at all um but to watch it on Facebook Facebook I mean that's why most people are doing that because of that and other other

communities other towns are facing the same thing it's not just us I mean you know new bedford's the same thing you know westport's the same thing but uh from Comcast they're kind of like stalling on wanting to do that but maybe if you as uh just if you sent it some information on what that would cost and just give us an update and she can send it to us I'm

just curious to see what when you say it's a big ask what that means and I don't want to say it out right I think we need to know what it what it takes because it is not a good situation when people call or text and say we can't hear this it it looks terrible the song is terrible and I think you guys are doing a great job but at the same time like I don't

have a good answer for anybody to say we should have it should be better well let's get get it better I just learned that today I didn't I didn't know that was the the issue I mean the quality I I always watch it online so thank you if you can get us a plan let's expanded and the last item is new business is there any new business from earlier in the meeting yes all right

Miss Laura I'd like to make a motion uh to hire an additional position to focus on Tech installation great motion is made second second all in favor all right thank you very much thank you very much for the efficient meeting you can do the reports they should be an example of how we should run a lot of other meetings that when you're prepared to come in you run your reports you give us the

information we're out of here in almost 50 minutes so I appreciate you coming out at a late time and getting out of working so thank you all and take a motion to adjourn those two generations thank you all so much thank you thank you