The Fall River Public Schools Facilities and Operations Subcommittee met on Monday, February 14th, to discuss several key operational and facilities-related matters. The meeting began with citizen input from Colin Dyas, who expressed disappointment regarding unaddressed maintenance issues at the new Durfee High School, including roof and structural problems, and criticized the city's road conditions and snow plowing practices. A significant portion of the meeting focused on a technology reorganization plan presented by CIO Scott Cabral and Kenny Chico. The plan outlined the need for increased staffing in technology integration, student information management (SIMS), and technology services due to the district's expanded network and device usage. Specific positions requested included two middle school facilitators, a systems manager, a database manager (requested immediately), a database specialist, a help desk coordinator, a client services coordinator, two VILS technicians, a network manager, and a VOIP manager. The subcommittee voted to refer the technology reorganization plan, including the immediate request for a database manager, to the full School Committee. Discussions also covered projected pre-kindergarten expansion sites, with Mr. Chico detailing four potential locations to address the growing need for pre-K classrooms: 951 Slade Street, 2501 South Main Street (former Atlantis Charter), 657 Quarry Street (former Planet Fitness), and 1207 Globe Street (former Stone School). The subcommittee voted to refer this discussion to the full body for permission to continue exploring sites and issue an RFP. Additionally, the subcommittee discussed the formation of a renaming committee for school facilities, particularly at Durfee High School. Committee members, Miss Laravey and Mr. Harp, raised concerns about the lack of diversity in the proposed committee, suggesting the addition of more diverse, permanent members. This item was also referred to the full body, with the understanding that discussions on committee diversity would continue at the subcommittee level. Finally, the subcommittee voted to refer statements of interest for accelerated repair projects at Whiteley School (for a new roof, boilers, and windows) and Robert L. Madeira's Resiliency Preparatory Academy (for windows) to the full School Committee, seeking an 80/20 cost split with the MSBA.
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today is monday february 14th the facilities and operations subcommittee uh roll call please mr harp here miss laravey here miss pereira yeah salute to the flag pledge allegiance
0:34okay so through the mass general law chapter 38 section 20 f pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible
0:57uh citizen input whatever yes there is okay can you read it please sure um citizen's input is from colin dyas 560 ray street florida mass zero two seven two zero good afternoon members of the facilities and operations subcommittee i plan to be very vocal in this subcommittee if i was elected to the school committee i would have loved to have chaired this subcommittee and maybe soon i will
1:22and you want to know why it is crucial and important that we have maintained schools schools that our students deserve should be maintained the students and just as importantly the taxpayers who fund them deserve nothing less i am very disappointed that this subcommittee has not taken the stance of and as soon as possible discussing the maintenance issues facing the new durfee high school
1:48there are issues with the roof some structural issues with some of the ceilings and many items already breaking down including a stove in the kitchen which is listed in an incident in with i'm sorry which is listed in a recent inspection report we need to discuss these issues to see how these items are already breaking down if it if these items are covered under warranty we need to hold suffix fee for
2:14the fire for a multi-million dollar project they constructed they constructed for us the taxpayers deserve nothing less i understand their members have made donations to political campaigns i am disheartened with quote-unquote hush hush approach to issues with the new school they get censored big shocker they are swept under the rug i hope this committee does more work to deliberate on issues with our schools and its
2:42maintenance their taxpayers the residents and the students of this great community deserve nothing less while we discuss facilities and operations the roads around durfee high school in the entire city for that fact were in horrible condition the school committee should work more closely with the administration to assure our students set a school get to school safe other cities and towns work fine
3:08the mayor wants people to die on these roads we need to hold the administration accountable when our students do not have safe roads to get to school on we need to call it out and make a plan scotty's pub gets plowed down to the pavement before main street that is simply corrupt that is bad government all the pediro buildings get plowed down to pavement as well we need to prioritize the students of our public
3:35schools before the donors mayor forever deserve better thank you very much thank you um for the first discussion uh 3.01 discussion about to refer technology reorganization plan kenny chico and scott cabral here if you guys want to start it off hi everyone so i can come to you that you know i've taken over a cio i've had time to take a look at the bigger picture right um during that bigger picture we had the
4:04biggest pandemic and we influxed a ton of devices onto our network we could come at you 10 years ago when i helped many of the positions that we can talk about from a technician up to a director level we've increased our typical classroom used to look like one computer one hardwired data and a phone now we are doing over 2 000 access points across the district over 12 000 devices daily
4:27our need and our infrastructure has increased so much it's time to put the people into the place to maintain that infrastructure now we subcontract stuff out we have you know contractors we have overtime we need to have the people in place now to maintain our facilities to maintain the infrastructure to maintain the equipment i could come to you right now and easily say that i'd love to put a technician in
4:51every building right that's not the right answer right now because i want to start small we want to try to build the capacity from within the department we want to start small with these positions so that we can at the administration now take a look a year or two down the road and we can you know create a cleaner road map by starting small you know we could come in and i could say i want 40
5:13positions i'm not asking for that i broke it down into the three separate departments so we have the student information management system which is sims we have the technical uh the technology integration piece and then we have the technology services piece which is kind of the wires and the pliers the brake fix piece on the technology integration side we really have not had any
5:34increase in ftes in that department and it's been eight or nine years so we're simply asking in that department which is in charge of all the back-end systems for all of the software applications that we use across the district all of the integration pd across the district we're simply asking for an additional two middle school facilitators and a new position which would be called a systems manager
5:57position right now it's being shared by the director of the department and the actual facilitators in the department so they're all taking a piece of that work this systems manager position would technically work behind the scenes take care of all of the software aspects all of the google email accounts all of our integration with all of our other pieces dreambox lexia that would be the point
6:20person to work on this moving forward illuminate all of the pieces that we currently have this person's job would be to the point person that would also now work with the technology services side the sim side they'd be the liaison at that beginning piece we've never had that before we've always had these people sharing there's kind of loss of information because one person does one piece one
6:44person does the other piece by kind of streamlining this approach this person is going to be responsible for all that back end piece and then you know they're going to talk to technology services we created these accounts this is what we're looking for these chromebooks should be receiving this they shouldn't be receiving that it's just going to allow us to be more efficient and then
7:02let those people that are doing their role let the director do his job and let the facilitators get out into the buildings start to push in to do pd's and get back into those meetings with the teachers and the students on the student information can i stop there just have a question on how many in this department in the integration department right now so currently um there is one director there is one elementary
7:27tech there is one middle school tech and one high school facilitator we currently have two elementary positions posted um we did just hire one individual so we have one elementary left so what we're trying to do is we're trying to have three at the elementary so that they can split up that workload and all of the buildings can get covered now with one person now she can get out to one building
7:50she may not get to that other building again for a month because she tries to hit every single building and it's just it's not working um at the middle side what we're trying to do is we're going to separate the trip the typical middle school from the k to 8 school so that one person is going to be the liaison for the k to 8 buildings one person is going to have
8:07the typical middle schools but then we're also with the addition because we're asking for two we're actually going to have somebody on the district level facilitate the ville's instructional technology facilitators right now it's difficult because there are so many different pieces going on but that'll be a district level person that can work with those vills people so that we can
8:27push in the district piece but also work the bills piece so it'll be a liaison from the bills program to the district something that right now we're lacking because they don't really ask questions but it may not be streamlined because everybody is doing a different piece within the bills in those buildings so we're going to try to streamline that process so that and on that side that's all we're asking for for now
8:47so that we can see how that works and build the capacity from within okay one more follow-up questions all these facilitators right now where are they housed or are they just in transient alder so currently they're at 290 rock street they have an office where they all share um ken and i have been talking we're eventually going to take the pace area we're going to fix one of those rooms
9:08where all of the technology staff are going to be located so it's going to be a one-stop shop so then also we can communicate effectively because right now if technology integration wants to talk to sims it's a phone call now when we get to that point it'll be walking down the hall everybody will be in the same location it will improve the efficiency it'll approve the communication it'll make it easier for
9:28me to run a department because everybody's under one umbrella okay so sorry thank you you're welcome so on the student information management side we all know that we're moving to power schools it's single-handedly going to be the biggest implementation that the school department has ever done i think second to the high school right so this is 22 years of historical data we're moving from aspen to power schools
9:51there are so many variables and different pieces with powerschool than there were with aspen that we really currently only have three people in that department so we have the coordinator we have a specialist and then we have a technician so we have three people for 17 buildings over 10 000 students over 1800 staff members so for state reporting we have those three people are the only people that we have on the sim
10:17side so tonight um we're asking in the full council for a position this year just so you guys you know you have some background on it we're looking for um we're calling it a database manager position so something that's a step down from the coordinator but also has a little bit more knowledge in state reporting and power school itself that's a little bit higher than our two current positions
10:39that's so that we can build that capacity within so that way we have two people that are at that higher level right now we're borrowing one of the technology facilitators from the district who has um a wealth of knowledge on the sim side she's actually helping with the power school migration right now because we don't have that capacity within so and it's not that the people that the
10:59specialist and the technician don't have the know-how but we still have to run that department so we still have to maintain the state reporting epim's the october reports we're going to get close to the end-of-year data we're doing the civil rights collection right now so those people have to continue to stay on their path and finalize all the reporting right for our funding and
11:18everything but we still have to get this implementation done for july 1 so we have the new system so that position is a need right now these positions that we're talking about we're planning for next fiscal year so this is all next fiscal year but that one position we're asking for tonight in full committee so that way we can start to move forward with the power schools which one was
11:37that that's going to be the database management and then the only other the only other and i think there's a might be a typo here i can show you guys on another piece of paper this we've asked for a database specialist position um it's not technician it's specialist so it's that upper level position not the right down to the manager exactly um the database technician that's a typo one it's a it's a specialist okay i
12:01apologize for that um so we're gonna maintain that one database technician position that we currently have she's still going to be there her roles may change a little bit because now that we're bringing another specialist and a manager position on her roles may change a bit she may be actually doing a little bit more on the technology side integration side she's going to help all those going
12:22to kind of do more like day-to-day duties and still help with reporting when it's needed um and then we want to step back and look again so once we implement powerschool i want to be able to say to maria in eight to ten months we may need to look at another person in that department but i don't want to put all my eggs in one basket and ask for 30 positions that we
12:41don't necessarily need for funding wise i want to see if we can do it efficiently with what i'm asking for what we currently have and then we may look at it again a year down the road just to continue to build that capacity from within so now we don't have to on the sim side we've had contractors that we open up some open pos here and there so that they do a little bit of work we
13:01won't have to do that anymore because we'll have the capacity from within and the coordinator and his team will be able to do everything internally um again to try to make it a little bit more efficient and also to be able to meet those deadlines for state reporting internally moving forward everything is smooth they'll also work with the ins i'm sorry the facilitators because they're actually going to help us with
13:23training for power school so those people we build the capacity from within on the technology integration side where actually over the summer and into the start of the school year they use that piece so much powerschools and aspen that they're actually going to be able to help us push into those buildings and do some internal pd so that way both pieces are working together that's what we need to work on
13:44they were always in silos these different departments were trying to streamline everything so that way these resources that we have we can use them efficiently correctly and everybody can work together it's technology services and then there are three different umbrellas underneath it and up until this point it's kind of been everybody's been in their own silo because we don't have the staffing
14:03are any questions on that piece i do miss the chip yes go ahead okay so sorry so tonight uh we'll be discussing the database uh manager so moving forward for 22 23 you'll have one special two specialists a coordinator and one technician you're not going to be asking for another technician no at this moment correct you said maybe within a year you'll be able to figure out if you need anybody else would you go
14:32maybe technician or would you have to go so and that's why i didn't ask for it we didn't ask for anything else yet in the sims piece because again big project and i can't necessarily forecast what we're going to need until we start using powerschool on a day-to-day basis okay so we're going to need some time on the district level for maria for kent so we can all sit down and we can say
14:52okay we've used it for six to eight months we really do need this capacity so and that's why i didn't want to go heavy with positions because we may have may have put positions on the books that we didn't need yet so this is why we're kind of taking slow steps on this roadmap to get where we need to build a capacity and to build a true department but make sure that we just don't go at
15:12it you know and not have the answers that we need i don't want to spend money that we don't have to because i think that we can do it efficiently with this but again with power schools being so big we just have to this is going to be the only i want to like say swing right because we're not sure if we're going to need more a year down the line so this is going to
15:30be the the biggest question mark but it won't be we won't come back to you in six months and say we need five more positions it will never be anything like that okay well it's intentional growth right we're building a department from just it was just people piecemealing the work that needed to be done and it's grown so much that we actually need to have a full-fledged instructional technology department and
15:54we have to be intentional about every position that we create to make that department successful so we're going to be thoughtful we're going to be assessing looking at what we have in place how do we grow from there i mean he might say he needs five texts in in a year but that's going to be based on data based on where we are as a district but i mean you keep saying i'm
16:15sorry you keep saying a year but if if you come it comes to us in less in six months i don't want you to have to wait a year if you automatically realize that oh maybe we do need another technician maybe we do need another specialist i don't want to have to wait that's all so this is this is foundation we're laying the foundation now like maria said we're trying to build from
16:38you know build the capacity of the department and we have a great relationship with the committee so if we ever got to the point where we thought we needed a position we would come to you guys in that i yield so thank you now scott so tonight you're looking for the approval of the database manager and database specialist so tonight to go to the full body well so the full body the
16:57full body has this plan yeah but a separate a separate agenda item is just that position so we can get approval from just the manager correct okay gotcha are there any other questions ken do you want to add anything to it or no i i um again uh just to piggyback upon what maria was saying the department used to be on the facilities and um it was just one more
17:18department that i had but it the the um the growth in the department obviously the pandemic brought a lot of um a lot of weaknesses um that we had because of you know not having a full-fledged apartment to light and and i think that you know what scott's doing uh and and looking at this um holistically basically is the best way we can go at this we we don't you know throwing money at things
17:49we all know doesn't work but you know properly placed um it will make us uh you know much better so yeah no i'm glad i'm glad you're here tonight scott and obviously uh like what uh committee woman uh laravey said always you know if there's anything that you you think you need obviously talking to to you guys the three of you then come to us and we'll definitely be uh um all
18:11wide open for any ideas that you have i appreciate that so the last piece just so you guys are in the loop the technology services side is the biggest piece of the umbrella so they're in charge of the wires the pliers the day-to-day fixing maintaining this has turned into a huge when i started 12 13 years ago we had a very basic network now we run our own dock fiber across the city we've now
18:34increased our internet speeds from dial-up speeds to over 10 gigs we have a huge network i've been doing this for 25 years and i would say that this is probably we're understaffed majorly in this department right now so when you look at the improvements that we'd like to make here the first position would be a help desk coordinator we've always had the vision of having a district help desk where students staff
18:59parents can call in if there's an issue with the device or something in the classrooms so this position this position will be where the phone call comes in first they'll be in charge of routing technicians with our ticketing system and they'll also be responsible for making sure that the technicians are on top of the uh the ticketing and also if there's an issue they would funnel it up
19:20to the cio right now the way that we typically have it we have a director position in that department part of this plan and we can talk about tonight in full committee is we would reduce that position and then create these new positions because right now that director role is just not it's not really working right there's one person and the department has gotten so big we need to kind of create different
19:41places where these techs and then the buildings and the staff can go to so right now the director is the one who's answering like who's doing this position so right now there is everything so a phone rings a tech answers it on your cell phone it could be at the landline it could be an email so we're going to try to streamline we're going to create a process for the staff that
20:02starting july 1 this is the help desk phone number you can also open up a ticket online but it'll be that person's responsibility to be the voice behind the phone and to also be the first line of defense that person may be able to fix the issue remotely if not they route it to the building technician but then that person is responsible to make sure that the time that it took for that
20:22ticket to open to close is acceptable to the district and then also it's going to allow a layer of accountability for everyone in technology services which then brings you down to the client services coordinator this was a position that i used in a previous district that was just phenomenal because when you think of client services you think of endpoint devices phones access points cameras chromebooks
20:46so we went from in the last three years 1100 chromebooks to over 12 000 chrome devices in the district now so this person is going to be responsible for that piece of the puzzle asset management upgrades to the devices refresh program okay we are working on our new technology plan for the state they ask for it in four-year allotments our current plan ends this year this school year so we're
21:10going to be working with the committee in the next few months to come up with that plan that's where we'll talk about refresh of devices our asset management and our plan moving forward for those devices but currently now right now what happens is there is no plan because we're just trying to stay afloat because we don't have the positions so this person is going to take that off of
21:31other people in the techs that are doing it to let them do their job right so a tech should not be responsible for worrying about that piece of it they should be worried about fixing the device right now the tech is doing the asset management piece the inventory piece they're tracking the devices which then means we're not as efficient because that tech can't do 20 tickets a day they're only doing eight
21:52tickets a day because they're doing all that back-end work then the next three positions i'm going to talk i'm going to take them out of order a little bit we have the vils technicians and right now we currently have one technician that's doing two buildings this past fiscal year we introduced a facilitator because that same two buildings doran and henry lord were sharing a facilitator they now each have
22:13their own facilitator we'd like to mimic that and mirror that with the technician because what's happening now is they're spending three days at henry lord in two days adorn and then they're switching every week but the program has gotten so big with the amount of chromebooks that there are he's just not able to stay afloat he's he's sinking he's actually asking for district help and we're routing
22:33resources there but this will allow those two villas buildings to run efficiently on their own um that's a very basic position just like the other bill's technicians it's not a higher end position the last two positions we've kind of toyed with for years i was the network manager years ago removing that district director position we're going to need somebody to run that 17 buildings and that infrastructure in
22:56the background so we'd like to bring that position back and that position is basically sitting behind the you know the scenes keeping the network running it's a 24 7 position um there can be calls at any time ken will call me and say hey we lost power at talbot you may want to check your stuff we check our stuff we work together with facilities on that the next piece which mimics the network
23:18manager position is the voip manager position you guys approved six months seven months ago we've now purchased all of the equipment for the remaining schools to go voip so we're gonna go from four buildings in the district to all 17 buildings are going to be voip now and it's a demanding position because now we're talking voicemails you know we're getting a phone call that hey when i
23:41call door in school it hangs up on me right now we can't fix those posit those problems from within just for clarification can you tell us what voice is voice over ip so it's going to replace the analog phone systems that are in the district many of them are on their 10th life of nine lives it takes some life life-saving techniques to get those systems to work on a daily basis
24:06we have two buildings right now that are going to get our attention immediately sylvia school is going to be done over february vacation and then we have to wait for the back ordered what they call voice gateways to come in and once they do the plan is by the end of the summer to have all the remaining buildings up on voip the problem is right now internally the only person that we have
24:25that can handle that is myself as the cio so i'm dealing with the day-to-day issues but i can't get out into a building and then rehab a building and get them up to 2022 technology because there's just no time so this person is gonna actually it'll be a savings for the district because we won't have to contract that piece out and we'll have someone internally that can deal with all those issues real time
24:46so and again like we talked about on the other sides we're not going in saying i want 15 people i want to put this in place and then i want to step back and i want to be able to say yeah this is really working but we may want to look at adding this in the future or that in the future or we may say we may we don't need that position anymore we
25:04want to you know turn it into something else but this will give us a good foundation to continue the work that we're doing in the district and it'll allow those technicians to specialize on being technicians and not these other pieces to just make us that much more efficient is that you okay those five positions that you just were talking about next fiscal year everything that's on this list is next
25:29fiscal year with the exception of the database manager position which we're asking immediately now that's good planning scott thank you very much for that why are we waiting sorry mr chairman why are we waiting until 22-23 if you feel you need some of this now because i'll be honest i think what's going to happen is it's going to create um it's going to snowball downhill and then i'm going to have there are going
25:50to be people internally that apply for positions that they're very capable of doing but i'm having a hard time filling some of those other positions the technician position right now i'm having a real difficult time filling so i don't want to rip open the band-aid and then be hemorrhaging i want to do this systematically so if we get the plan we can post these things end of may beginning of june we can do the
26:13interviews and then i know that july 1 i have the team in place because i don't think that we could internally pull this off right now okay i yield okay thank you oh is there a motion to refer the technology reorg plan and adding the database manager that motion to refer second pro call please mr har yes miss laravey yes ms pereira yes thank you scott thank you next on the agenda is early childhood projected
26:41pre-k expansion sites mr chico so um as part of uh goals um district goals the superintendent's goals early child care is front and center and we need to we need to look for space in the community to house what we think is going to be a gradual expansion in numbers of our pre-k classes it's um we're busting at the seams already we've converted a bunch of rooms and buildings into a space that we can
27:24jockey around sometimes our fifth graders and fourth graders moving classes to another floor making room on the first floor um so that we can set up prepaid classes we've done all of that and we've got nothing left we really don't we don't have any room left we have uh a possibility at the rivera school for maybe one classroom but um it's on the you know it's on the top floor of that building which would
27:50mean a lot of movement and maybe uh separating class uh fifth graders you know may have one rogue fifth grade class a one rogue fourth grade class on a floor that may not work well for the process so the idea would be for us to look for sites throughout the city that may be suitable and currently we have three classes that we are leasing it's on the agenda tonight the release agreement with the boys club and
28:23girls club and those classes are going to get us through those spaces will get us through to the end of this year and the goal is is long term um because some of those classes uh classroom spaces that um the boys and girls club are so kindly letting us use they need you know we're uh we're sharing them but you know we would like to to see if we can set up maybe more than three um
28:51maybe as many as 10 um you know across um the next few months so that we can be ready in september um for an influx where we're seeing that um that growth right now with students turning three years old after the first of the year and we have really really don't have the room for them um so what we did was we looked at some uh some obvious options um in the city and um
29:20i've listed them here 951 slade street was a former daycare uh and uh and like a pre-k kind of setup um i think the uh the organization was worried if i'm not mistaken and um it's uh we were we've looked at that property it gives us a probably between let's say six and eight uh classrooms that are in pretty good shape that would need a little tlc to get them to where we would like them and
29:56we're not quite sure yet on the city side what we we would be required to do from the building department to bring those up to that but it's a possibility so that's one of the sites that we're um that we would like to explore a little further uh 2501 south main street is um the former i'm not mistaken it's uh atlantis charter and um that is both short well i would say not short-term but
30:24an early expansion and then also long-term expansion plenty of classrooms the building is older it needs work but it gives us some options the possibility of a k through five you know expansion if we needed it where the south end is our two south end schools both henry lord and um the varus are busting at the seams and this would give us a little bit of relief for those two schools but also
30:53across the district where we're looking for some class size reduction this might be the answer to that we all know how long it takes to build a school we've started durfee's project 2012 we're 22 10 years and we're just moving in that's the unfortunate part of the core projects through msba we obviously couldn't do this on our own without msba so to build a school from scratch it doesn't answer what we need today
31:26a building like this would because it does give us both the pre-k and it also gives us enough room to put a a k through five if if we needed to um okay yes and this building should all be up to code because there were kids in the school it is but a few years ago um there's a one year there's a one-year turnover if the building isn't occupied with with the same occupancy
31:53um you have to bring it up just up to uh today's standards so um both buildings we would have to look at you know i'm not sure if the slade street building the occupancy was there within the year i know that the south main street um property the atlantis property they've been out of there for almost three years i think if not more probably a little more
32:15right so um a lot a lot um is going to happen there they do have an elevator the building it has yeah it's semi handicap accessible it does have a few more things that we would need to do but for sure it would need a fire suppression system throughout the building it does have the fire alarm system is code may need some upgrades and a few of the other items emergency lighting things like that so
32:41the building just needs you know some care the third one down 657 quarry is the former um planet fitness so again a first floor location is tough to find in the city mill spaces is kind of ideal for what we're doing we would worry about a little bit of daylight for some other classrooms like the inside classrooms that we would have but um that kind of coincides with the same things that we've seen at
33:10951 slate this there's not a lot of natural daylight a few skylights here and there um so that i think we would have to to deal with um i don't have a lot of information on the quarry street the gentleman who owns that is seriously thinking about making that a self-storage facility and really wasn't sure that he could wait the amount of time it will take you know the district
33:39to put out an rfp for this and and so on and so forth and the last one 1207 globe street is our property the former stone school and we would be looking at that for uh portable you know classrooms so basically uh kind of uh mimicking what we did at tanzi with the uh with the uh ten trailers to make six classrooms in uh bathroom facilities and a little bit of extra space for utilities we'd be
34:07looking for at something like that on globe street setting up maybe a u-shaped uh configuration of trailers uh allowing for the the center of that u-shape to be a playground and we could fence it in it would be secure and it would all be a nice little package on on the pebble street side of the 1207 globe street property so um rentals which would be 1207. uh quarry
34:35street um kind of iffy on that one but i you know we still want to take a look at that one uh 2501 south main and 951 slade street uh both very promising uh property so the purpose is is we'd like to keep moving in this process and find out where we stand both financially as to what it would cost maybe maybe a lease to own on one of them an outright sale on another i
35:07i would say after looking at these properties along with superintendent and the director of early child care and it may be a combination of two we may be looking for something right away where we would sign up you know a short-term lease to maybe own and then the other property an outright sale um so that we can set up a a a phased-in approach um the one thing about uh and that would
35:40be the atlantis property the one thing about that property is once we bring it up to code with the fire system then we can occupy it we don't necessarily have to complete it all the way through so we would finish a floor occupy a floor continue the work and that would allow us to gradually do that work if we didn't want to totally go into it you know head first so that's
36:04that's the four properties that we've looked at um the process is an rfp a request for proposals so we would write what we really need square footage-wise what we're looking for for amenities and then moving forward we put that on on you know formal bid and what we would get back and maybe some that are not listed here you know i'm guessing there will be um we need to look at those properties and
36:30evaluate them for most advantageous to the district advantageous you know come up with a criteria and then um if it's more than what we want is it more is it in line with what we're looking for um that kind of criteria so it's the process is lengthy um the short-term lease process uh we may run simultaneously so that we have something ready for september but this these sites were very interesting and uh as i said i
37:02think that we're kind of at a point in the district that we're uh we're losing the uh capacity to um to accept new students without overflowing classrooms so um kenny two with the uh so obviously the three buildings the one is that owned by the city or us yes uh the other three uh also too i remember uh talking about this like probably two years ago uh to the former superintendent and it was the
37:33um on south main street but it's the prop the issue would be for the parking in the area it's in but where umass dartmouth used to be across there's a lot of classes up there so there's ten classrooms up top so we couldn't use it for pre-k okay because it's too many stairs for kids to come down so in case of a fire right it would be a really bad situation so that we couldn't use you
37:55know um you could use it for uh other kinds of expansion within the district if we had another need for it but there are ten classrooms that was used um by the stone school when um the roof that you know came off the west coast and then atlantis used that that building also deadly as well those buildings of those classrooms are probably a year old yeah they're in good shape really really good so is that a
38:20consideration or it wouldn't be a consideration for pre-k yeah but it could be a consideration for expansion but again you've got a parking situation and the age group would be the one you'd be concerned you know i just wanted to throw that one out there but on the atlantis charter school what how what was the capacity in that school how many i'm going to tell you that i i i think we're somewhere around 34 to 36
38:42classrooms of various sizes the building is enormous it's a wicked big place it is it used to work there was a nurse there you walk around that building it's just every door leads to another door leads to another door and um the classroom's a good size right you know uh so it it does have a lot of expansion there's a a wooden structure that was part of the classroom you went through a
39:06tool kind of a tunnel area to get to it it wasn't connected to the main building other than that tunnel that's being demolished so that's not part of it um and there is some talk about what that is that building currently is zoned for uh 40 units of residential uh housing and that's one of the competing factors for this um but um the uh the owners are uh interested in what we're talking about
39:31here there'll still be some room for expansion that the property is huge there's a playground a playground place a nice playground that would be moved up if we so choose to use it move up closer to the building having the little ones walk down the street to that playground somebody's going to have to get my bus right back a little later the last thing i want to ask you is um
39:53you said that the where planet fitness used to be uh was that it might be uh converted to a storage you've talked to the owner so we talked to the owner have you talked to the other two building owners uh so we've talked we've talked to the 951 slate 2501 south main and um obviously we've talked to ourselves about 1207.
40:14but um 657 quarry the conversation was brief but it was when are you going to do this how quickly can we do it and that government moves too slow um usually for business so i think we may get beat out on that one um we're not giving up on it but i you know we do want to get into the building and see what what we have for options this is above obviously the
40:37burlington the the flo we were looking at both the basement piece which is the burlington piece and then the upstairs which was uh planet fitness that downstairs is already um occupied um so it would only be the upstairs area so the uh next so after so we're gonna move on but that the next step would be um right so if if um if you send this uh discussion to uh full committee all
41:02we're looking for is is um permission to continue searching um and then possibly put an rfp out at some point um so that we can get um we can secure short term and look at long term all right very good so is there a motion on the table to uh refer to your body second committee roll call please yeah mr hart yes miss laravey yes mr pereira yes uh the next uh discussion
41:35is a vote to refer renaming renaming committee members um um okay so uh we have um right now currently derpy is is a focus uh for the amount of um naming i'm sorry renaming or naming um of the sites from the old building to the new building we do have a couple of requests um for naming of some of the spots in the new building that already have names and one request for a field
42:17to be named and the city council took a vote last year if i'm not mistaken on a softball field on the softball field at durfee to be named and they voted on it and it would come before the school committee but they voted on at the time because it was part of the construction piece and it was located in a different location the field is now going to be moved down to
42:40um the um practice football field so it's no longer in the jurisdiction of the school of the city council however um a courtesy to the city council that that will come before this committee so we have nothing outside of durfee high school that needs any attention currently but we really didn't have a policy or procedure i should say not a policy but a procedure in place to look at the naming so
43:11what the goal is is is uh to have a group of people vet all of the requests because i think there will be more requests when this committee becomes public or committee becomes public and um at that point we're going to um want to have some kind of buffer in between you know the the actual request and the school committee this committee will make a recommendation only so it's the the recommendation
43:41they'll they'll put it in the form of of a request uh to uh the school committee and the so the two questions i would say is does this committee want to see what this committee does first or does this committee goes directly to the school committee with that request so is to avoid the committee putting it back into this committee should this committee however it's made up come to
44:11this subcommittee or should go directly to the school and if that's the case then i would include that in whatever motions uh you make tonight um the name that's what i that's how i like that's how i think i would think i would think so right as well right so uh the names of the committee members are flux or influx uh i would say for a couple of reasons number one i
44:34think you're always going to have people moving in and out of this committee based on which school we're talking about so if we're going to the rivera school then some some people from the various principal being one should be involved in that since it's in their building so maybe a name comes out another name goes in um the same thing would happen with outside fields and sports so i think there's
44:59there's no one here on this committee that represents you know the athletic department uh so we would want to move people in and out and the representation on here is limited so i think that this is this was a starting point um when asked when when a few individuals were asked what that committee should look like these names came back um i don't plan on being that voting member
45:28i'm just going to facilitate the meeting for purposes of of uh coordination however um because this stuff is a durfee uh principal demaris should be there the other members are in flux um there's always a historical portion of some of this stuff so you to see why it was named you know when it was named that that history piece uh so a couple of these people do have a little bit of background at durfee and you'd
45:54and you'd want that which is why i say that if you're going to do it at another school you may want to have someone familiar with with that and again um on the durfee side derpy grad maybe that should be one of the qualifications um but i'm sure there's other people in the community that would serve on these that don't necessarily work for us um that you know would uh would be
46:20better suited to sit on any of these committees so would you think that these names would consistently change i don't think so in other words if you're naming something if a very school mr principal demaris would be out then your principal would i think they could stay so i i what i'd like to do and again um if there's so this would be like the foundation but then you'd add people
46:39based on what school and and they could be in and outs right now so these people have all agreed however um that doesn't mean that they would be the ones that the committee approved so i think the committee should you know should have a say and and move people in and out but i also should have a say as to who starts what this group looks like at the start
47:01um so when i originally saw this i had a little bit of an issue with it i'll be honest with you yes um i see there's not too much diversity on here um you know as a district uh our words have to kind of match our actions um if i i agree i understand what you're saying people coming in people going out right but i i think there should be the majority of this committee should
47:30remain on the committee but i think it has to be a little more diverse i think we have to go out into the community we have to get some south end people um we have to get some women on here not to have women but to get women sure i mean it's it's the right thing to do um again we can say we're promoting the dei we're promoting but we have to back that up
47:53now on every single committee that we we start that we currently have and we want to add to or but um i obviously am gonna i probably abstain from this one because of the name one name that's on there but i would like to make a motion i don't know if i have to make it here or in full committee but make a motion to add two or three or two to four more positions to be
48:28um to stay on the committee not somebody that comes in and out right not to stay up if you i don't believe you have to move it at all this could stay right in this committee and we can make those suggestions and then we'll figure out how we're going to correct you know promote this committee and then when you're ready to move it to full council that's when it will go i
48:52don't think it needs to go and like i mean i have the utmost respect for every single person on this list but if you look at the list it kind of it was a little glaring when i first saw it so it kind of threw me back but um yeah i mean i would just like to see us uh practice what we preach you know absolutely it can stay in here if you if that's
49:12what you want to do yeah i agree with mimi 100 um we need to show some some diversity on this list now i don't know if that means adding members or if it means maybe a few of these people switch you know tell them thank you but no thank you how whatever you think you know would be um would be better um but yeah we need to we need to anything i think anytime we establish a
49:38committee we really need to aim toward that committee looking like the people we serve and that means it should be diverse it should include men women people of color whether it's just a committee to name a building or or what have you so um yeah i agree with mimi nada you yield not 100 by that i yelled yeah sir so um you mentioned uh durfee graduate you'd have to be a durfee
50:05graduate no no i just said that maybe that's one of your criteria is that that you'd want a person who was a graduate of the school if it's if it's a dirty matter okay you know so who's setting the criteria you no no no no the what we're saying is there's a there's a prescribed list of things that we had we had had at our last meeting um our last policy meeting
50:28and maybe that needs to be looked at along with these this membership we're going to have a policy meeting soon i think so i think that the the so some of this became urgent when the plan was that we were going to have a ribbon cutting ceremony in april during school vacation and we have about i don't know maybe 30 maybe 40 rooms areas at durfee things that need plaques going back up and um
51:00since that isn't the plan because it doesn't really work yet like we'd like a little more finished both the building the grounds so we're thinking about mid to late august just before school opens we'll hold it when the school can be toured again by the public for those who haven't had an opportunity to look at it but we can also list it as part of a presentation on on the stage of all of the
51:29issues in all of the rooms and and amenities in the school that are named after someone uh so that people as they walk through the building you know we'll have a little map that will show these uh particular areas so they'll they'll um you know be able to get a little bit of a rededication so to speak both on the stage and then with everyone looking at it so i think that the focus
51:52of this particular piece got less urgent and i think we have plenty of time now to both look at what we wrote as the potential policy and obviously the committee so we do have time thank you okay so thank you very much ken uh is there a vote to refer to the full body of the renaming committee members um and also uh we'll we're not going to move what we've discussed about new members i
52:21think we'll keep these members here and just add maybe two to four and that's something that maria and ken can we don't need to move it to the fullest no we're not just the uh because we have to go back to the drawing board oh even the renaming okay okay that's fine all right uh the next up for discussion is the voter for statement of interest and accelerated repair project on whiteley school
52:44right so this is um we've done this before um and um with the wiley school we've never gone uh it's never made it to the committee covert got in the way um and um it was shut down so they the reapplication process is here again uh the wiley school um is a one unit school so it um it is basically going to end up to be uh probably in annex and we're hoping that
53:15we can use it for the stone schools so that we could maybe even you know put the the elementary level grades in that school if we have the need uh depending on which group is is larger but i would think the elementary school going to the wiley school and the um the middle and high school students would stay at the westhall current building so msba has that the accelerated repair program
53:46that we use at tanzi we've used it at westall rpa and currently the project just wrapped up at the watson school from the msba piece where we're doing phase two now on the city side but um a new roof uh new boilers and new windows for the wiley school um will give us a tight envelope and the rest of the work that needs to be done in that school will approach at another time but this
54:16will give us an opportunity to fall into an 80 20 split with the msba they pay 80 of the of the bill we pick up 20 of the bill we get a lot of work done for um a very short money and um it's a way for us to preserve this building that is still in our possession so this process um what we'd be looking for tonight is a referral um to uh the full council
54:44uh with uh um from the full council of motion to i'm sorry from the full committee a motion to um to approve and then this process moves to the city council which would happen uh next tuesday next tuesday um so by this thursday we would go on the agenda and move it we need the votes of both bodies in order to put the application in which is due in the late march and we already sorry
55:14we already approved this way back when it was approved this has been approved once as a project yes by the school committee gotcha yeah any questions on this one okay any uh motion to be made yeah let's make a motion to move to forgive anybody mr hop yes miss laramie yes that's prayer yes next up for discussion is a vote to refer to statement of interest and accelerated repair project i'm robert l
55:50madeira's resiliency preparatory academy okay so again um another uh project we had one project for roof and boilers at um at the um rlm and what we're looking to do is um the one phase that we didn't do at the time um because it would have it was a lot of work so there's 390 windows in in this building and the amount of time that it would take to do that particular project
56:24if we would have piggybacked the roof which was five roofs and the two boilers um which was a monumental task um the project would have been a very difficult project to manage and occupy the building at the same time so um waiting the full year because of covid we would be only looking for a window project from msba and that would would help us in completing the envelope this building needs a little more work
56:54it's 1927.
56:56the exterior of the building has been punished with a leaky roof and a bad windows so the exterior envelope is um is in much much disrepair disrepair around the windows and around other penetrations through those walls so this project will be a large project for mspa i'm hoping that that they accept this since it's really really um concentrating on just windows and this project will be
57:33one of the final pieces to closing in that building and then restoring what we need we already have the ability to work on the fifth floor of that building which we never had because it was leaking so bad this would be the final step in making the building watertight and allow us to use the entire building um you know for uh for for any purpose we uh we so choose any questions
58:02is there a motion on the table to refer the statement of interest and accelerated repairs project
58:13yes mr pereira and i also wanted to mention ken um i went by uh i know we're gonna go next uh subject here but i went by the uh henry lloyd yes in the talbot over the weekend because it was so nice out they did a great great job on the road behind henry lloyd and the parking lot yep really good it um both projects came out really really
58:39nice uh the henry lord project has a few finishing touches to do that the talbot project's completely finished it made a world of difference around there oh yeah um and the uh the henry lord project like i said a few more pieces on that one but um it immediately um gave an awful lot of relief in the traffic and both to the um to the uh assisted living facility and rehab center next door
59:06who suffered every time we we opened our doors right um but it also uh for the school it it made the uh the pickup especially the end of day a breeze so um it's really worked out well and it also will help out with feel access because there's a lot more parking uh that we added about 45 parking places following that road out and it'll give some relief you know on
59:32that end too no just wanted to mention that good job thanks uh any new business is there a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second roll called ever mr heart yes ms laravey yes mr pereira yes thank you