The Fall River School Committee Technology Subcommittee convened on March 29, 2022, to address several key technology-related matters. The meeting began with a discussion and vote to refer the digital device policy, which aims to enhance accountability for student chromebooks by treating them similarly to textbooks and potentially introducing a fee structure for intentional damage. Committee members, including Mr. Bailey and Mr. Again, emphasized the need for consistent enforcement across all schools and requested data on broken devices and any collected payments. The policy was unanimously referred to the full committee for further consideration, with Mr. Bailey and Mr. Again voting yes.
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okay i'd like to call this meeting of the subcommittee on technology to order madame secretary please call the roll mr again here mr bailey here miss larabee miss laravey i did call that she's ill just want to let the public know that she could not make it today but she will be getting all of the documents and we'll make sure that she's up to speed first went to the open meeting law any
0:21person 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 please rise for salute to the flag pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the
0:44republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all
0:57i don't see any citizen input time so we'll just jump right into the discussion 3.01 discussion and vote to refer the digital device policy madam superintendent or designee yeah so mr cabral is the one who uh put together the policy what you have here i do think that we probably um i mean i'm looking for some feedback on there what um if anything needs to be revised or added so um i'll hand it over to scott
1:27good evening everyone so this is the policy that we had in place during colgan um we cleaned up some of the verbiage and added a couple of forms at the end that i would like to see on the technology side that all students and parents sign next year with year three and two chromebooks being in every building and every student having a chromebook the one thing is there's not much
1:53accountability right now so if something is broken we triage and we move on and we give another chromebook out so i would just like to see that all the buildings from the district down are on the same page moving forward i did not include in the policy because i wanted you to look at it to refer to the committee we've never charged for repairs and or replacement parts many of the districts are now
2:21i passed out to um to them just a an idea on what some of the main repairs are that we look at with chromebooks and again i you know look to your guidance and you discuss what your thoughts are on that um the policy is very straightforward most districts use it um talks about you know digital citizenship accessible use parent responsibilities school responsibilities student responsibilities if you know in red
2:54on the third page it says unreturned chromebooks will be retreated will be treated as unreturned books and related instructional materials to school which means that the student is basically put on kind of a probations so they could be precluded from school functions activities events including graduation we've had discussion with members in this room you know if a student doesn't bring a
3:17textbook back they may not graduate their grades or transcripts or diplomas are held back until they you know give that textbook back so because the chromebook has become everyone's textbook and a main piece of learning uh we feel that we should be holding the students responsible just like it would be a textbook one big piece in this document that it talks about is the filtering that has to be done
3:42federal regulations i can't say that frank brian and i when we started with covid we were probably one of the only districts that initially got right out there we use relay by lightspeed it is a phenomenal product we actually are now working with the vendor they're using us as a test bed for some of their newer products so we are completely super compliant as far as filtering out those devices when the
4:09students are on site and when they're off site so a student can take their chromebook home and they're not going to get to a site that they should not be getting to just like they're at school so we have been doing that since the onset of covid something that many districts were having a hard time to a pull off b fund and c keep working so it's a testament to the gentleman sitting at this table
4:30and our tech team um that was a giant lift and we're able to do it we're able to do it effectively the system will automatically send an alert to frank and his team if a student is doing something that's inappropriate policy there is frank reaches out to the building principle he vets it first of course because even though it's a filter there are things that get through that filter that
4:52you know that might be a key word the kid was not doing anything wrong in class it just flags a key word frank vets it and then he gets the school administration involved so with that you know i'll open it up for questions on the policy i do i would like input from you gentlemen and the committee on you know the feast from the structure that i have separately um and if that's
5:13something that we would like to uh include in the policy moving forward um mr bailey for me um well first off i'll start with the peace structure um how would we be implementing the fee structure let's say if a chromebook was broken and let's say a student broke a screen on a chromebook how are we enforcing that to make sure are we you know are we doing it the same way as
5:39in terms of infractions if a student doesn't return a chromebook like you said with their books or so right now we have and we'll consider it two pools of chromebooks we have the verizon piece which are all the middle schools so if someone comes in with one of those it gets shipped out right away they fix it we're still on that warranty structure there are pieces that a student might be
5:58responsible for the stylist perhaps the buildings have bought aftermarket ones they charge at 50 cents a dollar and they put that into the school kitty i'm a father of three uh when my son at diamond had his first chromebook he broke it the first week i had to buy a new one but also being a father of three we realized that there's malicious damage and that there's everyday wear and tear
6:18i'm of the school of thought that if there's everyday wear and tear we're responsible for that it's our chromebook fleet i'm looking more at this fee structure as student a at one school is on his fifth chromebook because he likes to throw them down the stairs or he just treats them with disrespect and that's something that we have to work with the buildings to identify our technicians have been
6:39really good at that and the buildings have been really good at that as well they'll say this kid broke his fifth chromebook he smashed the screen so what typically happens right now because we don't have a fee structure in place is they get one of our loaner fleet an older chromebook they don't get a new chromebook so we go through i want to say 125 to 130 chromebooks a day we've gotten into a
6:58really good system where they'll pick them up from the buildings they'll give them spares and that way no one is without a chromebook however the repeat offenders are getting a used one and not necessarily a new one that we're injecting into the chromebook yeah that's going to be one of my next questions and then also that acceptable usage on portion it says teachers have the prerogative of setting additional
7:20requirements for chromebooks and other digital devices uses in the classroom um that was i mean i just wanted to know more about that just because they're like a set standard um you know as far as like repeat offenders or let's say kids are doing certain things in the classroom with the chromebooks and like who's my biggest thing is just like if they're let's say if the kid does one thing with
7:44one chromebook and the other kid does the same thing are they are they getting the same um recommends or something like that i don't ever want to be in a position where our kids like you know is that he said she said thing um so so right now there are some buildings that do it well yeah and there are other buildings that need some help so when we spoke as a senior staff we're looking
8:04for a policy and a procedure that we can start to implement so that everyone is on the same page as far as filtering everyone is treated the same but i can tell you that certain buildings do different things with their chromebooks now but that's why we're looking at this language to try to clean everything up some teachers when they get into a classroom they say hey let's close the chromebooks and we're going to talk
8:23today that's their prerogative to close them other teachers are using them as more of a you know a full period tool um that was just put in there so that way they can you know use it effectively in their classroom as they feel that's about usage that's not about okay correct yeah consequences in regards to um damage etc i mean we need a consistent policy across the board so that everybody does exactly what you
8:47just said so we have consistency from school to school yeah yeah i was just asking i think that's more that would be
8:59and i just wanted to add one quick piece when you see the chromebook handbooks the signed the sign off pages we are implementing parent square this summer so those would actually be electronic we would actually be able to push out this policy to the parents electronically they'd be able to answer the form and we'd get it back mr mike glazer could then collect the data update our sis system so we're moving in
9:21the right direction where these policies can actually be shared with the families electronically moving forward next school year so one of the questions in that this is going to be a theme probably of this new committee of asking for data to be sent to the full committee on a regular basis so we can tweak things out but then get some data my concern is what does the data look like
9:46over the last i'm looking at this policy it's pretty good you know the one from the 2020 april 9th 2020 but it begs the question what have we been doing since this time for how many have been broken how many have actually paid for any of the damages it says throughout here in various places it's like a book you have to replace it there's another one that says uh something along the lines of
10:11the code of what you would do students will be responsible for the entire course of repairs to chromebooks that are damaged intentionally or neglectfully or you know i think you have a lot of language in here my concern is that from just from what i hear across the district we haven't been following this in any way shape or form and that's a problem for uh consistency like we have a policy
10:37it needs to be followed with fidelity across all schools to hear at any meeting well we some do it better than others and i'm not criticizing it that's just a fact we shouldn't have some do it better than others as mr bailey just said if we have a policy that you break your screen we have given you a case we do this and that you break your screen you broke the screen it didn't just automatically
10:58happen so you broke the screen it's we're not teaching our kids and our families anything if we don't say you broke it you pay for it the way i see it so there should be lists of who owes obligations to the school when you look at the high school level kids want to go to the prom they want to graduate and all that that's where it comes to roots so i'm in 8th
11:17grade and i break my chromebook and i owe 250 or whatever it is that should stick with me through my entire career so that at some point it's going to catch up to you to say no because that's real life it's going to catch up to you i'd love to see some data on it i'm just i'm not expecting very much other than not much i can show you i can show you stats on
11:41broken chromebooks time to repair um i will say you know when i became the cio we've been working very closely maria and i and there are things that we want to do this this policy was there um and it wasn't being followed because up until that point we really weren't a full department we were working in different silos trying to keep the district running now that we're able to put some
12:02of these positions in place to have a true department it will be easier for us to push these policies down to the buildings and also have the manpower to make sure that the policies are you know followed and done correctly yeah i think what i would say to that is and i can appreciate the fact that we didn't have all these other positions in place but we have a principle of a
12:23school that's their house that's their building that they're the ceo they should be responsible for this stuff and the policies just like if my school has given out chromebooks like candy mr bailey school is actually holding kids accountable and teaching them that you can't just throw it in your bag down the stairs that's not okay so we come whether we have a million staff in your department the end
12:45of the day this is what you have this all costs money books the same so i don't want to go on and on but i totally support um i don't think there has to be many tweaks to this maybe um well like we would have to add that i would maybe like make it more um streamlined okay per se because i think there's a lot of pieces but the most important ones may be put at the
13:11beginning like if you break it you pay something along those lines like that's a basic and here's the structure of what it will be obviously we'd have to have some consideration from you know lower income kids whatever it is but at the end of the day they need to understand that there is a consequence to breaking the thing now if it's a wear and tear you know i get it you're gonna have your own
13:36procedures for like when they're at their useful life and what they're gonna do you know so correct i think we we're definitely gonna it's not like somebody's gonna have a chromebook for eight years and then they say it didn't work and you're trying to charge it it should work very well for at least what three years yes you know so we we shouldn't have a lot of complaints but as far as i'm concerned when this
13:56goes to the full committee the committee needs to support the superintendent and you and your departments and the principles to say this is what we think because if a parent just complains to us it says oh they're charging me well it's very clear this is what it was and this is very clear and they will sign and the student will say right yeah like that is one of my questions i'm
14:14glad you said that so in here it says they will sign do we have we can get data on each school how many to sign uh so as of right now the verizon buildings have signed the other buildings have not signed because we didn't right so the technically the verizon piece they all had to do digital citizenship and then they all had to sign off we weren't of one to one until
14:36recently right until this year we made sure that everybody had one et cetera but our kids aren't taking it back and forth as the verizon kids are because it has a data package with it so um this year we didn't but the intention is that everybody as we implement the policy everybody will be required at the beginning of the year just like they do acceptable use in any other form they
14:58will sign off that they're going to receive a chromebook and that they're required to take care of that chromebook and they will be held accountable for um the chromebook yeah that doesn't say it on here that's why it should say at the top verizon program chromebook can't like when i'm reading this this is for hours the verizon has their own they have their own so verizon has their own and they share that
15:20information with us so it lives in its own silo the verizon chromebooks this is just our forever chromebooks under us all right so then i don't understand why it had why it wouldn't have been signed if this is our phone because they the verizon buildings had to fill out the verizon piece and that actually supersedes ours because they're they have a bunch on the horizon side so if we had a student that that
15:45isn't in the verizon program there whatever it's middle school right verizon right yes so like the high school for instance they wouldn't sign this the high school signed a form that we had separate from the policy that was a we use a staff and or student equipment sign-up form we have those for the high school when we rolled out the new high school they all filled those out the elementary
16:08students did not because up until the start of the school year we had ingested chromebooks to make them all one-to-one so they did not fill these out like maria said they're not even taking them home they're using them in the classroom so how many high school kids have signed would be the question all of them yeah i can get that yeah i'm just because if they signed so that would go hand in hand with if
16:25they signed and then you tell me that there's been a thousand chromebooks broken at durfee we have a problem so the date is just gonna come together and put that all together but i do appreciate it i think it's you're right on and we're fortunate to have the resources but we can't just keep on giving stuff away so any other questions thank you anybody else on that i was just going to say we
16:50should probably if we're going to do this like month we should probably keep a running spreadsheet and have the text enter that in like so we can look at it real time data and um the principles probably need like at the institute that we do before school it'd probably be nice to do like a 15 minute because this is stuff that i mean they deal with it but it's not making excuses for them it's not really
17:15in the wheelhouse once the schoolya gets moving tech is not like the thing but if we do uh hey a screen is going to cost 150 this is like put it right on the you know on the radar day one 15 minute training and it's that's how we do business day one so that it's included in all the information that they need to sign off yes you can add that to our piece when
17:39we talk at the admin institute right yeah all right good suggestion thank you we'll move on to three point zero two job descriptions i'm sorry um i don't want to interrupt we were looking to get that reference motion to refer made and seconded yes mr bailey yes sorry thank you sorry about that that's okay so job descriptions uh budgeted new positions okay so as we spoke when we talked about the department of reorg um
18:13back a month ago and then also at the budget hearings um we're asking for a variety of new positions i've included the job descriptions in the job descriptions there are two are already approved job descriptions they were more there just for an fyi for you guys it was the student information systems data manager which was approved um a month and a half ago at that meeting and then um the network manager position
18:37which was already an approved position um back in 2008 that's just um we're bringing that back when we did that new york so those were there just as an fyi for you guys um we have four new positions which you have the job descriptions for which would be the systems manager position that would live in the technology integration side and then we have three positions that would live in the brake fix technology services
19:06which would be client services coordinator help desk coordinator and voip manager i leave it to you guys that however you like me do you like me to discuss the positions or would you just like me to you know just ask questions about the positions there are needed positions on the technology services side um we are going to do away with the director position in that department and we are going to break down the job
19:32duties between the client services coordinator and the help desk coordinator the department has gotten so big um that it just behooves us to have two members to basically be able to oversee the day-to-day operations and work in hand with each other and then also um myself i'm gonna take more of an active role on the technology services side you gentlemen both know my background um and i just feel that
19:57with the influx of devices with the influx of changing over our buildings to all voip in the next coming months with all the infrastructure projects i just feel that um it's in our all of our best interest that i have uh more of a day-to-day role in that department again as well as overseeing everything else um with these two new positions and then the final position would be the voigt manager position
20:22we have eight buildings left that need to have weight turned over um which will be in the future a cost savings i can't really forecast what the cost saving is going to be yet because we still have to implement the systems and then we'll be able to see what lines we'll be able to cancel for a cost savings however when we talk about a 17 building plant we really need to have someone to oversee
20:44day to day on that voip site currently right now it's being done by myself um one of our senior technicians and one of our junior technicians we're trying to train from within but i can answer any questions you have on those positions now if you'd like is really any questions on that so i i think that we it's very complicated and i do appreciate this subcommittee being formed because we should get a good
21:15handle on through the subcommittee process exactly what we have what we don't have a lot of this language is different to people these the descriptions there's a voice all that stuff is different to a lot of people so i'm a little confused myself just generally but what my concern is to make sure that what we're doing is getting as part of like the five-year plan and i know that you're all doing
21:38this but i think how do we get to via the subcommittee so that everyone the full committee the public the city council anybody else that wants to pay attention to what's happening that we're all that we know we've done the due diligence on everything so that we we can give this department what the resources it deserves now i think it's fully underfunded personally it's so that we made this committee
22:03i don't really want to go over every single one i would like to have another meeting in 30 days which is one of my last items so that we can like get this to the next level but my question on the budget is and i've said this in other meetings july 1 is july 1.
22:19but i don't know why if there's certain positions we're not advertising them filling them if we can now because some of these positions are hard to find somebody so waiting to me isn't the best thing um i i actually spoke to mr almeida about that um so once the committee if let's say this is referred these job descriptions the positions were approved by the school committee right the full body once if these are uh
22:47referred to the committee and then on the 11th if they are approved then we're going to be posting um as soon as they're approved so that he can get a jump on trying to get on the the right candidate to the table and we're meeting on what what day april 11th so at some point we had a um uh org chat i think that was there that exploded that's in one of the next uh next item
23:20oh about the front under the front tv one yep so i think that is where um i'd like to get a good handle on what we have and don't have so that when we when we forward this it's like we've already done our due diligence at the subcommittee on it so maybe you could take us through that this piece here and how these interact and do you want to do that in the next item
23:46or do you want no i think i'd rather do it now because quite honestly i'm not ready to i don't feel like uh i have enough knowledge to say that we've vetted this you know this through well enough do you want me to give you the twenty thousand foot overview of the positions or like not technically not technically just sort of right um so i see your name have cut off at
24:08the top but so this is this is a draft org shot um based off of what we currently have in some of the anticipated positions so cio at the top and then there are three silos right now they all work together they work as one unit but there are three different pieces so mr farris is the director of instructional integration technology integration he has a number of positions underneath the new positions that we're
24:36looking for in this budget are the systems manager position and then a middle and a high school technology facilitator those positions are going to work hand in hand with the current positions the new position the new to the department position is the system's manager position i can let mr farris talk about that piece in his department because he's the best person to discuss his vision for that um position
25:05so this would be more like we have nicole christie and beth who kind of integrate working in the schools working in the classrooms with teachers helping with um testing access mcas this person would but they're also getting sidetracked by hey this kid can't log in or this kid doesn't have an account or troubleshoot this little weird idiosyncrasy that this kid has that can't log in to get him to do their work this
25:36systems admin person would be kind of like behind the scenes um and making sure all of those systems run so for instance and we'll get into this pilot we won't go over the next agenda item like our ssl single sign-on of power school we're at the beginning stages which is just letting you log into multiple things with one with one login it's quirky it's not really working i have
26:03a person set aside to just kind of try to break it like is it get it not to work so we can work with the company to get it to work i envision this position to be separate from pushing into schools like just working with them we have 200 and something apps i last time i checked i think 150 extension browser expense extensions that cause issues and need like they they need
26:31it's like a car they need servicing so they would they would be solely focused on on that type of work and if i can interrupt that will also allow frank to work on the bigger picture stuff with myself with brian the technology plan the strategic plan moving forward the budgeting piece right now he really can't do that stuff because he's in the trenches with his team working on that
26:53piece so that position when we crafted that position we envisioned it so that it can take some of the minutiae day-to-day troubleshooting and advanced troubleshooting off of frank's plate so that he can be dealing with the bigger picture stuff running the department and planning for the future yeah it's it ends up sucking a lot of my time away and sometimes it's just set up a call get three people on the call the
27:18call you don't really get anywhere you got to do another call next week and it's kind of it's like calling the cable company when you have a problem you're on hold for a little bit getting everyone in the room to work it it takes a lot of time and it's not fair to have me or or the the instructional attacks that are in the school that's taken away from the school the time they service the school
27:43so we envisioned that like as the sole um description that that they would work on you have a question on that the only suggestion i'd make on the on the org chat would be the systems manager that you just described doesn't appear like a facilitator instructional facilitator in the same so i would take it and put the facilitators under one so under mr farias would be to facilitate
28:12instructional facilitators so we could see like elementary middle high but and the second tier is other types of work that's still under him where this would fit on that right now it's a sort of one line okay because i think it pulls it out like a tree it'll help it to on us to understand and anybody that wants to as we start creating positions naturally people are going to say like what's this
28:33assistant you're making up you know jobs for this that you know but when we lay it out in a very clear way we can justify let's just suppose that that position what you just described is a very busy job in my opinion yeah for that one individual yeah so by breaking it out and we look at the facilitators at some point we might be like how much is that now systems manager doing every day they
28:57might be overwhelmed and we might need another box under that person but if we just lump them all in it doesn't make it seem very clear to us okay so when you say we tried this for one year year two mr bailey's going crazy every day he's working 90 hours a week he got this and that we would love to have a second systems person it'll help to to do that my other question is on the
29:18i'd like to see the breakout of the elementaries the middles so that we can see where the facilitators are the villas coaches are confusing because of the nature of it's like the grand and it's off the ground and they're going to be half with us so i like the idea that that's all under mr farias but at some point that bills is going away and we're going to win and we're going
29:43to maintain those positions in our budget um as their own leader has already i still would be under mr farias yeah correct so when i look at this i would say when i the same thing with an orchard how it just appears that we need let's say there's 36 there's nine or 10 spots for facilitators just because bills goes away we still need those 10 spots which i think you're all agreeing to
30:07but that doesn't necessarily mean they're village coaches only they're they're middle school facilitators okay dash phil so right okay it won't look like as if we're adding now six more positions because they fell off uh for right i appreciate the input like i said this was a draft so yeah that we could discuss it and we can make those changes very easily we're in the i think one of the other
30:30items is about curriculum uh um platforms platforms different things we have so that would also fall under mr farias on the instructional so we when we look at this too we need to see where that duty is going to be what they oversee so you're talking about the instructional because there are many platforms that are being used right so the um christie and nicole support those and and amanda than the new young lady
31:02that works and lisa they all support that instructional technology that's part of their work you know within the schools any of those coaches but i i understand what you're saying i mean in the yorkshire what i can do is i can create the org shop and i can also just put some of the roles and responsibilities under each position just so that it's a more comprehensive in that box in their box
31:21yeah because we have i mean we got thousands of kids we got thousands of devices so it's gonna seem like i'm asking for more positions but in essence that's a organizing that stuff is a job too correct and i don't know like it might be as part of some of these sprinkled in but what i see just from looking at this it's like you said a little of this one little that one willow this one
31:43i'd like it to be no it's your job so you're going to be the one looking at how much is used what is used why are we picking this what is this so i think we need a point person on instructional curriculum as part of some kind of structure because mr farris is only the director and he can't do all that all day so when we look at it who's gonna we'll
32:08talk more about this when the digital thought comes up but just as feedback i think somehow instructional curriculum needs to be part of it okay so if there's no more questions on the instructional tech side we're going to move into i'm going to move to the right hand side of it and we're going to talk about the sims piece so currently brian has two individuals he has a data specialist and
32:32a data technician under this new re-org we've discussed moving that data technician over into be more of a a clerk role so that she can help everyone in the department she's doing that now she prints ids she answers phone she routes tickets the whole nine yards so using her strengths her strength now and knowing the lay of the land we're gonna move her into the technology services piece so that she can assist
32:58all sides of technology when we do that we have the data specialist and we have the database manager which at the time was an anticipated position it's approved now that's the one that we're still looking for an individual as we speak and there'll be an addition of a data specialist position that'll give brian the team that he needs to in this coming year maintain x2 with state reporting for the current
33:25school year and then move us forward into powerschool the individual that we're in discussion with for the database manager position has a plethora of experience with powerschool has integrated in four different districts so we're hopeful that that all works out for us because it'll be a very highly valued member of that team to help brian i can let brian further discuss the sims piece
33:50the data specialist job that we're asking for is already an approved position he can speak to those duties and he can also speak to the database manager position that was approved at blast full school committee can i ask you a question on the first you would mention in the first position where is that on here so if you look to the left it says department clerk that's just just for me
34:11when i was planning she's going to do more of the day-to-day um that's what you call the technology services she was you used a different terminology than it was data specialist um and typically brian can tell you over the years when we couldn't get a position approved they became either a data technician or a data specialist and they did whatever work was needed by the director of the department at the time
34:34this member i put clerk there um but she knows all aspects of it and have had the discussions with her she would still be doing work with brian she'd still be answering the phones for technology services she'd still be providing the security ids that we print for ken's department and security she does a little bit of everything and she's the yellow you have a yellow at the top and
34:56a red here yep so the red's going away is that what i know the red stays the when we get to technology services i can further discuss she that position's just going to move into the technology services wing because she's going to work with all three departments so just for me should be working for her yes i know but there's two there's a yellow at the top says anticipated client services coordinator i'm not at
35:19that piece i'm at the sims piece right now um which is the blue box under brian i just i just referenced the individual under that yellow box i don't want to say her name in public record but that's we're going to move her from brian's area just to be you know full transparency she's going to move from brian's area to work with all three departments and then there's going to be a clerk underneath that client services
35:44coordinator position that is the clerk that is the clerk she will be the clerk she this and again this was just a draft she should probably be moved to a different piece of the org chart this was just a very basic draft at that time but that's a position is currently in the mr michael laszek correct and that wants to stay and filled whether it's with the same person or a different person
36:05and mr michael azak is what i'm asking she's gonna it's she's gonna be we've had the discussion she's going to be shared between all three facets because of what she does now for brian in brian's side she's going to continue to do it but we're just i was trying to move her into the orc shot to show that she was used on all three facets of the department so i'm getting like half time and he's
36:28getting like a half dollar yeah so i would just it sounds like you want to take that position and move it under you with a somehow under all three so correct so there's a link to all three which is confusing here because it makes it look like as if it's under the separate silo okay but what i'm asking is mr michael lazak is now going to have under sims a data specialist a second data
36:51specialist and a data manager database manager only or is there that clerk still going is there going to be another clerk there at the present time there isn't she's going to do both sides and if we feel when we discuss the positions we wanted to see where power schools took us first and if we have to come to the committee like you guys have all said if we need anything to come to you guys we'll come
37:14to you at that time but we want to really see where power school is going to take us and with this database manager position brian and i feel very confident that the individual that we're trying to vet and get in is going to be it's going to be excellent for us i agree sorry i interrupted before he was kicking the team like do you have anything to add that no i mean just
37:37like i said in the last 12 years state reporting has grown exponentially from sims only to now staff now students three times a year staff twice a year every grade every schedule um every conduct record it's all going now several times a year not even counting that this the federal level has made civil rights reporting an every year thing now going forward that we're constantly doing stuff
38:05and falling behind that's one of the reasons why we haven't necessarily trained well other areas because we're doing state reporting almost constantly now that we need systems here we have people like specialize on that work with the schools more so the areas that we see as a regular set of errors we can correct at the school level whether it could be a digital user it could be like a department we can work with them
38:23better to get the errors down uh quicker and then you know certify on time which is always the goal so we're just always growing in that direction and then the possible side of things which we'll get to next i'll wait on that pop up i think the staff that we hopefully will hire and the ones we have are still working for us they're already excellent at state reporting because they've done it either
38:47for us in other districts and they have training backgrounds which will help us and one of the mandates of the you know switzerland house is not that brian should know everything about the one system and no one else knows anything that's what i'm trying to do now with um the power supplementation is that making sure as we work through things that the staff are taking ownership of their
39:05departments like san diego's done that administration kristen parish michael also doing that with special needs i'm working with kevin wong they're all taking a bigger deeper and by letting them take a step back and let them you know do themselves a little bit let them feel a little bit like coming in and helping me sort of spinning plates is what i'm calling right now that um that the staff that we will add will
39:26make us a pretty big department in terms of what we need to do as a regular thing can you give the uh a real basic explanation of what like so when you say sims is student information management system and then what do you call it when you have to send the information to the state the state now collects all districts uh electronically through it's called sip which is school interoperable
39:50improbability framework for these every night aspen or powerschool one of the systems being used sends it um it's not just nightly sometimes it's nightly but many things are several times a day they'll send all the student information that isn't required you know the attendance it goes through electronically and the state gets their system to suck it in and then process the areas and that's
40:12how they share the data with other parts of the department of education wants to be certified so um that's been like that with five six years so it's almost like the error is uh coming in 12 months a year now it used to be this like they would open up october areas in september and so on now it's like as soon as we finish march which we just finished we'll start getting the errors for the
40:35for the envy here that means that cleaning up and most of things are clarifiers that they're not it's not really pretty much false that they made the error in some cases it is they didn't understand what they were doing and they did you know wrong coding then we just have to give them a better a lot of things with enrollment all and special needs especially all play off these big set of uh
40:58rules have to play by that we get so many areas from special needs that my other guy said that's not really someone's fault it's just the way that it gets processed and so what like literally well i hear everything you're saying and having worked in schools i know how this has been we've been woefully undefined under staffed in these departments that's why i think it's important we
41:21have this committee but what i wanted you to explain that was because i don't think the public understands sometimes how much work it is to do some of this stuff and we need people in charge of it we need people to check on it we need people who are responsible for it because we i think i've sat here for years and we've had woefully underfunded technology so i support all of those positions and then probably
41:40some because you need superintendent's going to want that data done right on time in the right way if we don't have the people here it's always like just add more to one person add more to one person and it's just not acceptable so i appreciate the explanation and do you have anything for mr mclaughlin no that's right all right go on for next okay so now the big umbrella which has grown
42:03exponentially in the last couple of years because the covet is the brake fix we call it the wires and the pliers technology services um so we're doing away in the budget with the director in this department next budget season and we're looking to add the four positions that you see in yellow so network manager voip manager help desk coordinator and client services coordinator the way that you see it right now what
42:29what we envisioned frank and i have bounced ideas off of each other and it's again a work in progress but these positions that fall under the cio will have some type of supervisory role and what we're going to try to do with our technicians what i've been trying to do over the last year is if technician a shows a liking to voip processes voice over ip which is going to you know
42:50replace our analog phone systems it's more streamlined it's more cost effective we don't have to always rely on the phone company if there's a problem we can do a lot of that in-house to fix it in-house we try to train that technician to do that piece so ideally for me looking at the bigger picture over the next year with these additions on the higher end with these positions is we're going to be able to train some
43:14of those technicians to have a specialty almost so we're training the people on what they like to do and what they feel passionate about but then we're building that capacity from within so that way if the network manager is out we still have two technicians underneath that network manager that know the network infrastructure know how to keep the internet running know how to keep the
43:34wireless access points running so that way we can test so that way a teacher can be teaching in the classroom priority number one for this department they'll always tell you the superintendent can have no internet and a school can have no internet and the school is going to be fixed before the superintendent because the teachers and the students rely on that internet to be learning in the classrooms um so
43:57that's the biggest piece we can go right into the network manager position over the last three years we've increased the load on the network to over 12 000 devices which means a network manager is responsible for our wireless infrastructure our hardwired internet which provides power and data to security cameras access points printers card access systems across the district always continually has to be monitored
44:28we've over the last five years um and mr michael isaac and frank had a huge part in that myself and my former role we have a new doc fiber plant across the city that that network manager is responsible for to be in touch with the vendor for outages we have a 10 gig backbone so we never are going to have an issue with speeds so for the people at home you have comcast you have different tiers
44:52when your kid says that his playstation is slow that's because you have a lower tier internet we are actually providing in our schools right now pretty much pentagon speeds of internet we have 10 gigs and we have room to grow and that was you know putting our heads together and planning for the future so this position is basically i kind of call it the wizard of oz position because they're
45:13behind the scene and they're keeping all of the infrastructure pieces running so that way teachers staff ad building all of the systems air conditioning ties into our systems now everything plugs into a network switch so that is a position that we had in a former life that i actually held for quite a while um that we want to bring back and then again train some of our junior and senior techs to work under
45:39that network manager position so we're building that capacity from within so that way it's not always one person holding all the keys we have the capacity and we can continue to run if someone is on vacation or if someone actually gets ill we have that capacity within the network piece and and when you see it here i just kind of put it you know these names there because that's how we've been training currently
46:01so those two individuals under that network manager position have kind of been training as more of a network concentration then we go to the next piece and and the thing with these four positions that are in yellow just so you guys understand they're going to work hand in hand with each other because when we say network voip help desk client services they all interconnect with each other so every day
46:25the voip person is going to deal with the network person because those voip phones plug into the network infrastructure so they plug into the switches so they're going to work hand in hand with each other typical you know prime example maria's phone didn't work a few weeks ago it would turn on it would turn off we had no idea why so i was here on site my office is here i unplugged the phone did some troubleshooting
46:47got the person that's kind of in the role right now of the network person got on the phone we worked together with each other and within five minutes we had the solution but it required some back and forth and that's why these positions are important because the communication lines go back and forth sometimes they actually get myself involved as you know as a cio and then they get technicians involved so that's
47:08why i want to try to build that capacity from within so when we talk about the voip manager 17 buildings you're going to be up over 4 000 phones when we're complete voice mail systems auto attendance elevator cabs security lines that all falls under the voip manager position and it also works hand in hand with ken side of the operation because that voip manager would then call a low voltage
47:36electrician if we have a wiring issue if we have a line issue we work hand in hand so that these positions those top four positions work with multiple departments daily daily sometimes more than we can come on a certain day and then that position then turns to the help desk coordinator and that position i envision we have i have an individual in mind that's been with us for a long time that knows the process
48:04that is going to do quite a bit of things so if a teacher has no internet typically they're going to call in right now we have one person answering the phone but with this position there'll be a second body answering the phones that person then routes the ticket and or issue to the appropriate person so if it's a phone issue it's going to go to the voip side if it's a network issue
48:27it's going to go to the network side and then that person one piece that we don't have right now is we don't have a safeguard in place when a ticket is created if frank calls in a ticket the ticket is worked on and then it just gets closed out because we're always reactionary right now because of the lack of staff we have on this side we never can follow up this
48:48person is going to be able to follow up with the end user to make sure that the you know the trouble ticket was done correctly to make sure that it was done professionally if there are any questions or concerns that they have this person is going to route the correct technicians to it but also do all that follow-up and coordinate with the other departments as well so if there is a low
49:10voltage issue that person would be contacting ken's team manny the new director of maintenance to get that issue resolved quickly effectively correctly right now we're triaging as we go technicians receive the ticket technicians go out to the building work on the ticket close out the ticket and i just feel like for me i come from that disney frame of mine customer is always right
49:36we need to be better at checking on the end user to make sure that it was done correctly that they were comfortable with the outcome and if they weren't comfortable with the outcome what can we do better as a department so that person and that help that's coordinated that's going to be a big that's their main the duties however they'll also be able to go out and work on tickets if they're needed to we have
49:57always had frank and brian and i all hands on deck if there's an issue in a school i mean i for example rpa the west hall building the roof blew off it was all hands on deck we had instructional technology people and jeans we had all of us there as directors at the time getting the problem done so that's the other piece like this department it merges into so many different lanes but it's
50:20it's phenomenal the way that everybody works together i could call and say we have an issue and frank's going to roll up his sleeves and help he may not know the answer but we're so good at working together and bouncing ideas off of each other as well as all of the employees that fall underneath us that we've been able to be so successful over the years and with these additions we're going to
50:41be able to create efficiencies and processes and procedures to make us that much more efficient the last position is client services coordinator i had this position in a former district this position is going to be in charge of the chromebook fleet okay anything that a client uses laptop chromebooks desktop right now it's so separated because people are doing multiple-ish you know multiple things a day
51:09i want someone to be in charge of incident iq so that way we can see when little johnny broke five chromebooks that flags that person to say principal a we need to take a look at this right now we don't have that because everything comes in so quickly i don't have that person that can oversee that chromebook fleet right now what happens if an update needs to be done we have one senior technician that contacts
51:32frank frank puts out pushes out the update and then we have people triaging the update as we go with that position that'll be a direct line to the technicians with the chromebook fleets and the laptops and the desktops but also a direct line to brian a direct line to frank frank we're having an issue with update number 92 frank then gets involved but then what happens and frank is awesome about
51:54seeing it through to the end but on the break fix side with my absence in that department it's been tough because there's been nobody seeing some of these issues through to the end i just want to create more efficiencies i want to be able to know that people are in good shape i think it makes sense so my recommendation personally on that would be to call it what you just described so the position is called client
52:17services coordinator to me truth in advertising is more like a hardware coordinator okay computer because it spells out exactly it's not a uh made-up position it's it's you just described it a necessary need without a doubt okay you asked me about a client services coordinator or you asked me for a chromebook hardware coordinator they're not even named like the description is okay
52:40it would just sell it a lot easier to the committee and everybody can know exactly what we have okay you have any questions then yeah i just think that was an extremely thorough presentation and um i think you hit everything um right on um i'm just going to ask one more time so the department clerk is obviously not going to be in there she's not probably going to be in it it'll be
52:59i'll go back and i'll edit this i'll actually sit down with brian and frank will and maria and we'll clean it up with the suggestions that you made and we can forward it out ahead of time so you guys can look at it and then the full committee can look at it um i appreciate those um suggestions because it does i think in a very technically minded world so for me that's a good idea so that
53:19people can actually see what people do i i appreciate the suggestion my other suggestion i mentioned this at another meeting is across the district we have instructional technology folks at all different schools or whatever we need them all to be under mr farias in my in my view so we shouldn't have a person at durfee we had mentioned i don't even know the guy but why does he not fall under the same as it should
53:43be this so when i asked or the committee member asked the superintendent what's happening with instructional technology she should be able to go to mr farris who tells everybody that's doing that work we sometimes in the budget is like oh i have that position but that one doesn't but this one doesn't so if we can lay everyone out here so that it's you know we talked yesterday about the cost
54:02centers at another policy change this to me would be a cost center on technology under you but that means that everybody that's under your course center should be on your under your tutelage of you know directors and and the like understood the only problem i have with some of these positions and i think we can i would certainly vote to refer to get it at the next committee but we might need some uh
54:28front-ended executive session on some of these positions so what ends up happening is like the salaries don't make any sense to reality uh as well as management like we you you're describing in my opinion management in several areas all those positions need to be management then they need to be paid like management they need to be year-round positions they need to so there's systems that we
54:52have in silos in this district of this is how we treat a manager this is how this person is but that one happens to be in the union because that does this and that when you get to management we the we should just be on the same page so as i was going through here without getting into specifics there was people in here that i see as managers that are going to
55:10manage a lot of people well that's the case then you're not in the same union as the as the people that you're in that so that is executive session material but when i say to try to maybe do it beforehand because at the end of the meeting after we talk about voting on positions it doesn't make sense so we need to kind of get the thing the other piece is you just said
55:31six times ten times maybe more about training your people and getting them to you know do what they need to do and everything well i'm personally sick and tired of us training people and then they go somewhere else so we train them they go somewhere else for five grand or whatever else so let's just in my opinion let's fight the bullet do what's gonna be done and pay people what they get
55:53that's just the fact and then at the end of the day we're not gonna lose as many people we end up losing we're killing ourselves with it because we train and then we lose the same thing happens with certain teachers or other departments but in in this department which is why i think it was important to have this technology needed so that we have it like no where we're on it and every month or every two
56:14months whatever we've got you can come to us through the superintendent and say we've got an issue here we have to address it so um i'm looking for a motion to refer all these positions to the support committee motion made seconded mr again yes mr bailey yeah next up is the org shop to include fred tv so this one is just very straightforward fred tv works hand in hand with every facet of technology currently they sit
56:45under the facilities and operations committee department and it just made sense to have fred tv under the silo of technology just because they there they do technology stuff every day um whenever there's this meeting this meeting for example you know alex has been instrumental in getting these meetings live throughout kovit um but we we're always bouncing ideas off each other i mean you gentlemen know
57:14that i was you know side by side with alex to make sure that these meetings got off at the same time calling frank to make sure frank was able to make sure that we were good with google me the whole nine yards so it just while we're building the technology department we were in the department we're building it the superintendent has been amazing with us to see the need and
57:36to help us build this from the ground up it just makes sense for fred tv to be under the technology side in their day-to-day operations any questions i think my only i think the it says orchard but i think is that under something like that mr mr kochman uh tried to email to me he's away this week on vacation i'm just saying it's not here yeah we're gonna with your approval and vote to refer we will
58:07create an ad to the draft document that you had from our org chart and we'll make it into one document it needs to be on this one so that would be my question would be i totally support it falling under here that would mean that the whole department's under you correct the way that i i'm seeing what you're asking for here where it's currently under mr bachchan it's different than so he he works in
58:33collaboration with the superintendent it is a very confusing when you look at it he's under you correct right now he's under facilities and operations and if he and if we move it over to technology it would just be the same thing mr kochman would be in charge just like brian and frank would be just under the umbrella of technology yeah i mean i don't have any idea why i would fall
58:54under facilities but everything fell on the scene yeah but like that doesn't make any sense so this makes more logical sense why i say that though is this department needs to fall under you but at the same time that means you have to be responsible to recommend changes to recommend transparency and budgets transparency and what the positions are we've talked about this at multiple meetings there's things on here like
59:19half and half drink if i pay attention and i do my homework but i can't figure out sometimes what's happening with certain salaries and the like i personally believe that fred tv needs more instructors like actual instructors it's like it's part of there's pieces of the of the fred tv that does you take meetings you do all that stuff but we're also teaching kids so we need to have them the folks that
59:46are there as you are saying train up your people to do the the wise employer stuff the same thing should be happening in fred tv and i've mentioned this to the director so not saying anything that's not new but we need people to become instructional teachers so that whether it's at the high school or at the middle schools or whatever they're actually teaching they're teaching the classes they have
1:00:08other skills whatever it is so i'm glad it's fallen undie but it's a big undertaking to to say here's what we want fred tv to be in the next i think we do very well but we also need to get where we're going to be in five years in that department i know under the law superintendent they tried to build it as a vote program work with a new vote person like
1:00:27we can take this to another level in my opinion so i like it under you but just know i want to be home with you for some some questions and stuff but um so is this a referred to or is this i don't have it as a referral i would say that's something you just uh sort of like the superintendent can you make that determination basically that you're moving it um
1:00:52but i definitely do support it and thank you for the recommendation next up is powerschool update i've just briefly twenty thousand foot overview we are in full all speed ahead all hands on deck with the integration piece into powerschool we are still live for seven one um i'm gonna let mr michael lisa speak to this because he's been instrumental in this piece um it's been a learning curve for all of us
1:01:20it's different than what we're used to but he's been he's done an amazing job so far um there have been some hiccups that he can talk about but like we've told the full committee and maria and i have you know said time and time again a project of this nature we're gonna have hiccups there are going to be things that are missed from that larger level down to the granular piece
1:01:42ryan has found some of those pieces um again he's doing an excellent job and i'll let him take that update over so i actually start with the hiccups part of things as we've gone through this since basically we started the conversion right after uh thanksgiving and since the holidays are over we'll be born pretty much non-stop almost every day with some sort of power school meeting or
1:02:03training that we have to do if not our own homework but i know what our principals and our school staff want out of their system out of any system i know what things that they're comfortable with and sometimes when you throw that what we didn't ask this way powerful does it this way some of the things that i thought would be doable in power school honestly right out of the box doable
1:02:26but i think i call them the wishlist items i know my staff are going to want i've actually vetted against many principals and staff i'm saying if polisco doesn't do this how are you going to feel and the feedback is it would you encourage me to say yeah these are things i want to not i'm saying fight for but say let's discuss it and use some of our they call them keys to ownership hours
1:02:43where we can customize the product to meet our needs better because i don't want like things that we can't we do now that people like doing in aspen i'll use conduct as one of the examples of translating reports i want to make sure that functionality exists it have been found the same but hopefully better in polish if we can make it better if it doesn't exist the way we have it now that's going to be a
1:03:05sort of discussion to say all right how are we going to correct that maybe that can't happen immediately but it can happen down the road that can be an acceptable you know alternative but in in general all the areas of policy will be worked on we're making significant progress over the last few months like we actually are accepting registrations now be a power school for our kindergarten kids and any
1:03:25kid that's starting next year senator kudos been working with her staff um you know almost like i said taking the keys herself after me helping her along the way getting it up and going but now she's taking the lead with you know there's any issue with power school she's dealing directly with them let me know if there's issues so i can be aware of the issue um same thing with catalon and health that's going along
1:03:45fine um and like say staff attendance is the one thing that powersuit doesn't do because it doesn't serve as staff the way like aspen does it so we're moving all of our after meetings with um power soul and front lines with human resources we're gonna be moving our staff tenants to front line for next year so power school will not be doing the attendance um and then that would be the way that
1:04:09um which actually i think see an opposite improvement because front line strictly does attendance and management in the pools and i think that's sort of like a um a better way of doing it when you're getting your absences in this way we have people reporting their absence that way we can easily manage it and we can still take data from front line and put it into power school which would be you
1:04:27know and somehow like you want to know how many kids are out our teachers are out every day because they'll get that information in the power support this won't be where you're going to put the attendance in for every staff member and brian just to interrupt front line the way that we purchase it now it's a cost neutral move for us because it's already included in our our subscription
1:04:44it's just something that we never use because we didn't use that piece of the software because we were using asking for it well we're using it it's just we're reconciling front line with aspen daily exactly we're not using the actual entering they're they're entering but we're not so friendly it's it's just we're doing an extra step this this piece will be all in one umbrella now and because we already had front line
1:05:06we're not paying acne right yeah we're just going to pay off we already had it included but it's not using we weren't using that feature because we were doing announcement already correct and we went you know at that point and power school wasn't charging for this policy doesn't offer staff attendance as a whole so he's not even part of that was not part of the contract the only
1:05:23piece just and it was for discussion is uh mr coogan and hr and myself have met with powerschool they like their onboarding piece for hr so powerschool offers an onboarding piece where if a new employee comes in you're not going to have thousands of pieces of paper anymore they'll be able to do it all online so we're working with powerschool now to get a con you know to get a quote
1:05:43to see what that would cost us because mr coogan wants to try to streamline hr everything would be paperless at that point it would just be down to signatures when they came in so we're working with power school because they offer that piece they own school spring so when they post a job it would be a seamless transition and a transaction for them in hr so we're looking at that piece now my
1:06:03advice would be that's a hr function and their budget not the so i don't disagree with what you're saying but that should be something that comes under mr cleveland's hr so that it's not like well now we're getting hidden costs like so if you tell us the power school contract went up by ten thousand right it's not really because he's asking for absolutely let it be under his court center yep correct
1:06:26so anyway um last two weeks we had uh several uh probably six different uh training days for on-site bipolar school where they came in and trained uh system admin people with people district technology and then we also had the secondary middle school high school schools and the principles with their scheduling team to do uh two days of training where they're left with homework that we'll be
1:06:51following up on make sure they're doing their homework so after april vacation we'll come back for four more days of on-site training by power school but they're they're going to finish their masters hopefully they will finish them they will finish their master schedule for the first time ever before this in a long time that's the goal because you need the schedule to be in there to start moving on with the
1:07:15trainings and you know you know there's a lot more things along with that so if that's out of the way that will allow us to other areas and like we still have to work on getting a lot more data into into power school we still haven't gotten in the many of the exiting students we had or exit staff that we want to get in there for historical purposes we have to work on a secondary
1:07:35set of data for both staff and students to get custom fields that we've had that we rely on for different parts of managing students and staff into power school but power school is limited in how they can bring in data can only bring in so many fields at a time or so many number of students or staff so we have to chunk it out and do it in some batches that policies are
1:07:54preparing the data we review it and then we actually imported ourselves and so um we feel comfortable with that stuff he said there's not a date going between now and the next 91 days until september 1st on july 1st that you don't have something power schools going on um we also have our training calendar set in terms of we have to train everyone some people can be trained live by a power school
1:08:18in-person trainer others are gonna be us learning stuff that we're gonna be training people to be trained to train is different things and we'll have a robust catalog of like online things as well as you know it could be daily or weekly zoom google meet meetings to train people on certain parts but like the attendance officers can get their own separate training the council's getting their own
1:08:38trading on how to use the system you know effectively as well as you know the clerks both the district and the schools and plus the admin getting data out of the system like they want to um that's going to happen at different times so we have the administrative time there we have time to be only at the admin at the end of the school year and the beginning before the studio starts
1:08:56where we know we have them for trainings we need to and like i said we have probably have like it's right now like every tuesday and thursday we're having as possible trading days throughout the summer where you're bringing it for your clerk you're going to get trained by someone if you can make it this tuesday and you have the case next week they'll be the same training over and over for the whole summer that way
1:09:17you'll be able to hit it because people are going to leave people that people come on that wouldn't know about power school yet now make sure we have everything um training options in so many different ways because teacher grade book um is a big thing for the teachers coming back to the school year the frea and the um the school department have that uh great book mentors that were the aspen mentors
1:09:40now they'll be the power school mentors that they're going to be trained separately and taking that into the start of the school year where they'll be training the teachers at the secondary level so we've been thinking about training for a lot the whole time and how we're going to do this and we have some great ideas and great resources to do that with so i mean other other than you know
1:10:00hitting some hiccups here and there that we have to you know debate and because you could use the same just for so many years that sometimes you don't realize what other people have been doing for years and some people you know switch systems three or four times in the last decade don't mind having the same system for 20 years so um i feel pretty confident that will be golden is there any other surprises financially
1:10:23at this time the last meeting when we discuss the iep live data that's the only new um so as far as for the committee's identification the original contract has only been increased by that number so if there's any other issues that are even on the radar please send them to the phone committee correct so we're not surprised that you know this happened you know i wasn't happy with the way i went before but
1:10:47we don't want more surprises and we if we have to push back against them they should be supporting us but you know they told us how wonderful it was and they've done this before with big districts and all this stuff so hopefully that's going to continue but any questions on that no i mean i think you've covered them in many meetings pretty much everything that we're doing seems like we're doing a lot of training and
1:11:14uh integration is going well you know it's just really you know just just learning what's actually going on uh when we cross over um when july one hits so so i think even like sometimes the updates uh when we add them to like a friday or something i think at some point even before the meeting we should have a one-pager on the powerschool update but not necessarily bury it in a friday email where we just say
1:11:44like at the meeting is an update and everybody has a copy of the one pager that says things are like summarizing kind of what you said here in a nice concise way so that it's like okay we know it like we're addressing it and then we're moving on rather than go through the whole okay so like a one-pager quick and then even if we use it as an agenda item for the full committee
1:12:04yeah we started adding regular ones the last couple meetings we meet the three of us with tracy we meet every week just to so that we don't surprise so that we have a good handle on what's happening and not happening but yep i think it's a good system it's just that when we we get overwhelmed with the friday emails of everything and then if i ever say check my email and i want to see what's
1:12:25the power school update i can't just type in pause for when it comes up so if we even we're going to have another meeting in a month but the whole committee should know that that's the case anything else i'm powerful no the last up 3.05 digital platforms i'm going to hand the floor over to mrfarius and he can discuss this list that you have in front of you so
1:12:52i'll take a stab at this list that has been growing and i think i speak for everyone in the room it's it's grown exponentially year over year at one point kind of the tech wing of the log shot had a handle on it and then schools kind of went off and purchased their platforms and it started to not be a real central district purchase so it's i think we all can agree that this list is um
1:13:22it's fairly large i had my staff break it out to elementary middle and high to show you what um this is the most up-to-date list of just paid platforms that we have in the district um grades that are what grades are you utilizing it when schools are utilizing it but we've we've had discussions for a while now too and we almost did it um i think last year we went through everyone becomes passionate about these
1:13:56platforms like it's they live and die by this is how i need to teach and i need this in my classroom but we flushed it out and had a good we whittled this number down at some point and then it kind of mushroomed back up but i think at some point we have to make a hard decision and say we we using one map one math platform um these are the these are the minutes that
1:14:21we expect like some type of standard like usage standard um and then so we can get better control um and we would know based on how schools are doing if they're if they're failing we would know is it the platform or if they have an issue they're having trouble with certain math problems is it we have so many platforms that you don't know who to pin it you don't know what platform
1:14:46is could it be pinned on the dream box st math um so we're in the process of you know tightening that up and we'll have to bring principles together and have them um the curriculum leads at each school who are passionate about this stuff a lot of it is this curriculum that my team kind of takes care of the google apps the screencastify the um the last piece of of it like amplified id
1:15:16grade transfer like just basic things that help teachers out logistically in the classroom not really curriculum but we definitely need to get this number to a more manageable uh this list a little shorter so even with the increase of the staff hopefully that goes through i envision like we're at three now at the elementary it's sliced up nice they each have three schools they go in kind of
1:15:44share this data with the principals principals share it out with their curriculum leads and they use that data to make to guide their instruction that's what should be happening but it's it's too much of a beast right now to to really intimately know all of these platforms um so how we will conquer this beast because we we actually have had this discussion uh multiple times we've inventoried and
1:16:10looked at usage data and we're going to bring that to the principles at the principal's meeting and then we're going to make some hard decisions because we do have to streamline and have some standard usage i think that we have here some where you see like for instance cuss only bring pop discovery ed that was as a result sylvia cuss vivaris for instance they had that elt even though they weren't elt el the the
1:16:35state made that money available last summer to them so they purchased all kinds of software etc for summer school and to use beyond they told them it was okay to do that so they went out and and bought that stuff but that's not standardized uh platforms that we use across the district so we need to look at each one of these platforms what are we using what are we using it for some of it
1:16:58we've they've we've outgrown them as a district so we have to pull back and say so now as a district we're going to stay with this this and this that's our plan mr bailey i mean just looking at this to be completely honest it's a little overwhelming to me just because i mean how do you really gauge um you know where students are successful um and then it's just for me it's it's
1:17:25almost like a consistency thing if we're doing something well in one place and we're not in the other they're not even on the same page so how do we kind of kind of figure that out um i think honestly we really have to take a look at this because not only that it could be confusing um you know we have different levels of students um students learning and you know learning something different you know
1:17:53how do you really tell if they're being taught on different platforms so um yeah it's really really overwhelming we agree we totally agree we we had this conversation today we were talking about measuring effectiveness right how do you know and this has been whittled down a little we've taken some off the table and it's like we just have to pull the dna the pull the bandaid off life goes on without it they have
1:18:25core based curriculum apps that they can use and platforms um but it'll make it more manageable and like my staff they feel the same way they're overwhelmed like you don't even know where to start you don't know what's gaining traction what's not um so yeah i think i'm with you i'm overwhelmed by it and i've been around for a long time paying attention to this but this is not meant
1:18:50for criticism of anybody in this room or anything but i see this particular pete this thing here as a management issue from this district so i don't have the time or the energy to be able to look at this stuff but i would want to hold the superintendent accountable she knew but decisions have to be made and what we're going to do what we're not going to do and people have to understand that
1:19:15that's the way it's going to be we can't have all of these things going on everywhere i would like to get a copy of the amount of money that all these things cost in a separate column because we just vote yeah it sounds good at one meeting we don't know we don't we don't have the perspective the committee doesn't have the perspective on all this money so we'll spend this we spend it i
1:19:35remember asking a while back and we get busy this thing called paper yeah some sort of like um it was like a tutoring thing you know whatever online tutoring did we ever use it how much like i know you have the data so each one of those should be it cost us x dollars this is what it is like so that it it becomes sort of like a dashboard for the committee and what i'd like to
1:20:01to just jump this into we need more info on this but at the next meeting i want to have another meeting in 30 days at that meeting i want to have a major focus be on the instructional side of what we're doing so that we can have some of this info you can have had a meeting with your principals you can have other stuff because we need to from the budget and policy type of
1:20:25thing what are we going to do we can't just have this free-for-all so it's been signing up for things that we don't know about we've got to stop that system as we've talked about and you've been doing very well with that i think it's creating systems the system this system cannot continue because we don't know as mr bailey said is it effective is it not affected right if his school is doing very well in the
1:20:49certain things using certain tools and data and intensity why the heck wouldn't i we don't have that consistency across our schools even at the level so um you had a net in here isn't that in all schools yes that is in all schools so i think that has to get added to the well it's all district assessments in the thing but it shows up in middle school right yeah
1:21:12i showed up on the cover but i thought it was it's everywhere it's everywhere so we will what we will do i mean and certainly do uh correct me if i'm wrong but i think that what would make sense for the next time we meet will have a comprehensive more comprehensive rapport on dreambox what we use it for exactly what we're using it for etc and we'll have a list of the things that we've streamlined to
1:21:36in addition um because i think that some of these things like st math is going to be used as a uh intervention for math right but that's going to replace something we used before what it's replacing it and why we're doing away with it yeah so you have that information it should it should make sense it really sounds very basic but just do the right thing have it make sense and i think we
1:22:02definitely can get there the other piece of uh this is when we look at um who's going to do this reporting on a regular basis that also has to be part of the discussion that it in my mind personally shouldn't be people that are working under the district curriculum stuff i think the principals need to take more responsibility for all of this info and data attendance discipline i've said this in other
1:22:25meetings as well so they're the ceo of their building they should be the ones that know exactly what it is what it's not and if they say no i you know i'm not using it then they should tell you so we can cancel a membership or whatever it is but i think that principals need to um submit to you certain things as a system so that every month the school committee gets a
1:22:48a notice about like a dashboard of instructional technology technology what does it look like people in the community and in the school committee don't have any idea of the amount of data and work that these gentlemen and ladies are doing you're doing it like they have no idea because it's so much is happening but we don't give the the um platform for you for them to describe to you and you to
1:23:12describe to us and for the community to say this is what we have going on in technology so i over the next 30 days we can talk about it offline to get sort of a running dashboard of what we're what we're doing so that we have it so i'd like to set up that meeting in 30 days as soon as possible to check with mrs larry any other questions on the platforms
1:23:38are there any in the pipeline that are new but that we is there anything new on the that we're going to purchase when the process of
1:23:57we're doing additional subscriptions to st math but we're replacing it's already here so right now we have some schools using st maps i'm using dreambot and we're going st math district wide so that was something that started in some schools we see traction we're partnering with the company and taking it taking it apart yeah but nothing new totally account of the so you know i asked that is i believe that
1:24:23we would need to i request that things like that if they're going to come up have to come before the subcommittee so we say okay you know this is why we're going to go to paper because not because some strange reason or whatever that and i don't even know that whether it's good bad or different but we shouldn't just have okay we're going to hire this and we're and then we're
1:24:43seeing these builds come through so if we get in the system of you tell me we have to have a meeting every month we'll have a meeting every month i'm not shy about doing the work but it has to go through a system yeah we talked about that today we said anytime we bring something on new it really should go just like if we're buying a new math curriculum we're going to go through the
1:25:00instructional subcommittee um we didn't have this committee in place so now that we have it in place anything that has to do with technology needs to come through the committee we know that yeah absolutely that works for me anything else anybody wants to add any thoughts anybody i would just like to say i commend you guys you do a great job as far as i'm concerned i think in the past you've got
1:25:23a bad rap as a department not for me but i think you do a really good job and you've been understaffed for a long time so you all have saved this district hundreds of thousands of dollars before you came on and what happened is we were just the work kept on increasing and these gentlemen were staying at the same place so for too long the work's been overwhelming and you guys have maintained it so kudos to
1:25:47you but now is the time that the committee has to step up and let's get the right staffing so i support these programs let's talk about how to do it this committee is going to be i think a very important powerful committee on giving the information and giving you the ability to tell us what you need and then showing the community what we do so we'll have some what we call dog and
1:26:05phony shows i think in the future about what are we actually doing with technology in the classroom because people watch these meetings they want to see what is this all doing so you all do it i know it because i talk to you and listen i want to have you be able to show in a subcommittee so that people see it this is you guys are doing some great work so when time is doing some
1:26:24great work so let's applaud that so put that motion to adjourn second your business anybody new business no sounds good motion coaching thank you very much