The Fall River School Committee Technology Subcommittee convened to discuss and refer several significant technology procurement and security initiatives to the full committee. The meeting began with a roll call and the Pledge of Allegiance, with no citizen input. The primary focus was on a comprehensive plan for device replacement and upgrades across the district, including middle and high school Chromebooks, teacher laptops, elementary Chromebook cases, high school engineering lab computers, and nutrition registers. The total cost for these replacements, primarily funded by Esser funds, was projected to be over a million dollars for Chromebooks alone, with additional costs for other devices. Key discussions included the need to replace aging and end-of-life Samsung Chromebooks with Dell devices, incorporating durable Gumdrop cases, and establishing an internal repair process. The subcommittee also considered replacing outdated teacher devices with HP Windows laptops to standardize technology and improve efficiency. Proposals for new Chromebook cases for elementary schools, an upgrade to the high school engineering labs, and modern Surface tablets for nutrition registers were also presented. All these items were unanimously referred to the full committee for approval, with an amendment to include the high school Chromebook replacement in the current purchase. Further items included a payment of $43,424 for Chrome bases from the Emergency Connectivity Fund Round 1, necessitated by changes in federal qualifications, and a suite of cybersecurity enhancements. These enhancements comprised Bitdefender antivirus software, email filtering, and Lightspeed Alert and Analytics, a platform designed to track devices, applications, and provide alerts for student safety, replacing the previous Social Sentinel system. A discussion on PowerSchool revealed ongoing frustrations with customization costs but acknowledged recent server upgrades and efforts by PowerSchool to address district concerns. The meeting concluded with a unanimous vote to enter executive session to discuss security personnel and device strategies.
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okay we're going to close a lot of the technology subcommittee meeting can you please call the roll Mr Agnew here Mr Bailey Miss Laramie here please stand for pledge of allegiance uh
0:17indivisible with liberty and justice for all right depression they make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium and these are there for advice recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unconceived by those present and are being acknowledged and permissible I understand there's no citizen input tonight so we'll proceed to the first
0:43discussion item a vote to refer the following replacement devices okay uh good evening everyone um what I did if you want to take a look at the screen you also have the packet I tried to just summarize some key points when we talk about these Hardware Replacements as a district with the support of the school committee over the last 18 months we've been able to outfit every classroom with a Promethean board
1:07we've updated Network infrastructure security infrastructure building access infrastructure now we're getting to the point where our devices are starting to see the end of usage for a number of reasons I sent out a Chromebook RFP earlier this winter numbers there for your access as well as you have the RFP in front of you this would replace the current Middle School Chromebooks currently they're the bills devices
1:35they're the Samsung devices they are they were at end of life starting last year they are now also going to be at the end of this year out of the warranty process through vils so moving forward any warranty after this school year if any repair would be on four of the public schools also Google does a life of device it used to be five years they've kind of shortened it to four years now because
2:00everything's changing so quickly so as we start to talk about these Chromebooks as we move forward I'd like to try to start implementing a life cycle replacement I've worked with Mr Almeda and with superintendent we've talked about how we'd like to do this I'd like to start at the middle school next year where we replace the Middle School devices the devices will be our devices they will all allow us to take the SIM
2:23card that is in current device and pop it into the new device because we'll still have that one year left of the mobile data so that will just pop right in this RFP also encompasses something that I've learned as a new CIO with the influx of Chromebooks is we need to protect them better they're kids so this also includes three thousand gum drop cases and we'll talk about this again
2:47but these are the gum drops this is this is more of a kind of entry level and then this is the Cadillac rubber bumpers you can take this the kid can drop it this protects the screen this also actually increases our warranty on the device Gumdrop will say if a device breaks in this we'll replace it for you because they're research and development team they make these four you know for kids so we can
3:12pass these around if you want to see it we're going with this model the rubber bumper model the other thing that's nice about this too is it protects the outside of the device no scratches no dings no any of that stuff so just gonna allow us to five years keep that device well um the current devices if this is going to be referred to as committee and you know approved will be pulled at the end
3:35of the school year and now what will happen is our Tech team will go out building by building and they will swap out the vice SIM card have it ready for redeployment in the school year also the one thing that we've seen internally is chargers they go quickly they break they borrow out they get lost I've been included into this a thousand spare Chargers to be dispersed evenly through
3:58our middle schools so that way also we have spare Chargers now the other piece that we see in the bills program are spare devices I've had conversations with you maybe like there are not enough spare devices because of the way that they're um repaired at the warranty Depot what this allows us now is every student has a new device we're going to take out of service all the Samsung devices they're
4:21not worth keeping in service but you'll see in the next couple of slides we have plans where we're going to actually take devices from other buildings we're going to create those as spares there's a pretty intensive plan for this summer so now every Middle School will have between 100 and 300 spares on hand that can be used in an emergency can be used if a device has to be replaced however the warranty process is
4:45in our office now so Dell sends us Parts our texts replace Parts day of breakage every building replaces Parts day of breakage which in turn turnaround time to get the student their original device back is less than a school day okay our techs have taken the classes the Dell devices are nice because the the hot swappable pieces so if a board goes pops right out you put the new one in
5:10um they've been instrumental in getting to turn around the elementary schools the turnaround has been so much quicker we're doing it internally um so if this goes to full committee and is approved our next round of replacement devices is going to be the high school high school will be at four years those are the devices that are used in and out the most in the district the older kids so what will happen there
5:29is I'll come back to the committee at this time next year recommend replacement of the high school devices however we will not Sunset those devices we'll pull them back we'll pull out parts that we need and then we'll have more spares that we can use in the district I will say I'm going to move as a district to the Dell devices because of the ease of use as far as replacement
5:51parts the high school currently has a mixture because when we opened up the high school we were trying to get a Chromebook just like everyone else during cold so we'll Sunset those devices this would be an Esser fund purchase total cost is right there at the bottom of the screen just a little over a million dollars again three thousand Chromebooks three thousand cases three thousand spare Chargers and
6:15the warranty Depot but on site with our techs that's the first piece I can answer questions by individual ones if you'd like we can go through each one or I can give you everything at once and we can talk at the end let me just do the each one okay any questions on this uh how many Replacements now for the middle schools in each building yeah so we're having a hard time keeping up
6:38um we send roughly 80 to 100 every week and then we take back broken ones and try to do some of the repairs in-house the biggest hold up with the Samsung devices right now is they use a proprietary battery for the for the motherboard you can't get them I've actually tried to use a number of different vendors to get them ourselves knowing that we're gonna you know avoid the warranty opening it ourselves but I
7:02have three months left on the warranty just to get us there so we've stopped doing that and we've started in putting in just regular devices so if Johnny breaks his laptop we're not sending it to Samsung because they're charging us to look at it now because we're at the ntln and we're in experiencing our own devices during MCAS season every middle school has two MCAS carts that can be
7:22used in an emergency and my team right now is working on sending another 150 repaired devices to each Middle School to get us through the testing so where will we be after do we purchase these purchase these it'll be one to one yeah there'll be 150 brand new spares in each building okay and then we'll further put two three hundred as they repaired back in the buildings so the the idea here is
7:45so that the building can circulate on their own will work with the building Tech in our department to keep circulating them out however we're going to get to a point with the brand new devices that we should see Zero repairs for at least the first eight months unless it's accidental there will be some system board failures again fixed right in-house because we can do all that in-house now right so you just said
8:06accidental this cover or thing whatever it is it's just that it's going to prevent a lot of a lot of these things that have been going on because a lot of it is damage because they're dropping them and this is a 40 foot drop so you can actually take and I actually did it I took an older Chromebook that we had in repair and I went to the Pace Building you know the overhead and I
8:27dropped it and it protected the device the only thing that this is not going to do is if someone accidentally leaves their pen in and close it in the practice screen however nine out of my 11 texts all can replace a screen in-house it's a 17 minute process so instead of sending stuff out we're at the point now internally where we can do this All in-house and make it that much
8:47quicker within 24 hours we can in most cases it'll be within the hour in most cases if a student brings it into the middle school every Middle School Tech knows how to do the device on their own they can give them a loaner to use for the class and then have their device back before they go home so we're going to warranty from both companies we'll get a warranty from both
9:06companies so you get a two-year bump and a bumper from Dell and then this this basically protects the device so if something breaks and I can say that the Gumdrop hey we broke you know we broke a device they're going to replace the device for us this company Gumdrop is being used by many many schools across the you know the country it's all for makeup when if somebody does put a pen and it breaks the screen
9:29that they pay it depends on you look at the student and if there's been a history of abuse I'm a parent so a lot of what happens now and something that I can say so these are new devices but the old Chromebooks that we pull out those screens are work with the or the new device so when we pull these Samsungs out I'm gonna have 2 000 if they're all worth you know working
9:54spare screens to you so it's a like a there's no cost to the district so if there's a repeat offender or if a kid takes it and purposely you know matches it down on the table yes we would go after them to repair but I have a hard time if it was just an accident what is the data show the data shows that right now we had 37 Chromebooks in the middle schools that
10:18were malicious damage the rest have been age of use and just failure on the hardware itself not by student and it's it's real easy to tell that's what I'm saying so they pay it's my point yeah so there have been 37 there have been 37 repairs at the high school not the high school I'm sorry at the middle school that have been paid out but they've been simple things like keys
10:38there have been no like destructions at the middle school level we have um at the high school level there's probably been about eighteen hundred dollars collected from September to now screen replacements but it's been like hand through the screen and the kids have been great they paid for it or they put them on a payment plan because the screen is the most expensive piece so they yeah the only reason why I say is
11:00that we for too long have just given away willy-nilly and even though it might be an accident per se but you need to know you don't put a pen inside of the thing correct you don't put your hand in and she's closing it so that now my fingers in it and it ruins the screen so I feel like we should be charging those families for that because that's not necessarily like malicious in the way of
11:22like breaking it but it's being not careful with a device so I just think that we're we're still not to the point where we need to be holding people accountable to you owe it you put your hand in it and I work in a school I know what that means the kids hands in it all the time and it's hard the younger they get it's a little different and all that
11:42stuff but you still get a document it you gotta there's no reason to for me or any kid to put his hand inside of her Chromebook while she closes it absolutely and I will say at the middle school level last year it was very difficult we were seeing more of it and this year it's really tailed right off the building principles and the tech people in those buildings have really they've leveled that out it's gotten
12:00much better and even at the high school for a bit there at the beginning of the Season it was like another broken screen Another Broken Screen and now it's really leveled right off yeah we're moving in the right direction again this is something that when covet hit we kind of jumped right in and we didn't have standard procedures operating practices we're getting to that point now so we're
12:19cleaning things up as we go yeah and we talked about it in the summer correct so at the start of the Year everybody in every school was told the same thing you break it you pay yeah so to me we shouldn't be just now saying oh well we got new ones so we'll have some extra spizz and you can't have it wishy-washy it's got to be this happens you pay you're you're responsible for it
12:40and when you said before I think you said 80 100 a day or whatever the I don't know if those were mistaken them so so that's so right now that battery piece with the Samsung Chromebooks and the bills that that's what's happening we're losing between 75 80 to 100 a day because the batteries for some reason it's almost like they were on the production line at the same time and the
12:58batteries are just going and if there's no Rhyme or Reason to it but they're all at that point where we only got five six hundred kids in the in the school it up so that means everybody in one week is losing it so we we've turned over an entire School we've there have been buildings that 75 of the devices have already had new batteries in the last three and a half months through the warranty repair
13:19process yes now with them being under warranty if the agreement is before so do they have to get to the factory in order for the you know what I mean yes so it has to get there before the end of the warranty however what we're doing right now is in order to try to make sure everybody has devices because we're trying to keep up we're sending 50 out from a building getting 50 spares there
13:38because what happens is if you send them 100 at a time it backlogs them and they can't keep up we were using AGI for repairs and AGI no longer will work with the bills program so it goes directly to Samsung so you guys know if you do something warranty with Samsung it takes a while so internally we've been okay we're going to send out this many and we're going to keep doing the spares and
13:58we've we've been able to catch up it was a little hairy there I will say before February vacation but we finally got ourselves into a process where we know what we want to do and if I could find batteries we would have but my thought process on that is we have four months of school left and I'm to have new devices in people's hands and I can I can close that gap between now and the
14:16end of school with what we have but they still got to go and get repaired they still they still want to get a new day they're still getting better devices they are still getting repaired in the end it's just time consuming on our end yeah there's just a lot of moving Parts on it I think we're doing it's for me I think we're doing better but we still got some ways to go
14:34with to hold absolutely and we can always work to create more efficient ways and processes and we're getting there with the high school one next year where you said no why is it weight is just Manpower um no I just I came to you guys with a lot of expenditures today and I wanted to try to I didn't want to make it look like technology was coming in here for millions and millions of dollars I mean
14:56if it's the will of this committee for me to put that proposal forth for the full meeting I can include that as well because they'll honor this pricing as well and internally our staff could do the middle schools and the high schools but would it be funded for the same yes next year be funded through the same I think so like as far as I'm if we've got all this money in this sort
15:16of in the side to me more logic is to do them all but yeah a year from now we're going to have another price increase probably or whatever but um I'll add the high school into it and then if there are any questions when you report maybe like just divide it into it like so you know which one's which but if they're telling us we have X amount of millions of dollars to spend now or
15:38July or August or September or whatever and I would say I I think for us that would be excellent because then everybody would be on the same playing field students would have the same device from 6 to 12. we're actually also looking at and if we do the new devices at the high school when you come in as a freshman you're going to keep that device through 12th grade we're going to
15:58get into that model I'm working with a bunch of tech directives from another District to go into that model because my thing is if my daughter is taking care of her device as a freshman she returns it in June we clean everything out she's not necessarily getting the device that she's kept in perfect condition in September so now if Abigail Cabral gets her device as a freshman she's going to keep it until her senior
16:20year so that I think also will have some respect on the devices students respect their device knowing that that's going to be their main source of learning through their four years of school and we'll do the same thing as well on the element um Middle School site six will keep it all the way through eight and then what we'll do is we'll clean them out after eighth grade will always
16:38go to sixth and come through no would you collect them after this each school year we're also toying with um allowing the high school students to keep them moving forward however if the full committee allows us to replace those devices this year we would do the swap out starting in September and then they would keep their devices for four years not collecting them not collecting them giving them back in September
17:00correct we have a way to track everything now so we have software that can track the devices and these students it it's just efficient for us as a district for the student it shows some source of ownership you know I just a lot of districts are moving to that and they're seeing Success With It I'd like to try it if we do that I would recommend you come up with all the new
17:20policies on all that stuff so that we can know the questions that we know we're gonna we're gonna have that would be answered because it's a little dangerous to send them home and then 300 kids swap over now you're coming to the same way you can't collect them what do we do all of that uh I'd also like to do a lot of districts are doing they have the tech team at meet and greet during
17:38the opening of school so they have like a little 10 minute this is how you take care of your Chromebook you'd like to start doing more of that as well when you said you had to take the Samsung um internet I guess the SIM card will come right up my concern is that when that goes away that goes away so why are we even playing with that at this point we have one more year of the
18:01free data on top of at the end of the school year right I understand I'm saying but why the once we're getting doesn't have free data correct so like at some point whether it's this year or next year we're going to lose the data correct so the Samsung thing and the Verizon thing hasn't worked out in my opinion like it should have it was not as seamless and all that stuff so we're
18:18going to end it at some point because we can't afford to get anybody every day this time next year so why would we worry about changing it maybe the idea is that we're doing all new stuff and do we have to have what we do because the grant was extended for that one year the Bills Grant so we would have to put the chip into the new devices for the one
18:35year and then at this time next year when they turn off it's not going to matter it can stay in the device it's not going to hurt anything yeah it just seems like a little prolonging like fake we're not going to go the year after the parents are going to say well I've had it for free for three years now I don't have it for free we're gonna have to answer that question
18:53if it's the world it was part of the grant but if it's the will of the committee we can look at if we decided to pull out on the free data for the remaining year um but I just think if we're getting it for free we put the cards in and just the kids that use it I do some research incentives so we know what the pros and cons of it would be
19:11any other questions on this spot no no okay so the next piece would be replacement teacher devices and this one for me is kind of a no-go during covid we tried to get whatever device we could in teachers hands they were working from home they were working at school um again supply chain we would I would go to Kevin and say we can get 200 of these so we would do one school I can
19:32get 50 of these we would do a smaller school I have devices that are all over creation right now in all of the schools the only school that has the same device is the high school and that High School device when we did the building project is already obsolete right because I mean the same device they have the same Windows laptop so right now across the district everywhere else are using a
19:51combination of either older Windows laptops or older operating systems security floor for me and they're using Chromebooks which we've now found out three years after covid that a Chromebook is not the device for teacher because it's not it doesn't have the power to do what a teacher needs to do we just last year the committee approved replacing all the administrative laptops that roll cloud has been completed this
20:15would be the new Heist the new teacher device so from K to 12 everyone would now be on the same device in this price also is next day guaranteed Depot repair so on top of our text being able to do the minor repairs anything major we have our own dedicated HP person okay and they come in and they fix for us for that time we're also building in a percentage of spares so if you're a
20:41teacher and your device just dies and we can't fix it here you go we take the hard drive out your data is there you're back to teaching um and someone's going to ask we're moving to the Dell Chromebooks because it's a better Chromebook for the student but we're moving to HP for Windows devices because their security and their background is just so much better the HP Windows device in my opinion my
21:05professional opinion blows the Dell device out of the water so that's why we're going with this and it's time for a teacher to feel like they're appreciated with their technology if you see this looks like a Macbook it feels like a MacBook battery lasts 10 hours it doesn't have to be charged it takes one simple USBC cable to connect it to their Promethean board so this cable can stay there but it also allows them to
21:27wirelessly connect to this device their devices now do not allow that I have four or five different connection types to these boards so now we standardize everything it's going to make PD easier it's going to make teachers being able to share you know ideas on how to use their devices easier and it's just I can pass it around it's just such a more robust device if you want to see it can pass it over so
21:51that's that's what we're looking for there again this will be another Esther purchase these devices should last us seven years they're that type of device so they're like a Cadillac teachers are used to use in a Corolla right now so this is going to increase efficiency so now that we have um tech support that entire seven years as far as yes again so my staff has trained in Dell replacement and HP Windows site the
22:19other piece about this is the security side it's the updated windows 11. we can get rid of all the Windows 7 stuff that's on our Network right now that could be a vulnerability what is the policy on repair same thing as the kids like the kids can't break it we also can have staff that they shouldn't breaking or they're responsible we've had two staff members of over the course of this year that
22:41have broken it one was an accident in the classroom that we did not charge I investigated that one myself and one teacher accidentally left the device on her roof and drove off and she paid to replace it whatever that devices so this would be like there's a policy of some type and we issue a new one that and just says it costs x amount of dollars if you break it just like we do for the
23:03kids yes so the superintendent asked me to look at our current policies there's going to be some wording changes at the next policy subcommittee meeting to align those policies and procedures with all of this that we're talking about tonight and is there anything of value to what that you're currently using are you just so what we've talked about in the past with the old Chromebooks we sent out to that
23:22company AGI they Frankenstein them out they give us money for replacement parts we actually are going to use a company called edu parts and what we'll do there is same thing they'll take our old devices they'll go through them and they'll give us between an a grade or an f grade the money changes a little bit and it will go into their account and we can get replacement parts um anything Powers you know power
23:45screens the whole nine yards um that will build up because for the first three years I won't need it but in year four then I'll have that money from these older devices to stop turning around and repairs any other questions hello next one okay so the next one we have is Chrome Case Case purchases um same case we did in emergency connectivity fund round three we were able to receive 2500 Chromebooks
24:13those are on their way those are going to be used to start swapping out Elementary School Chromebooks that are at the end of life so my thought process here was emergency connectivity fund would only fund the actual device and the power I want to make sure now that we're doing this at the middle and hopefully the high school level if approved that everything has the same case so that we're protecting our
24:36devices from K to 12. so this is just to allow me to purchase 2500 cases for the devices that we'll be getting in early spring from the emergency connectivity fund and the emergency connectivity fund there's no cost to us at 2500 Chromebooks free and clear and I'll talk more about that in one of the next lines any questions no thanks High School engineering lab currently at the high school we have two engineering
25:02Labs state of the Arts as far as infrastructure however when we moved over um we did not there was no funding in the project to replace computers however at the time the computers were only two and a half years old so they were doing what they should have done for the time um they're now Windows 7 they're slow and the students are kind of falling behind as far as being state-of-the-art
25:28this is going to allow us to put the two Labs state-of-the-art dual monitors we've worked with the cbte director over at February vacation our internal team added drops so that way now when a student hits Sprint to a 3D printer it doesn't take four hours to spool that whole thing it'll be real time so this is just basically for I believe it's 57 machines two teachers the labs and the
25:56monitors and that will bring that area up to 2023 and Beyond so why haven't we had this uh when we opened the building yeah um those devices were at the time state of the art however the current cvte director has changed the programs we have new staff members they're using different programs and it's choking the machines they're just not meant for today's standards so this will bring us
26:20right up into today's standards okay okay and you're going to see these are HP devices it's either HP or Dell we're going to move forward as a district Dell is going to be our Chromebook and HP is going to be our Windows based platform my only concern is that the wiring wasn't done when we just built a new building we didn't know that there needed to be different wiring so
26:44um doing some research when we sat down in the planning phase the former director of cbete was asked to review all of the spaces and for what he was going to use the spaces for at that time four years before the project hit the ground these Labs weren't going to be used like that um when they were doing the research phase I was not in this you know this position
27:05they were pushing more of we're going to be Wireless it's going to be 2024-ish when we open the building Wireless would be the thing however what we're seeing with these 3D printers um and Mr farius could talk about it the file is so large even with having two access points in the classroom it just chokes out the network so it was more appropriate to bring them wired and something that I you know I asked Mr
27:28Pacheco to help with he did his team did an amazing job with it now it's going to be push the button printer receives the job it's not going to be like we had with this lag sorry we're never going to have 3D printers in the engineering lab there were 3D printers however they weren't part of my scope as the Director of network infrastructure at that point they were purchased with the pro with
27:48the school and then when the new cvte director came in said this is how we're going to do things and then we got kind of tied up because we didn't have that infrastructure so we've been doing it wirelessly however she's amazing and she found a way to dump it to a USB I can bring it over to the printer but we're in 2023. you shouldn't have to put it on
28:05they're going to go into the real world and they're going to work in 3D printing this is we want to emulate what the students are going to see when they go into the you know so you said there wasn't money in what does that mean so as part of this and again I wasn't part of that piece um this the current director at that time he had just purchased those computers they were only 18 months old
28:25so he wanted to use those and then they used that money elsewhere and I don't have access I didn't have access to that so that's where I as the new CIO I'm seeing the need working with the current director and this was the immediate need to get us to 2023 so that's why I'm bringing it to you yeah I just to me it just defies logic that a brand new school we don't have the up-to-date
28:48wiring with the most well again I don't care whose fault it was well it's not even a fault those rooms weren't going to be used for that type of lab they were going to use more for a Makerspace type of lab and then it kind of morphed into no this is where we're going with the engineering program because the Makerspace you really don't so where in the building is so somewhere else is
29:05over why no it's just those labs those became computer labs after the fact they were going to become kind of the maker space right so that we wouldn't have used drops in those areas so you had it just I don't want to get down into the nitty-gritty here but we have engineering program that obviously we know anybody that's paying attention to it would know that it's moving the technology is moving fast whatever we
29:35better have the most up to the upgraded wiring we don't have it in that room so when you told me that it was coming in in the middle of the year we got to rush this thing through to get the wires if I had logic to me then and it still devised now why that wasn't done beforehand for any kind of room that had the wiring like we actually had our
29:53people go I haven't seen it but they had to go and run wires already you know if it was from the network closet which is right outside that area into the classrooms and again this is me trying to fix things moving forward I wasn't part of that process and I can't speak to the former director in that area this is trying to write the program to help the students can you get a copy to the
30:13committee of what we what it would have cost to do this yep the wiring yeah because obviously our internal people must have saved us some money I'd like to just get a report on sure next all right so next is nutrition register Replacements so I've been in the district so 20 plus years um in my former lives there's different positions we've replaced the um registers once um it's dying need now right when those
30:39seven devices um The Nutrition department needs to be brought up as well this is going to be a little bit of a different device after some research with whitson's and some other area um districts we're going to go with a Surface tablet that goes into a dock because it allows them to actually take the device when they're doing breakfast in the classrooms and track the breakfast and then drop it back into the
31:04device and it's a full register what happens is we reuse the old register cash drawer itself and we replace the brains of the operation all of the work will be done internally our team the network development team will download Nutra kids get everything into there this is something that we're not going to wait until September as soon as the devices come in we're going to roll them
31:26out it's a seamless thing we pull the old one out you put the new one in we have two of them right now that we have replaced in other buildings because it was an emergency need and the um the Lunch Ladies can't speak enough of how much easier it is for them to use it's all touch screen so they're not using so they use it there are two buildings that
31:43are using them and they and they love it so this would be for 34 registers across the district it's going to allow me three spares something that we don't have now so every register goes down mister cutting calls in a panic because we need to get them back up and running so we'll have three spares total cost is just uh just another 55 000 for the registers oh yeah and this page for the nutrition account
32:09correct do they still have the um IDs that are really like a lot to yes so the barcode scanner so what will happen here is the lunch lady is not going to have to go back to the device and put it back together every time as you can see on the picture what basically they do is they slide this out and it slides right back in the barcode scanner and all of
32:29the peripherals plug into this base unit down here they don't touch that piece you have to cover they don't touch it if they go to a classroom for they pull it out they put it back in and actually this company when I purchased a 2500 for the um they're actually giving me 34 cases for this device for nothing that's possible yep any questions all right entertain a motion refer all of these items for the full committee
32:58including the update on the high school so made seconded all in favor aye opposed thank you next up 3.02 okay so when covet started the federal government came out with something called the emergency connectivity fund and I at the time was stolen my role as the Director of network infrastructure however we had the immediate need for Chromebooks and we had the immediate need for Chrome bases in some of the
33:24buildings so I went ahead and we were approved for it however Mr Amir is here and he will say the first round was very messy because the federal government didn't understand how they were going to roll the project out but the vendors also did it as well there are two reimbursement pieces there's the bear piece and spin this went through bear so it took the company Hub Tech over a year
33:46and a half to be paid however they had changed round one and didn't really you didn't really discuss it with the districts and our e-rate consultant will say the same thing it was a very difficult piece in retrospect round three I applied for 2500 Chromebooks they're on their way the vendor's already been paid we didn't have to do a thing um what happened here was they allotted 270 odds some odd thousand and the
34:11remaining balances on us for the 43 000 424. these devices have been in use now a little over 18 months and this is our side of it because what they did is they changed their qualifications and the Chrome bases were not allowed to be part of it however the Chrome bases have been an instrumental piece in our schools basically to high school and we have a number of labs across the city that are
34:34using them so we have on our piece we owe 43 000 424 um so I just needed permission um to pay that out of our site and again just knowing this has only come to light in the last three months I was hoping to get this done a little bit sooner at last school committee however the vendors are excellent with us because they were blindsided by the process as well so I would just need approval what
35:00is the Chrome base like you're saying it's um docking station no it's actually um a flat screen all-in-one computer that's on a base so they call it a chrome base it's basically a giant Chromebook that we use in the labs so it's like a standalone computer any other questions on this no what happened around two was that round two we did um that was the hot spots at the time that we were using
35:25um that was already taken care of that was sync so we don't know anything because you know one and three correct yeah emotional approved to refer the Motions no motion to refer right yes uh 3.03 so Swansea Public Schools some of the other districts in the area BCC have taught us a lot about cyber security very challenging time um sat down as as soon as it happened actually that night that it happened in
36:04Swansea we were on our Network launching things I can say the biggest fear for cyber security now in a K-12 district is What's called the USB key drop so basically a hacker takes a handful of USB keys and they walk into the north parking lot if they're feeling they throw them up in the air and they walk away and those USB sticks are infected with malware anything right we don't know a teacher
36:31comes in and says that looks like my teacher next door I'm going to plug it into C's and they plug it in and guess what happens our network is infected we're okay as far as firewall right now however we weren't okay and that's why we're going to move to New Teacher devices for that type of security so our plan our early plan is threefold antivirus software for all the new devices and servers that's bitdefender
36:54we did I decided to go with bitdefender because they will automatically update our devices when the device is home anywhere protect our devices can I just say like just be careful what you say if I was like we don't want to tell anybody what we're doing so well no this is all software-based but we can see it and get it to sit up there right there's too many details but the bottom line is you
37:14need this money to be more secure than what we currently are correct antivirus software for the devices then we have email filtering and security which will live on our firewall device and then this next one is light speed alert and analytics I wanted to show you folks that I will in a second and then just to let you know in the coming months before the end of this fiscal year or a
37:33possibly at the beginning of next fiscal year we're going to come to the committee and look to replace our firewall clients something that we haven't done in four years we're going to have to do that however we're still researching possibilities and I didn't want to rush into this at this meeting we could come to the full Committee just knowing that the subcommittee and we're going to come to that in the coming
37:52months I just wanted to show you all um this is the lightspeed analytics piece and as a district we're learning we never were able to give data as smooth as this product is going to allow this product will track all of our digital platforms across the district it will also apologize it will also um track all of our devices this is also the piece that we've talked about in the past where we had social Sentinel that
38:20would send an alert if someone was talking what is it that's cool oh thank you um fingers are tired today it's been a long day of typing um this will also be the platform that replaces social Sentinel because what social Sentinel gives you that email alert student is talking about suicide or hurting themselves or harming themselves this product is just it's tenfold from what we had so just just quickly District
38:46overview you can see number of devices total registered users we have 12 000 active devices right now 9886 total active not currently rostered so that could be test devices it breaks it down for us by total users total devices being used by day so I can go in here by day and we can say well why did it Spike on a Wednesday at the high school and not on a Monday are people
39:11not bringing their devices that's just on the device side I can come back here and just show you this will also give us cost of ownership cost of Life on anything application wise so we can can come in here and I can pull on applications anywhere these are just a demo platform just so you could see so I can come in and say how many people are using this app how many people are using our
39:35digital platforms we have um licensed applications these are just two that we use in the technology department but I can show you and I was just these are fake numbers for demo purposes but it'll show you average cost of license days of renewal something we've never had in the district all of our digital platforms are all over the place in all different teaching and learning facilities technology this is
39:58going to put them all in the same place so now Mr Almeda when he builds his budget can say oh we got this one to renew this year it's just somewhere where we've never had passwords we've never had any of that if I decided to retire this information is here for the person that takes over it shows you your licenses it shows you your cost per license it shows you everything this is something we've never
40:20been able to do and we're in 2023 and we have to um so that's what this I just wanted to give you a quick little brief overview that's where we are with this this piece and we own that already we do not own it that would be we own light speed as far as relay for our Chromebook filtering and our MDM devices would just be an add-on to that platform uh Mr farius has
40:42been demoing it for the past two and a half months and he speaks nothing but like unbelievable I'm saying you have it here now so like this you're looking to we're looking to take it yes correct do it not just keep talking about it yeah want to pull a trigger excellent motion to go to refer those three items motions so made second date all in favor all right anybody have anything on the new business
41:11I had a question on PowerSchool I was looking at I don't know where I went but somewhere in one of the documents that you had was about the special ed you know I've been all over the like how much money they keep charging us and driving us and whatever like they're in the ration Alpha of doing it do we have anything related to anything that extra that we require my feeling is that they didn't do what
41:38they said they were gonna do so now if they tell us no in order to do that it's going to cost us more money is there any issues going on like what is the issue going forward as far as okay like should I just be frustrated no every year or every meeting or so we're at the point now on the project where we're going to start talking about certain customizations because now we've we're
41:56getting the bugs out I will say um everybody here has talked about some of the outages that we've had PowerSchool has found out that our district and a couple of others in Massachusetts were on a failing server fund they actually took us from a Windows operating system to a Linux which in my geekspeak that's phenomenal because it's so much more stable and knock on wood we have not gone down
42:16since they've done that upgrade usually they would charge for that they did not charge for that because of our frustration the superintendent and I met with them well I mean just yeah they're working with this they're extending the Olive Branch um members of the team are coming down every two weeks and meeting with us internally so we can talk through some of these processes I will say there may
42:36be some minor reports that we want to start to do with the you know the program that we may be looking to spend some money on but once we buy the report we own the report there's one that's possibly going to come out in the next three or four weeks um breakfast sheets all the buildings use them they scan the bar code they do the breakfast and all that we don't have
42:56a way to do that in public school right now that one probably 4 800 bucks 4 900 bucks for them to implement the report it's like 20 plus hours that would be paid out of nutrition because it's a breakfast report but we're getting to the point now where we may do some discipline reports we may do some attendance reports and I won't have you know numbers on that however we've
43:17just added our new member to the team and we have our own reporting software so we're starting to work on our own internal reports so we may not come to the committee and say I need this report we're going to come to them for the breakfast report because that one's a definite need and I also am looking at a transportation report that's something that we probably can't build internally
43:35but moving forward all of the attendance and stuff we're probably going to be able to build that internally but we're at that point now where we're going to start to tweak the general shell of Power School it's not going to cost hundreds of thousands but I may come to the committee and say we need nine or eight you know eight or nine thousand dollars to do this but I'm going to try to do it
43:53in a way where I come to you all at once for next school year and itemize those plans and if people don't want to approve certain ones or we don't like the number of certain ones we can hold off and we can work on them internally yeah I think one of the arguments for what we used to use was that it was reasonable and I when I worked in this District I had personally asked for
44:14certain things to be customized for to have me do my job easier and you know all the other Vice principals and that was done at a reasonable cost and in some memo that you sent to us about the special ed one is that we might need customizations when I asked those questions at the time the PowerSchool guys are like we'll work with you like almost like it's no big deal there were no yeah
44:38they would say like it's no big deal it's going to be minor you're saying a couple hundred bucks a couple thousand bucks I would love to feel confident that that was going to stay the case but I have no confidence that they're gonna do that for short money so my only thought on bringing this up is that we right now I'm not happy with the way it's going and if there's a timing to
45:01squeeze them is now is the time is now and now I'm not confident that we made the right decision just speak for myself but as we go forward and look and you say well if we if we need X Y and Z and it's going to cost us whatever whatever your numbers are her estimates and I hope it doesn't shock us or shock you so might as well hold the same
45:24but if as soon as you know please let us as soon as you get any any tools like that um the last item is a motion to go into executive session and the purposes of to discuss the deployment of security personnel with devices strategies with respect there too master on the law 38 section 21A pool I'm looking for a motion to go into executive session
45:52executive session okay we're going to make them have a motion to return roll call Mr Dragon here Mr Bailey here here any other business before the subcommittee no motion to return Me seconded by Mr Bailey all in favor I opposed to voted thank you all for your presentations and thank you for listening