3.9.2026 Fall River School Committee - Facilities and Operations

popped up. I'd like to call to order the facilities operations subcommittee meeting March 9th, 2026. Please call the role.

Mr. A here.

Mr. Das here.

Mr. Mus here.

May we stand and salute the flag, please. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium.

Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unpersceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

Is there any citizen input time?

There is not.

No citizen input time. We'll go right to item number 3.01, update on the Brightley software.

Uh Dr. Curly brighten software demonstration.

Oh, that's the first item. Yep.

I apologize. I was not anticipating Josh's Well, you can kick it to them. I just sent it I just sent it to you as I just started with you as like you can you can uh pass it to Mr. Chico. Uh, I am.

Okay. That's what I anticipated, but everyone else was being so quiet that I thought maybe not.

So, we're going to have a um rival software demonstration.

Yeah, of course.

I guess. So, just uh by way of uh background information just so everybody's on the same page. So, this from my um research shows us that we started this process in January of 2024.

Mhm.

Which is a long time ago. So, we're going to try to figure out what where we're at now, but also keep it in mind the fact that it's been a long time.

Just want to put that out for everybody to know we did something two years ago and it's still in process. So, um we'll have more [clears throat] questions afterwards. Uh this is Mr. Fado, the director of maintenance, who's going to lead us through a little bit of a demonstration.

Uh committee members feel free to I would say ask some questions as we go but main other questions are going to be afterwards related to he's going to show us what the system looks like a little bit. Anyone else at the table wants to weigh in feel free. Um and uh take it away.

All right. So here's here's a what a typical day looks like. Um, so what I'll do is I will see if I need to um pick if I want to see what our work orders look like or where we are as far as status or what we have open. Um, I'll take it through. I'll highlight each person individually as follows.

[snorts] Is Brightly just called Asset Essentials? That did they change from Brightly to asset Essentials or is asset Essentials like a piece of Bright?

It's a piece of Brightly. So is Bright.

The equivalent of school dude is now asset essentials. No, the equivalent of school dude is Brightly and inside Brightly was al and inside school dude was also this acid essentials and then this is where this what is the other pieces of are they called brightly or are they called they're all called brightly the only piece that's not brightly a school due portion is inventory control which is

still the old system they this new system doesn't have that particular piece so we're still so like used to school is called asset essentials no it's called um use of schools is the rental portion that is caused.

Yeah, we'll get to that after, but I just was trying to Yep. audio.

There's two separate sections.

Alex, they're saying the audio is not working.

Going to call two minute recess.

Recess. So, please continue.

So here you see uh sign two. So I I'll I'll highlight the um workers that I want to check on the status. Um so I put a date range of December 1st 24 to present. Um so here work order status when I hit in progress and I scroll down 114. So what that means is everybody that is highlighted, so that's every trades person, there's only 114 work orders through the entire district that's open.

Can you show us the date some of those were submitted? Just curious the in progress.

Well, no, this was uh when you put the December 14.

Yep.

Like if you did now if you change that to January 1st of uh or just put 2025 instead of 2024. So this will tell us out of that 114 how many are in.

So we want to do January 1, 2025.

I sorry I meant 2026 because now it will tell us what's current right.

That what you mean?

That's what you're looking for.

Yeah. Uh 2026 January.

You just got to click. You just got to click on the one. Click on the one and 26.

No, I know. But that's not what I'm seeing here.

I see.

There we go.

I was trying to scroll up.

Got it. Thanks.

So, we have 61.

Yep.

All right. So that's that's what's open from January 1st 26 to now. So now that's in progress.

So now what's going to have to happen is I'm going to have to back out of this and go back in and add it to the filters again.

Cuz normally we wouldn't do it like that. So obviously it's for the demonstration and you can just uh do it all whatever you got to because if we bounce around like that it'll actually wipe it wipe the memory from it.

Josh, is it possible if you go into that filter where it says crew instead of um clicking on every person, can you just filter for the people in your department?

You can, but you have to set it up.

So if you started off that that I'm assuming the all these people work under you for the most part.

That's that's moment of effect. Yep.

Yep. So to the superintendent's point I think it would be make sense to have like in under crew is there no setups for like for instance uh under you maintenance crew and then another one would be uh grounds crew of like so we would have to set that up. Yes.

Yeah. I'm just wondering if you click on the little filter if it would just show up in a drop down menu. That's all.

If I do that though, it's going to wipe out everything.

So, what what would you want to do? You want to do January 1?

I try with the superintendent as go where go back to where it says crew and see what is set up or do you know that there's nothing set up so it's going to be zero.

Correct.

Oh, okay.

That's so we just use I can't remember where it was that we just use January. No, I wasn't looking at the data where you had the word crew up there. It looked like as if it had a um an hourglass.

You can you can categorize them and we haven't set that up yet.

Correct.

So, as of January 1st, 26 to now, we have 411 completed work orders. So, you had what?

61 um outstanding or in progress and 411 completed from January now.

Is there reports that get run for each department, each principal?

So, I can So, I could run a report like this. Um, I could even go down to um analysis.

All right. So here, so [snorts] from the date you gave me, it takes me 15 hours to respond and it's taken an average of um 5 days to complete during that time.

During that during that time, correct?

Y that's going from the date that you just gave to when I first started, it was about 15 days. We're down to five.

Yep.

Just feel free to bounce around to anything that you think is uh worthy of us knowing.

Um, I mean, so with the names put in, uh, let's just pick Dery, and we're still under completed.

So, from January to now, completed is 68 work orders at Dery.

Um, so if you wanted to see Doran 14 and I can do the same thing with an in progress.

Yeah. And then is there a way that you can see any reports that have been run previously like a a report um summary so that we can see and maybe other anybody anybody in Brightly to say show me that the last 10 reports that an admin or principal or anybody ran I would say no. Um, but I don't typically look for something like that.

Um, because I'm the one that's usually doing the reports, the reporting when it comes to my guys.

Yeah. Your own guys.

Yeah. So, you got anything that I don't?

No, I don't.

You know what I'm asking though?

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, before we started, we were talking about uh trying to like look to get through a um an item to see if we could like as an example. So, I was mentioning that we have a lot of cafeteria ones in in our packet for the the ones you gave us today, right?

To try to take one of those and and figure out like to match them up.

Josh wasn't sure cuz it doesn't fall under him or not. But like what if is there a way in here to show all the work order should be here?

Even the cafeteria, everything every work order has to go in the system or it's not a work order, right? So, that's what I'm saying. Like where's Can you show us the cafeteria?

Um, would that go under cafeteria? Like how would that be coded? Is it just like could go under I'm not sure if it would go under um the director if it would go under Bob if it would go in the Jose.

Can you type in the department maybe when there's nothing in there? So I'm assuming it's not that's not I wonder um Josh when you were looking at the completed ones over on the left it has all different kinds of nutrition right there. See how it says nutrition under Mr. Cutting?

Yeah, but I'm also looking for um Jose.

Actually, that would be under nutrition.

We should all go under department. So, if you just show us the any uh work orders from nutrition.

U Mr. [clears throat] here. Also, um if on page two and it was um an individual that had um 545 work orders and um I think it said that all 545 were overdue. Was that like a glitch in the system or something?

Wait, was it just now?

Yeah, I did when we were on those three pages was on page two.

Let's go back maybe one or two posts.

It was the last thing we were on when we were going through where we're clicking on individual. I can tell you that some nobody has 500 work orders past.

We just hit back to where right?

Yep.

Like this one the dies.

No, it was when we had the three pages up. One, two, and three. Page two down as multiple pages.

It was the last page. It wasn't this. It was like the subsection down.

Can you hit back again to see It doesn't look like it's laid out.

Are we able to go back to where we just were when we're clicking on people's names? You like when you said I can clear the filter. Yeah, for sure.

Let's focus on the nutrition because I think that would show us a kind of a good example of what does it look like. So, if we should search by department, what is in this? Uh, right. Yes, it was this right here. That's where it was page two. We go down to two.

at the top there's uh 555 work orders and 545 overdue. Yes.

So he doesn't have 555 workers want to do.

What happens is the system will repopulate right so if he has a um preventive maintenance thing it'll just keep repopulating and multiplying it and multiplying it. So that's where you get that number. Is that the same thing with Robert Fu and grounds 137?

I would say that that's actually more probably more accurate than your 555.

Okay.

So, can you show us what that means?

And again, Robert's work orders are going to be in with lose.

So, what do you want for a date range?

Current fiscal year from the drop down other one the date range it's current fiscal year right at the top it doesn't it doesn't so current fiscal year he has three and that's completed

[snorts] And see this is what I'm talking about right here. Right. So you just see how it just keeps repopulating.

So it's PM work.

Yes. So it just keeps right. So what happens is if we say that we're going to cut grass at Doran on Monday and once we cut grass on Monday, it throws it back in as another PM.

If it rains on Monday, Monday stays.

Even though we're going to do it on Tuesday, it's not in a Tuesday schedule.

So, it's it's a little glitch in the system that doesn't allow us to eliminate the day and move to the next day in the PM only. It only happens has a PM report. I'm guessing that is separate report than this that talks about Mondays, Tuesdays. We talked about having that as remember when at some point was it was asked of us to provide a cutting schedule right so the principles knew when

you're supposed to come to my school the fact that it doesn't take into rain it doesn't take into other events so that that's why that that's probably something maybe like afterwards on a separate sheet get us something that says that but I think that explains that those high numbers and I think like in origin if you if you click on that dropown you can probably select the nonpm And then you just be able to see what

that total looks like.

Yeah. Over here. Yeah. Right here. This one on the bottom. Origin.

Hit 900 p.m.

900 p.m.

And then apply top.

Yeah.

It's not It's not going to change. It's going to go back to all.

Well, cuz you had PM. But yeah.

Okay.

It might be a glitch in the system, but I agree with it. [clears throat] You see how it has done PM and PMT?

Right. But if you hit origin and you hit nonpm and hit apply, it should be only showing us what that uh filter shows.

Correct.

Right. I think you tried that and then it I think it glitched out.

Yeah, it's okay. Let's try be before we open up for questions. Nutrition like try to find us something about the department.

She want clear all I would guess.

No.

under department I would type in nutrition.

So all this is is this your whole group or is this everybody?

So anybody [snorts] who's added to this system, right? So Bob's in it. Um, all my guys are in it. Um, so you don't have your just your particular group.

No. And that's what to Tracy's point, that's what she was saying. And Kevin Boot, right?

But I mean it it's it's all there.

Nutrition. The only individual in there is Bob Cuddy.

He's got school and I'm assuming.

Well, it wouldn't have individual employees.

I see. It won't come up like that.

It goes by school and then those who put in items. So, not every single like a part-time custodian is not going to be in the system. Um, not everybody is in the system because there'd be no reason for them to be in it.

But a custodian would put something in here right?

Like custodians put in the tickets.

Seniors.

Yeah.

Who's the equivalent of a senior in the nutrition?

Jose.

There are none. It's just Jose is the only is the only um administrator.

So, I'm saying like he would be his name should be in here somewhere.

It is.

Yep. That's what he's doing right now.

cuz maybe he maybe uh maybe it would show some other What's Jose's last name?

Poso.

It's you can't It doesn't go all by that. So, it's not in alphabetical order.

So, how long has this system been up and running? Oh, yeah.

going to have to like obviously that cuz see the top says current fiscal year that must mean he has none in 3 months but that's why let's let's just search it right from day one makes it easier just for the demonstration.

So 121 like you're going from day one at 121. Is that when that's when I started?

Yep.

What when does it go live? Like when we had the meeting January of 04. What is the if you had to It took it took I want anywhere from 6 months to 9 months for them to prepare this prepare the document. And then from there they probably did a um we did the turnover. So the roll over from one system to the other and then and that from that point on it was

almost six to eight months of back and roughly like he's using December 1st as 2024. Is that fair? Like that's 12 months of since we were first since we first purchased it. He's got in here 121. Should we change it to another month or I can't tell you off the top.

Let's just leave it at 121. That'll catch everything. Yep.

It's going to catch it all from the old So, what are you looking at right here?

This is a completed work order. This was um two steam tables.

Yeah. But like, can you just go back a second? It changed it a little quick for me, but did it just say two from the entire like what is the Yeah, it seems to me that this things don't get assigned to um Mr. proposal that it looks like cutting that Steve is not is not being assigned to to make no so source has to say all but he's got Joe up there so Jose

I just uh obviously Jose doesn't get those or like there's got to be a way to look in here to say how many tickets did Jose put or any employee, there has to be a way to figure out what you put in, you know, so that it initiated with him just trying to figure out where the if something's broken in the freezer at the door in school.

Well, it depends on how it depends on how they put it in, right? So, but we should be telling them how to put it in.

For example,

I'm going to search myself.

And this will give you an idea of when we put it in.

I try to get everybody to be as descriptive as possible.

I'm going to use one of my guys.

Well, let's not worry about that for now. So, I'll speak for myself first.

The question that I have is on how do we run reports on who initiated the claim?

This is where they get assigned to. What I'm looking for after this meeting is something that says how many were assigned like what is the process for who assigns a work order along with the directions on what is what have people been told how to enter them? What is the expectation for entering? Now it's not from you like obviously they have in it their own piece.

Yeah. So from the whole school department, what have the directions been for how to set up these things and put the work orders in would be my two of my questions. It's clear that there's not there's some things going on here that I know we're on right on the spot.

So I don't want to get back in keep going back into it, but ultimately um so to give you an example though.

Sure.

To your question, see how it says FD in parenthesis.

Yep.

So anything related to fire department, I put FD. So when I want to search, I can prompt them. So then editing will come up, right? So I put those little um abbreviations or something so I can prompt the u the search.

Yep. I would say and I don't know the system.

There's got to be a way to to have some sort of button on there that says a fire related.

You don't you shouldn't have to put it in there.

They put it they initiate. So if Dery asks or or puts in a work order for fire panel, they put on they they'll put it in um to your question. So you would come here work category and they would have safety, right? So safety problem fire protection. So that's how it would get put in, right? So it should show up on that report based on those, not you having to

put the parenthesis is the way I see it.

[clears throat] You know what I'm saying? Like if you forget to put the parenthesis, you can still figure out anything related to fire safety should be part of uh the system, right?

But I think we just and it is it is but it takes some time to pull these reports.

So that was some of my questions.

Anybody else have questions for this demonstration before we ask questions related to Brightley in general?

um this demonstration like of Josh doing this.

Are we are we going to be stop?

We're going to talk about that in a sec.

Do you want to run any uh other reports?

We could I mean I mean just from the reports that I've seen just on it face value, but of course we're going to get the backup.

It looks like this either this program is underutilized or it's not done or it's not done but I'm hoping as we tackle this further we'll get to more questions. Do we have any anything from custodial on anything to add to this that do you want to show us anything that you guys do relative to the brightly to show how it's helping you or the custodian pieces the um senior will if something's broken they will apply a

new work order submitted in and then it either goes to if it's an electrical issue it'll go they click on electrical it goes to Josh submits it to the right departments if it's grounds it'll go to Lou and we've been telling them time and time again, be clear, concise, and accurate.

If there's a broken window, give us the room it's near and the location of the building. Don't just say broken window.

That's a question, of course.

Uh the guy's going to end up running around. So, if you give them 232, they know that window's broken by 232. as much information as they can put in there, they need to put in there for the maintenance and grounds personnel.

It sounds just by your response that you're frustrated a little bit with people not I'm getting over No, no, you were saying like you over and over I've asked them. So like I took from that that they're not following your direction or is it hard?

They weren't. They are now because I had Josh reiterate it. We both got a hold of him and said, "Look, we need it this way." So we can we're not spending a lot of lost time looking for stuff and they're all coming around.

It's been corrected.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Dice.

Thank you. Just quickly on that point, so in grounds, the only individual who will be submitting orders or um assigning orders would be the director.

Yes.

See my concern with that and to um Mr.

Claus point. We we went through there and it was um the the data showed that most of the work orders were passed due.

So I just want to know as one member how we're following up on those but they are pass. Remember we looked at it and it said it those are the PMS. So those hadn't been attended to because some of them either are in the past or they're scheduled.

So I thought that was for another I no correct. So I think your question is and we can get a report afterwards was for the grounds piece the director would put them in he puts in all of the updated pre preventative maintenance so it's all over the district that's where you get that large number what you're really I think trying to drill down is to say how many active nonpm work orders

are we getting and we can get a report on that to show it's 10 a day it's 20 a day there's x amount uh due that's I think where I'm anticipating what your question is isn't related related to the preventative maintenance. We're going to get a separate report on preventive maintenance.

Can I ask Yeah. Yes, it does. Can I ask how um an individual is assigned like an account through who would be the assigner? The director? Would it be yourself?

The director would be the only one that should be accessing this and distributing. No one else should be.

Who?

So, each director would be doing that.

Who Who's the Who do we have? There like a admin list and who? So Josh has taken a role in because his the system is primarily going to go to the maintenance piece designed for work orders and most of the work orders end up being maintenance. However, Jose has some access and has also sat with uh Brightley along with Josh and others because every time we do end up meeting with Brightly,

most of the time we met with all the directors that are in FML. It wasn't just one particular person.

Okay.

So, the template of uh I guess we could probably get a report at some point. Not now. I think we're good with this. Josh, if you want to shut down the um report [clears throat] of uh like an aug chop for the who's in rightly, it would just help us to understand who's in it. So, we should have more people that are able to assign a work order versus actually getting the work

order because the senior wouldn't get like how does a a senior know if I'm a principal and I say I got an issue in my school that I want to assign to the senior. Well, the principal can put it in position to assign it to the senior.

It says on this sheet what we're looking at said assign to. So that would mean that all the seniors should be on that list.

You get what?

The seniors the seniors are the ones inputting the information.

If a principal needs No, I'm saying like uh I'm talking about within the school. So that if I'm a principal and you're the custodian and I need you to do something that's within your purview.

Mhm.

I'm the principal. How do I put that ticket in so that we document that the principal asked you to uh I'm not sure that the principal is using it in that in that manner because the principles are either seeing the probably see the senior custodian in their building first thing in the morning and giving them whatever they need done right out of out of the gate.

Thank you.

That's my guess.

Right. I understand. But there's certain things that I see that they should be keeping track of with a building. So, I think there it probably is not being utilized like I'm envisioning yet.

Yep.

I'm thinking more the principal says, "Hey, you know, can you take care of this?" And I'm not suggesting like we need toilet paper and in the first floor bathroom. That's not what I'm I'm talking about. But at some point, the principal should be able to assign things like uh they move furniture for instance, right? So, you know, they would get that event. So the principal would hand them

you have I have a meeting and I need 14 chairs set up here. They would go put the 14 chairs set up there if it would come up in the calendar and then they would live where does that information each school it doesn't live in any software the calendar or wherever like in that example Mr.

Chico said so how do we know uh what is cap captured in the software for that particular description of what we need or teacher wants to move a desk from Dr.

Curley's room to Mr. the dasis room. How does that get confirmed?

Usually it just gets confirmed with the senior custodian. They'll make a call to them and say, "I I have a desk to be moved and then because the maintenance has to move it."

The custodian doesn't move.

The students move it like Yeah.

It wouldn't be something they would be putting on school dudes.

No, because they're in their building and that communication happens with the principal or you know the teacher will tell the principal and and say, "Hey, I need this room moved." And so the principle of community yeah I understand I'm only looking at it as I think the purpose of the softwares that we have here is to manage and also understand what's the breadth of how much work is being done and putting

nothing from a custodian in it to me is not useful when we have a system that you know there should be a limit like don't tell me that you need paper towels but if they're having to be moved what if what if uh somebody came out and said uh that principal is making me move stuff 15 different times back and forth what in the system is going to allow us to say, "Oh, yeah, that's right. They

moved that from here to there, then there to there, and there to there."

I'm sure I'm sure if a senior is getting that kind of response from a principal, I'm sure that Maria and John would know right out of the gate that this is happening over and over again. And then that conversation would have to be had between the director and the principal.

I don't believe it's happening, but if it is happening, then Well, I think we should look at it personally. I think we should look at making sure that there there is something put in whatever special would be that so there's not like the example of a toilet paper or a paper towel but I think custodians need to be involved in some of it and things get assigned to a senior

to do it should be documented what those seniors are doing. Um any other questions on brightly Mr. Dice?

Thank you. So I know um and I just this is my first um turnaround on facilities and operations. So I did some research.

I understand this was first um brought up. I know the switch over happened from school dude into the new system brightly. It was um January of 24, February of 24 when that was discussed and brought before the committee.

And um I know it was um there was a secondary meeting I believe in April, March, April of 2025 in facilities and um and I know and I did go through the backup. I know it took us a while to get the program fully up and running. Um just quickly just going through that timeline if we can just quickly just for the public's education just um touch upon what were the issues why we couldn't

like to start right from the get-go when we had the the amount of the amount of items in Brightly was just thousands of items to be moved over and and they and again as I said that rollover was not necessarily um easy. Some of it is the fact that when we did bring everything over, all of the individuals who were involved in the work orders back then don't work for us anymore. So somewhere along the line,

we had to figure out where that stuff was going to live and under who would it live. So if we if we lost probably 25 to 30 over the years, 25 to 30 custodians, senior custodians changing over things like that. All of those items had to live somewhere. So a lot of this stuff was back and forth with Brightly to try and figure out where this stuff was going to live. This

wasn't 10 minutes. It wasn't two days.

It was weeks um for them to figure out how they were going to land it on on this particular thing. Mind you, all of these softwares are not just designed for schools. So, some of it's designed for other applications. So, it's not a it's not a perfect fit in the rollover.

So, that was some of the issues. Some of the issues was internally how we wanted it to lay out. Going from this person to this person to this person wasn't some of it wasn't a normal transaction that they normally would find in districts.

We did things a little different. not completely different but we did do things a little different than others.

Sometimes the size of the district matters also. We are a goodsized district with a lot of employees. So again more data had to be inputed. Um and in back in the day the reorg was not as singular as it is here now. It was one person doing all of the work. maybe two, possibly three, but not seven, and to the magnitude of which we have to do it today. So, those are all the things

that contributed to the amount of time it took us.

Sure. And and I can understand that. Um, and I guess and I know Mr. Cabra wasn't here today, but a question I would ask is why didn't we go more through the company itself to fix some of these issues? I know we used more in-house.

So, we did. We used the company to do a lot of stuff. We didn't we didn't go outside of the company until we wanted to and I'm going to say make make the product more customized as opposed to general. It was so far that that we went with Brightly and then the Brightly um help was not as as um accessible and that was again as I said you know earlier um on on certain items

we took it upon ourselves to take this on in house. the fact that we have a robust technology department, we assumed that we would be better suited by doing some of this work in-house.

Some of it worked out for us, some of it didn't, but the the intent was to allow us this customization that we didn't have available by flipping a switch with private. Okay.

Do you think there's more work that needs to be done to get this up?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Do you think some of it has to be with us? Some of it has to be with us figuring out what's important and what's not. Okay. So, so there are things that we've customized in here that have worked out very well and then there are others that may not be as necessary as we thought they would be. Um, the amount of people that are in the system is a lot. You know, the

system is is is large. So there's a lot of working parts within the system and a lot of names and individual um duties that are that are part of the system. So when we first looked at this stuff, we were looking for something robust, very robust. That was not what school dude was. School D was a little clunky. This is not as clunky, but it's still got its own drawbacks, of course. Um,

and I and I agree with you looking um when you say we're looking for something ro more robust.

Can I ask for like a percentage of like where we're at in terms of like and maybe like a cost estimate and getting this to 100%.

I I couldn't tell you that because I I would have never I would have never been able to predict the amount of time it's taken so far to get where we are. But I'm not quite sure what that would what that would entail and whether or not it would entail any any additional help from Brightly or whether it would be in-house. I I don't I don't have any way of knowing that and I'm I'm sure that

u Mr. Cabraw could obviously answer that question better than I can, but I I would say that that is um something I couldn't answer, you know, and whether or not it was something that he wanted to take on inhouse as necessary.

No, I appreciate the candidate. The reason I bring it up cuz when I was going through like the minutes from previous meetings, um, uh, Mr. Reposo who, um, I guess in the minutes he took a major role in the in the roll out stated that it was 90% done, but it looks like we're not.

Well, the roll out was the roll out is completed. There's no doubt that the rollout's completed because the roll out only means bringing the documents into the new system. That was the roll out.

as far as getting the the system to function as we like utilizing the software. That's not [clears throat] that's what he did with that.

He's just saying that right. He's just talking about the migration and is there any plans on using this in the future for um inventory tracking like the so the system does not is not doesn't have that capability and we've been told by Brightly that they are they are not ready to roll out their particular version of that. Okay. Um but there is supposedly a virgin a virgin a version of this you know coming.

Okay. Um roll out the principles is that like bring in now. Okay.

Um last question is um I understand like most of the directors are pretty well verssed in this now.

Yes.

When did that um when did that take place? When did we get the training for the directors?

It's a year ago now.

Year ago. Okay.

Yeah.

And that was done. So the the senior custodians were trained. The principles were individually visited and trained um in the in the process. But the custodians who did most of the input on the previous system um were trained um together in a group or might have been two two separate settings. session.

Yeah.

Okay. Hey, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Miss Monus.

Yes. Um, so real quick, um, when your inside departments can't handle the the work and you guys end up you end up outsourcing it, is that all part of this program? that you guys go through getting somebody down there to look at it to evaluate everything and then call you or I don't know how you guys so any time work is done they put a work order in there right so for instance more

they put just put a work order in no hot water went down I went down we were able to handle in house if we [clears throat] weren't able to we would have to make the proper calls okay now is that are these people on the list at all. Whoever you call to come in or No. So with something like that, we'll use Morton again. Um I would just tell the plumber just put down what you did,

right? So if he So Morton the VFD was an issue, right? And the fend wall. So we replaced the module, we reset the uh the VFD, right?

Worked fine. If that if that didn't play out that way and we had to call a contractor, I would have the plum just put try troubleshooting, put what he did up to that point.

Yeah.

Once the contractor is completed, then we would close it cuz then we know it's closed.

Okay.

So, if something gets put in with the elevators, what I'll do um is I will actually personally go in um and actually put the date that I spoke with them completed.

No, this is the company you're talking about.

No, that's me. That's me closing it out.

Okay.

That's me closing it out because if a if a custodian puts a work order in for an elevator, which they do, I have to be able [clears throat] to close it out, right? We don't want things open.

Correct.

So, but I won't close it out until But you're not making a work order for the elevator company.

No, no, no. So, so, so how do we look at So, if we looked at Brightly, which is our main now work order system, and I said, "Show me all of the work orders for the elevator company, right?"

What? By what you're explaining is you don't have that.

No, no. What I'm saying is the custodian will put the work order in.

No, I'm saying for the if I said search by, you know, a elevator.

So, there's elevator, there's an elevator section, and then if I put into the uh description elevator for a particular school, it will show up. Yes.

of the issue, not necessarily the actual referral to an outside police.

No. So, what I do in the description is I'll put spoke to Buckley at such and such time or Yeah, I understand. You put it in you put in the notes rather than an actual like uh that way we know how much goes outside, how much stay inside, what you guys and obviously well obviously and obviously you know you guys know elevators always go outside of course that might be a bad example because of that reason

but I I think the point is if we're go using outside vendors in order for us to be able to like see as a management oversight right we should see how much work's getting done by outside vendors, right?

And how they're attached to which is what I was asking about the nutrition, right?

So the guy in the nutrition, which we'll get to at some point, [cough] uh came in, he had to uh fix a um freezer that was frozen over, blah blah.

So that person, that company, Marshall or whatever the other one is, there's nothing in there that says Marshall.

It'll be under somebody wrote that Marshall came to fix it. It's not under a list of Marshall fixing the nutrition.

So, we can't like cross reference our bills to work orders potentially or what staff is capable of doing or not capable.

That's what we're trying to because then the other debate that the other issue on the item here is whether who can fix the items or not, right?

So, and I think in nutrition you guys don't even get called, right?

because the as well like he your young guys would go to so so a lot many times the custodians and the nutrition side they collaborate and uh like the one that sticks in my mind is cuss right so the custodian gave me a call told me there was an issue in the cafeteria and uh you know we fix the issue and how did how does that get put in so Billy would put the work order in

and then you type in you did it and whatever the the issue would be whether it's electrical plumbing yeah it'll make more sense So when we go over the bills to know that I think it's going to make a little bit more sense.

Any other questions and moments?

Mr. Chair, Mr. D.

Thank you. If I can just follow up and my last line is um on the overtime.

Madam superintendent, can you um just um inform the subcommittee what the protocols were or if they I don't know if they recently changed, but what they were are for now. if um an employee is um given overtime or request overtime.

Sure. Um so when um this particular project um in another came to [snorts] light um I I met with the um those departmental leads and the you know members of senior staff to just review that if we're starting a project like this beforehand or after I mean or after this was after okay that um what we do with other departments is we fill out um a person fills out a request

it's like a proposal we call it the white stipen form.

um because it's white paper and um it's stipened approval. So they outline a project. It could be you know curriculum writing project. It could be um some kind of professional development project. It could be um you know a tech project for something in FNL where it would they would you know put together a proposal that would say um looking for approval on this project for this purpose um anticipated

you know these two people are each going to work 25 hours and it's going to come to this price based on the hourly rate that we pay out and then so we approve up to 5,000 6,000 whatever it is and then all of the time sheets come off, you know, are subtracted from that total. And then as it gets closer, someone in finance might reach out to the project manager to say

hey, you you only have about $500 left in that approval.

They might come back and they could come back and then we'd have to review what the original project was, why it wasn't done, and so on and so on. So, that's the expectation.

If um and and I appreciate that the administration um took this on and implemented those protocols. if I can and can add if um like just for example, I'm going through one of the time sheets from um 27 2020 2025. It's um signed by the individual receiving the overtime.

Um that supervisor signature was that the individual's direct supervisor or like department head or um 27? I think it's the same individual that signed off on all like it looks like the same. Actually, maybe not. The signatures do look a little different.

So, I'm not sure if there's different there was different individuals signing off on them or it was all the same.

Okay.

Okay.

So, I'm looking at one from 27 and it looks I think Is this Mr. Pico? Is this your signature? Yeah, that's Mr. Pico's signature.

Okay. Um, is there a plan if we're to to continue like improving the the protocols to have it be that direct supervisor, someone in that department or would it be okay or do you think it's okay in certain instances that directors for um supervisors from other departments can cross?

Yeah. So I my understanding is that this this project kicked off um and included Mr. Pico and then our um CIO and I think potentially um the person here who actually did the work. So it kicked off in that way um with a request like hey we have this kind of work to do. Is this something the tech department could do?

Yes. And I would you know I recommend this person to do it. And then because this money was coming out of FNO and not technology, Mr. Pacico was the person who signed off on the time sheets because it was coming out his budget.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

And um did this individual was this like a work from home situation or was he did he come into um I think that I would say that um if it was done after hours and when I as I look at um there are definitely weekends this person was not coming into the building to do it. No.

Right. So like the start time end time.

So it says 1520. Is that military?

Yes.

Time. Okay.

Thank you. I yield.

So I just had a few followups. So it it um it seems like the answer to the question was that we had limited internal controls before.

Yes.

And we're trying to upgrade those which I would appreciate that we're finally upgrading, but it doesn't it doesn't um I can speak for myself. It doesn't sit well with me personally that has been here since January of 2024 when we were told this was going to work seamlessly and we weren't going to pay any more money and all that stuff. It doesn't sit well with me as one member that we did

start it. We whatever happened with the Brightley or school dude and the conversion why we were allowed why it was allowed to go outside and spend $40,000 in overtime for something that we were never told as a committee that was going to be needed.

And we said we were told in the meeting it was going to be seamless. It doesn't sit well with me that we spent that kind of money on that. To Mr. Das's point about the signoffs, the I believe we should always have multiple levels of sign off, which is what the process has been since the last overtime issue in the FNO departments that Mrs. Pon was the superintendent to have two people

sign off. When I looked at these, I said, "Well, Mr. Pacico signed off," which I understand, but then no one else above him or in addition to him signed off. Mhm.

And the protocol was that a supervisor would sign off like the like assistant custodian and then Mr.

Pico would sign off.

We didn't have that in this case to the tune of $40,000. That to me begs the questions of how um when I looked at a couple of these on a Saturday, this gentleman worked overtime for 17 hours or 14 hours in one day and he was working from home. Even though we have a no work from home policy, we do not have a work from home policy in the district. So if I'm

looking at policy procedure, one, we shouldn't pay somebody that much overtime to do something that we weren't told was needed. Two, the signoffs and work from home isn't in policy. And at the end of the day, when I look through this, the the I I it begs the question of what does these people do all day that they couldn't do some of this work during the time. Like some of this is

related to single sign on things like that. In Mr. the um Cabraw's department there's people that do that work working with vendors all the time. But in this case we spent $40,000 in overtime for a situation that was already a year out and then we still haven't implemented it. So I definitely have a problem with how that went. Um we need to tighten it up. I don't know if everyone is aware of

the policy and protocol from the FNO department after the situations we had in the past with overtime, but that should be through the whole system.

That's an internal control that was put in place uh to do that. So, I'm not happy personally with how this whole thing rolled out because I'm not sure I'm not seeing at all anything major that we spent probably over $100,000 on this new system that the old system couldn't do.

I'm I'm just not seeing it. And I appreciate you know Mr. T working on this here. I wasn't impressed by what we're using it for for the tune of over $100,000 of this system. At the time I mentioned why are we why don't we look at it like incident IQ which is another department that um technology uses. So we didn't even consider that but we're doing this piece. So, I know we're into

it way too far now to abandon it and say, "Let's do something else." But I for one wasn't convinced. Um, some of the stuff that when we first did the conversion that we said was Mr. Reposo said was 90% worked out from my understanding is that some of it just didn't carry in properly to their own system. So, he spent hours and hours of overtime working on lines of an Excel sheet because they didn't seamlessly go

in. That to me is not our fault. That's rightly in school loot's problem. So if it came in and those things didn't line up like they said before the committee and subcommittee was sold on it, we shouldn't have paid them. We shouldn't have had to pay somebody outside. In addition to that, I asked for and I haven't been able to really track it down, but Mr. Cabraw gives overtime to

this gentleman as well. So now we have an employee that probably made more money in overtime than his entire salary. And that's not a good look.

That's not a good system. Um, so I definitely have some issues with the financial piece of it. Uh, Mr. Jose Reposo said from nutrition, he was part of it, a big part of this. My question is, is any of his pay what where does his pay come from? Out of the nutrition account 100%.

Yes.

So, if he's doing work for non-nutrition, is that is that legit?

Well, there's quite a bit of of the work that was nutrition and he also did in some of these items there is neutra uh neutra kids that is part of so some of this overtime not all of it but some of this overtime was attributed to a nutrition account um and a nutrition piece and nutrition paid for Darren's we haven't seen that report but some of Darren's overtime was paid out of out of nutrition

nutrition just that just the stuff that was part of nutrition y I'd like to get a report on Mr.

Repzo's uh where his money came from because it came out of it came out of nutrition.

There was no if buts and that about it.

His entire salary came out of nutrition and it's okay that he was doing work on FNO stuff. Is that if you would like that correction made I can make that connection.

I'm just Well, I'm just saying it is.

I'm just curious.

The lines are blurred.

The lines are blurred. But that's you know I mean it's explain what that means.

Well, the lines are blurred because there was times when he was working on on neutra on neutra kits, there was time when he was working on this particular piece of Brightley.

So, I would say when we're doing some of the rentals, there is a portion that it should be charged to nutrition if it's going to be an event that nutrition is handling. Not always, but I think that some some of that piece is blurred. So I can't I can't pinpoint exactly how many hours I couldn't you know if I tried how many hours but um there were some hours that a salaried person was working on this.

Yeah.

And all I'm asking is that we look into it to say that there's [snorts] hours that he was obviously working on it not like when he we were told which is in the minutes that he was going to go and train all the principles. I'm not so sure that should be a nutrition piece because his title is nutrition supervisor not. So, I'm not sure that that and that's been said in the public

meeting. So, I'm not so sure that his whole salary shouldn't have been paid for it, but that's just a question. The other piece of this uh before we end this is the um use of schools and the not use of schools, but the piece of rentals and stuff. Where is that stand with it? Because the same thing I'm going back to June, January of 2024 where we were told.

So, it's running. It's up and running full. There's no um I haven't been told that there were issues with by the person who does most of that work.

So uh maybe the custodians, Mr. Claus.

So if a custodian wanted to figure out where um anything about a use of schools, where do they find that in Brightley?

It's under school dude. I believe school dudes.

So they'll go in into school during then go into a calendar and we usually takes care of all the event management and then she'll stick it in there and say you have there's an event going on on Saturday. So the custodian will go into the calendar, bring it up, and it'll say basketball from So they're still using school dude in a pretty tremendous fashion. Like we're not we're not doing anything.

They call it school dude, but it's still it's it's brightly it's brightly, but it's underneath the um the calendar of school.

Yeah, you can understand why I'm confused.

It's just that they're calling it school, dude. Because because that's what they have is now, right?

You know, so people Hulu doesn't exist anymore anywhere except for this one piece that we do have to have which is that inventory and it's still owned by Brightly.

But they haven't developed their particular piece to get rid of the school dude name completely.

I'm [snorts] talking about the event manager.

Exactly. It's event manager Brightly.

Nothing to do with school dude.

We've used it as school dude for so many years. It's just habit forming to say, "Oh, I got to go into school, dude." And so you go to brightly.com/events or something like whatever the I believe they not going to school.

No, they're not going to look at it. So school is pretty much the only person that's using school dude.

The only person that's using school dude for anything is inventory. and the inventory piece through our distribution department is using the version of and it's not called um school due when they start using that or they've been using going on since for yeah for long time since it was since its inception it's been used could we get a not today but presentation in the future on the

inventory management because I know that was brought up in the um yeah So inventory management is under that's the only thing that's still under school dude and it's working like school dude. So that's not a brightly.com that's a school dude right um if you can either supplies we can add it to another meeting or if you have somebody that can maybe do a um work with the tech department to do

maybe a visual of what it looks like be good. Any other last questions on this piece? which I'm just um I'm just going to add that overtime like this especially for one person should be preapproved and signed just like a stipens would be that way we see it and we know what's coming. Um just so we have control of how much and why I I don't think though that I don't know

actually but I don't think that the committee sees like if if Mr. repos um puts together a proposal for $5,000 worth of curriculum work. I don't know that that form gets approved by the there are other departments who all put in a slight but it goes to the superintendent. So what you're saying is I think correct in that it should go to somebody but it goes to the superintendent to say okay the budget

for uh facilities and operations overtime is 100,000 and he's making a proposal for 40,000.

It's up to her to figure out yes or no or whatever. That's the piece I think that didn't happen.

And I think the superintendent saying that's what she corrected now to say it's going to happen in the future that if you think I'm going to spend 20 30 grand, it has to go before them to say, "Okay, what is it for?" At that point, she might have said, "Why don't you go see uh Scott and see if they can do it in house?

We can't do it after hours because we don't have a policy." You know, those questions that we raised today hopefully are not going to happen again in the future based on the internal control. And I would be I just want to be clear that if there was something um where Mr. Pacico needed someone to come in on a Saturday to do something that had to be corrected before kids came back to school on Monday. I wouldn't

necessarily seem like there's an emergency project.

You can have anything happen. he could call it and say let's take care of this right now because right I'm not looking that right but when we're looking at something that's going into longterm which it looks like it just kept growing and growing and growing that's something where uh we need a little more I could be wrong but I almost imagine this as something Mr. perpico might have brought to say um I'm going to need

someone to do this and he very likely might have estimated not knowing what the work was going to be like I need you know approval to do up to $5,000 and then might have come back and said it didn't cut it I'm going to need this and and it because my understanding is that's how this project rolled out it seemed like it was going to be a a relatively like small fix that just kept

getting bigger Yeah, I would just like to add as well like the part that you said, Madam Superintendent, about Mr. uh Cabraw being part of the original, I'd like to tease that out a little bit as well because I would be concerned that seeing what I saw in the overtime and like I said, the spreadsheets and the single signons is a big one because I know that happens with all the other instructional ones.

I want to be able to see what his involvement was in that because he has people in his department that do that stuff all day, right? So in essence, we paid somebody to do something that we should be paying people to do during the day would be it just begs that question. So right tease that out to trying to like say that this isn't about like oh and and Mr. Cabraw knew I think my understanding

and it could be more than this but definitely at the beginning it was a hey there's this need and the tech you know the CIO was involved whether he was involved as the project went along I I yeah I'm just saying he's help to try to see because it also comes into a systemwide thing of he should know whether his one of his employees is working this much overtime so he's not

giving him overtime and I haven't been able to cross reference it but if as he's doing this he's also an overtime for his department. That's his real job.

It just I I asked those questions for the future just to kind of get an update.

Mr. Chair, last question. Yeah. Last question is um the last comment is and I think it's been a habit, [clears throat] but I I think in general we we have these companies. I think you mentioned it before, there's in my opinion as well, there's some things in here that we spent money on that the company probably could have corrected on its own. And I don't think we do a good job at holding these count

companies accountable. So, I don't know if it's something that either we can try and hard bargain to get some of our get a refund on some of the money we spent up or something that should have been corrected by this company or I can say that I I can speak from experience on the technology subcommittee where most of the software um conversions and all these things and it's very complicated in educational

software since I've been on that tech subcommittee for the at least the last four years that I've been here never once have we heard that a company didn't fix or we didn't fix working with them internally during a regular workday that they haven't fixed it and it's much more complicated problems than this particular one like for instance incident IQ is the one that the technology department uses I would say I

don't know because I haven't asked for the information when we did a conversion from whatever they were using to incident IQ guarantee we didn't spend $40,000 trying to get the whole system up and running to convert so the issue is just not asking for the help basically within this specific particular I don't know specifically on this one I think it was probably they sold the bill of goods if I had to say said oh

everything's going to work seamlessly because we're going from your software to your software they probably sold the bill of goods to whoever and then at that point once you realize oh it's all right now it's a mess we got to fix it that's just my own editorial on it but I can say with 100% confident that the technology and curriculum folks that deal with this type of stuff deals with it during the school day and

we don't pay overtime like this.

So, thank you.

All right. So, we're going to move on.

Thank you very much. Thank you for your presentation.

Should we have a motion at the table or is that No, I don't think we need to. No. Uh some of the questions that we asked if you can get them at some point to um next month when we meet, we'll either figure out whether to put it on the agenda or if we have the answers. Uh number two is a traffic review uh update. So, uh, some of these are going

to go a little quicker than, um, than the first item, just so you know, so we can move this meeting along. Mr.

Chica.

So the um the packet from January 28th, Materno um we met with engineering traffic um and um PD at the site, came up with a plan um to institute a um a small change in the pattern by not allowing people during certain times to come down Progress Street at all. Um, which cleared things up. It also allowed for a little bit of a traffic change to have the traffic circulating through the

property. Um, we noticed a considerable difference um in the in the morning arrival. However, we also have had the um the ability to have SRO's around on some of these days. So to create, you know, a a habit changing pattern.

Um, and the hope is that we don't constantly have to have um offices there. There's also some traffic uh signs um that are going to go up, some no parking signs um between certain hours on Progress Street to stop parents from bottlenecking that um and that that the enforcement will be there to tag cars who um who are parked illegally. uh part of most of our traffic issues are concerning

bad parking habits um and also some tight neighborhoods and take out the the weather issues on a normal day. Some of these some of these places are very difficult to maneuver. Um the neighborhoods we're talking about a lot more parents showing up a lot earlier.

Derpy High School 1:00 [snorts] for 255 dismissal getting their parking places jockeying for position so so to speak. So in these other schools the same thing is happening. Um so with the the cooperation of the other departments the city departments it's made a difference at Lerno sometimes being able to create a oneway um as we did in Westall another particular traffic altering um change that changed provided

more safety. So it cleared the neighborhood up of cars coming up both ways on on the on Maple Street. it also changing the traffic pattern on June Street and not allowing cars to bottleneck on June Street. So creating those oneways, school street was really never an issue because it's not wide enough for two cars to get up and down anyway, but those other streets were and it's made a significant difference in

arrival and uh dismissal. Again, two different things. Arrival is much easier to handle than dismissal. Dismissal is everybody at the same time. Arrival is kind of a gradual thing. And there are parents who who take advantage of dropping students off just a little early to get out of that major traffic area. So, we do have um some works in progress. We are working with Dery. Um we're getting um the traffic studies

from the contractor to take a look at what the plan was originally.

Um some of it is is currently what we're using. Um, but we're waiting for the final document um to work on helping Dery create a a better flow. Uh, and and there are a bunch of ideas coming out as to whether or not we move our uh SRTA portion of the transportation to the opposite side of the building uh to the north entrance instead of that entrance.

um some of the um our our doortodoor busing, our our special ed education busing in front of the building. Um maybe reooking at that. That was never intended for that. However, the proximity to the classrooms um make it an ideal spot to do some of that work.

So, that is another piece uh that's in progress uh for traffic. Um the uh changing of lights, so timing of of lights has been a big factor right there. We changed the lights 20 seconds and it made a world of the difference to empty out Ellbury Street. So you got four lanes of traffic on Ellbury Street.

20 seconds was made a world of difference on uh allowing the Ellbury Street to dump out because President Avenue didn't dump the backup that that President Avenue that um Ellbury Street did. So again, one more piece of of a small adjustment that really didn't affect an awful lot of people um but made a world of difference in emptying those those two roads. Understand that the the business, you know, in Dunkin

Donuts right across the street from Dery is a problem because traffic is in and out of there frequently and it ties gives us a little congestion at one of our main entrances which is Hood Street into Dery property. So all of those items have been attacked slowly, but they are they are working. Um and um Sylvia, we do have a proposal um that'll come down to you. We started a major

project on Sylvia when we did Henry Lord um on the access road and there's a possibility of adding an access road um to Dery uh to um Sil Sylvia, I'm sorry, from that parking lot still open that little section.

Yes. Yes. So the the the rotary in the prek kindergarten area.

So that rotary is kind of a dead end.

There's no way to move cars from there, but there is and there is a possibility of an access road that would lead out to Meridian and then we could make one entrance in and one entrance out. It would make a world of difference there.

That one requires a bit of money. It's an investment crossing a waterway. It's a capital improvement piece. Um but it's it's um it's it's a process because there's a crossing a waterway requires a little more work and a little more due diligence. Army Corps of Engineers um a notice and intent to to cross a waterway is is um a lot of work, but we'll be working um with that project will be

coming down uh very shortly to this committee um so that we can get that process moving. It took us almost a year and a half to do Henry Lord uh with the how close we were to the left. So So you mentioned about the Dery having the plans that were in the original.

So the original which which only work when you have the original design in mind. Right. So again the bus the front parking lot was never meant for buses.

It was meant for visitor parking.

It serves well for what we're doing because it's a shortest route for some of those students to get on those buses and a safe spot for them to get on the buses.

No, I totally get it. So, one of the things that we mentioned at a prior one was and this came up at the city traffic department about doing a traffic study for all schools.

Can't say I I think that's we have to do that and we should do that before we spend money on any of those other projects almost as a and if we can't do them all at once because it can get costly. We need a proposal to say we're going to do a traffic study. We're going to put out an RFP, however that process works. So, I'd like to make a motion that we refer

this item to the full committee with a RFP or whatever you feel the superintendent feels to do traffic studies for all schools. Second motion's been motion and seconded. Roll call, please.

Mr. Dragon.

Yes.

Mr. Das.

Yes.

Mr. Mo.

Yes.

So, I think that we will get a lot of information from that. I do want to say uh from being around and having and listening and talking to Mr. Pico about some traffic, we are nibbling around the edges of making progress on certain ones. I mentioned to him at the TZY school, I got a call from a parent was much better when they did a different traffic pattern. That's a work

in progress. I get it. But there is some positive things happening with the schools. I think Laterno was better after the city traffic department. My one question on that one was that is there a playground that they say that you can't get around the school anymore?

Was that something built where you normally could go around?

So it was never used that that was never used as an entrance or exit on the building. Number one, because of its proximity to the playground and it's a real tight corner um to make so you could get up.

It's just not made for that. We would have to just steal a little bit more land from the from the um prekk area, that small playground on the project.

I didn't real I've never seen it. I just I heard it was never been used, you know, but that might be another way to [snorts] have access and and sometimes the fire department says they want to be able to get around the schools. I don't know if that's an issue, but just they can get around because the backside is is accessible. [clears throat] They just have to come from

they just got to get it from the other side. Yeah.

So, if we can just check that out, but I appreciate that, Mr. Chair. Yep. I apolog on this issue.

Yes.

Um specifically, [clears throat] I'm just going to speak on the two that are here today on um Westall just quickly.

Um I don't know if we've been receiving any complaints. I know I have from s to my office at all. I'm sorry to interrupt but no complaints whatsoever on West.

The neighborhood president and who um believe he lives around that area, he said he's done some complaints down there, but I I But my my main issue right now is with Excuse me if I interrupt. So I believe that that was true that was brought up, but I think you referred him back to the superintendent if I could remember.

Correct.

Yeah, but I I never got contact information or anything like that.

So basically, I think it's a good practice that if somebody's in the neighborhood, just so anybody's watching, you can call us all you want. At the end of the day, we are going to refer back to the superintendent or Mr. Pico so they can address uh so I would just say as part of like the next step go back to him and say please let Mr. Pico and superintendent know so they can hear the

sometimes they call us like as if we can just snap our fingers and do it. We have to refer right. Um secondly on LNO and the and um the individual that reached out I told him to go speak to the principal but I'm still going to bring up um this issue because it's um because it could [clears throat] be [snorts] a problem. I don't know. um ADA compliance at the schools. Is there like

a you need to have some sort of like I don't I really don't know the answer. Do you need to have the handicap spots? Mhm.

You mean parking or Yeah. So there were quite a few at every building.

I received a complaint and and again I don't I don't know like I haven't been there to check it myself is um there's only one spot at Lernal.

Lateral yes. one spot and the spot depending on the day because I understand they have the cones like that for them for everyone to go around and it's block the the parking spots getting blocked by the cone.

I I don't we can take a look at it. Sure.

Um and secondly, and I don't know if you you're receiving this um or whoever received this for the traffic complaints. Um this the plan has been f been followed since since the um changes were since we had all had that meeting hasn't been any I haven't heard anything to the contrary.

Okay.

I'll yield with that then. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. We're going to move on.

U just looking at the time. We spent a lot of time on the first one. So I'd like to uh have a motion to table 3.05 the capital plan and 3.06 nutrition. And with that one, have the uh at the next meeting have the nutrition department administration present.

Second.

Motion's been made and seconded. Roll call please.

That was 3.5.

Yep. 056.

Mr. Ian, yes.

Mr. D.

Yes, Mr. Mo.

Yes.

We're going to meet in one month, so we'll deal with that then. Uh 3.04. I had asked this to be on about the school resource officer. I'm not sure if anyone has anything additional to add. One of my questions was around which can be taken off between now and the next meeting uh the time of day like how uh overtime is uh how whether it's guaranteed not like the start and end times of the

schools and the so my questions were really around the schedule but I think we saw we see a package of something a little more than that so that's not time sensitive is that right so this is a a draft um draftou with highlighted changes so the the um the cover just kind of offers commentary or a summary around the fact that this is a um this really is like the model

SROU for the state of Massachusetts and then there are some um highlighted areas where it is um specific to Fall River.

One of the things that is um specific is around um the work week like the work hours. It is a um a minimum 40-hour work week, but there are 2 hours of overtime built in every day. So, it's actually a 10hour workday um for each school resource officer. That allows us to have school resource officers at those early start schools that are at 720 or 7:40 and it lengthens the day into the

afternoon so that for after hours. Um so they have they do roll call in the morning then they're at schools by like 7:00 7:30 and then they are um they are available till 4:30 in the afternoon for our you know later schools 3:20 3:50. Um so that's exactly you know was my point.

So it sounds like it's an automatic 10our which isn't in the old one. It's an 8 hour day.

So that's where that comes in. It's overtime. How does the overtime get approved? The contractor says you need to approve it. Things like that. But ultimately, what you're saying now is that all SRO's work 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. if what time um I think it's more of a 6:30 to 4:30, but yes, 6:30 roll call type of thing and then um 4:30.

I think we should uh also put that on the agenda for the next meeting and have somebody present from the um or whoever.

Yeah. So the one thing I would say about that is that we already have um started discussions. So, one of the things that um on page 13 of this draft um is some of our proposed language. So, instead of the standard workday being from 6:30 to 4:30 as it is right now, we've proposed that the work hours will be between 6:30 and 4:30, but that it may be a staggered start. So, so that we

can do this internal um like audit of whether or not we need every single re school resource officer to work a 10-hour day or is there a way to stagger it such that some people, you know, are there from 6:30 um and maybe it's maybe it's 6:30 to 3:30, maybe it's 9 hours and then others come in 7:30 to 4:30.

So, that's what we're trying to um work out right now. a preliminary ask of principles in terms of, you know, do we need them there that early? Do we need them there this late? The answer was yes. It's just a question of whether or not all of them need to do it. Do we require all of the school resource officers to be working 10 hours a day to fulfill the needs across the district

and that's what we have to take a look at.

So, this is um this isn't a final draft.

This is not a final. Okay. I think they should come before us to discuss but that also here at the subcommittee u I think the school resource officers are important I'm not making any I'm not saying anything about the things but they work an 8 hour day under the MOA or whatever they call it it's an 8 hour day somehow it's morphed into they just get two hours a day of overtime and when [clears throat] I'm

looking at theou and the policies it doesn't allow for them to get two hours of overtime every day so we're When we budget, and I've asked Mr. Alita this several times, we need the budget of what is it going to cost on July 1 for the eight SRO's and the sergeant, whatever that rule, whatever that is, exactly what they owe. Any overtime that's added should it needs to be approved by the superintendent because

we had issues in the past where they just came to us and said, "Here's the bill for additional overtime." And it was like, "Where did that come from?"

So, it sounds to me like as if the our ask is that we got to take a look at it.

But if I was being honest, we don't need them for 10 hours a day when we really get down to like between now and the next meeting, what do you do at this school from this time to this time? And it's also good to know if there if they do have them extra. So that what are we assigning them to do?

Who's assigning them to do it? Uh so I think it's valid to valid discussion to have. I just don't believe for a second that they're doing school resource officer work from for 10 hours a day, but they're getting paid since the start of the year for 10 hours a day in addition to getting a stipen that the uh police chief just gave them outside of collective bargaining. So now I I just

there's so many questions. So please have somebody show up at the next meeting.

Mr. D, I was I was I was just going to comment on that point. Um, I'll just I'll just comment quickly just so administration's aware of and the police department's aware of where I'm coming from is like I'm still trying to understand how we got to that point of um like do we even have like since we're the we're we're given the money we shouldn't we have a say in the salary like

would not where would that even like start from? I don't know.

Of course it does. July 1 when they when they we pass a budget we I meaning school department superintendent Mr.

Almea when we pass a budget there's a number in for every single employee. So we know Mr. Almea knows and superintendent knows the six or eight or nine whatever the number is there's a set number each year. When they give us that number it's incumbent upon Mr.

Almea as a CFO to be asking what does that mean for that mean? So if it's $80,000 per and there's times but it's really supposed to be each person because they all make different amounts.

So the real answer to that question is Mr. Almea basically but via the superintendent when they say here's what the budget is.

We shouldn't just throw a number out and say as long as we got enough money nobody's going to ask any questions.

That's not good oversight. So I think that's where the problem came in when we found out that they just gave automatically just gave a raise.

And how did we find that out? Like was there like a did the police chief call the administration say we're we gave a 5% raise you should probably put this in your budget we should have that conversation when did when did I guess you all find out I didn't receive that phone call I called um and we did talk about it kind of how that came about mostly because I was

you know I heard you know maybe it was you maybe it was somebody else um talking about it and I said what like what what is this kind of thing um because the way it was kind of put out there was like this thing just happened and I don't think my understanding is like it didn't just happen. I think these are like it was negotiated right. Um so that is and yes

we paid the bill and and and maybe what you're saying Mr. Jaguar is um is true in that we did have the money budgeted and so we didn't um you know we're not going to fall short in terms of that line item this year. So, but moving forward, we know that we have to budget for more because of that increase, right? No, like for instance, if we go back and

look at person A, let's say Kevin Aguia was a an SRO last fiscal year or two [snorts] fiscal years ago, I made X amount of dollars.

The next year I made whatever the 5% raises whatever.

You just look at the there's only eight of them. You can see what their numbers were. So, we don't scrutinize those numbers. We just pay the bill is the way I see it. And quite the opposite from what I understand is it wasn't negotiated. It's the exact opposite of that. In police negotiations, from what I'm being told was negotiations, they tried to get the SRO to get that bump in pay.

Mhm.

It was denied in in negotiations. So, it's even worse than what what [snorts] I'm saying. In negotiations, it was denied. They said, "No, this this group, that group, that group is going to get the extra pay as detectives or whatever it is." The SRO's was denied in in negotiations. And when the new police chief came in, she unilaterally said, "I'm going to just give you that raise."

That's how I think it went. So, please go back and try to verify or have whoever like I that's what I heard. If it's not true, so be it. But ultimately, I think we need to scrutinize that number. Like, we were tight on our budget and we needed $100,000 for a couple of par professionals.

We shouldn't have $100,000 extra sitting in our SRO account where we know, okay, this is what it is. and we can't afford two hours in overtime every day for everybody. So, we would be back at like square one if we were doing a tight budget. But, we just keep on Yeah, it's okay. Just add it another 100,000 here, another 100,000 there. So, yeah. I I mean I think that likely there's um I'm thinking about

like theou itself and how it's not it's not like otherus or contracts that we have u with bargaining units that specifically identify salary ranges and things like that. So ourou doesn't have anything like that. So there's nothing in here for us to go and say well no you said it was only going to cost x amount um and we're not paying more than that.

We don't have that kind of Yeah, it doesn't have to be in there, but it it's a job description of the CFO. Before you plug [snorts] a number in, you ask the city, "What is the number and where is it coming from?"

Right.

So, we get that scrutiny. So, I I would think it's on him to um you know, sort of ask that question uh ahead of time.

In fact, just ending my comments and and just to finalize the point, I think it's disrespectful to both the school committee and the school department in general that we never receive any notification that could affect our budget. I think that's fair to say. I yield that.

Yeah, I I think we we got the idea. So, when we meet next month, we'll have somebody uh from there be able to come in and um and talk about it. But we do appreciate the SRO's don't want to have this looked at like they typically do would say, "Oh, they were against it."

No, that's I'm just looking to do our job of fiscal oversight, not anything to do with the SRO.

Yeah.

Last question is I know, Mr. Chica, we talked about the sergeant that I believe that we pay a sergeant or we're supposed to be paying a sergeant.

Any word on that?

I don't believe that the sergeant is in the numbers, but I'm again I'm going on on historical memory here that we received a SRO's and the sergeant was overseeing that but I don't know for sure.

Yeah, no problem. If you could just check with them. So at at a committee meeting I think it was about a year and a half two years ago it was determined that the sergeant actually is working full-time as SRO sergeant.

Mhm.

Not doing like other business. And logically I said it made sense to say why don't we fund the sergeant because they're doing all their work with the schools. it was approved mid year or mid right after the budget got done so that we should be paying for such in our number percentage because they are doing other work whatever I'm saying like it was whatever it was that was worked out that it said

kind of why don't we let them at least reimburse somehow so I'm in favor of letting paying the sergeant for what the percentage of their work is relative to the schools um so thank you for that um the two-way radio is 3.07 107. I think I put that on because we had had a um some [clears throat] additional two-way radios came before us. Mr. Chico.

Yes.

So my question was as that meeting it was um it was asked to me if we have other schools that are not that radios are not working or do we not have systems in place namely at RPA where they don't have telephones work.

Some schools have telephones working and they don't have it or uh that was the nature of just putting this on was to get a discussion on.

So, so there are schools who use the radios much more than others. Uh there are schools that the radio goes out to playgrounds when teachers are outside and and parents are outside. Um there are um class classrooms that have these for variety of reasons uh in those particular classrooms. Um but but it varies from building to building. We buildings used to have four or five radios and today that number is probably

25 to 30. Um and some of them have been upgraded, some of them have been consolidated. So for whatever reason there are schools that the radios last longer than others um and others through whatever reason um the radios are seem to turn over much quicker. They're also a different system at Derby. So those radios are a little different than the rest of the district.

Um, so when we order radios at the high school, they are a different model. Um, but so the basic uh reason why we put this is to get a a request out to you guys to say, oh, do we have other needs for either radios or safety on if the phones aren't working? That school should probably have more radios than those that don't. So something happens in my room and it's an emergency and I can go

to the phone, that's one thing. But if you're at 290 and you don't have a phone in your room, you should have a radio.

So, if you can just get a baseline on that.

Um, I'm going to revert back. You got a question on that, Mr. Guys?

Yes. Actually, I placed in a request for information for this meeting. I don't think we got it yet. Just to look at the um invoices for the radios.

You should have them.

No.

Oh, the radios.

I thought we had them with Mr. um what was it for?

the radio.

They're part of the backup.

Yeah, printed it out.

So, I wasn't able to we just I think we just received it at this meeting.

What is the ultimate question was it on cost or was it just related? Is it looking at it or was it cost or Yeah, I just wanted to see um I think it was how often was it? If I mean to interrupt, but I think it was how often the radios or what they were purchased for and where they were going.

Was that Yeah. One was just because I saw the backup and just the to put the the the invoices to the backup and just to um and I I guess I guess it kind of makes sense which ones were broken or not, but just to that that was the main reason.

Okay. Well, we if we don't have the backup, we'll request it again or buy a different backup. We can request it again and put that on the agenda for next month if it would be going to refer back to uh 303 update vote to refer transportation. I think was this the software or something? So, it's two pieces. Got to be one.

Yeah.

So, I wasn't exactly sure what it was that um you would require, but um Mr.

Piggo and I have been discussing getting a parent app uh GPS and parent app for uh the buses. One of the main difficulties we have here in the city is the parents knowing when the bus is going to show up. Um traffic delays at school. There's numerous issues that can um come into play and then students are either returned, parents aren't there, kids are waiting at bus stops. Um so I

did meet with Zoom meetings with four different companies.

um ended up landing Mr. Piggo and I met with uh the one that I feel uh would be the the greatest most advantageous uh based on the cost name of that company is Calam.

So that's just what the parent app looks like.

Um this company in particular there is no upfront cost. um where the other so of the four companies one company didn't offer a parent app the other three companies did uh this was the cheaper of the three and this one works with the program that we are currently using in the department which is the Tyler technologies questions specifically on this or in general or transportation transportation these two items

the um looking at the the backup and how much we pay overall. And I mentioned this at the last meeting. If something that we can take on to um in terms of supporting student protection is I know we have the the buses the D9 buses like the doortodoor transportation.

if we could potentially either I don't know if it has to be a formal policy or something we can add in our protocols that we um take in the the licenses that we make sure the the D9 licenses and that we make sure they're um fully insured and fully inspected. Correct me if I'm wrong. I believe these um transportation buses need to be inspected twice a month. So making sure that our students are getting in fully

safe buses I think is very important and making sure that there is um insurance all the time. I I haven't been convinced I don't know if you've watched the previous meeting. However, um I presented some evidence where I'm not fully convinced that every single one of our um that we carry the insurance or verify the insurance for all of our um doortodoor transportation. So, just making sure [clears throat] um we're on

top of that. I don't know. So, those things that I just mentioned, I don't know if it's something that we can So, you're speaking about like the outside vendors, not our major contracts. Correct.

So, you are correct. There were some um certificates of liability where I thought I had updated ones and I didn't.

Um 7D licenses is not something Yep. 7D licenses is not something that we ever um have kept um for the individual drivers of those companies. That normally falls under um each individual company to make sure that their drivers are licensed. I did reach out to a couple of the other districts to see if they do that. Um, and they said that they don't, but um, I have since reached out to all the

vendors that are transporting our students. I do have copies of all those licenses. I did also make sure that um, everyone had updated quies [snorts] that the fingerprinting was all completed. I do have copies of all the certificates of liability. And if that's something you'd like us to take a look at, I definitely make it available to you.

It's not even necessarily just for me to take a look at. Just making sure it's on file. It's something that's uniform. Um, as far as the vehicles themselves, so they're inspected twice a year. It's in March and October um that they get um inspected. What I do is I try as much as I can to be out at the various schools for different reasons. Um, and when I am

there, if I see that there is one of our 7D vendors, I do make sure that they have the correct pupil plate. um that the sticker is the valid one, that the vehicle is inspected, that it looks, you know, to be in good working shape, the driver, you know, sitting in a seat doing what he's supposed to be doing. Um those kind of visual inspections also, right? Um no, I I really appreciate um that

explanation. Um Mr. chair. I don't know if it's something um we should make a formal something that's more formal or just really just trust that we're we're I would say we should trust that it's happening. I think uh they took the you know comments to heart and I think we're doing that. I think we should do it. We shouldn't just allow somebody to say oh by the way I have they're all cor you

know. So I think well the cory's we've always done it cories and fingerprints.

But I think just tightening it up I think which is what you did. I think um that's an expectation at this point that you have if new contracts come in they should say in it that you need to provide it before um you know but it's busy in there things happen in my opinion but I don't think we need to definitely tightened up the systems that we we're using.

Yeah. Thank you Mr. D. Mr. Mo.

Yes. Um what happens in case of let's say the bus has it breaks down or there's an emergency what do they do for backup as far as Are you again about the the smaller vendors?

Yes. So all of our vendors have at least more than one vehicle to make sure that you know so that's they're small companies but so that's set in stone if something they have to have some sort of backup Absolutely.

All right I'm I'm new to this so I'm just asking just in case something does go wrong uh as far as the parents get notified everybody. Okay Mr. Chair last Thank you. Um believe this has to do with transportation/tra.

This asking something that we could um review in the future is the um this new position that um traffic supervisor position I understand is paid for through the city. But just more of just an update on how that's working, what their responsibilities are. And yeah, that's pretty much it.

I don't need it today. I'm not looking for it today, but just in Oh, the crossing guard. across.

So, she does work out of our office. Um, she comes in pretty much every day. Uh, she's been a great help to me where I've had issues where um, fussing issues and parents complaining and things like that, I'll ask Laura, you know, you think you can put a crossing guard there, try it out for a couple of days. Um, and we have added at least I can think of at least two

crossing guards that have been added directly because of that.

Thank you.

You can just get a budget for that, Mr.

Pico.

budget. Sure. Thanks.

The uh this particular piece that's before us, what is the cost of it and other systems using it?

Yeah. So, I did also just want to mention that um I we did send it over to uh Mr. Caball's department to just take a look at it. I haven't heard back. I just wanted him to put eyes on it. Um but I can't give you the price.

So, for this uh company, we have approximately 70 vehicles that we contract with.

It would be uh if we went for a 5-year contract, it would be 23,000 a little bit shy of 23,500 annually or 30,200 if it was a three-year contract.

Yep. And other systems that are using this particular other systems um I mean, I don't want to mention names, but No, I wanted to mention names. Okay.

like school systems, not so edgelock um would charge 20,000 annually just for the hardware.

No, no, I'm saying other systems that are use it other meaning districts that are using software.

So the reason that we are getting a good deal on this one is they are trying to move into our region. So they don't have um any currently now in the norththeast, but they are a company out of Canada.

One second. I did speak to a couple of company, a couple of school districts that they work for.

um the Houston County School District, the Atlanta, Georgia, uh another one in Atlanta, Georgia, and there was one other that I spoke with and they had no issues with the current bus vendors have GPS in their already.

So, they would provide the module.

I'm saying what do they have now that they is this a contract issue?

Nothing.

Our vehicle, we can't just go throw GPS in their vehicle.

No, no, it is it is written into the contract that we can't we can't we just don't have it and they don't have it on their own.

like there's no uh video.

I'm not I'm not sure that they don't have something. Um maybe maybe they're tracking by cell phones. I don't know.

Yeah. If we can just get something like to know what our current vendors are using for Okay.

Uh video or GPS stuff and then make sure that it's going to work potentially seamless.

Okay.

If they do, I get it. Uh when you look at a new company wants to come in, I think we should do what we've done with X2 is that if we do take you on that we get that price forever.

Mhm. uh so that they can't just do one contract and then hit us with an increase. So if we're going to be a trial run at a reasonable example, we should get that price forever would be my feedback. Um do I do I have a motion?

Motion to refer to the full committee.

Motion to refer made second by Mr.

Monus. Roll call, please.

Mr.

Yes.

Mr. D.

Yes.

Mr. Mon.

Yes.

One question on the budget that was here. This is just to date, right? So, yes.

Are we up to are we where are we looking if we projected out doing everything the same to the year? Is it uh should be close but we should be back.

Close meaning to the high number that we approved.

Yes.

So, there was no way if we didn't approve the 750,000.

No. So, I haven't touched all of that.

So, that was putting seven new buses on the road. Um, we tightened some things.

We moved some stops. We did a lot of managing. And now we only added four buses. So, we only use 400 of the same.

What I'd like to get is for the full committee a projection of where we're at. If everything stayed the same, what does it look like for that budget?

Um, and the 1.9 million in Mckin Vento.

Um, is that reimbured or is that not reimbured?

When we get McKini Vento reimbursement from the county, is that what it is?

So, um, those numbers came from the bookkeeping department. And so just [snorts] what else would we get reimburseed for McKenna Vento?

It was split up separately. So I believe it was one idea. You don't have that.

I don't think my order.

Oh, she does.

Yeah, I got I don't What are you looking for?

No, no, no. It was another So, I have my numbers and I have the numbers that came over from But ultimately, McKenna Vento Transportation is reimbured by the Commonwealth correct?

At 100%.

But there was a difference between McKenna Vento and homeless that they had made and I honestly couldn't explain to you what you don't need to explain it here but I would assume that off offline you're going to get an answer to it. But the reason why I'm asking that is we look at the transportation that's funded by the city and we're doing oversight to try to help them save money

and they're not really participating in any discussions about how to save money.

I talked to about redistricting. Mhm.

So, we've said all along, well, the city's the one that should be coming down on us to say, why are we not redistricting these kids? But the city's nowhere to be found. The mayor's nowhere to be found on worrying about real issues. This is a real issue. So, when I look at that 1.9, if they're getting reimbured for it, like I just don't understand why they're not more actively involved in it. They pay the bill,

so they should be more worried about it.

And where are we going to get? So, that's why I want that number to see where we're currently at because it's going to come budget time. They're going to cry that they can't come up with the money as you know because they always do. And then we're saying, well, what have you done all year to try to help?

And the answer to that is no, nothing.

So, Mr. Mr. Dice, and just to add to that point as well, I know this um committee during the budget season last year took a unanimous vote to refer a um I forgot what the petition called name is called, but um unfunded mandate petition. And I I know the city council referred it to corporation council and that's the last I've heard about it. So I don't know if it's permanently shelf, but if um the city's

listening, that's one way that my opinion that we hear a motion to uh get the city to respond to us within 48 hours made and seconded. All in favor? I I oppose. So voted. So we got 48 hours to get us an answer on that.

Um 3.08 08 is the uh two job descriptions.

Um do we want to take those first before the storm or I know it's going a little late, but if we can do it um in short order, let's take the first one. Mr.

Chico,

one second because I've been shuffling papers here like cards. Oh.

Um, can we do painter carpenter?

Awesome.

Did that one get referred?

Yes, Mr. Chair.

The first item is on the the principal the new carpenter painter painters department.

Sure.

I have more questions on the second.

Yep. So, the first one uh I think Mr.

Patrico, you mentioned there was a few minor things that you requested.

Sure. So, um they're highlighted um pre prefab cabinetry. We wouldn't be building cabinets anyway. I just had cabinets. So just for that clarification, I also added uh number 11 which was ceiling tiles and floor tiles which I didn't have which is a is a project that could be done by this particular person. And then number 12 as requested we added um all the duties as assigned by the COO or designate.

Personally I think it makes sense uh to do um this joint position. I said it before. I think the rather than have the situation and Mr. Pico, you used a perfect example of the sheetrock and the painter that the other person would have to do the sheetrock and then he's going to leave and then go somebody else has to come in and paint it and then that's two work orders. It's not efficient um

in my opinion for maintenance and um I think it's a smart thing to do and it'll allow uh some flexibility. Uh the last state the last sentence I believe in the that Mr. Chica mentioned about any other duties or whatever would be deemed from Mr. Fado to be able to manage this person to say, "Okay, you're going to do whatever." I think it it I think it's good flexibility um to get more things

done. Um and we're not making cabinets, right, like from scratch. So that's that expertise is not needed.

Yeah.

Any questions?

Um um on Moses, what is it? No, on the carpenter.

Go ahead. on the carpenter uh slainer slash painter.

So, did you guys speak to the union about this already?

Yes.

And they agreed.

They agreed.

Okay. And they took a vote and everything else on this.

They agreed. Yes.

Okay.

So, if we pass it forward and the second shift was agreed on too shift position.

Okay. I wasn't aware of that. Like I um it's Was that in the Was that in the first one? No, that's one of the ch Well, it wasn't it was it wasn't in the original. I don't think it wasn't in the original because we were going with a first shift position, but the conversation between Mr. Fado, myself um and that I had with the um with the union was the fact that it's

one of the bigger problems with painting is the fact that when students are in the building, it's very difficult to paint in certain areas. classrooms definitely out but even hallways becomes very difficult because there's a lot of traffic. So with a second shift a lot of that kind of work could be done um without any interference other than a custodian here and there.

Yeah. Yeah. Just uh I didn't I wasn't aware of that personally and and obviously it's it carries a $2 differential um for ship differential because it's a nice and captain and payers get paid the same.

Yes.

At the same level.

Same level. So, I I think we should entertain something along the lines of uh and I'm just hearing that now, but uh flex hours rather than automatic second shift uh [clears throat] because I think it's it's it's probably going to increase the candidate pool. Um having it be a flex hours versus a second shift. Um as long as you guys felt it was you'd still have the authority, but you know, sometimes you might not get

the same level of interest if it's not.

Well, I think that and we had had this conversation about the fact that the summer obviously in the summer if a building's not being used um at night, it would be ideal time because a lot of our buildings are used over the summer as well. But over the summer, if we did have buildings that were being used night and day, we may want to move that person to the day shift um just for

maybe for a project or um working in certain areas. So, I mean, I I really like the second shift just because I know how much work can be done in the second shift, but we wouldn't have a problem with a flex um schedule as long as that person knew that they would get their that they would lose their $2 an hour when they're working on the day shift.

Yeah. I think it's when you're trying to hire the best person, I think it makes sense to give some options.

Sure. uh somebody might have uh something wrong in their, you know, they're doing something at 8 o'clock at night and they don't want to work till 10:00, but they would do an awesome job from 12 to 8 or things like that. So, I think adding flex hours makes sense. Any thoughts?

Uh, another question. What happens now if they're falling behind or they're on vacation time? Are your carpenters going to step up and perform some of this work or no?

No, I wouldn't. We wouldn't do that cuz this person is not going to fill in for a carpenter on the first shift. So, if the person's a second shift person, then predominantly second shift. And if we're flexing, that shift is still going to carry um the stipen. So, I would I would think that we don't do that in any other of the trades. If someone's out, they're out in that work. If it's if it's um for

instance, Mr. most if it's a project that has to get done then we're going to figure out a way to get it done. You know what I mean? But but I would think on a regular basis we wouldn't be substituting one for another on a regular basis.

That figure out a way most likely means outside vendor.

No. Meaning we could do inside and we could have the way I see it if he had flex and he knew Mr. photo knew that there was uh this gentleman wasn't going to be in and we had a project that need two men for then the person could go and you know your flex hours could be hey for this week they're out they're going to come in during the day shift because we

got these six projects going on where another one would be flex hours to me would be hey come in at 12:00 today because some you know I I just think opening up that flexibility is really going to give you the opportunity to um to meet so Mr. tower is going to be working second shift along.

What happens if they need something?

What would What do you mean?

Like if they have an issue uh in an area of a school on second shift, who do they report to?

So you are you referring to painting or carpentry now?

So So we'll use painting. We'll use painting, right? So this wall here, I know that I need this wall painted, right?

So I know the next day I know what's done.

No, no, no. I'm saying when there's a problem on second shift, are you coming in to address?

I always get the calls.

They're on [snorts] call.

I just I just spoke with Angel.

That's what I want to know.

Yeah.

Couple nights ago at 10:30 at night.

They're on call for 24/7, not in the meaning he's going to come in and clean the paintbrush for the guy.

Correct.

But ultimately, if there was a problem, I always answer.

Yeah. So, always answer.

So, I'd like to uh You want to make a motion?

Um I'll make a motion to committee with flex hours. Correct. Flex the hours.

I'll second.

Second.

Roll call.

Mr. A.

Yes.

Mr. D.

Yes.

Mr. Morris.

Yes.

The next one. Refrigeration appliance repair service technician.

Mr. Chair.

Sure. Mr. D.

Or should we wait for you? You want to present?

I go. I go.

Um, so two things with this one specifically. Um, myself, I'm not sure if anyone else did.

asked for the um we asked for the backup relative to the invoices. I just believe we received them today.

They were emailed as well.

Uh they were emailed. They were emailed today. Um I I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't had time to go through them.

I haven't had any time.

I reviewed everyone.

Um you want questions?

Go ahead. Sorry. Secondly, um just going up. So just even if so going based off the um preliminary numbers I believe we're up to this fiscal year 48,000.

Yes.

In terms of um refrigeration repair work and actually want to like commend because it looks like if we're going to finish out the fiscal year we're going to end up lower than we were the year prior.

That's just a look. I mean it's really not it's not a plan thing. Things break.

So there's no way to predict that number. However, the purpose of this job would be to control that number. Um, there's going to be a whole a whole host of things that this person depending on its skill, their skill set that'll be able to do instead of going outside the contractors. However, there is still going to be a time where it's going to be beyond our ability or in such a way

that we won't be able to do it on our own and we will still need either one of those vendors um again. So it won't eliminate it, but it will it will curb curtail some of the service calls and things like that that are but heavy on the labor and light on the material.

So the reason I asked for the backup specifically was to look at when we're getting most of these invoices coming in um when we're putting out the work. Is it more towards the end of the year? Do we do we run into the situation at the end of fiscal year June all it's getting hot these refrigerators are breaking down all over the place or is it more you can't really

I I'm going to I'm going to defer to Josh only because he's been doing it you know for a while but I I can say that I again I do believe that it's happen stance that it's not a a situation where we can plan you know the preventive maintenance side of everything we can plan but the actual repair and age of a do of a particular ular piece of equipment is going to determine what we have

and what we end up with.

Okay.

I'll make a motion to table to the next meeting.

Hold on. Question. You have any questions on this?

I got to look at it because it's two different companies. We're trying to make one guy be able to be do able to do both uh different professions and everything else. uh knowing with dealing with coffee equipment and kitchen equipment, uh some of the stuff you have to be certified in and everything else where you void warranties and everything else. I I'd like to look at the backup that was provided. I haven't had a

chance to look at it.

Okay. The uh some of the questions I had from looking at I did actually read them. I was just joking, but some of the things that I got the two companies have different uh formats. So, not Marshall, the other one actually writes up exactly what was happening. So, like I uh I read one that said I went to the place and I turned the light I turned the switch on

and it was off. I looked the switch was off. I turned it on and it was working.

Now, we had that happen a couple years ago and I sort of was upset about it rightfully so that we're spending $400 to get somebody to come in and say they didn't turn the thing on. Uh there was a couple in that advance is it advanced heat or something?

Then the other one was more generic like it just said we're building you for this this and this. So, those were some of my questions on what it is. I was trying to figure out to Mr. Monus and Mr. Das's point, what is it that is in those bills that would no longer be needed if we hired this position?

So, that's sort of the question and I think when as they're looking through it, but I'm just throwing it out there.

I I I think that's the real question.

And you might have to like weigh in on this at some point to say, "Yeah, and looking at the builds, we hired Marshall Electric to do the following." uh they change a condenser, they change a thermostat and uh thing cost us $500.

Things that I not being in the field actually think this position could probably do or they uh told worker make sure you close the door because if you leave the door and your refrigerator open it's going to ice up and then the condenser is going to not work and then you know those are the ones. So if you go through the backup and be like, okay, we can pick out a good number of these,

it's not going to be exact, but what is the type of work that we would be not having to contract with? And the flip side of that is what would the actual work that we would need an outside person to do. I think it would be similar to what you mentioned earlier about the uh water heater or whatever that you diagnose it, you guys look at it. If they can do it in house, yes. If

not, this is the case. And then you know elevators, you automatically have to go out. So in the in the cafeteria, you actually could probably pick out the things that you know you're going to need every year to do generally at all the places. I think summarizing that is going to answer some of the questions of my colleagues and myself. But I think some of that too um their BPM too. There'd be some repairs that

probably wouldn't be being done right now that we could be doing, right? So that that's that piece too. So yeah, I think if we get some uh information like that, I don't think it's urgent that we can wait 30 we can wait 30 days to at the next one of these meetings to have it. But I wanted you to know those were the questions. Um please look at the ones that um which I'm sure

you probably did is if a custodian's calling outside vendor to look at a refrigerator and the refrigerator wasn't turned on. If that's what I'm just reading quote what the guy said. Y if that happens, somebody needs to talk to the custodians or whoever is actually making that call because that sounds ridiculous. Now, if it's not the case, I'll stand corrected. But I can read the description from advanced thing and it

says I came to the place that said it's not working. I turned it on and it's working.

I think you're referring to that uh MREN. Uh there was about three or four times because I know that that happened at Warren, but the issue was actually the circuit breaker.

So So to their point, I get it. My point is they would have been in there.

My point is just check it. So that if that's the case, the person that's given us a bill shouldn't have in the description, I turned the thing on and it worked. It should say upon further review, it was that we had a bad breaker and therefore it wasn't working because you can't necessarily just uh you shouldn't be able to write. I turned it on, which is why I was saying if we go

back to cross reference, I'd be curious to see what the on the ones that look like that, what did the work go to say?

Uh, but those are the things. So, Mr. D made a motion to table, seconded by Mr.

Monus.

Yes.

Roll call, please.

Mr.

Yes.

Mr. D.

Yes.

Mr. Monus.

Yes.

Lastly, um, and thank you for your patience. We got 309 update storm overview. Uh, I asked for this to be on, um, not so much for a presentation. One of the things that hasn't sat well with me since the storm was the issue of the custodians not coming in during that storm. Uh it's still not sitting well with me uh as one member. I'm just speaking for myself that we didn't have people come in and still

waiting on the numbers but I'm roughly it was almost on the Monday of the blizzard started.

I might be off but I don't have it in front of me. 95% of the people didn't or 90% of the people did not come to work on the Monday. Then the Tuesday 85 or something, but it was tremendous. So out of 100 people, 10 came to work on Monday in the blizzard, 15 came in the next day, 20 came in the next day. So it hasn't sat well with me trying to figure

out how the heck is this happening? Um I know on the Wednesday we had a meeting, Dr. Curley and I with the mayor about the agenda. I was getting calls saying that the people don't have to show up, they can get paid to stay home. What the heck's going on? I mentioned it. It wasn't clear that it was an issue. She Dr. Curley checked it out. We talked about it after being it was part of the

new contract thing about um you get an extra day's pay if government is closed.

I still can't find it in the contract.

Talk to Mr. Pico. It's not in the contract. So my direct question is and this can be to the custodians or anybody custodian folks here but under what condition did people just not show up to work on starting on that Monday when they had to show up to work all these other years? Like I just don't like I'm trying to figure out.

I mean I think the difference was the travel ban and the fact that government center was closed. So, I think that just even out for all of our um [snorts] employees, our 12-month employees, that we generally if there was no power in the district, we'd say, "You still going to come to work, we'll find something else for you to do kind of thing that but if government center is closed, it

changes the playing field." So, that's always been my understanding as an employee that if schools were closed, um, 12-month employees still come in, but if government center closes, 12 month employees do not have to come in.

But I I don't I can't find that in the contract.

I I'm not I don't think it's there. So I think that what we um I think the the language that is in the new contract is something like if people if um if schools are closed and people are required to come in then they get um like a float vacation day. So the inference there is that if we were closed then which we were and it wasn't just us it was the entire city and people many

people were homebound because they you know they couldn't get off their streets that there was not then we weren't requiring people to come in but we did have people who who were able to come in and those people got a full vacation day but I think it's um I I would agree with you there's no language that explicitly states that if government center closes people are not required to come in That's true.

And and in the past, from what I could see in old emails that I pulled up and the like, it was that if you were not going to come in on in the storm and you were a custodian, you have to take a vacation day or a personal day.

So, was that true even if the city was closed?

I would say it doesn't say that it's opposite. So, like you're an essential worker.

Custodians are essential workers and not according to the state though.

They're not. So, and I'm I'm just only going to interrupt for one second, Mr.

Haga, only because you can't compare a 50-year storm to a regular storm. So, there's a lot that happened in this storm besides the driving ban, besides the state of emergency declared by the governor and then signed off with a document on the city side. That itself tells me that this is not an ordinary situation. So, I would say that there's people in this room who couldn't get out of their houses.

Okay? And how would we then determine who could and who couldn't? By literally going and checking their streets. The fact of the matter is they shouldn't been out to begin with. Those that came in on the Monday, we were very fortunate that they came in. And the time that they came in was a factor because we didn't have. I think at the time we might have had six inches of snow, you

know, at 7 o'clock, maybe maybe eight, but no one expected 41 in at the end of it. So once they were in, they were stuck in and we transported each and every one of them home because they couldn't get home. They couldn't get very, you know, get their cars back to where they were. So those particular people, the 11 I think it was, right, the 11 people who did come in could

transport it home and then if they wanted to come in the next day, I had to get them in because they didn't have their vehicles and we did few of them that did come in. So I think that that piece has to come into place somewhere in this whole thing that it was not like any other storm because custodians have always showed up in other stores.

Yeah. What does the maintenance contract say? The same language.

There is no language in it. No, the maintenance maintenance the maintenance side grounds.

Yeah, the grounds, but they showed up.

I understand.

But they've always shown up would always show up and the custodians have until this storm.

Correct. So my point is in this storm, if we use the logic of that it was a driving ban, the state of emergency, the city was closed. Nobody should have been working. That's my problem is that we had some people working and some not working. And I'm trying to tease out how did you get to [snorts] the how did we get to the point where they didn't work?

So if you take the blizzard the first day probably nobody should have been working because it was a blizzard. Then you take So we got 90% of the people out. What happened between Monday and Tuesday to say let's clarify here. I know you didn't show up but it was a blizzard but today you got to show up or you use a personal thing like every like consistently at as the storm uh response

was getting better. We I don't I'm asking did we ever pivot and say like to the custodian director did you ever tell the people they you're expected to be in on Tuesday?

No. Because again we're all acting under the same premise that government center is closed and being closed is still a state of a state of but I don't believe that we every time the government center's ever been closed the custodians don't come to work. I just don't get I I I think that's a a a step. Now, I personally don't think that that's been the way it's been. Is that

the way it's been for the whole How about you? You've been here how many years?

No, we've always came in. Um I think this is even when government centers closed.

Yeah, we were required by we would get a um 12 month employee message saying that um we'd be um communicated by the uh supervisor uh or the director of custodians that would communicate to us to have come in which would be in that case would be Joey and and um Jimmy and we were always told that we needed to work. If we decided not to stay home to stay home,

we'd have to use a vacation day or a personal night. We could not use a sick day.

So do you.

So this was new.

I believe it. I mean, so I have like generally speaking, most of my time in Florida has been 10 months before that.

They never asked No, no, they never asked for this.

What we negotiated was the fact that it was it was extremely it was it wasn't fair. It wasn't fairly right because the other group was this was the only groups that were coming in and still working for straight time and so they gave him the incentive of getting that vacation right okay I just can't remember I mean as far as I don't remember years I've always came in that same with me and other

hurricanes or you any type of snows I'm now if you chose to stay home. It was taking I I just think and I raised this not as a gotcha and it's not like it what happened it happened but we got to figure out why like there's no language that says what we did but there's past practices of what we did that we didn't do in this like it's on both sides I'm I'm feeling frustrated because what

you're explaining as a person who's been here for 14 years is that you came to work as a custodian in the 12 month paying with notice from the superintendent and everything. So you all came.

Yeah.

Now if it was whoever decided we pulled attendance, we would know what it was.

Whoever didn't though, they had to take a vacation day or a personal day.

So that didn't happen in this one. So there's like both sides are not meeting and I'm trying to figure out what happened. So like on Monday, nobody shows up. We clean the streets a little better. Tuesday, clean the streets a little better. We're getting there. When did the custodians when were the custodians told you need to be in here?

Why are you staying home? How the hell are you staying home? Under what condition are you staying home? Did you ever have that conversation with anybody?

No.

As the director conversation because government center was still closed until Friday.

Friday was they using all vacation times and stuff.

No, none. None. They got paid to stay home without using the vacation time.

That's my point.

I didn't get paid to stay home. Nobody.

I guess I'm frustrated because how did we get to the point where we made up this not made up because it was I don't think it was made up on purpose, but we said the government center is closed. We can't open schools when we've had they they should have been here. So that's where I think we aired. It wasn't like the first day of the storm, hey, you can't show up. You can't get out. I get

it. But after the next day, you had a lot less people that were not plowed out as the week went on. But we still maintained our posture to say government center is closed. So you can you can stay home. So when superintendent sent us a message after on the Wednesday when we met and I brought this up, it was like she was surprised to even hear that this was an issue. She sent an email to

to talk to me and then sent an email to everybody saying basically our schools haven't been touched yet by the custodians, which is true. It's not a lie. But then we would have known we weren't going to have school the whole week if that we if we hadn't touched the schools yet. We weren't having it.

School was not cancelled because of the state of schools. School was canceled like it has been in the past because of the state of the city. So, and that's always the case, right? Like our our folks do a bangup job of getting things ready. And if we were and if we just visit our school sites, we say, "Yeah, we're ready." But maybe the streets aren't ready for buses and maybe the sidewalks aren't ready for walkers and

and so on and so on. And so, we've canled school in the past. This was a situation where like so you know Monday I was home, Tuesday I literally could not get here because I could not get off my own street and out of my own town to get here. Wednesday I could get off my you know get out of my driveway and therefore I I came down to Fall River.

Um but I mean Wednesday when I drove around it was mostly drive. I tried to visit all the schools. Well, I mean, wow. I mean, you couldn't and it was even it was obvious as you drove by schools and saw all of the side streets, nobody was moving and there weren't any cars I in the street, half of them were getting stuck. So, I would say that even like Wednesday, we weren't in a I don't

feel like we were in a position to require people to come in because I think that more than half of our folks probably wouldn't be able to get in and then and what so I have to someone would use a sick day because they literally couldn't get off their street. That that that does seem like a lot. Um and certainly by Friday when government center was open, people were required to

come back to work. Do I think we could work out some kind of language moving forward that states explicitly under what circumstances we're expecting people to come in or out? Um I I think it was a tough judgment call and we leaned into government center is closed and so we are not going to require people to come in. We'll incentivize people coming in.

Yes, it does.

Very quickly, but to to your point, does that even have to be collective bargaining or can we even make that some sort of policy?

[snorts] like does that have to go through? Could that be a policy that could I I think it has to be bargained. Um but I I would defer it doesn't have to be bargained if it's the expectation that they commit.

But we already know it's not in the contract. So they have to come in.

There's no doubt in in analyzing the contracts, emailing Bruce, Mr. Pico, and superintendent for the last week to try to figure it out. There's nothing in the contract that says that everything is in the contract that says what what she just said that you're supposed to come in, right? But to the superintendent's point, if um like most of these roads Wednesday Thursday I'm I'm sure there's people throughout

the district that couldn't come in and either I don't know if we should have made them take a sick day. I don't know if they should be paid to stay home either. I don't know if like they just don't get paid for the day or I mean You yield.

I yield, Mr. Monus.

So, who cleaned the the sidewalks then?

When the custodians came in, so some of them did their own building. So, when they did come in, Mr. Monus, on the Monday, all they did was cut down as much as they could and basically gave us some entrances, okay, to the building, right? So, we could open doors and things like that. It didn't snow after Monday. It got cold.

It was still a little bit windy, but it didn't snow anymore. So as as custodians trickled in in some of these buildings, they did pick up. There were also custodians who helped in other buildings.

So custodians who maybe a proximity were kind of like the the candy derpy subordin. They're close by. They may have helped each other to get through this. And then when you had a full as close to a full compliment as you could on Friday, [snorts] you're talking about 8 hours, three shifts at a place like Dery with that many custodians. They took care of what they had to take care of.

Everything was was done and ready for Monday. The intent was always ready for Monday, but government center was open on Friday. That was the first time it opened. So up to Thursday, everybody was in 100%.

Well, 28 28 out, but the remainder was in. Yes. there's a major difference in in attendance um by that date and I would say that it certainly to your point I mean it certainly speaks to the fact that by Friday it was a no you have to be here now some people either elected not to come in the sick day vacation day whatever [snorts] it is but yeah there was marked

improvement by the on in the moment that we said no you have to be here more people showed up sure could we have done that potentially on Thursday yes And maybe we would have gotten more people to show up because maybe some people did stay home because why not? I'm getting paid to stay home.

That's possible. And I still think that we had a number of people who would be who who would who would not be able to get in and might find themselves in a position where they were using a sick day or a vacation day simply because there was no route to work. And um I think that was difficult for us to navigate. But I was getting calls at 2, 3, even some at 4:00 from people saying, "Hey,

they're just now plowing my street on Thursday."

And that's just from all over the custodians, not just one or two, but I got several calls like that saying, "Hey, I'm sorry, but I'm they're just coming down my street now."

True. I believe that.

Another thing, um, did anybody get hurt or anything while all this snow removal?

All right. So, everything, we didn't get any reports of anybody, um, on our staff, both custodial, maintenance, um, grounds. No.

All right. That's that's great.

Other than fatigue, right?

You know, cold.

It's a lot colder, obviously.

Yeah. We all dealt with the cold. We all dealt with the snow. As long as nobody got hurt, things got done. Everybody opened back up. Like you said, you can't control if people coming in. not come in. But at the end of the day, um, like I said, a little bit of confusion for sure. I'm not saying it's not. Um, just vanilla effect. That's the way I look at it.

It's almost Are you done?

Yes. Sorry, Mr. D.

Are you?

I just think it's it when I look at it it's the situation where it's on on in other circumstances it might be the government center is closed for a day um for you know a reason where yeah it's not completely safe for people to get in before noon so we're just going to close for the day. the fact that government center was closed for 4 days. I I mean I

I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here when I say that like I reached out to the mayor by Wednesday like can we please open tomorrow? we we want to get our people in and you know and he said so I don't think so you know I don't think and Wednesday morning it was crystal clear to me why we were closed on Wednesday and then when I went to go

look at some places I hoped like if they're working through the night are we going to be able to open on Thursday no um and I I mean I'll it it's me at the end of the day right so I did not feel comfortable requiring people to come in if government center was closed Okay. I mean, and and the the amount of snow just trucking it out and everything else just trying to make things safe, which

is understandable. Um, you know, it's just a little bit of confusion as far as um government center being closed and they're allowed to stay home.

That's just not in writing. And Mhm.

Right. Kevin, you've never seen it anywhere or nobody can produce it because it doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist. the language that exists just says if people are required to come in [snorts] then they get the float um vacation day.

Okay.

So it implies that there is room to not require people to come in right like the last storm that was 15 in or whatever happened on a weekend I believe. So we didn't have this issue but theoretically if that was on a Monday and we closed on Tuesday people would have still had the same problem.

That's the problem that I have isn't that let's just say oh it was a blizzard it was 40 in it was unprecedented. No it wasn't unprecedented because if we're not clear with our expectations of what people need to do which is what they've always done which we we were not clear. We would said government center is closing. We made that up because not made it up but we used that that doesn't exist. Then if we

get a a 14-in storm today and tomorrow morning it came that we expect our 12 month employees including custodians to come to work. They're staying home.

They're staying home just like they did this time because they're going to think that this is what's the norm is to now.

But they didn't in that 16, right? So they didn't stay home.

But I'm saying it was the weekend.

No, but even though even though it was the weekend, they did come in on Monday and get those buildings.

Correct. I'm saying the storm that happens overnight. If it happened Monday, this if we don't clarify, here's the expectations. So we would have had expectations like we paid we we p let them stay home and paid people but like for instance the maintenance crew was expected to be in under the same everything is the same in the same as me union the grounds keepers were meant to come in and they

didn't you know like it just doesn't seem logical that some people just came in and I'm assuming they get the same extra day or incentive and overtime or whatever but it's expected that those folks folks came in, even though their streets were the same, their street, like the same issues we we're talking about. Those eight people or nine people, whoever came in, had all those same issues, but our expectation was

that they come in, but our expectation wasn't that the other hundred people come in. That is my problem. Not trying to be like a a jerk to say come in in the middle of a blizzard. Probably nobody should have came in. Some of the custodians that came in in the morning shouldn't have came in. They should have been told it's a blizzard. Stay home.

But then I was looking for where did somebody say now Tuesday you're expected to come in Wednesday you I'm just saying as it went on and we met on Wednesday with the mayor on the on Zoom and it was stated open you got city hall is clean as a whistle why is government center not open if under that time we were of the belief that we can't get our custodians in because you keep government center

closed. Government center was clean as a whistle. They had no snow didn't exist.

No, I get it. But they could have had it's like on the days when our schools look impeccable and then but it's the route totally students and staff.

At the time it was the excuse of the custodians not coming in was that the government center was closed. We told the mayor right out in the meeting that you need to open government center. So we do. So then all of a sudden government center is not open in the next morning. Then they did whatever and then all of a sudden it's open.

Government center should have been open in my opinion. But I have to stress this that we should not have been telling people to stay home as custodians.

There's a bad precedent to set. She this Miss Bes just proved the case that that's not what happened in any of these other storms, including when they were open. So it doesn't sit well with me. We can't, you know, it is what it is.

Moving forward, I think we need to clarify that you're expected to be here.

Anything else? Anything else? Anybody have any new business?

No. Can we get a motion to motion to adjurnn?

Motion to adjourn is made. Seconded by Mr. Roll call.

Mr.

Yes.

Mr. Das.

Yes.

Mr.

Thank you all for your attention.

Appreciate it. Thank you.