6.6.2023 Technology Subcommittee

here we go okay we're gonna call to order the technology subcommittee meeting on Tuesday June 6 2023. call the office let's drag yeah yeah Miss Laramie here Mr Bailey Mr Bailey's on his way just for the education of the public using traffic so please write our questions like the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all

any person may make an audio video recording of this public meeting while we transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised as such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible is there any citizen input no there is no citizen input when it comes right for the agenda the first item is 3.01 the

discussion and book to request uh job description good evening everyone so this first position we've gone back and forth on means um just for this meeting it's listed as one thing but we've had some discussions and I believe that the correct title should more than likely be project manager for technology Services um we've now since built a department we have different silos in areas that we

are running very smoothly the one piece that I don't have and I find myself becoming more of a project manager I'm out there dealing with this project and with the small issues that arise every day because everyone else is in their silos Network side and user Computing side our voice phone plan side our help desk side where the tickets come in so this position is is kind of a hodgepodge of of everything that we do in

technology but this person will have a hand at everything to manage the projects when we get a little bit later in the agenda you're going to see just the sheer volume of work that we're going to have this summer we also have taken on the security side with the cameras and the card access this person is going to be the front person that facilities will be able to contact with an issue with the system this person

will work hand in hand with the vendor that will use to build this plant of card access they'll also be someone that we can rely on I can rely on here we can discuss projects and then that person can make sure that the team is working together um we're at that point where we're at the 99-yard line and I just feel like with this one position the addition to this position I'm actually going to be able

to create new efficiencies and get us further than we ever have without technology in the school department moving forward I can answer any questions about it the technical side of it so sorry so you're changing its project manager yes because after discussions the superintendent and I have sat down and said again I've spoken to some of the members of the technology team now it's not it's not a director position

like we had initially anticipated it it could be and it's not necessarily A supervisory position it's more of we need someone to manage those projects and those projects will affect every Silo and Technology services so that person is going to basically and you can see up on uh that proposed area is the project management okay that's all right yeah so they're going to work hand in hand with the

upper tier of people in the technology Services uh that's myself okay so what will happen is they'll work together as a team but that person is going to be the one that reports back to me this is where we are on the network side this is where we are on the VoIP side because what's happening now is I have a network outage that network manager needs to work on a network outage can't

necessarily be reporting back to me directly this person is going to be the person where are we right now with this so I can get Scott or the superintendent involved or I can get Ken involved because it's a power issue um and on top of it moving us forward with the sheer amount of projects that we have coming up we will never in this department not have a project going on because technology is quickly immersing

and changing so this is going to be a benefit to us across the district so I get that so who all people to the right are just senior computer technician reporting to right now I know that's open but so right now they're all reporting I I have the network manager helping me and the technology manager helped me a bit but but they're they're all going to take a bit of it because

what what I've done is we've kind of um specialized where certain technicians are so you'll notice under the technology manager it's the Ville schools that report to a district senior technician and that's how that Silo works then on the network manager side we have two technicians that have a very high concentration in networking so they work hand in hand with the network Personnel however they also work across

because if there's an issue somewhere else they're trained that they could go to the device side they could also go to the VoIP side and now this project manager's piece will work with the technicians that technically do a lot of our brake fix and right now they do a lot of our wire and plier stuff so they'll be able to work these are the technicians that if I call on a card

access company I'm going to call one of these technicians to meet them on site to facilitate the project so they would still be there in their role doing that but again also crossing over all avenues in the department they're all cross-trained something that we're very proud of in the last 18 months they're cross-trained in all aspects so the project manager will be cross-trained as

well in ville's and correct okay correct and if you look at the job description that's why I kind of call it like a whole career of everything that we do in that department but the um the strengths are running all these projects right I don't want to get into detail about salaries similar so very similar second tier correct okay it's all in line the security issue I see that that's in

here now but when I went back and looked at New York well when you were hired security wasn't necessarily all under you it correct am I wrong no at that point when I was in the director of infrastructure side we were already starting to do some changes under the former superintendent and I was assisting facilities with that piece and some of it fell under the director of security and the technical side of it

just making sure everything ran fell under me now we're taking a more day-to-day piece in this where we're retrieving evidence for um you know the buildings we're working on the little blips card access is a phenomenal technology but there are Blitz daily updating usage updating times in times out so that's all you know that was not it was not right but it's not it's not the security department it's a security really

interesting technology the infrastructure yeah the security the safety even though when I looked at the uh because I went back to my emails to see your job description doesn't say security technology per se it kind of hints it a little bit but it doesn't say you're going to take so it looks like you're taking up your department is taking on another Beast a little bit of that's the

cameras and all that is a thing we have because the technology now is not just an analog camera everything flows through the network so the thought process here centrally was it's network based it should be where the people that understand how to fix it and keep it running that's where it should yeah I just wanted to point out that I think that's some you've got added responsibilities

and therefore you know need an extra person to manage this stuff whereas I was critical at first because I said you said you didn't need this position correct that's kind of a rationale for why now you come back so I agree with it I think it's needed placement on the bar chart which is 3.09 on the agenda so we can just combine the two of those sure or 3.07 so this org

chat is actually going to why that was on the agenda was to see where all those things fit correct and I think that makes a lot more sense the way that you have it if you scroll to the other side where you see the directors that was the issue that we had talked about at the meeting those salaries are in the union and they're a lot higher but they're not necessarily in the same so this position

will be sort of back correct below I think that does me more sense so and I will send this I will send this to the committee um my a staff can make anything fit on a piece of paper it was awesome yeah I couldn't print it today so we will get it ready and make a motion promotional approve motion second all in favor yes we'll count you in it's just a new job description everything's perfect okay

all right so for the record Mr Bailey sure it came so just put that in the agenda that is present perfect next item we're going to try to combine so 3.02 is an audio video tech job description we've had discussions and meetings in the past related to 3.09 which is the low voltage of the electrician position yep why I wanted that to be added was several months ago we had a discussion at a public meeting

where we were deciding what those positions do and was it did it make more sense to shift a person whose skill set is such that they could do this work and hire a folk electrician if that's the way I would call it going so I hope to see you guys if that yes it makes sense or not so after discussions uh with the superintendent um I mean I am fine with using this position if we internally

worked at a low voltage Tech you know low voltage electrician would report to the technology side receive low voltage work from us and then that we would repost the position to gain an actual electrician then I would have no need for the AV technician because I would have at my disposal the low voltage electrician daily okay I'm superintendent you want to just weigh in on that yep I

I think that um that makes sense I with all the technology and all the work that's being done Mr Cabral needs an electrician that's going to be doing that work that is going to be focusing on that and getting that work done so struggling with all their needs in the district but he needs somebody assigned to his department so the it in my right to say that at the time

of the meeting a couple months ago we were gonna if this worked like that shift because this person's skill set was more aligned with what this jobs were going to say that we'd actually just hire another electrician a real electrician that's what was said instead of the local so and at the same time Mustang yeah the regular electrician is going to be able to take care of an outlet add a piece of equipment that may

not be there so it won't take a third person five electricians you know they the two of them are going to be able to do the main work that he needs done but that thread one will be his access to um right I've always felt that having somebody with the license in hand is better than not especially when the salaries are very close yes uh we also talked about the security cameras

outside the uh all that work that needs to get done yes I can't imagine a little electrician by as soon as possible so correct don't think that's necessarily part of um this so if we just bypass this maybe you send something out there that's what the full committee this acknowledge that movement okay I think that would help us because if somebody's looking at this they say well what happened to this we

don't necessarily wanna we want to make a recommendation that we're hiring an electrician that's going to come from you does that make sense so I think is there any questions on that yes does that make sense yeah so the 3.02 and 3.09 are now so we don't even we don't even need to because we're not referring at all right seriously 3.03 is a district employee cell phone policy this went to the

policy subcommittee needed some changes so please let us know so the only changes on your copy are in red um we added any violations may result in removal of the district cell phone and further disciplinary action by the superintendent of schools or designee use of employee electronic devices in violation of this policy other technology policies administrative regulations and or state or federal laws

may result in discipline up to and including dismissal if appropriate referrals will be made to law enforcement officials um and what will happen here is we will send this out at the start of the new school year to all staff that have a district phone and moving forward we will be implementing a software called MVM where your District cell phone will no longer have a personal iTunes account

it will be all controlled at the district level so there will be no questions moving forward we needed to retrieve information from the phone refresh a phone for a new employee and such we will have the software in place as of July 1st any questions on that makes sense I mean I think we just after meeting we didn't have this piece in here so there's more teeth to it than just you're not going

to get a cell phone anymore right I do think it makes sense and I'm sure you reviewed this with superintendo those folks to make sure we're covering all our bases and that people should be using it appropriately the only request that I would have is I'm just curious just as we were talking about people that have a district phone if at some point you can send something to the committee about who actually has them

creative Union contracts have them in there but

Bailey on favor I opposed subwoorder 3.05 discussion of the VoIP wireless phone purpose okay so as we were just discussing these cell phones are getting a little bit costly in the um article 27 states that the school department is going to issue security officers cell phones not cell phones to be using after hours cell phones to be using in case of an emergency to call a school office to call another building

to check my referral to call 9-1-1 so looking at the pricing on that we were looking at more than likely just under seventy thousand dollars to purchase the cell phones and then upwards of 55 a month to maintain those services um you just each phone um we are in the final stages of our wireless Voiceover IP plan this device which I've been testing for a few months now is a wireless version of our desk phones it

has the full capability to call any extension any outside number if need be and emergency numbers so if a security guard needs to make a phone call to an office and they don't want to be broadcasting over the school radio it could all be done on this device this device battery time is 14 hours it has a charger so this would be the same process when a guard comes in they would

grab their phone clip it actually has a case idea that's my question that's staying in-house they're staying in-house and here's the the kick is they only work in-house at Durfee they will work outside of the school because we have a wireless plant outside of the school and we are installing wireless access points over the summer and all the other buildings so if a guard was outside due to an emergency lockdown or

something they'd have access to this phone as well as their school radio or about middle schools an emergency outside they wouldn't have access they will after the summer when we install those things so this quotation is for um I believe it's 50 phones because I actually have 10 in-house and we have just under I think 34 or Five Guys permanently but we'll have these all ready to go rolled out day one

um they are a really nice device and they also have push to talk so if we really wanted to they could push the walkie-talkies eventually replace the same place because they're very I was going to say they're going to have a walkie in that this is a one-time license a lot of the network equipment you purchase a license then once you own that license if we have to replace the device I don't have

to buy a new license a new cell phone I'd have to buy a new cell phone and a new contract oh durable well no second and just Home Shopping Network yeah but you know and moving forward like we're talking about cases for um for Chromebooks and stuff and it's in there so it's actually ringing um you can't get you have to really push okay and it's a rubberized gorilla phone Gorilla Glass

it's very light so it's heavier than I thought actually oh it is yeah um so it looks great yeah so and what we'll do to help the guy definitely every phone will be pre-programmed with every house office number it will be pre-programmed with the security front desk it can have this the um Police Department in there if we need to the SRO sergeants the SRO numbers and I've also included enough in that number to

also have one with the sros while they're in our buildings earbud accessible earbud accessible and mic accessible okay and I did not purchase accessories yet because they're on back order but that'll be a separate couple of thousand dollars for accessories and I'll have them before school starts once I order these I should have them in about three weeks they take about a day to configure now what's the insurance or

replacement cost for those if they want to repo those so unfortunately with something like this there is if we were to purchase insurance on these devices it would just be a budget Buster the device itself edu pricing is 522 um and basically in that first time about 278 is the licensing cost so moving forward if I had to replace one of these just under 300 dollars now now what's the difference between

that um as far as the price point in the regular cell phone cell phone 500 bucks to replace every time but with the insurance cell phone uh state of Massachusetts they don't they contract on wireless phones because it's a utility they don't allow us um insurance on the devices so when um you said it was in the contract well like yeah article 27 says cell phones new the department shall issue security officers

cell phones and that was going to be for in building to do those type of things and when I what was it changed from so there was a mask of a monthly

even without that it wasn't worth it so it's just easier for us to own the device because we control the device are there any other questions

thank you very much District firewall upgrade purchase keep our Network safe and to keep this this is kind of a subject that I don't like to divulge a lot of information because I don't know what this is so um our last firewall was purchased right around the time that we started to decommission the old high school and in those terms it's time to replace this will get us uh moving forward at least

the next five to six years the piece that's nice about this is we have a 10 gig data pipe coming into the high school and our current firewall is not compatible with that so I have to load balance this will allow all of our traffic into one device and just secure our Network and this isn't we've had something like this last song so two months ago that is for the filtering of

email separate so this is an actual account for sure all right all in favor thank you 3.05 security cameras in schools okay so again this is a this is another one I'd kind of like to keep connected to the hip um I had made a recommendation on one policy but after reviewing with the superintendent um I'm gonna I'm gonna recommend that we stick with the m-a-s-c um security camera install policy

um the only additional verbiage will be that we will post on school grounds that security cameras are being used and recording at all times um and that at the time of the meeting I had it I did not hit send yet to Deb I will send you the updated but it will just be at the end um it says the superintendent made from time to time issue for the guidance that is consistent with current laws and

policy and then right at the end there's a bullet that says All Fall River Public Schools will notify the public and staff that video recording is in process at all times in all buildings

I think that you capture it here and people should know that on and it could be on vacation if everybody does the right things thank you the org chart which is oh sudden we already discussed do we have any questions on that or no for this just Michael can you put it up yeah she updated it again so I'll be updating it on board docs okay I'll just yeah he's going to bring it up uh

special paper and just to briefly give us a quick so so Mr Bailey we at the proposed position had lived up in this area somewhere and it it didn't make sense and and also um the position didn't make sense where it lived so now it's going to live in the first year of of the upper echelon of the technology services department and it will have some people underneath as I discussed before you've got here

these silos even though they're under certain people they kind of they're all cross-trained now we've crossed trained the department so a Bill's technician could actually assist on The Voice side avoid side person who could assist at the network we've built that capacity from within um and it's I'm happy to report that we have not had to rely on an outside vendor for a network or a voice issue

this year since the changes in our department um so that just basically cleaned it up to our audition uh same salary as in this line item they're all in the same range and also just you know for the education of the public we have our new communication specialist that has been a life sentence you know to us all here in this department and we have a couple of open positions that we're actually

working on interviewing now at the time and then this position here and one of our others is actually going to be dropped off of because we're going to go with the local digital nutrition okay so the main one was uh well so we talked about the school meeting or the salaries with the directors yeah it's actually lowered into the 75 to 90 which matches with the others the other managers

summer project timeline there's a lot on here but we don't see it but you can just go over quickly but sure so you're going to notice reoccurring theme uh card access additional camera replace insulation and replacement uh teacher laptop replacement Across The District Scott I'm sorry before you wipe summon blue summon black blue are being done in-house okay okay black are being done by either a vendor

or a combination of In-House and Bender that's just for me okay okay thank you so um teach your laptop replacement across the district uh when you see network backbone PM that's preventative maintenance cleaning out the switches updating firmware making sure ready for September Promethean board software upgrade same thing each device will be remotely upgraded cleaned out ready for

September where you receive see replace two mfps or one mfp they were at the end of the lease cycle the the machines the copy machines had over 10 million copies on them they're in their life cycle for a replacement um you're also going to notice on here it basically across the whole district there is some type of upgrade going on I can say at Watson there's also an intercom installation being done in

Ken and I are working on that with a company they've never had an intercom system there with the new speaker system with the new network that they have and all the upgrades that have been done there they'll now have an uh intercom system um and then the bigger piece um is on the district side as we all know we are going back to X2 The Sims team has been doing amazing work there

and I can say with confidence that we will be ready for the opening of school and I um I actually have a little bit of weight off my shoulders there because it's been going very smooth we are also going to be implementing an electronic signature for the IEP process through the sped Department that is going to be something where they can get the IEP on their phone or their device sign

electronically that is something that the new assistant superintendent of special education really wanted to push for we're in the process of pricing that out right now and that will be implemented as well we are going to offer a tech Tuesday Wednesday Thursday throughout the summer we are going to be um targeting different groups for those days and what we'll do is we'll rotate so one week will be Tuesday Wednesday

Thursday for a certain group and then we'll reverse it so that way all groups don't have to come the same days and that'll be available to them all summer we have our yearly clever rollover which is the system that uses all of the student accounts so we update their information when they change schools middle to high et cetera parent Square rollover that was a seamless transition

last year we just update communication piece so that parents get their information incident IQ rollover which is my ticketing system and inventorying system for the district that gets rolled over to the new year we talked about the firewall upgrade a couple of other quick ones we're going to be turning off the pace circuit which is our fiber optic we pay for that per month now we have just

finished connecting the pace building with the current new high school so we'll be able to lose the monthly cost on that circuit that savings is going to actually be to turn the circuit on at 2501 when we open that in September so it's going to be a cost neutral but we're not going to be paying any more because pace is now going to run off of the high school yearly stuff our Google admin console

cleanup we get rid of users that have graduated we add in kindergarten users we clean up staff that have exited and or left another big one is our nutrition registers they are all in they have been configured and we're just waiting for the children and the staff to leave and we are going to install our new registers and then the last one is a special education Suite is getting um to

replacement machines that are going to work to what they need right now they're using machines that are just not to the amount of what they need we have a busy summer and this is awesome correct any questions the only uh this looks there's a lot of stuff going on the only thing I would request is I I like when police will do this at one point with the process or

where we're at with things and if we can just make this a spreadsheet and put like here like a July 1 and August One update so we can see like ongoing completed and then if we do that like if we can make the doing that July 1 August on September one absolutely will be very much without even having a meeting we'll be able to see and hopefully we'll be safe absolutely

yeah that would be uh feel good so any new business before this community again motion to adjourn okay thank you for productive meeting and have a great night