7 6 2023 Technology Subcommittee

I'd like to call to order some technologies activity meeting on Thursday July 6 2023 Deputy Police Department here miss Larry here

and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all

attendees are therefore advised at such recordings or Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unconceived by those present in our Deans as knowledge and principles do you have any citizens in court no we do not all right we'll start with 3.01 discussion in both the referral fund access projects hey good afternoon everyone so before you you have a number of schools that we

are Ken and I have gone around with the vendors to do the next round of card access upgrades we've talked about this at past subcommittee meetings and as well as the full committee this is round two this would do the Watson I'm sorry it would be green riveris Talbot tansy Fonseca Doran Sylvia cuss also grouped into this is the Watson School the Watson project we already have card access there however we have

an elevator cap so we have to now um put a card access system into the elevator cab so that the children are not in and out of it so that's going to be once the individual is in the elevator cab the only way it's going up or down is with the swipe of the card so that is grouped into there and then you also will see on the chart Spencer Borden we've already

started that project but as the vendor started to open up the ceiling and some of the links of the runs and also we had to change out some of the door openers some of the actual door door hardware so we're looking to move forward with that and then we came to you at a prior meeting for the Morton Middle School for cannabis they've done all the internal cameras and initially we were hoping

that we were going to be able to heat the external cameras to cut down on the cost and as the vendor started to do the work they called Ken and I a couple of times I actually went up on a lift with them and the outside cameras are really um they're in a rough state right now so that would be to change out the external cameras at more and then make it all

that same system so this would be any security they're an mhec State contract pricing um the total amount of that is just a little north of 1.8 million now just to note we will have RPA and Henry Lloyd yet to do when lieutenant and I spoke about it we held off on both because there's a major project going on right now with Henry Ford which may change out some of the doors with the windows so we

didn't want to do something and then have to reverse engineer it to redo it as well as at 290 Rock they're going to be doing the windows they're going to be doing construction there over the next couple years so that's something that we will add once that major lift is done both of those buildings with e-rate funding are going to be up for a total rewire as far as Network infrastructure

so we would include in The e-rate Proposal which we only pay 15 of the wiring for all the doors so then they would just come in and do the hardware piece but that is something that we probably will come to you guys back next summer to do those two schools um yeah um more in the elevator there was something about what says oh it was lost and I thought I had it done this morning I'm sorry

um now do all elevators at all schools have that access to like they need their cards uh no so Derpy currently does badges Lauren currently does and then the other buildings that have elevators card access wasn't there um the problem was some of those elevators um the telephone rooms were not going to be at ad card access like to a Fonseca um because actually already does so cuss would be swapped out when you do the

card access project but a system like Fonseca the elevator cab is not going to allow us to put card access in down the line when we ever have to replace an elevator cabinet that we get it but buildings like that also the school does a good job of policing elevators some of them have the key on the outside so a student is not getting into the elevator and riding it all day right now at

um Watson when you walk in there if they push the button here comes the elevator they can get in so we're trying to avoid having the kids and I think we could probably do halfway so I'm thinking that maybe in a place like Fonseca we just don't let the doors open so we access you know I'm saying so maybe you can't do the car the car um the car but can stop the doors

from opening so in theory you can't get in you can't operate it right so is it is it a code or so a Durfee we swipe in it opens the door when you get into the elevator you're not going anywhere until you swipe again so if somebody walked by and swiped it and a kid is following that person they jump into the car nobody pays attention to it right they can't go

anywhere yeah until they swipe again and then when they get up to the floor it'll open and then the whole system goes again stop so the next person right do we have I mean I don't know who know but do we have any issues with faculty losing badges or anything like that yeah so it's been few and far between so what happens is you know they'll usually contact will kill the badge and then

we'll issue a new one the one thing that I forgot to mention here is when we do this project Ken's ID will not work at all of the schools because they're all the same systems minus the high school like we've said in stone school because those two card access systems while they're different therapies is brand new and Stones is only a couple of years old and it's a very good system so instead of

you know in trying to save some money we're going to hold off on those now down the line five years from now when durkee's system needs to look at replacing we'll go to this and it'll be across the board but they have restricted access so during school there's a window and somebody couldn't just go and go into a building on Saturday at five you know what I mean so they as times scheduled

that time schedule for everyone is just for teachers no it's for so it's for all staff there are a handful of individuals at the central office level that would have like emergency access into a building but usually it's an hour before an hour after school teacher schedule and then if there's an event on a weekend um Ken's um custodial group would contact myself and I would just open up

the window and then it would close it's all schedule based what about South Main Street South Main Street is once we can get in there and I can look at what the doors are we'll probably that'll be part of our project with South Main Street but I haven't been able to get there yet we can't get in there yet until yeah is it in the future yes so early fall it'll be treated like

every other building that's going to try and get everything we have in other buildings there eventually the same access the same security systems and I'll touch on that there's an agenda item on 2501 I have an update on some of that stuff yeah yeah that'd be a good idea a motion to refer to the full school committee agenda item 3.02 discussion event for return Chromebook purchases okay so I

would be brief with this we came back to the subcommittee twice we've replaced the high school devices and then I came back and said we wanted to do the Middle School devices um during Colvin it was very difficult to get devices into children's hands into staff members hands so what was happening was we would get an email Kenner I would get an email from the state that they had 750 available we

were purchased if you get an email from a vendor that they had a thousand available you would purchase those what we didn't know at the time a Chromebook has basically a life expectancy of five years we were buying Chromebooks that were already in the eyes of Google 24 months 36 months old so their licensing goes and then at that point they're not upgradable so they basically become a paperweight so in reviewing

the high school devices and the Middle School devices what we'd like to do is I'd like to do one final purchase and go clear across the board across the school district which will allow us to be in compliance with the new Google regulations for their licensing but also we'll have a seven year window where we can then look at how we want to stop replacing devices in the future so everyone will be on the same schedule

but we'll be able to stop rolling the devices over in the future the one difference with this quote is I've included what's called a white glove service my team has done in the last four to six weeks just under 78 to 8 000 devices and I'll talk about that in another agenda item the problem is once we order this the 17th meeting and we get a contract these are probably going

to come in the second to last week of August and I want to make sure they're ready to go in the chosen's hands so what this does is they do all of this at the factory they put it all together it comes in cased and everything ready to go and I can do deliver it to the building and the building technician can pass them out to the children and assign

them to the children the second piece of this is what's called a Google console license um I'd like to purchase 1500 of these additional licenses so that we have some swing one because we have some devices as like a chrome base we have some admin devices so what I'd like to do is I'd like to have some licenses available to us we also have devices at some of the Catholic schools and I'm going to have

to upgrade some device um some licensing just so we have a window and a cushion so once the school year starts if I have an issue I have the licensing available they last seven years these licenses so we'll use them in the next 17 you know seven years I actually think that we'll probably use over half of them in the first half of the year just coming into compliance with some of these newer

devices we've been able in the past to what's called de-provision a device and it gives us the license back however because of the age of the devices those V provision licenses are not available to us with the new license so we have to offset it with the purchase of some additional ones so you kind of took both of those yeah at once I'm sorry yeah you're gonna have to ask for a vote for each one

separately because he he kind of talked about yeah I have a question so on here you have this paper right here yeah 1500 but what is this so that's 500 of that that was just a quotation for your records when we do the requisition we would lower it to the 1500 licenses because that's all right so the yep that's what was confusing me because I had 1500 yeah 35 years I can't

I can't modify a quote by um but what I can do is on my requisition I can say that I want 1500 at that price and then purchase like that but I can't model so is the 46 was the 46. the accurate numbers it is okay yeah but they just want to put that on paper well they they could except at the time of the quote I couldn't turn around a new

quote so okay when we give the requisition because it's the dollar amount and the requisition that's going to Kevin upstairs will be the correct right now so we have that for me yes any other questions no I do know yeah for the full committee the first one is the purchase yeah traditional licenses so motion to refer additional licenses what is it 3.03 to the full committee motion to refer to 3.03 yeah

there you go and we we touched on 3.02 as well yeah so that's 3.0 3.03 would be number two right yes vote for the uh quote two all right so I'll do that you want to run the call for 303. I thought Bobby did oh you did that all in favor no oh okay I'm sorry so for the Chromebook license purchase to refer the um purchase to the full committee so

motion to uh to refer to the full committee 3.02 Chromebook purchase second so I second that already yes yep open about 3.03 after she takes roll right yep Miss drag yeah Mr Bailey yes Miss larabee yes and now uh motion to invoke to refer to the Chromebook license purchase 3.03 to full committee I'm sorry Mr Agnew Mr Bailey yes Miss Laramie yes yes okay so 2501 South Main Street in regards to technology

um just to give a you've touched on some questions the median boards are already here waiting to be installed cameras are already in-house from our camera purchase that we did in early spring I already forecasted leading cameras for 2501 phones we have plenty of new phones in stock that we're able to outfit that building with new phones switches we are going to use the old dirty switches

which were only 24 months into production so they still have a shelf life of another four to five years as far as devices Chromebooks I've already forecasted a little high on that end but part of these Chromebook purchases that we've done Chromebooks are all set for that copy machines as well we're going to be creative and move some copy machines around from some other locations and also purchase a new one

for the main office yeah so that piece is taken care of the only piece that I don't have internally is enough access points to outfit the building wirelessly the building is old concrete there's a lot of concrete and Bricks so that requires me to build a wireless network that's a little more robust so that the signal gets to the children in the classroom so on the quote you'll notice

um it's 35 of one type which is a classroom style AP and then I have six of the larger format APS for the larger areas and then also as well we're going to outfit the outside of that building with outdoor APS because what's going to happen is it'll create a giant mesh Network so that way the signal is good in the school and then if there's a teacher outside of recess and they

needed to use one of the wireless phones or a Chromebook to you know call a family member this will cover the building so that's the only piece internally on the technology side of the project that we didn't have in-house ready to go so that's why I thank you folks tonight so the total number there for licensing and the access points is fifty four thousand eight forty one thirty eight

and this will be an end time if we place this order uh the end of next week after full committee I should have them within 10 days and then as soon as we're able to get into the building they'll be installed in-house by a combination of Ken's low voltage group and my technicians a project done by one and that's all going to depend on the you know the building uh we'll get into

against law work I guess is we'll be ready for September yeah I mean again we we're limited to what we need to have ready we need the basement in the first floor so we will have the building secure and those floors operation okay and we may hold off on the upper as we do the other floors this is going to cover the upper floors for access points but I won't be

installing those until the work is done on those floors there's no need to then get Dusty okay

3.04 uh 2501 South Main Street to the full committee and I'll second that Mr agya Mr Bailey yes Miss laravey yes 3.05 discussion we're going to refer version of data technicians to data specialists Okay so we in the last two years have gone from one system to another um we are going back to X2 um Mr Michael Lasik has worked at his Department he currently has a database manager he has a state reporting

specialist he has one data specialist and he has a data technician what we'd like to do what Mr Mike blazik would like to do is he'd like to convert the data technician position into a data specialist now that we're going back to X2 X2 has a little more um quirks I could say that the data is done differently the workflow is done differently easier however it takes a little bit more manpower on the back end

in order to make some of these tasks happen for example we're rolling over now when we came from PowerSchool back into X2 there were 250 new staff members that weren't in X2 that we had to create so in order to to do that you have to have there's a there's a level of expertise in X2 um that a data technician might not necessarily have all of the tools so

we'd like to bump it up to that data specialist area and you can see the difference in salary um a data technician is between 30 and 35 a data specialist is more with the times as far as technology between 45 and 55. so we had also requested an AV technician in our budget for this current year which we are not going to fill at last meeting we decided to not

fill that position so we have a cost savings there so this is kind of going to be there will be a savings because um I'm I'm estimating that the person would come in around 45 so it's only a ten thousand dollar increase from the positions but the workflow and the you know your work day looks a little bit different because they'd be responsible for much more than a standard technician

yeah um can you just give me an example a couple examples of the difference between the job so a data technician answers the phone hi I have any an issue with my X2 password they reset the password I um I got married I contacted HR I had to change my last name they don't typically get into the state reporting 60 000 errors that we get during the window this would uh create a

workflow so that the state reporting specialist can Farm out you're doing a through L you're doing M through Z you can get a workflow going it is the goal of the state reporting specialist to not have errors moving forward and she'd like to be doing those on a weekly basis so that way when it comes time to report we're reporting exactly everything correctly right away and getting you

know back and forth with the state another example a data technician is not necessarily in Excel every day this person would be in Excel doing Mass updates like the other Specialists pulling down information making it connect to our other software platforms that's something that a technician just doesn't do and in speaking with Mr Michael Isaac and his team now we've built a team in that department they all

take the calls so the phones all rainbows called The Hunt room so Brian may be at his desk he gets a password call Melissa maybe get the password call they've split that workload so there's no need to have somebody dedicated to that phone and tied to doing just minuscule tasks every day we'd like to get this person to do more um you know more of the the work that takes the most time in those windows

okay so what we're keeping the data technician right no we're not we're now those tasks that they were doing there they want they would like to work as a team and do those tests they feel with new workflows and the systems that they have in place um and I can actually say I've sat in there the last few weeks with this conversion and we've put together a pretty spectacular team they are working very well together

second let's try again Mr Bailey yes Mr Miss laravey yes uh item 3.06 update summer projects this was just an FYI um I had that graph um it's going to be put in again so you can see a Gantt project wraps and you can see timelines I just wanted to give you um all a brief update our camera installs internally have begun they've been starting at Sylvia school and also Talbot and 290 are in the the

pre-stages of camera work we have completed 3 000 student Chromebooks they have been delivered to the high school they are sitting cased ready to be passed out if they wanted to do an early pickup we're discussing with Mr Damaris now but they're ready to go change there is and a ninth grader comes in they will keep their device through their four years of high school the only device that will

roll now is the senior and it'll roll back to eight you know to the ninth they'll keep their own devices um that model has become very popular because we feel a lot of the tech directors feel is when you give someone a nice new shiny device they're going to take care of it in the past what's happened is um I get a device I turn it back in the device gets cleaned wiped down updated

but they may not necessarily get that device back it's however they come in line so some of the student government kids some of the computer science kids there they all came to us and said you know it would be really cool if we can keep our device because we feel like we're taking care of our devices and we're not necessarily getting one that somebody really takes care of the device

so we're going to try that model at the high school we have completed batch one of 3000 Elementary Chromebooks they are done they are boxed they are ready to go we are going to hold off on delivery until the second week of August so that we don't have pallets in the hallways for Ken's crew to get in there and do the cleaning we have completed as of yesterday 1800 of the new staff devices their image

they have the new security software on them they are sitting ready to go over the next few weeks we will plan and Implement a pass out at each building that'll be done by a senior member of my staff building technician in cooperation with the building principal every teacher will get a new device in every building other than the high school at this point because their devices are still online yeah I think we remember

that yeah is it just teachers though it's not I so what's going to happen is teachers are going to get the new devices and then building Paras and people that need devices they're going to get refurbished but they're not going to get we're going to take out of commission the ones that are tired okay and then we're going to clean up the others it's a good way to put it um

we talked about the senior pass down if they're one of the freshmen and I know you've already discussed this the lifeline on those so there'll be it's going to be about seven years so what we're going to look to do is um not next year at this time but I would think in 18 months we're going to look to slowly start to replace some of the Chromebooks and we're going to see

that it's going to be the middle and the high school Chromebooks that get the most usage because they're taking them home so that's where we'll start start to see you know in 24 months we're going to stop to replace again the elementary I I don't see why they don't last over five years with these new cases it's very similar to the one that I'm testing on this device um they are sturdy I was with the team

um as late you know as early as yesterday and I dropped one of them and I was telling Maria about this I was testing it and it slipped off the table it went down on the side and I said oh great it's going to come out of my paycheck and the device was just fine so the cases do work the reason why I asked that too is because you if we're saying

it as a seven year lifespan you're typically going to see kids in like that junior year probably in that rotation right because if you have it to four years and then the degree they'll come in you know the other thing that we're going to look at too as we get further the Verizon program sunsets at the end of next school year so now we are not tied into having a Verizon device in everyone's hand in the

middle school so we may look at an eighth grader or a sixth grader having a device and then carrying that device through and then rotating those devices back down to six we're going to start at the high school this year see how it works we'll have some data at the end of the school year actually halfway through the year to see how repairs are to see what the longevity is to see how

the kids are treating the devices and then we can make we can pivot we can make some changes and we can roll it down into the other grades so that way now a sixth grader carries their device until that high school performance um so that you know that's that's kind of a fluid situation I want to see how the high school plays out with the new procedure and the policy and then we may

come back and say hey we want to try to extend it to sixth grade and see how it works I just feel as a parent of two teenagers when they have their own device they take care of their device so we want to give it a shot and then the other piece that I just wanted to update on is we just as of this afternoon at three o'clock finished the 35th new register for

um our lunch program they are ready to go they will not be installed until the operations crew clean the cafeteria areas but they will be ready for day one so this school year what program do we use for the um it's called Nutra kids um it's through whitson's um and we have a great relationship there they've been phenomenal Mr cutting we came up with the plan we're going to roll these out and the other thing

that's nice is they're a tablet device pretty much similar to this they're in a stand but Mr cuttings vision is that the lunch lady and the lunch staff are able to take it out of the stand and walk around to tables and talk to kids and communicate with kids and they could you know if a kid is getting an extra snack they could do it right there just by carrying the device around so it has two

uses we also just finished upgrading the Nutra kids server so we're ready to go so this September is going to be great because we have new cameras in most of all of the buildings we'll have new Chromebooks at the high school at the Elementary levels um at the if this purchase is referred as we did to the full committee we'll have new Chromebooks K-12 staff members classroom teachers are all going to have

new devices we have new registers we've done phenomenal with in you know putting in the hands of the children and the staff new devices so it's it's exciting for us in technology and as a district do do you guys have any data Maybe send us later but on on the damages this year on how many kids irresponsibly damaged and didn't pay for those so I can get you that data um

that's more at the high school level because in the Verizon program the Verizon program takes the device and then they repair it right now so there's not really any that's accidental damage there there are a few um done on purpose yeah um but we've seen over the last six to eight months with the implementation of the new digital device policy that just right go way down um so hold him accountable correct

um and the buildings do a great job of that um the buildings will call and say hey we have this situation Maria and I will talk or Cameron will decide you know what to do there have been some kids that have been malicious with the device that are doing community service so there are there are options out there but that was my next question is there something in lieu of paying it there is

but I will say that it really has its case by case yeah the parent reaches out right it really is something else it's almost flatlined it's been it's been excellent with these cases I'm hoping that it's non-existent other than hey I accidentally plugged it in and the you know the charger got stuck yeah that's accidental it's been it's been a different situation from where we were in Golden yep it's been much better

it's good all right so I just wanted to give the committee an update um I will pass it along to the full committee for the Friday email we have two buildings left in our VoIP conversion which seems like it has taken a long time but Watson is being cut over the second to last week of August the only reason that that's being done that late in the game is because they're doing new ceilings they're doing some

you know other work in there and we don't want to be tripping over other trades and at the same time we don't want to put a brand new device where there's going to be dust and debris so that will be cut over the second week of August and next week on the 12th tansy is being cut over to the new system so where do we go from here um every building is now VoIP so in

October ish once we get through the opening of school we're going to do a full on what's called an analog phone line audit and now we're going to get to the point where we'll be able to see some cost savings because each building had a conglomerate of analog lines that went in because the older phone systems needed many lines to run a system now I can run our building with

four to five analog lines and the rest are all virtual lines so we're going to slowly be able to go into a tansy and say hey they have 17 lines we need four and then we cancel the rest so I'll come back to the tech subcommittee around the holidays once we do the audit and then we'll work with Verizon and we'll start to cancel some of the analog lines and then we'll see an immediate cost savings

I'm good with this one yeah 503.08 update on that stuff so X2 is live as of last night we are live so our staff members can go in they can begin to work in the system we still have a ways to go there is still data that's going to be going in the biggest piece that I wanted to share with the committee was in collaboration with Brian's team and then myself and Aaron Dunson the network

admin we were able to take everything that we've put into PowerSchool over the last 18 months and do what's called a shadow copy it now lives on one of our servers and we own that data so what was going to happen on June 30th was PowerSchool was going to shut us off and then we weren't going to be able to see any of that information so as a CIO as a superintendent we were nervous so we

pivoted and we came together and we put our heads together and we were able to get PowerSchool to agree to give us a shadow cop Shadow working copy of all of our data so now we have it on the server and we can log into it so any of the stuff that was done that past school year we had access to got a click of a button so if we needed to refer to that

for State reporting or for conduct workflows or any of that that's all there what it also does is it helps us as we start to convert the rest of the data into X2 we don't have to rely on paying power school anymore we can export the data ourselves from our shadow copy and then upload into X2 we don't owe them any money right no so the only thing that we're going to continue

with PowerSchool moving forward is on the HR Side School spring and unified talent and then on the guidance side Drew wood would Naviance as one of his supporting softwares so that's the there they're such a big company that they buy everything out so we'll still be working with them on those three pieces but as far as student Information Systems yeah

it was before the SAS we're going to continue the relationship there which is breaking the relationship on the cyst um some of the pieces of note for X2 over the next two weeks the remaining special education piece will be imported into the systems um that one has been a little lengthy because of the changes um to PowerSchool I can't say with certainty that we will be ready to go for the start of school you can yeah

it will be ready we actually could run now the only thing that we haven't done what's called rollover right now X2 still thinks it's X2 from two years ago just so that we can convert in and Brian and his team will be doing the rollover around the first week of August like we typically do every school year um and then once we hit that button we're ready to go we're ready for

students we're in a very good place I feel I I can come to you today feeling much better about where we are now where we were last year with the power School conversion I wear in a much better place

second

let's drive down Mr Bailey yes it's flowering yes