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9.10.2026 Fall River School Committee - Technology Subcomittee
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Thank you everybody for being here today.
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September 10th, Technology Subcommittee.
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Roll call.
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Mr. Diaz.
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Here.
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Mr. Moniz.
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Here.
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Mr. Ayala.
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Here.
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I pledge allegiance 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.
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We had no citizen input time while we were here.
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Did you get any?
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No, no, ma'am.
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No citizen input time.
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Okay, all right, so we're going to go right to the— you're going to read the pursuant to the open meeting law?
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Yeah, pursuant to the open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of the public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any media.
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Attendees are therefore advised that such recording or transmission are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and deemed acknowledged and listed.
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Okay, so any citizens input?
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None?
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Okay, 3.01, discussion technology software and software upgrade.
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Okay, so what I've prepared for you here is a couple of documents.
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One is just this executive summary, which is this shorter document, the narrative.
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Basically what this is, is a summary of all this information that's included behind it.
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Yes, exactly.
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So this is for last school year because obviously we're only in the first couple days of school, so this is a tech summary for last school year.
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You can see the way this is organized is we sort of have a district-wide usage snapshot.
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You'll see at the bottom there are our major platforms overall.
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There was— we included 10 of our major platforms here.
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There were over 3.5 million recorded engagements during the school year last year, which is great.
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You'll see that some of the platforms had more engagement than others, and it's a reasons for that.
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Sometimes it's for a really specific population of kids, right?
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So some of our platforms are for all students at an elementary level, all students at a certain grade.
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Other platforms might be for specific subgroups of students, right?
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So here I'll just run through a few of them.
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ST Math, we had, you know, over 1.5 million engagements.
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We had over 7,700 users.
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Lexia Core 5 is used at the elementary level, over a million engage— or around a million engagements, over 7,000 users.
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Carnegie Learning is our math curriculum for 6th through 12.
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And so there's an online component called Mathia.
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And so you can see there you have, you know, 500,000 engagements, that number of users in 6 through 12.
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So those 3 platforms you can see accounted for 86% of all the engagements across the 10, right?
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That makes sense to us because those are very commonly used platforms, right?
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So we're not surprised by that.
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If you go to the next page, you can see that some of the platforms we have like Alexia PowerUp or Imagine Edgenuity have less engagements because they're for a smaller population of kids, right, a smaller subgroup of kids.
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Satchel Pulse is the SEL screener.
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So that's called out here.
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So that had a lot of users.
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Our students take a social-emotional learning screener.
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That's what we use to develop their groups, right.
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So they take that screener a couple times a year.
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Paper is an online tutoring that we've invested in on a much smaller scale with some students.
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And then it gets in— Can I interrupt for one second?
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Yeah, of course.
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I wanted to ask this with these first, more so the major ones, and see if you can get us this information, because it might be here.
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What's the percentage of usage?
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So when you really dig deep down into ST Math, because it's the first one, do we know like on a given school and a given classroom, like you can break it down to 50% of the kids in the class are actually doing 100% of the work and 50% are doing 20% of the work?
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So typically what we do is our department heads or coaches or people in that content area also have access to that data for that purpose.
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So they can look and say, hey, are these students making progress in this program?
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Or listen, the usage is not happening, what's the reason why?
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Look for some of those barriers, right?
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So we can also run reports easily by school.
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This program does that as well.
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But somebody's watching it.
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Yes.
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So it is like along the way, Mr.
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Dice's school is really very low.
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Yep.
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You guys are addressing why is he low and his school is really high.
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Yes, yes.
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So they should be somewhat in the— Yes, yes, unless there was a reason that because of some other reason, for instance, first grade as an example, you know that we've invested, the committee supported like Ignite Tutoring in the past, right?
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So there may be 200 kids in Fall River that do the Ignite Tutoring.
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That might be happening during the time other kids are on Alexia, right?
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So we have to unpack that and say what's the reason why maybe the usage isn't where it needs to be in this particular place, right?
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So yeah, we can easily run that.
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That's something I can share with you.
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I don't want to go through every single report here, but you have lots of pages of You can look at this data in lots of different ways.
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This is last year's going in?
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This is last year, just the last full school year, that's all it is.
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And each one of these programs and stuff like that, are they for every grade level?
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It depends.
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Some are, some are not.
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So for instance, like when I say ST Math, that's only elementary math.
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Carnegie is middle school math, right?
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So when you look at the data, it's helpful to really do it by school sometimes because it's, you know, comparing Talbot to Fonseca is going to be 2 different things because they use different programs.
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Make sense?
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Yes, it's just new to me.
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Yes, got this.
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Yeah, a little while ago, so I didn't have a chance to look at it.
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So I'm just trying to ask as many questions so as I look at it, I understand it.
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Sorry.
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Yes, no, don't be sorry.
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You know, you can look— the digital— this platform allows us to see like this at a glance, but you can also log directly into the program.
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Many of our people log directly into the program because then they're looking at a different level.
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If I'm an ELA department head or coach, I'm gonna be looking and seeing, okay, where does this child need some support in this particular thing, what's a follow-up lesson I have to do with that child, right?
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So there'll be like, you can get really specific data.
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This gives us usage and then tells us, yeah, and then it kind of tells us, okay, I might have to ask more questions over here, right?
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So if I look at usage and it's down in an area, that should trigger us to say, hey, what's going on in this particular place?
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But when I'm as a principal or a department head, I'm gonna log directly into Lexia or into ST Math or something and see some other issue.
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Thank you.
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Um, so like my colleague said, this is the first time we're looking at this today.
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If I can ask if— like you said, I don't expect you to go through the entire, um, data sheet here.
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We can do that, but can you pinpoint some areas of improvement at some of these schools or some of this curriculum that we should be aware of before we go take a look at this and ask a million questions later?
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You think there's anything in here that we're going to see where the numbers aren't where we want it to be, where we don't expect it to be, and just maybe just an explanation for how we're improving it.
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Yeah, I mean, I would have to— this is for the year, so truthfully for me to look at the year-long is not going to be as helpful as to look at 30 days from now or 60 days from now, you know what I mean?
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So I think this gives me a snapshot of last year.
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I can have some conversations and say, hey, let me look at this or that.
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I have to digest this a little bit more because we just ran it for this meeting yesterday, but I think what's more important is that we're doing that on ongoing, hey, if we're saying we're using this platform, 30 days from now or 60 days from now, let's do a little dipstick check and say, what's going on here?
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You know what I mean?
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Is the usage where it needs to be, right?
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And that's how we make those decisions.
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You know that I've come to you at an instructional subcommittee and said, hey, I'd like to make this investment instead of this one because I feel like this is what our kids need, right, instructionally.
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And it may be that we're reallocating a resource or I'm noticing that based on the demands of what happens in 4th grade, I don't know that we can squeeze this in.
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It may not be worth the money right now.
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So I want to keep an eye on it so we're making smart financial decisions, you know what I mean?
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So are we doing this quarterly, looking at this quarterly, or is this— I think what we'll do is we're going to start with it monthly and just do some monthly quick checks and then see how it's going.
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Just periodically see where we have growth, where we have weakness.
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Yep.
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If I can just ask one more question, like going into the past year, when was the last time like the administration like pulled this data here to take a look?
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Is this something you all looked at in the past quarterly?
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Yeah, I mean, when we came to subcommittee, we had done a lot of this data analysis.
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That was part of the reason when I did the instructional subcommittee, we're looking at this data in order to actually make those decisions.
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You know what I mean?
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Right.
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So I guess the way— so what I understand, so this is something that we might not do on a regular basis at the administration level, but this is something we are looking to do going forward, meeting what you all have.
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Yeah.
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And I think again, knowing that this only tells us usage really right now, right?
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I also need to get our folks often into the platform directly as well.
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9:34
Where they say, I'm right in iReady, what is this kid struggling with in 3rd grade math, right?
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So I know that there's a lot of that because people go right into the program and try to think about how do they help that child in 3rd grade math, right?
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9:46
So you can target each individual?
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9:49
That's the intention of the platform.
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This helps us with this investment of are people using the programs, what does that usage look like.
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9:56
As you referenced, you know, you can see those bars and say, hey, it's up here, it's down there.
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And then the next layer is you actually get in and say, okay, so what, the child's on iReady, what is that tell me about what they can do in mathematics and how do I use that to actually help them?
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So, if I agree with what Mr. Raposo is saying, I've had longevity here because I've been through this, not my first rodeo on this subcommittee.
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And ultimately, I think we've done a better job over the last several years.
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10:27
We used to have situations where we didn't even use software, we paid $150,000 for it.
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You know, truth be told, that did happen.
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To Mr. Raposo's credit and the administrative prior administration, I'm assuming this one the same, that should never happen.
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10:42
So, we've had subcommittee meetings where we said we want to get this screenshot, snapshot, at a quarterly meeting, just as a, like you call it, a dipstick check, to see globally what was happening.
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Because if we do that, we're going to figure out whether it's worth it, whether it's not worth it, and are we wasting money or we're not wasting money.
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Are people doing it with fidelity or not?
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We've had situations where we say, like the 6 of you have elementary schools, and everyone should be doing ST Math, that's the curriculum that's on here, for 15 minutes a day.
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And all 6 schools, 2 of you said, no, I don't like ST Math, we're not doing it.
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We've had situations in Florida where that's happened, and they're trying to get like through it.
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It's not an easy thing, but the layers of administrators under Mr. Raposo can dig into it, whether it's worth it or not, what's going on.
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11:33
Where you put on the end here, the district can build upon this work by developing a regular review process that combines usage cost and tender population, I couldn't agree more.
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11:42
But that is something we have to do quarterly.
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So the reason why we have the quarterly meetings, you know, like this is one.
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11:49
So in one quarter, we should get the same thing back with less— it doesn't have to be this thick.
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11:54
But now it's going to show us, hey, this is what we found.
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11:57
Suppose we can come back and say we found that this is working, we did it with Lexia, one of them, we— elevation, we used to have like this much, and now we said no, we're going to target it for this much.
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12:07
So we're not going to spend the money, but we're going to, you know, technically that's what you're supposed to do if you want to build up on instruction.
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12:15
And these programs are all different.
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Like, if you're not in education, you don't necessarily know what they do, what they don't do.
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12:21
You know, having been in education, I think I have some problems with ST Math, for instance.
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12:26
ST Math is the little penguin that jumps, you know, runs through, and you're allowed to go buy it with no checks.
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12:33
So the kid can just keep going because he wants to see JiJi run across the thing.
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12:36
Once he does, he just goes and goes He might not be able to pass the quiz at the end to know what it is, but if he did it, just if he was persistent, like a video game, right?
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12:47
Well, somebody's got to watch it to say timeout.
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He doesn't understand this concept.
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What is the process?
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12:53
And ST Math doesn't allow that.
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It's a flaw, in my opinion, with their program.
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12:58
I asked them to try to change it in my old school.
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They said we can't, that's their program.
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So those like little pieces you know, they could implement something.
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You need the human side of it, right?
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Any program is not going to be good until you actually also have the teacher who's skilled saying, hey, wait a minute, this is a need, that's a need.
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So if you, you know, like if you said I could, in order to get to chapter 2, I had to pass chapter 1.
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It's kind of logical, right?
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Like you'd say that in any profession.
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Yeah, some programs you get locked out and you can't move on, right?
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ST Math doesn't.
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So you could go from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 just because you're persistent with the thing.
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13:34
So you have to manually now have the teacher be able to say, timeout, Brian didn't pass the test.
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13:39
So they give you a test, but if you don't pass the test, you still move on.
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Yeah.
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So you have to manually go through.
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So those things make it very difficult for— you're teaching 26 kids in the classroom, you're trying to do this, you're trying to— I'm just telling you that as an example of how really in the nitty-gritty of this type of stuff is where he has to go monthly.
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14:00
We don't— wouldn't see that at a quarterly meeting.
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14:02
That's with all the programs?
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You can just move along?
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No, it depends on the program.
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So like iReady, as an example, you could— it's gonna look at different things.
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You could look at the child's final progress or completion or time that they spent or their score, but it's also gonna tell you how much time did they spend there, right?
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Because it's like if you're scoring X but you were there for 5 hours, right, that's very different than you scoring X and you were there for 40 45 minutes, right?
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And so it's, it's looking at all those things.
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14:28
There are flags in the iReady.
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It'll code things with a certain color that prompts the teacher to say, hey, listen, I have to go check in.
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14:36
For Mafia, as an example, when I was a middle school principal, we're doing Mafia.
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14:40
What we would do is we actually would put the live lab on the board on the Promethean while the kids were doing it.
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14:46
That's a snapshot of your whole class.
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14:47
So me as the teacher, I'm either pulling groups or checking in with kids one-on-one because I can see on that live lab, hey, so-and-so stopped working, or so-and-so is stuck and they need help, right?
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14:57
So the different programs are different, but it gets very much into the nitty-gritty of how do you actually help the child, which is why we need teachers there to be interpreting the data.
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15:07
And we pay— like, there's some, some people think we should have less computers, more computers, but we pay for a program called Lightspeed that, to what Mr. Mendoza just said, you can be the teacher and see where every everybody's screen is if you know how to set it up and you actually do it.
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15:23
I believe they should be required to do it.
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15:25
Okay, so now when you're in a class of 24 students, you can sit behind your desk and see what exactly you're on and everything.
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15:32
You can make sure that their Chromebook only is allowed to use certain, uh, math work during that math block, things like that.
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15:40
That's the nitty-gritty of where I feel like we don't necessarily utilize device as much.
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15:46
So this might show that everybody's on Lightspeed.
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15:49
You know, their computers, you can see.
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15:52
What we do with it is where the administration has to dig into the nitty-gritty on it.
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15:56
Do we have data on that, on use of Lightspeed?
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16:00
I would assume that somebody could get it.
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16:02
Yeah, I'm sure you could find something.
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16:03
Yeah, I don't have it in front of me right now.
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16:05
But it's the teacher's choice whether they go on Lightspeed.
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16:09
Yeah, and instructionally, right, we're not in a place where you know, teachers are going to be sitting at their desks necessarily and everyone's always working independently the whole time, right?
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16:19
Sometimes it's done in the center, but there may be times where you're like, hey, this is 20 minutes of Lexia, and then that becomes a useful tool because you can monitor similar to what I was describing with that Live Lab idea where you're monitoring your whole class at one time.
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16:33
So if you had a 20-minute section where you're supposed to be on a specific Lexia, right, if and every day it's from 9 to 9:20 or 9 to 9:30, The teacher can actually set up the account so that every kid that has a Chromebook in their class between 9:00 and 9:30 can go to no other program except for that program.
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16:50
So that gets you— you can't have 24 sets of eyes on what they're on.
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16:54
So a kid shouldn't be looking at ESPN or YouTube or anything like that.
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16:57
So it can control kind of where you're at.
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16:59
So it's not just a babysitting service of let them go on the computer, it's targeted to that specific, that specific thing.
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17:06
So we pay a lot of money.
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17:08
It's good for us to get to know instead of just seeing it cost us a million dollars in software, right?
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17:14
Sometimes knowing that it's being put to good use.
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17:16
My last question is on Satchel Plus.
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17:19
Yep.
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17:19
Is that what you were considering, the SEL?
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17:21
That's a screener.
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17:22
Yes, SEL screener.
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17:24
And then what is— how is it utilized?
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17:25
So my understanding of it, I don't have as much understanding of it, but my understanding of it is that kids take a screener 2 times a year year.
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17:33
That's how we inform what their SEL group is going to be or what their needs are for SEL.
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17:38
And then the SACs or SLEs, whoever's supporting kids with groups, will use that data from the screener to conduct an SEL.
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17:46
We just asked any deeper dive on that, I would appreciate it.
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17:52
Questions?
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17:53
I don't think there's anything under that bullet, anything else under that specific bullet, right?
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17:59
The only one I think was— my concern is like syncing, making sure everybody's on.
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18:07
Like, where are we at with the status report on— obviously you can't use these programs unless you have your credentials of the student.
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18:15
Yep.
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18:15
The adult, you know.
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18:17
Yeah.
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18:17
How are we at with all of that?
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18:20
Yeah, so that gets a little bit into the school opening thing, which is fine too.
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18:23
I think the syncing for the most part if folks have their accounts.
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18:27
What I did is I reached out to all the principals for any feedback, and I asked them if there were— where they were at with device distribution, where they were at with any issues with programs.
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18:37
Overwhelmingly, for the most part, everybody's in a pretty good place based on what they shared with me.
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18:43
If a staff member just got hired or a student just joined, there's gonna be a lag obviously, or a delay, because they don't necessarily have their credentials yet or their account.
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18:53
And I know that it'll take— a lot of our programs will sync like at night, right?
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18:58
So it'll be an overnight.
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18:59
So if someone gets added during the day, it's not like they get added and they're right there.
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19:03
It may be that the next day they're actually live in that program.
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19:06
But all of our major platforms, my understanding is that they've been synced up and we haven't had any concerns with those delays with new staff or new students obviously, which is going to happen all year.
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19:18
In terms of— and I can transition on if you want to transition a little bit.
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19:21
Just a question on that was then, so in the overall numbers of the students, can we get a, um, how many kids?
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19:29
Yeah, so like if we have a queue, let's say, of, uh, yep, you know, I have a stack this big of kids that I gotta log in or whatever they gotta do.
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19:35
Yeah, what does that look like?
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19:36
Yep, because clearly like the day of is one thing, you know.
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19:41
Yeah, but if somebody was registered last Tuesday Yep, they should be on by now.
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19:45
Yeah.
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19:46
And if you're a teacher in front of kids, you should have your stuff immediately.
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19:50
Yep.
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19:51
Um, in my mind, and I just don't know the data on it.
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19:54
Yeah, and I know some schools, like I heard from the one principal today that, um, there was like 117 students were all set, and I want to say there was like 16 pending.
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20:05
So some of them gave me like that specific information, but we can get, you know, many.
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20:10
Okay, for instance, in that case, whatever school that was, you got 16 pending.
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20:14
Yep.
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20:15
What does that 16 mean?
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20:16
Does that mean they registered today so that by tomorrow at midnight they'll be done?
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20:21
Uh, potentially.
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20:22
That's the kind of thing I'm looking at.
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20:23
Like, so how, you know, backed up are we, right?
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20:27
If you registered 16 kids today for your school, yep, I don't expect it to be instantaneous, right?
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20:32
Right.
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20:32
But if you do a deep dive and just say, how many do we have in the queue that we don't?
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20:36
It could kind of tell us whether there's an issue.
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20:40
And with the staff, the email, I think somebody mentioned it, you got to get them on if they get credentials or whatever.
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20:46
We had an issue when we— I think it might have been Mr. Petronio, somebody else that we hired, and they couldn't get him an email because of our own decisions to say, oh, they can't get an email right away or something.
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20:59
Like, I think we should look into that.
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21:01
I can speak to that problem.
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21:02
Everyone gets an email, even cafeteria workers can get an email.
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21:05
Email now.
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21:05
So HR processes a new person, say we hire Colin as a teacher, we get a copy of the same appointment letter by email that finance gets, um, a lot of different people get.
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21:15
And then we use that as our ticket to say we're going to make up Colin an account for Spencer Borden as a teacher.
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21:20
And then we email to his personal email he used to register as an employee that credentials and send to the school as well.
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21:26
So you should have within a day or two of that, getting that letter depending on, you know, when is all their credentials, Aspen and everything else, which email and all the other SSO programs for single sign-on.
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21:37
So that's, I guess, the process of how do they get to that point.
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21:40
So when you say at that point they give it to you, great, but human resource-wise, how long does it take to get to that point?
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21:47
So I think what's happening is, especially now with live, like people just hire somebody, you want to be a teacher, well, we're waiting for them to do all of these documents before they can go live to get an email email.
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21:58
Or— and the situation I was talking about was, I think it was Mr. Petroni was hired for a certain date, and they're like, oh, we can't give him an email because he's not starting until, uh, you know, September 23rd.
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22:10
Well, no, stuff like that.
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22:11
If the superintendent says make Aldo an email because he's starting, we make— we get like requests for that.
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22:16
A new principal.
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22:17
But traditionally it follows that process once they have that final— I don't know how long it takes when we get the letter, but when we get the letter, we have a process.
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22:23
Point, especially now in the crunch time.
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22:25
If it takes forever to get a letter— I think now they're pretty up to date with getting the letters out kind of quickly if they have everything in order.
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22:32
They have been actually doing an excellent job.
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22:34
Yeah, in the summer, signing them all day long.
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22:36
Yep.
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22:36
And get them moving once they have— they have to have a meeting, sort of an ongoing meeting.
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22:40
Once they have that meeting, the work has— the paperwork has to be completed.
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22:44
It comes up to me to sign, and it's official at that point.
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22:48
Can I ask what the process is in the reverse?
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22:50
If a staff member leaves for whatever reason, what— how do— how are you all notified?
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22:55
We also get the same— we get an exit letter.
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22:57
They resigned, they left, or whatever.
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23:00
And we also— that's our ticket to deactivate the accounts as well.
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23:04
So if someone's retiring, you know, leaving, even transferring buildings, we try to get the same letter to say we're going to move this account from Spencer Board to Tansey, um, like Aspen Acres, for example.
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23:15
So we do get, you know, that same letter But sometimes we'll get a request that so-and-so, you know, disable them right now because, you know, bad stuff.
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23:23
And we do that, you know, based on getting a text or a call from one of them or a principal.
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23:28
And we do that and we try to follow through with that.
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23:31
All right, I think it should be something that's a little bit more uniform where, for example, let's just say a staff member, their contract ends June 30th, and so their last day would be June 30th.
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23:41
Now into July, it's So would you get notified that— We usually don't do any of that work for a few weeks on purpose because a lot of times, say someone's leaving and going to Teton, they have their Google with us.
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23:55
We want to make sure we give them time to sort of say get their stuff in order, get things out.
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23:59
We have that a lot happen where someone needs their stuff that they had here, they want to use in their new district they created here.
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24:05
So we have to be mindful.
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24:06
We do try to shut everyone off timely.
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24:09
Administrators and principals, that's usually not immediately right away unless we're told to, because they sometimes— they're usually staying around and helping out transitioning into the new person.
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24:19
Final piece.
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24:19
Yeah, right.
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24:20
Yeah, there are a number of things.
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24:22
So we can get tighter with that if they, they want that to be the case, but it's like we try to do exactly what HR asks us to do, or get them on as quickly as possible and off as quickly as possible.
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24:33
We do have people that they were non-renewed, but they're doing summer school.
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24:38
So like, we have that all the time too.
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24:39
It's like people, they left, they didn't leave, they're doing summer school.
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24:42
Thank you.
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24:43
Now if we get a new principal or teacher, all this technology, does that get upgraded to the new person or new student?
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24:53
Do they get all the credentials and everything else that— or all the scores and everything is automatically in there?
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25:02
Rob?
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25:02
I don't know, they'll have access, right?
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25:04
Yeah, but right away, if a principal has like— they'll know where each student is, and if we have to change something, we can.
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25:12
But if a student moves, they now live under that other school, and so that principal will have access to that school.
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25:18
But I may not have access as the principal at Talbot to a student at CUSP potentially with their, you know, iReady data or whatever it might be.
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25:26
Yeah.
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25:27
Okay.
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25:27
Number 2, you were going to transition on that stuff.
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25:31
Yeah, we're, we're okay with that.
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25:33
Okay, so, um, in terms of this, so really the school opening, do you want to talk about enrollment first and then— Sure.
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25:39
Yeah, so you had 2 documents, one I prepared, uh, earlier than the other.
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25:44
I prefer we look at the one with the yellow headings, um, on, uh, where we stand for enrollment.
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25:48
Yep, the one that has the yellow headings.
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25:50
And basically I broke it out differently because I think it makes Right now we're at like 10,977, which is about 200 less than our 12-01 number of last year of 11,184.
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26:03
That 10,977 is actually 10,734 within our 17 buildings, our active schools.
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26:10
We have 130 in out-of-district, we count that as active.
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26:14
And then, and I usually do that, only count most kids because those are the ones that sort of go towards our foundation.
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26:19
Number, which is sort of what we use for the money.
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26:21
That's why I don't get into the kids getting services, which we have many.
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26:24
Um, we also have 113 kids in our PACE school, which is the temporary school we put kids that are placed there because they're waiting like for their final medical record or some other thing to get finished for their registration.
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26:36
Once they're finished, they'll be placed by Cindy's team in one of the schools.
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26:41
So those 113 are technically going to be active with us.
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26:45
There's also about 22 others that are in a separate school for special ed pre-referrals.
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26:50
Same thing, there's about 150 in there now.
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26:52
About 2 dozen of them will actually become active in our schools.
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26:55
The other 130 or so will become services only or they're getting just testing for now and they could be not eligible and they didn't, you know, do anything with them.
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27:04
So comparing that to last year, again, well actually the active special ed Fed, it's just about the same number, a little less, a little more this year.
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27:14
And the L, as I said, is about 500 less so far, um, just due to the way they've been classified this year and kids testing out with the access scores.
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27:23
It's been less for this year compared to last year, um, grade level-wise.
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27:28
Um, also in the blue on the right, we have 50 new registrations that have been submitted in a status of not, uh, in progress right now.
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27:34
They're submitted but they haven't been finished, like they have met with yet, so they're still being worked on by the parent, but they're submitted and they have to come into PACE to finish it off with Cindy.
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27:44
So those 50, hopefully some of those will move into the PACE school and then eventually into one of our 17 buildings.
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27:49
As a benchmark compared to last year, the last few weeks of September, there was about 75 additional completed new registrations that happened in those last few weeks, which sort of gives me— I originally said that the school rate being, you know, 11,100 would be a nice number to get to.
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28:04
I hope we get to that still, but I would probably say a little bit less than that just because we're also registering kids and all these things, but also moving kids out because we're identifying kids that have been missing the first 5 days of school.
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28:14
So I have attendance officers and people in the schools trying to find out, oh, that person moved to Rhode Island, this person moved back to Puerto Rico or whatever, and we journal note that what happened and we try to withdraw them.
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28:25
If they haven't— if we don't know why they left, we have to keep it for 10 days.
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28:29
If we find out that, although they left, we can withdraw them immediately.
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28:33
Um, and grade level-wise, I thought Cindy underway here, uh, kindergarten is lower than expected right now.
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28:38
We do expect to get a wave in the next week or two because we haven't even started kindergarten yet, but I'm hoping to get to 800 with that.
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28:45
Uh, and Cindy said that may be good, which is still 100 less than last year.
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28:48
It's like, as you plan going forward, because everything we do is like— I think the theme is we're going to have less, we have to plan with less.
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28:54
We don't need to add— I'm not saying we don't have to add more, but saying as an example, in grade 5 this year we have 958.
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29:02
In grade 6, we have 712.
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29:03
That's because 100 or so kids left in grade 5 this year to go to the charter schools, you know, things like that.
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29:12
So, but I still think that's gonna— we're gonna have 100 more 6th graders than we do this year that we have to start planning for coming forward, because right now we have 712.
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29:21
We could have 812 next year.
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29:22
I don't know if the schools can handle 812 with their current setup of scheduling and staffing.
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29:27
So that's like a thing to look at.
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29:28
You can see the grades 2, 3, and 4, they're all in the 900s as well.
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29:32
So like we almost like a little mini bubble there, which happens every so often.
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29:37
All right, that was it.
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29:38
Questions?
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29:42
I put on the other page just as a reference the 290 enrollment, just so people can see what the enrollments of those 3 programs are compared, you know, last week opening day to now.
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29:50
You know, it was about the same The virtual is about the same, and resiliency is a few people, you know, it's less.
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29:58
So, so the, uh, that last part, um, you have 94— there are 94 top-year students.
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30:07
Yep, just active in the— how many of those we actually have seen?
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30:12
I don't know the exact— I mean, I can follow up with that and say of the 94, how many have missed all the days?
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30:17
So if I can find that out and email to the superintendent if you want.
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30:21
O'Brien.
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30:22
I don't— I didn't get to that.
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30:23
As of now, they have active 94 kids.
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30:26
Does anybody else know?
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30:27
Mr. Carreras, when I asked the other day, it's probably averaging around 52, 50 students that are present.
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30:34
Present?
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30:34
Yeah.
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30:35
Usually you have to wait till— I mean, we're just what, 5 days in?
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30:38
Yeah, today was day 5.
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30:40
So when I was over there, that's what he said.
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30:41
And you had 26 in the virtual, uh, Good.
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30:47
School.
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30:48
So, like, when we're looking at projections and, like, this other page, I'm concerned about that number.
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30:54
So, you got 26, because you start getting into where we can't have everything, right?
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30:59
And, we're spending an awful lot of money for 26.
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31:02
I know the point of it, and I'm not suggesting that I don't think we should do it, but we have to be cognizant of the fact that there's only 26 students there.
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31:11
And, if you get 94, at RPA, and then that turns into 60 or 50.
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31:17
Now we're staffed for how many?
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31:19
You know, like, we're in flux, but we really shouldn't be surprised by these numbers.
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31:25
Like, that's what we do in June, July, August.
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31:28
I mean, we've been talking about it at this subcommittee and school committee since March and April.
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31:33
Profile the kids.
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31:33
How many kids?
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31:34
What are we going to do?
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31:35
So the first week of school We still didn't know where these kids were even wanting to go, never mind.
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31:42
So I'm not surprised by this number, but I'm not confident that that 94 is 94.
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31:48
And I will follow up if you let me, um, that Dr. Barnett asked for a list of all the kids that dropped out in the last school year to try to start the efforts with Drew Woodard about re-engaging more kids to come back so they're not on the dropout list.
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32:00
They get them re-engaged before October 1st, they actually count as not a dropout and they'll be, you know, active.
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32:08
And, you know, but so I think many of those kids may be candidates for something like the virtual school, if I had to guess.
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32:13
I'm not saying I know what Amy was thinking, but that's a normal request that they try to reengage kids in September.
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32:19
Yeah.
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32:20
And we also been told, at least I've been told by the administration, that we were not adding kids this year.
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32:26
Oh, so that also flies in the face of of, you know, we should be able to know how many kids— like, budget time we were at 50 kids, or thereabout, 60 kids.
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32:36
If that was the max, then we could know what our max staff was going to be.
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32:41
But if we can't just be honest about what we've said, then it's going to be, well, now there's 100 kids, we need staffing for 100 kids.
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32:48
So then it means if we don't get those 100 kids, what's going to happen?
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32:51
Like, we hope to engage 50 more kids that dropped out.
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32:55
I would love it.
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32:57
If you would ask me to think if that's going to happen, and it's not going to happen.
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33:01
So I, I'm concerned about those numbers.
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33:05
One, because they're going to lower the projections, and then that means money.
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33:09
But 2, I'm not sure that they're, uh, that accurate.
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33:13
Would be like— well, as of right now, they're accurate and give us, you know, some time.
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33:18
As I said, I think there's a certain number of days where we'll start to probably have to drop kids.
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33:23
As you said, there's a chance for re-engagement if there were other students that may have dropped out to try to see if they can take part in these programs.
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33:31
So, would you like me to send you an overview, Dr. Smith, of the RPA kids?
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33:34
How many kids have been there all days, 4 days, 3 days, 2 days?
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33:37
Just so you have that number, you can do what you want with it.
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33:40
Probably at the end of next week.
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33:42
Okay.
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33:42
Mr. Dias.
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33:43
All right, I think 2 things.
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33:45
So, I think one to my colleague colleague's point about how much money we're spending.
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33:49
The school committee has never approved a budget for separately for Evolve, for RPA, and for the high school.
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33:56
And that's an issue.
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33:57
Administration needs to present a budget to the school committee.
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34:01
Secondly, if someone in the administration can just refresh my memory, because we've received a few different updates on projected enrollment for all 3 of these schools.
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34:15
Is this just— is this like in the ballpark of what we've been presented with over the last few months?
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34:22
I know that's the actual, actual data from Aspen as of yesterday, so I pulled it yesterday.
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34:28
I didn't know what any of the other ones are.
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34:30
And it's used last September 2nd as well.
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34:32
No, I understand, Mr. Metcalf.
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34:33
We as a school committee have received periodic updates on projected enrollment and for all 3 of these schools, and each and every time we've received different numbers.
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34:45
I think to my colleague's point as to why we're kind of— these are alternative schools.
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34:52
These are obviously students that have not, for whatever reason, been successful at our regular high school at this point.
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35:00
So again, as far as the numbers there, I don't think they're out of range of when I came on on May 1st.
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35:06
You stopped to discuss.
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35:07
You were discussing Evolve and the success, and the goal was to work with Dr. Stevens at the high school.
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35:14
If there are kids that continue to struggle at the high school, they'll have an opportunity at Evolve.
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35:20
It can happen very quickly about an opportunity at RPA if that's where the student can be successful.
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35:26
You also have now the virtual high school, which is such a plus for the district.
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35:30
You might have lost those kids to another virtual school that is statewide.
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35:34
So again, it is in process.
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35:38
We're hearing that there are things to be done there, you know, that's never been a question.
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35:43
But we're, we're pleased with the initial start to school.
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35:46
We're hoping to be able to do exactly what we said— grow, evolve, work with Dr. Stevens to have alternative settings.
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35:52
We may have to create additional alternative placements.
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35:55
So I'm not sure that we can answer your question is, are these the numbers numbers that we projected when?
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36:01
On what date?
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36:03
I don't have them in front of me, but we've received different periodic updates throughout the summer of enrollment.
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36:10
I would say July.
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36:11
July's memo.
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36:13
And I think they— I think they're somewhat close.
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36:16
If you add, uh, the 94 and the 26, you know, you're at 110, 120.
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36:22
At one point I think it was 135.
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36:25
Yeah, you know, like, I don't it's not like half of what it was, but at the time that 120 number where I had a public meeting said I had a problem with the numbers was because I was in meetings with the superintendent in May where I was told 60.
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36:41
That's the kids.
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36:42
So when I was— my mindset was on what we talked about in meetings with Dr. Bronhard was 60.
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36:50
The number went from 60 to 135 somehow in July, and now it's at 120.
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36:56
That's kind of where I was concerned about.
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36:59
We definitely have about probably 60, I'm guessing.
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37:03
That number was probably— I think right now it was about 52.
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37:07
How many students have been involuntarily transferred to RPA over the last few months?
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37:14
I don't know what you mean involuntarily transferred.
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37:17
You're talking about students that were transferred from, I'm assuming, Dark B to RPA?
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37:23
Well, they would be able to find that out on— so Mr. Michael Isaac's program can look at any data you want.
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37:30
So he could very simply tomorrow pull up a report for us that said, here's the students that were on July 1st or June 30th, the end of the year, and here's the kids currently, and here's the 18 kids that are added, and here's where they came from.
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37:43
He can do that in 2 seconds.
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37:46
It's just a matter of us getting— like, we don't know that number now, but clearly he can get it for us tomorrow and send it to the superintendent, to the committee, because it's a valid question of, are the kids— are we adding kids?
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37:57
Are we not adding kids?
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37:58
Are we— so I think we should, we should get this, whether or not it's voluntary or not, for obvious reasons.
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38:03
Well, right now nobody's also involuntary.
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38:05
I mean, I understand what you're trying to say, but in all cases, the parents have to sign off on it as as well.
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38:11
So I mean, they may be encouraged to go there and say, here's your best opportunity to succeed, but we're not just moving them and saying that's where you're going.
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38:18
From what I understand, all the years I've been here— well, I think we also have been told that there's no more involuntary transfers over the last 2 years.
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38:26
So to Mr. Diaz's question, the easy answer to that is no, they shouldn't be.
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38:31
Perfect.
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38:31
That's what I was trying to confirm.
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38:34
So I can't get that.
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38:34
Somebody is, then that's a different story for the administration But what we know now is nobody's supposed to be involuntarily transferred.
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38:41
So I would ask that Mr. Michael Azek, through the superintendent, gets us that data so we can see what it is.
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38:46
And if Mr. Baxter gets the answer to his question, thank you.
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38:51
Okay, in terms of— so I can go through the technology, and then, um, Mr. Dunst is here just in case there's any other specific questions.
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38:58
So just school opening, um, as I mentioned, we had, you know, lots of moving parts.
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39:02
We have secondary schools that are one-to-one.
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39:05
Elementary schools have sets in classrooms.
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39:08
Case by case, if there's a need, our system is that if a teacher has a need, they go to the principal.
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39:15
The principal then reaches out and says, hey, I need X thing addressed, right?
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39:20
And then we take care of it.
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39:21
So as soon as we're aware of it, we take care of items.
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39:23
So we have, for instance, phones that needed to be installed in new classrooms at Evolve and Doran.
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39:28
I believe those are all done, Mr.
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39:30
Dunce, already.
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39:31
We have new classrooms built at Doran.
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39:33
We installed several Promethean boards.
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39:35
I believe there's one more installation for Friday, but that's actually at Green School, that installation.
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39:40
The ones at Doran, I think there's one room left that we're gonna install in the library area.
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39:49
Staff devices have been distributed.
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39:51
Again, what I heard from principals were in cases where there was a delay, you know, person just started, waiting for their credentials.
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39:58
Obviously we've got to get them a device and get them squared away.
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40:02
Yonder distribution sounds like, you know, across the board has gone well.
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40:06
I believe Durfee just distributed, I want to say this week, I think when they were doing Yonder.
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40:13
I know some principals reached out, like I know Henry Lord reached out, they need maybe 12 pouches, which we're gonna get them, or 15 pouches.
In
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40:21
So again, if the principal calls and said, hey, I have this need, you know, we're gonna respond.
In
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40:26
One issue that we, we do have that we're also working on already is the ID printers.
In
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40:32
We've had some of our ID printers failing in some of the schools, so for now we can print centrally if we need to, but we're working on getting some quotes and estimates to replace those ID printers as needed.
In
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40:44
So on the ID printers, this is something we recently ordered, or how long have we had ID printers for?
In
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40:53
Because every school has been given an ID printer, including elementary, for the last 7 or 8 years.
In
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40:59
Yeah, it was middle school and high school only, but because of the lunch soft— we have to, you know, scan kids in for lunch if possible for, you know, forget the reimbursement and, you know, auditing purposes.
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41:09
They've all had the IDs at the middle school and the high school.
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41:12
They're now scanning that ID for attendance at the door.
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41:15
So now they're scanning in present every day.
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41:17
That's a new thing we did last actually, and that's very successful.
In
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41:20
But we should have had more printers on order.
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41:25
We had a whole set go out that Aaron took care of to get fixed and brought back, but I think we need to order some replacements.
In
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41:32
The ID, since it's all nutrition-related, we usually pay— that's what usually pays for all these things.
In
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41:38
But, um, we do need— we have tons of cards and supplies, that's not the issue.
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41:42
We need more printers in case one goes down.
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41:44
We can give it to CUSP, we can give this one to of it and fix that one and have that as a spare.
In
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41:48
So, so facilities oversees the ID printer?
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41:50
We do, but it just has been— you said nutrition?
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41:57
No, no.
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41:57
So example, it's always been paying— nutrition's always been paying for because it's a nutrition-related expense, because it's ID cards that are used to scan for the lunch software.
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42:06
Yes.
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42:06
So it's being paid for by them.
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42:07
You're welcome.
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42:09
That was my idea.
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42:10
So I think this is the only thing is there's machines that are breaking in some schools.
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42:20
I think we— it's important that for the next year, we don't want to go through the summer and not have them up and running.
In
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42:26
Next year, next month.
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42:28
Yeah, we're already working on it.
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42:29
Just that, yeah, they're way too broke.
In
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42:31
Literally last week, it's like they were working on it, all of a sudden they broke.
In
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42:33
The issue is we get so much use, obviously, of printing at this crazy rate at this time.
In
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42:38
So I agree with— I think it would be helpful to even consider you order an extra one or two where you can say, okay, take this while that one goes up for repair, right?
In
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42:46
That's really the way to think about the system.
In
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42:49
And the one last point, Mr. Moniz, is the distribution.
In
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42:54
So I know I've asked— I know on the vice chair, I've asked last few weeks and over the last few years, every single year, how much are we spending on the Yonder program.
In
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43:05
Where is the money coming from?
In
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43:08
What are the policies that are in place to make sure we're maintaining like the pouches, the devices to unlock and lock them?
In
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43:15
Because we pay for them as a committee.
In
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43:17
We approve, um, either through the warrants or we approve a contract for the Yonder devices, whatever it is.
In
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43:25
So I think it's important that we're keeping tabs on how much money being spent every single year?
In
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43:30
Are we losing devices?
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43:32
Are kids following the policy?
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43:36
And what's the consequence?
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43:37
So hopefully we can get some data on that at some point, is what I would ask for.
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43:43
Who's controlling that?
In
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43:45
I know that's a good question.
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43:48
If you want my honest answer, I request I report back at that next meeting because I need to talk internally with them first and fight with them a little bit first before giving you a— I think we need to be in agreement on some things that I can't— I don't want to say without other people being here.
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44:04
Okay, so I know what I want to say.
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44:06
I'll say it because I said it in the public meeting already.
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44:09
So we've had over the last couple years principals of schools think that it's the technology department's responsibility to deal with the younger coaches.
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44:18
This happened before.
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44:20
We said no.
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44:21
School committee said no.
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44:22
Superintendents at the passes said no.
In
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44:25
They had technology teacher integration specialists, or whatever they're called, the teachers putting numbers on Yonder pouches a year ago.
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44:32
Last-minute scramble.
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44:33
It's not acceptable.
In
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44:35
So the school committee has said at meetings, as far as we're concerned, that's a principal issue.
In
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44:39
Figure out how you're going to do your Yonder pouches each school.
In
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44:42
That means if I have 2,500 kids, I should have 2,500 pouches with X amount of reserves.
In
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44:47
Yeah, we never get that data.
In
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44:50
So what happens is we just get bills that say we're gonna buy another 2,000 yonder pouches.
In
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44:55
Well, that's not good management if we're buying 2,000 more yonder pouches in year 2 when we should have had year 1.
In
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45:01
Then you're trying to find— we had full accountability of it.
In
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45:03
The system we put in place was extremely— worked perfectly.
In
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45:07
I could give accountability of who had one out, who had lost one, who had to pay for one, and then that not follow through to year 2.
In
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45:15
And that's where we sort of— now I think we need to get back on track with how we did year 1, but it's a bigger conversation.
In
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45:21
I couldn't agree more.
In
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45:22
But at the end of the day, it didn't happen.
In
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45:24
So that's the issue that we have.
In
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45:26
And we just keep on getting bills for Yonder.
In
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45:28
Now I support the program.
In
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45:30
At the end of the day though, I don't keep supporting— keep buying 20,000 or 2,000 of these at a pop like it's nothing.
In
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45:36
And that is part of the frustration But no, we don't actually implement what you just said.
In
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45:41
There should be no reason why it worked in year 1 very well and then year 2 it didn't work.
In
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45:46
That should never happen.
In
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45:47
So our concern now by asking for this is like, what are we doing?
In
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45:50
I asked for last year for a rollout plan.
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45:53
How is it?
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45:54
I got an AI-generated thing that was all complicated.
In
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45:58
Very simple.
In
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45:59
How many do you have?
In
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46:00
How many did you do?
In
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46:01
If a kid loses it, what does he pay?
In
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46:04
What does he do?
In
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46:05
How is— what's the ramifications?
In
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46:06
Not just, oh, we'll buy more, we'll give them out.
In
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46:09
At one point they were giving the kids their exact ones back because they told them, oh, wouldn't it be nice to put glitter on it and this and that.
In
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46:14
So now they're trying to find the first week of school, trying to find that person's actual thing.
In
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46:20
This is a true story.
In
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46:21
I know you're right.
In
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46:22
And at the end of it, so then fast forward, rewind to last year, after the first week of school they still hadn't gotten them.
In
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46:28
We just heard again, I think it went out this week.
In
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46:30
Well, the kids went to school last week.
In
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46:31
So for the first week of school, you don't hit the ground running with a yonder pouch.
In
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46:35
You just wait till the next week so the kids get used to not having it.
In
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46:39
I was at Evolve for day 1 doing the high five right out there.
In
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46:42
Principal of the school was outside talking to the students and said, you got your yonder pouch?
In
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46:47
And the kid says, well, no, I, I left it at home.
In
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46:49
Fine, you're gonna have to turn your phone in at the door.
In
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46:52
You don't go through security until you do it.
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46:54
Structured, organized, and no nonsense.
In
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46:57
That's how we should doing it, but we just give away— like, it, it, there is an issue with the Yonders if nobody wants to admit it.
In
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47:04
But that's why I wanted to be honest.
In
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47:05
I'm not trying to get you in trouble.
In
Out
47:06
I think to give us a chance to get back to year one, and I'm saying, I'm not saying we're not gonna have hiccups here, but I think there's issues I like to bring them in on that I don't think they're aware of yet.
In
Out
47:17
That's all.
In
Out
47:18
Mrs. Stewart, I thought we bought more of those over the summer.
In
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47:23
I thought we got some, we got some back, and I think had plans, Aaron, to have more ordered.
In
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47:28
I don't know what happened because I think Scott was doing that follow-through, so, and then that's what it went, you know, when he— so, but we do have plans to buy.
In
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47:37
We're always trying to buy more and get the ones we have fixed so we have a stable.
In
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47:40
But we approved to buy more, correct?
In
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47:43
I don't know where it stands in the process.
In
Out
47:45
You probably did.
In
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47:46
I don't know where it stands in the process though, so I can check with CeCe tomorrow and ask if there's anyone in Yeah, we'll have Aaron check.
In
Out
47:53
So we asked when the money would have been available on July 1st to order these printers, correct?
In
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47:57
And I received— ordered then, correct?
In
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47:59
The printers have been ordered.
In
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48:00
It came through DocuSign.
In
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48:01
I signed off on that.
In
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48:02
Is this recent, or when did it come through?
In
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48:04
It came through maybe 3 days ago, and I signed off on it yesterday, I think.
In
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48:08
So those are, those are the printers.
In
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48:09
Yes.
In
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48:10
The Yonders, I received several envelopes full of money, um, for people who've lost them or whatnot.
In
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48:16
So I have all those which we're going to turn over and put into one of the revolving accounts so it can be used to purchase more.
In
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48:23
So what I said is, I want these put in an account, but I want a separate code put in so I know that these receipts are for those pouches.
In
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48:30
So I probably have, I don't know, 15 or 20 envelopes where they paid for them.
In
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48:36
So, and I'll find out what happened in the past, what they did.
In
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48:38
I don't know if they were turned into IT or where, but we're going to start tracking the dollars on them.
In
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48:45
So that's a bigger problem.
In
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48:46
That's something you're going to have to discuss.
In
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48:48
So when I see an envelope of cash come into an office, I've never seen anything like that.
In
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48:53
So we're going to have to take a look across the board at any of these kinds of things and come up with a process as to how cash goes from point A to point B.
In
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49:03
What is the chain of command?
In
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49:06
Who has signed off on it?
In
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49:07
So when you have any kind of cash— and that's something we should probably look at too.
In
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49:11
Should we be cashless?
In
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49:12
Is there a way for that?
In
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49:14
We had a plan.
In
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49:15
So again, we're seeing some of these things, so there is a bigger picture, but I couldn't agree more.
In
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49:21
This is what we had to plan last year with both Yanda, even replacement IDs, that can we bill to the parent via ParentsWeb?
In
Out
49:27
They have to do an online bill and they have to pay for it, and that way there's none of this envelope showing up where, you know, that was like the tip.
In
Out
49:34
But they sort of— I don't know where Amy left off with that because Kevin Almeida and the city had to discuss how they would classify and who, you know, it's more of a Munis thing than anything else.
In
Out
49:42
So, right, but that should be— everything should be a bill to the parent and say you pay it.
In
Out
49:46
If you don't pay it, then you don't get your stuff.
In
Out
49:50
So one of the things that you just spoke about with the roll-up plan, you're talking about year 1, it worked well.
In
Out
49:56
So looking at the number of employees we have, if it's not in technology, and it sounds like that's not where it seems to belong, And if it belongs in the school.
In
Out
50:05
So we— it's incumbent upon us to look at— we have contracts.
In
Out
50:09
Have we identified somebody, you know, that is distributing them, keeping track of them?
In
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50:14
I don't know if there's like a stipend or somebody in each building that we identify, or 2 people in each building that we identify.
In
Out
50:21
So I'm hearing that that didn't necessarily happen.
In
Out
50:24
I think what needed to happen that didn't was this superintendent's office needed to tell the principals.
In
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50:31
You are running a high school, you're the principal of the high school, you're in charge of your yonder boxes.
In
Out
50:36
That principal therefore has $4 million in administration that has to work 14 days in the summer.
In
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50:42
You have 18 security guards that have it, like, you know, you use the people in your building to do that work.
In
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50:48
They were never told it.
In
Out
50:49
So what happens is that the principal goes to the superintendent, not you, the superintendent, and says, oh, I can't do this, it's too busy.
In
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50:56
So then they push it on the technology department.
In
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50:58
So now technology department's pushing back.
In
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51:00
So there's this back and forth because the superintendent's office wouldn't just make the decision.
In
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51:03
I'm saying we've got to identify uniformly who is responsible.
In
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51:08
Technology are always involved in almost everything as an advisory thing or setting up.
In
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51:12
Like, I set up the process for the honor vouchers with Amy, and then we said, okay, here's the game plan, we're gonna roll it out year 1.
In
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51:18
It was perfect.
In
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51:19
Year 2, it wasn't perfect for a lot of reasons that, you know, he just mentioned, but also So year 3, I don't even know where we stand because I can't tell you.
In
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51:29
I have no faith in what the numbers say because I can't— year 1 was not the same way as now.
In
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51:35
And so it was year 1, I could tell you everything about you on the down to the pouch.
In
Out
51:40
So a lot of people ask me about it.
In
Out
51:41
Also, kids that leave the district, we're not getting that pouch back in many cases.
In
Out
51:45
And I'm like, the schools have to say, Kevin left, get his pouch back, get his phone book back.
In
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51:49
So we're not doing a lot of that stuff.
In
Out
51:50
That once they leave, it's like, okay, I was gonna ask that about the Chromebooks.
In
Out
51:54
I think just the last thing I'll say on this, I think the administration needs to come up with some sort of SOP on how to proceed for each principal knows what to do.
In
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52:07
And if it's that complicated, then we need to put some language in policy.
In
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52:10
But I think if the administration will, I'm hoping, can just present something next Month or two, I think.
In
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52:18
No.
In
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52:19
Yeah, suggestion, can you look back to, uh, the printouts just to see what the history was for the past couple months of POs and what we had and what we didn't have?
In
Out
52:28
Because I think committee members have seen, uh, they've signed purchase orders like months ago.
In
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52:34
So I don't know if it was that we ordered some and then where that process went, where— just so we can kind of figure it out, because I think we might have been I believe so.
In
Out
52:44
Yeah, I know it was a state contract that Scott had worked on.
In
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52:48
Yeah, I saw an order for the ID cards.
In
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52:50
There was an emergency, they needed the ID card.
In
Out
52:53
Then I saw the order for the actual printers.
In
Out
52:54
But I'm referring to like when you weren't even here.
In
Out
52:57
So like in May when we were doing the budget, June, like at that point was where we knew, okay, we passed the budget, they knew what their contracted services were and all that stuff.
In
Out
53:07
I believe that something happened happened in probably early June, which would have been good because you'd have the other ones.
In
Out
53:13
We also had the printer issue across the district that we had at a subcommittee meeting.
In
Out
53:18
Yes, that— I'm not sure where that landed.
In
Out
53:20
We were gonna, um, like revamp the whole thing so we had all new— I don't know if that was embedded within it.
In
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53:27
So if you can just check it out to see.
In
Out
53:29
Yeah, yeah, yes, it was.
In
Out
53:32
I think that was probably caught up upgrading the printers, these printers, like all-in-one, and that whole big process didn't happen.
In
Out
53:40
And I don't know that we took these out until recently.
In
Out
53:43
It's not just ID printers.
In
Out
53:44
No, printers across the whole district.
In
Out
53:46
We should go out and go out to bid for all printers across all schools to make sure— because some of them were— yeah, we're looking into that.
In
Out
53:55
We did have that discussion, but that was in May.
In
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53:58
Yeah, right.
In
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53:59
And we just had someone in.
In
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54:00
Yeah, we just had a company But we're here in August, you know, that's why I'm trying to have them look back.
In
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54:06
Yeah.
In
Out
54:06
And if in April we talked about doing that and it's now September, we approve contracts.
In
Out
54:13
What happened?
In
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54:13
We referred all contracts.
In
Out
54:15
Just because I did put this for many, many years here, the copy and so on.
In
Out
54:18
Traditionally, we sit down with the company that we— because everyone's an individual lease, there's not like a fleet of everything at one.
In
Out
54:22
The one thing, it's individually.
In
Out
54:23
We sit down and say, try to see which one would the person, the company would come say this one you can get another year out of, don't worry about picking that one, this one definitely needs a new one, look at the usage and like say, oh yeah, it's definitely out of whack.
In
Out
54:35
And like I was always trying to keep it under the same $410,000 budget we had to make sure I wasn't going adding things willy-nilly.
In
Out
54:41
But I don't know if that's happened this year with the company.
In
Out
54:43
I've already started that.
In
Out
54:45
We had a company in last week, we had someone in last week, and so what I'm doing now is compiling a list of all the machines that we have.
In
Out
54:51
Because the way I've always done it is you replace them all at once, do a 3-year lease They all come out and replace them all again with all new ones.
In
Out
54:58
There's nothing worse than machines breaking down, having to stop printing.
In
Out
55:02
Sounds exactly, Mr. Petronio, like what we talked about in April.
In
Out
55:05
So I forwarded the minutes of that meeting to the superintendent and deputy when they came on board.
In
Out
55:10
We can go back and look to the technology subcommittee meeting in April.
In
Out
55:14
You'll see the conversation, you'll see it almost verbatim to what you're saying now.
In
Out
55:20
It's just that that was in April And we're in September.
In
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55:23
So something happened sort of in the middle.
In
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55:24
That's something right up my alley.
In
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55:26
That's what I've done for years.
In
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55:28
So I'll get that taken care of.
In
Out
55:29
Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe we referred contracts and we approved them at the next meeting.
In
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55:33
So yes, the money's already set aside.
In
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55:37
So my question would be, what do we do with the money?
In
Out
55:39
No, the conversation was had.
In
Out
55:42
The conversation was had, um, and it stalled.
In
Out
55:48
But the conversation was had.
In
Out
55:50
Mr. Petronio came in July 1st and we started— I know he hasn't been here, but when we hired him and got him in here, that was— that has— that has been on our docket immediately.
In
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56:00
Get that.
In
Out
56:00
So I think he needs to just look back and then present something to us on what the findings are.
In
Out
56:05
It wasn't as clear as, you know, we passed the contract for the Michael Azak Company and they were going to start in May.
In
Out
56:11
So meanwhile— no, but it wasn't that— it wasn't that clear me.
In
Out
56:14
So you can look back and figure it out.
In
Out
56:16
Right, the current contract goes most of this year.
In
Out
56:18
The current contract— when I got here in May, one of the first things I did with the Director of Technology was to bring him into my office, and that was one of the things we spoke about, starting to get a handle on what we had for printers, how they were working, and starting to look at, you know, what we needed to do for the district.
In
Out
56:35
And so that is exactly what we began.
In
Out
56:38
I want to say it was sometime in May.
In
Out
56:39
That's right, the Anything else?
In
Out
56:43
No, not for me.
In
Out
56:44
Um, I just have a question on opening technology.
In
Out
56:47
So, and I brought this up in the past, where can we access our minutes?
In
Out
56:53
Um, so we— I have this one-pager that was in the, um, superintendent snapshot.
In
Out
56:59
It wasn't signed by anyone, and it gives instructions on how to access the minutes.
In
Out
57:06
And I followed the instructions verbatim.
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57:07
I went on the, uh, public schools website, went to school committee, went down, follow the steps.
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57:15
It brings you to Diligent.
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57:16
You go down and on the Diligent website, which is on the public, and click the minutes.
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57:23
And I clicked the minutes and I sent the video.
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57:25
I actually sent— I sent the video to my colleague.
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57:28
There's no minutes from 2025-2026.
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57:31
Tips in 2024, 2025.
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57:34
The last minutes on the website which I saw were from April of 2024.
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57:40
I wasn't even on the committee at the time.
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57:42
I wasn't.
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57:44
So, so I know, I know.
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57:45
Um, I think it just— so can someone give us either a presentation or just— can we just verify what we're getting in the snapshots?
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57:56
Because it doesn't seem to be accurate.
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57:58
So, so what I understand at this point is that 2024 is not there.
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58:04
So I spoke with the communications person today or yesterday, and right now we do not have access to all the minutes.
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58:13
The administrative assistant does, and when she returns, we will try to solve that.
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58:19
So we'll make sure all the minutes are, are showing and accessible.
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58:22
Is that your question?
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58:24
And how do we get there?
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58:25
I know there's an issue.
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58:26
I think you identified the issue.
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58:28
My question is, how did we get there in the first place?
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58:32
I can't answer that about the technology and the minutes.
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58:35
We obviously have the minutes for all of those— you're talking '20, '24, '25— all of those in the past, we have the minutes, but they're not showing in Diligent.
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58:45
They're not showing for people to access.
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58:48
Is that right?
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58:49
That, that's just Interesting.
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58:50
Yes.
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58:50
And so I just— hopefully we can get a more updated, um, snapshot because I can only go off of what was— I asked a question and I can only go off of what's provided in the snapshot.
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59:01
So, and when it's not accurate in the snapshot, then I have to ask again.
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59:06
So I just— hopefully we can get more accurate information.
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59:09
How long do you think that's going to take to get that up to date or get them?
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59:12
Well, the administrative assistant is returning, I believe, on day.
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59:16
So I will do everything I can to find out if it's a Diligent issue.
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59:21
Is it our issue?
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59:22
You know, I'll have to reach out to technology to find out how.
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59:25
It could be as simple as Diligent was bought out, BoardDoc, which you used previously, and it could be that they haven't converted all the data over yet.
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59:32
I'm just— if I had to guess on something, it could be something as simple as that.
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59:35
I don't know, that makes sense to you?
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59:37
No?
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59:38
No.
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59:38
All right, strictly it's been, I don't know, 9 months or 10 months that the school committee has been getting banged by the DESE in their governance report saying that we don't have the minutes online.
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59:49
And we're told by our executive secretary and by prior superintendents as well as the current ones that no, they're up to date, we got them done, we fixed it.
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59:57
And it's still not fixed.
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59:58
So the frustration for us is we get the— we get beat up because something as simple as just put the minutes online, it's not a complicated thing, and organize them so the public can see see them, and it's still not done.
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1:00:12
But when— to Mr.
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1:00:13
Dice's point— when we get something in the superintendent snapshot that says, oh yes, it's done and this is the way to do it, almost like sarcastically— that's how I took it— was that, oh, you guys are making a big stink about this and it's done, just go here, here, and here.
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1:00:26
And when we do that and it doesn't show up, now we get aggravated, like, wait a minute, why are you giving us grief when you're telling us to do something and it doesn't actually exist?
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1:00:35
That's our So it shouldn't be— the last thing we want is people frustrated.
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1:00:40
That's not done on our end.
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1:00:42
You know, I know there was a lot of struggle and there were issues with diligence.
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1:00:47
I mean, there were issues.
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1:00:48
So again, we'll do everything we can to get them up there, whether we have to call in an expert.
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1:00:54
I don't think we need an expert.
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1:00:54
So what we used to have before we did this diligence thing, we had the minutes online, right, which is a Google Drive that we did in somebody's infinite wisdom upstairs, they decided let's take that down and we're going to go to diligence even though diligence is not ready.
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1:01:11
So the system that's been in place for as long as I've been here, almost 20 years, was you get the minutes, you put them in a folder, and somebody from the public wants to click on it.
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1:01:20
Somebody's infinite wisdom is they've removed it.
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1:01:23
So all I want to do is put the thing back on and then we'll get your diligence straightened out.
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1:01:28
So if we have a folder folder that says minutes, you open it back up.
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1:01:32
Because even worse, public comes and clicks a button and it says there is no— it looks like you have the minutes in there, you click on it, it says no files here.
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1:01:40
It makes it even worse.
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1:01:41
And I can't tell you how many people have told me that what is up with these minutes because we can't— it's unacceptable.
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1:01:48
I agree, they have to be up there for the public to be able to access.
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1:01:51
And the second issue as well is I, I did actually What you, um, you mentioned, um, what was the prior program before Diligent?
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1:01:59
BoardDocs.
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1:02:00
I actually went back on the BoardDocs and I go in between meetings and some of the minutes are there, and then some of the minutes for some meetings, the ones in 2024 which we're looking for, we're just not there.
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1:02:12
So I don't know if we approve minutes that weren't actually there.
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1:02:17
I hope that's not the case, or we just the minutes just got— it could have been a glitch.
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1:02:25
I think next week we're going to take a minute to look at the minutes.
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1:02:28
And we also— so as soon as she comes back, we'll get it done.
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1:02:33
Anything else in business?
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1:02:34
In business?
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1:02:35
Nothing.
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1:02:36
Anybody?
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1:02:36
I don't have anything.
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1:02:37
I'll make a motion to adjourn.
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1:02:38
Second.
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1:02:40
Thank you.
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1:02:40
Roll call.
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1:02:43
Mr.
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1:02:43
Dice?
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1:02:44
Yes.
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1:02:45
Mr. Roni?
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1:02:47
Yes, thank you very much.
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1:02:48
Thank you.
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1:02:48
Thank you for all the hard work.
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1:02:50
Appreciate it.
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