ORDER-2020-108 : An Appropriation from Free Cash, account number 01-324001, in the amount of $309,104.60 to various IT accounts as set forth herein.

Transcript (~11 min @ 3:22)

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▶ 3:18 Christopher Cinella: We're gonna have a pretty long night, it looks like tonight. anybody needs to recess or whatever just let me know and I guess for those folks that are going to be speaking just know that when the counselors raise their hand that's to indicate to me that I'm they have a question but I put them in a

▶ 3:41 Christopher Cinella: queue first this evening 2020 that's 108 and appropriation of free cash account 0 1 3 2 4 0 0 1 and the amount of three hundred nine thousand four hundred and four dollars and sixty cents to various IT accounts a set for Karen we have

▶ 4:00 Speaker 2: motion to suspend the rules to hear from our rules to spend the rules made by

▶ 4:07 Christopher Cinella: by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 4:13 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Migliorelli. Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi. Yes. Councilor McMaster. Yes. Councilor McNaught. Yes. Councilor Eccles. Yes. Councilor Garipay. Yes. Councilor Stewart. Councilor Thomas. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. President Grigoraitis. Yes. Chairman Zanella. Yes. And yes, I will bring in Director Ellis right now.

▶ 4:52 Speaker 3: Hello, good evening.

▶ 4:54 Speaker 1: Hi, Neil.

▶ 4:57 Speaker 3: Hi. So the $309,000 that you're looking at is for, the primary chunk of that is a replacement for a piece of the CIP budget that we have a, i think i talked about this last time we have a capital improvement line for the schools that's 150 000 and one for the city that's 150 000 that comes up every year in the past it's been used to pay off a five-year lease for equipment that was purchased prior to my starting um that account was is going to be uh depleted by 200 and change next year uh and due to the due to the the decrease in revenue uh mr delarusso wanted to give me an appropriation of free cash to backfill the 200 he was taking out of next year's capital improvement um The additional money was is for a projector replacement project at the school. I think I may have talked about that last time the school. Has basically every room has this 1 projector in this projector model. Is failing, it's roughly 12 years old. In every classroom, and we're constantly having to send these out and it takes like a month and a half 2 months to get them repaired and come back. we're spending 400 every time that happens we've got we had before the shutdown we had three out and three that were the light was was starting to flicker and and get dim and they were gonna go so it's like six of the uh i forget how many classrooms are in the building it just just looked at it too because this will replace all the all of the classrooms but um uh we were in severe trouble I Kristen is Megan Lewis on she is she is let me make our panels right

▶ 7:19 Speaker 3: now please so Megan is a is a teacher at the Winthrop school she can give you a little bit more insight into the day-to-day with with the projectors and in what's happening and how that diminishes her ability to uh teach during the day megan are you

▶ 7:47 Speaker 1: there megan can you hear us okay i think i hit mute at the same time you hit unmute thank you

▶ 7:55 Speaker 3: for having me i don't know if you heard my introduction i just introduced you and um hopefully you could give us kind of an update of what's what what the condition is at the

▶ 8:04 Speaker 1: winter school yeah absolutely um i remember when they went in it was it was a long time ago Um, so, yeah, our projectors are kind of dropping pretty frequently. We're having to swap them out. Light bulbs are 1 thing. Although those are the projectors are sold. I think they're hard to maintain and repair even though. The city is so responsive and we need help, but the projectors needing to be mailed off. Sometimes we're without projectors for a few months and it's usually pretty sudden and it's a real disruption to teaching and learning for our students. Our, our smart boards are a core focus to a lot of our instructional routines and it's really, really difficult. I've been, I've been in 2 different classrooms that have lost a projector for. A few months or more, and it really does impact my ability to teach effectively with my students. um we use them to model instruction right now i mean this is pretty much our only service for presenting visual instruction so imagine trying to teach students how to solve problems examine text draft their writing um we're really limited and unable to do that without our smart boards also our curriculum we have the pearson mathematics and reading program those are heavily based online so all of the videos text guidance interactive practice we no longer have access to when our smart cards are down additionally i've worked this will be my 16th year teaching i've had a lot of students on ieps and a lot of those ieps are written with certain supports like timers and visual cues and checklists things that are good for all students but things that some students really need in order to develop strong executive functioning skills and without again without that smart board without that projector it really makes difficult to provide those accommodations um i would say the hardest thing for me when i've been without a smart board and speaking to all of the other teachers in my building because unfortunately i think most of us have been touched by this in the past few years as the as the hardware has really hit its end of life um is just the interruption in classroom routine at the elementary level building routines and predictable environments is incredibly important for students see when they come into school one of the things we work really hard to is to to create an environment that is supportive predictable um there's a routine that's very comforting and it And it puts students in a really, really strong place to be successful when they feel safe and comfortable. And it really does throw that kind of whole classroom routine when we are no longer able to access that technology. So, it really does. It really does have a pretty significant impact on our ability to teach our students and for them to really be successful.

▶ 10:46 Christopher Cinella: so thank you thank you i didn't i only saw one hand go up is anybody else that i missed

▶ 10:54 Mark Garipay: council garrick thank you uh chairman sanella thank you mr ellis thank you uh so much for being here my son had you and um he thought the world of you uh he is one year out of winthrop but i can attest that um through his years at winthrop the uh smart boards were typically were broken more than they were actually working, which was a frustration for the teachers and for the kids. But my question, Mr. Ellis, is is this the only school that we have the problem with this particular model or have this across the district and is this something that should be on the plan to replace city-wide?

▶ 11:40 Speaker 3: but just if you can give us some direction on that yeah that's a that's a great question uh this particular model and i'm not sure i wasn't around when they were installed i'm not sure exactly why but this particular model seems to be uh just in the winthrop school um it's not as stable or as durable as the other uh projectors even projectors that we have in the rest of the district that are older than this model so there's that but he answered your question yes we have this issue throughout the district in every in every building and to replace them will cost roughly a million dollars is what I I figured out and put in for our see CIP last year well this year and it's just such a large amount it's hard to do it all at once I'm trying to figure out ways to do it in tears one year two year three year we're looking at probably a four year replacement cycle that maybe you know 250 a pop if we do it all at once there they're cheaper to do but again you do it all at once you've got projectors all dying at the same rate at the end of that their end of life so So, yeah, there is a problem.

▶ 13:07 Mark Garipay: Does it have anything to do with the age of the school and the technology? I mean, that is the old school. My grandmother actually went to school there. So is it the age of the school that are we going to have this problem if we go with the new ones too?

▶ 13:22 Speaker 3: No, I mean, the equipment doesn't have anything to do with the age of the school. So it's not relative to the, yeah, I think that building was built in the 20s sometime.

▶ 13:35 Mark Garipay: All right, um, thank you very much. Sure. Thank you.

▶ 13:38 Christopher Cinella: Any other questions is the will of the committee.

▶ 13:48 Christopher Cinella: Motion to recommend for passage. 2nd, we should recommend for passage made by Councilor Eccles, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 13:56 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Eccles? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Stewart? I will abstain as I joined late and I didn't

▶ 14:16 Speaker 1: hear the full article. Councilor Thomas? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President

▶ 14:27 Speaker 1: Grigoraitis? Chairman Cinella? Yes. 11 yes. Motion passes. Thank you Neil. Thank you

▶ 14:37 Christopher Cinella: Megan. Thank you. Good night. Next order we have order 2020-104 appropriation from free cash account number zero one dash three two four zero zero one in the amount of a hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred dollars to various fire department accounts as set forth here we have brought in chief kalina we should be coming