Technology Plan Update including Internet Safety and Summer Work (15 minutes)

Transcript (~49 min @ 42:18)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 42:19 Speaker 8: these donations motion passes unanimously next up technology plan update including internet safety and summer work Madam Superintendent yes I

▶ 42:26 Speaker 2: would like to ask Neil Ellis the city's chief information officer to come forward to present to the school committee mr. Ellis has had a very busy summer along with several construction firms and the Department of Public Works so mr. Ellis if you would like to just why don't we start with the summer work

▶ 42:52 Speaker 8: and all we got accomplished sure sure so good evening we had a lot of projects going on this summer more a little bit little a little more than anticipated but so we started off the summer there were quite a few systems in the schools that we we wanted to update we felt were behind and lacking so we we approached the mayor and mr. de la Rousseau for for funding for those for those projects and and they're very supportive so we were able to attack quite a bit this summer one of the main things when you were talking about the mcas and the computer-based testing for this year one of the things that was a major issue was having wireless access in all the schools enough that would be capable of having a computer-based test so we wired every classroom INSTALLED AN ACCESS POINT IN EVERY CLASSROOM, AND THEN IN MORE THAN JUST A CLASSROOM, MEETING SPACES, LIBRARIES, ANYWHERE THERE MIGHT BE KIDS NEEDING ACCESS. SO GYMS AND CAFS, TOO. SO THAT IS, THAT TOOK A LOT OF INFRASTRUCTURE WORK AND EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE OTHER END, TOO. THAT'S ALL BEEN DONE. So we were ready to rock and roll for the exam this year, for sure. We have a number of servers that were outdated, old, didn't really run like they're supposed to anymore. We were able to replace a lot of those. They have functions like just patching, nothing very exciting or sexy, just patching computers so they don't get malware and viruses. and there's a file server we got that we haven't implemented yet just to carry storage we did implement a printing server I know it's not very exciting but we we went through and renamed all the printers and labeled them so that if there's a problem with one of them the teacher can contact us and tell us what it is with the sticker that's on it and we can access and fix that remotely we did the same with the computers we we renamed and labeled all the computers in the district and that gives the teacher the ability to again send us the name of their computer what the problem is with their problem through our help desk system and we also installed remote management software on all those computers so that we can remotely fix those those computers and that that shortens the the time for us to get to the computer and fix it we're always trying to improve the amount of service we can give to the teachers how fast they can get things fixed so they can do what they need to do every day we had a

▶ 45:59 Speaker 8: problem with the phone system which is just the phone system it wasn't I shouldn't even say it was a system they basically had phones in the schools you know what was installed in 1920 is what they had as of the beginning of this summer they couldn't transfer they didn't have voicemail couldn't conference they had a phone line regular phone line like you'd have in your house and that's it if somebody called and said oh I want to talk to the nurse you'd have to say okay you're gonna need to hang up and call this totally different number and talk to the nurse you know that paused posed a lot of just in building communication public communication with parents and that's never good so we built off of the voice over IP system which goes over our fiber optic network through the city so we basically have a phone server here that will now run the phones in those locations and they have fully featured phone systems it also gave us the ability to put central phones for teachers to make calls they didn't have access to the phone in their buildings

▶ 47:13 Speaker 8: let's see what else go on forever we we had general network cabling we had different teachers who we want to use space we're needing to use more space all the time to build out those spaces and be able to install computers and let teachers working in different spaces um we did and we uh put six more chromebooks out into the

▶ 47:34 Speaker 8: district uh chroma carts of each one has 26 in them two at the winthrop due to enrollment in one in each of the elementary schools we also cleaned up all the server rooms the wiring strained out all that stuff reprogrammed all the infrastructure we did an internet upgrade that's kind of ongoing we had we rebuilt some of the report cards and progress reports to add for translations report card translations and it's kind of dynamic the way it works so you can kind of just say the language that you you want when you bring it up and then print it easily for those families that need a different language of report card in a different language and we need to do those things quickly and they need they deserve to have those report cards at the same time as everyone else gets them we also started reducing our number of printers so we we called some the the this has already been ongoing at the at the elementary schools they've been very efficient with their use of printing and we've we started that more at the middle school and high school to bring costs down and make it more efficient but keep the same amount of printing ability let's see what else so we actually finished this morning we finished a destiny upgrade for the library management system it brought our brought our we were operating I think it's like version 11 this brought us to like version 15 so it offers a lot more for for kids they can see the book covers and stuff when they search and some other information is just a little bit more user friendly and we made it a little bit more accessible and it's available on the web now so the modular projects and Horace Mann that took up and is still taking up a lot a lot of time we installed in the classroom new instructional tools the interactive projectors in each one of those rooms classroom audio systems which are basically there you can wear a wear a lanyard with a microphone and just boost your your your speaking volume in the classroom it also connects to the computer so anything that's going up on the screen is also amplified in the classroom for the kids it really looks and feels like a movie theater when you're in there it's it's pretty amazing so each one of the new rooms have have those um the uh security systems in those spaces

▶ 50:22 Speaker 8: we had to make it so that those new spaces were safe and met kind of what we want to have as a district for our security guidelines and uh so we did put fobs and cameras in those locations and there we we did decide to kind of build out a little bit of some of the buildings like the winthrop for a couple other purposes that we needed doors to be on fobs the front door and that kind of thing while we were there so uh those are still ongoing i think the winthrop work was pretty much completed today i think so uh the horse man uh we we did all the office space there's a conference room there with a nice tv that you can connect in computers have have connect in laptops and have a nice digital conferencing space with a nice uh new phones as well in that in there um yeah it'd go on there's somebody it's that that gives you an

▶ 51:18 Speaker 2: indication of how much work we have gotten done since last june it's just it's just been amazing um my favorite picture is neil in coveralls crawling in the crawl space at the horus man trying to run wire because he was very hands-on and we have more projects to come I didn't know destiny was finished because I thought we were going to be a little bit late on that than we thought we are also in the middle Neil is also instrumental with Amy Camosa the clerk of committees in building out the new website um we're scared as you all know so we're scheduled for that uh late november um but uh it's it's it's been um interesting because it's things that people don't see it's the it's the in the walls behind the scenes stuff but it makes a world of difference to how smoothly we operate on a given day so we're very grateful to the city for providing the funding for it and for neil leading this effort because at times it was a lot of moving parts you know let's talk a little bit about internet safety and that sort of goes into the policy and planning that they'll be discussed under mr. O'Connell but we recently we we are compliant with the two federal mandates around internet safety for children and we Neil recently did a few upgrades to the system to increase that safety do

▶ 52:57 Speaker 8: you want to talk about what we just did sure so we just kind of tweaked the the inside Google Google for the way that Google Apps for Schools works it gives it gives an oversight administration of all the accounts and all the Chromebooks that we have added to the system for our domain and there are a lot of little things you can change in there just to make things a little safer such as safe browsing you can just you can turn that on in the console so in that that works in and out of school so if the kid is logged into their Chrome browser with their Melrose schools comm account it it it'll affect whatever browser they're on at home if they're on their own Chromebook at home if they're using one of our accounts to do it it'll it'll it'll enact safe browsing we try to do some things around YouTube which we had to roll back the the in it it kind of goes more with my philosophy on on filtering which is you filter as much as you can and then and then really when things pop up or kids you know do something that they're not supposed to if they do it in a classroom setting with a with a teacher teacher can address that with the students say here's why you don't do these things because maybe they don't have oversight all the time at home or you know teachers are can carry forth these this digital citizenship how to's that we want to teach in the school so yeah we couldn't we couldn't there are some issues with classroom some things that we that didn't come out that didn't the teacher wanted to show and they could in and it made a lot of sense that they we roll it back so yeah and like the superintendent said we adhere to the for filtering to SIPA which is which was I I guess it wasn't really a passed act, it was an act that didn't get passed, but then in order to, if you accept federal funding, that you have to adhere to SEPA in order to keep that. COPPA was a actually federally passed act, and that's for student online protection. that that more governs it tries to more govern the the the social media and internet providers one of the big things about kappa is you know children shouldn't have or kids under 13 shouldn't have an online account so any kids out there that have a gmail account says just gmail Facebook anything under 13 if they're under 13 by law federal law they shouldn't have an account and it's one of the reasons why we have Google Drive because those are actual student it's social media email everything but it's it's under the dome of you know controlled by the Melrose schools so it gets us out of gets them out of a lot of trouble so thank you any

▶ 56:31 Speaker 5: questions mr. O'Connell thank you very much and thank you mr. Ellis thank you also for your help with the ECC documents if this technology doesn't work out you may have a future and early childhood education and and looking ahead in our agenda if I may and as the superintendent pointed out and as I think you know we're taking up our annual certification under the Children's Internet Protection Act and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act under policy and planning tonight and so with that in mind I think you know we have internet safety policies as part of our policy manual have you had a chance to look at those and do you have any questions concerns comments about any of

▶ 57:18 Speaker 8: those no I think they're they're they're good policies I mean like like any policies that are around social media or internet or web even accessible acceptable use because the technology changes so quickly you do have to you know edit them so I'm sure by the end of the year I'll I'll be thinking about it and think oh you know I should add that or tweak that but you know they're they're strong policies now great um oh sorry um mr o'connell i would like to ask that you refrain policies questions for policy and uh planning subcommittee as we are now under finance and

▶ 57:59 Speaker 5: facilities um can i ask a couple of follow-up questions uh if i don't use the word policy is that okay um and i guess this is more for the superintendent but and again thank you mr ellis

▶ 58:13 Speaker 8: for that no concerns about compliance no no in fact if if i may i know that we we uh myself and amy lindquist the new solicitor for the schools we've been talking a lot about student privacy and and safety and one of the things that there's a state organization a consortium called mspa which is a massachusetts state student privacy uh protection alliance and they have because the state of massachusetts does not have a state law governing uh student privacy online privacy which is unfortunate um the consortium of schools and i.t directors have gotten together and have drafted now about over five years with legal help an agreement that that governs protection privacy if there is a breach the step of notification and and we've recently joined that organization and we're hoping to fill out the agreements for the different software companies that we we do business with that they adhere to our protection agreements so that we make sure that all our students are safe so that's just kind of an add-on to the policies that

▶ 59:32 Speaker 5: we have terrific thank you for sure and a follow-up if I may to the superintendent just so I'm clear about this and this agenda item is styled as technology plan update and I know a superintendent you regularly provide us with technology plan updates is this a reference again just so I'm clear to the technology plan that we adopted in April of 2015 is there a different technology

▶ 59:58 Speaker 2: plan out there no the technology plan that we adopted and it was April of 15 yeah feels much longer than that was mainly about educational technology and how we improved the use of educational and instructional technology there is reference in that plan to infrastructure and equipment because obviously you can't have one without the other but Neil is here updating you in a similar way that John Shana comes in front of you and update you about his work the

▶ 1:00:32 Speaker 2: structure of the city is such that while maybe on paper with separate departments we are pretty much a tight group and we work together all the time and we're dependent upon each other so um this was a good opportunity for you to hear about the type of

▶ 1:00:51 Speaker 5: work that we're doing together so i i and i guess i asked the question not to put too fine a point on this um you know when i think of the technology plan i think of that as a a guide and a point of reference for us as a committee um and i i guess i'm i'm wondering if if it serves a similar purpose and i know we're here talking about hardware and software upgrades uh at least in terms of the summer work um is it something that you look to mr ellis i mean is it or is it just something that

▶ 1:01:24 Speaker 2: we use as from an educational standpoint well it was george pesos mr ellis's predecessor and i drove that we appealed to both the committee at the time and the board of aldermen to support us in that because it does address the city side as well um it was it was an effort to help the city shift its thinking about technology a lot of people at that time thought of technology as a nice to have rather as a way of life the analogy that i've often used with people about it is you now have to think about technology the way you think about roads they're necessary and need ongoing upkeep in order to be effective and efficient and that's how we've got we've begun to think about technology so the plan was an effort to um get us going in that direction it has a five-year timeline after that i'm hoping that we have implemented enough practices and protocols that it becomes an institutionalized habit and rather than necessitating a specific plan in which you say did i do this did i do this did i do this and and so ultimately i guess

▶ 1:02:32 Speaker 5: my question is you know is this technology plan you know a living document this isn't sitting

▶ 1:02:41 Speaker 2: gathering absolutely you see you see my updates on it yeah no that's what i thought and quite frankly on the updates we tell you the things we cannot do because of either funding or because the field has changed so fast when when you read the beginning of that plan it addresses the fact that it's a hypothetical plan to some degree mr o'connell because everything changes so fast You know, and I'll tell you, our staff has helped us change. I never, and George and I talked about this at the time that it happened. We never, ever predicted how fast Google Ed was going to take off with our staff. They love it. They would prefer Google Ed and Google Docs and Google services, you know, the writing, the Excel sheet, everything else, over almost anything else we have um and we never thought that would happen we thought this this would be a multi-year run-up and within a year's time it was throughout the district so even there the plan is wrong and you have to adjust like i said the main purpose of the plan was to help the city and the schools reshape their thinking about the role technology has to

▶ 1:04:00 Speaker 5: take in our lives fair enough and my last question and thank you for the indulgence uh dr adams tech committee is the technology plan part and parcel of what they look at

▶ 1:04:14 Speaker 2: is that completely separate no it's part and parcel why would it be separate i don't i don't know it's part and parcel but so aren't many other things that we look at i mean they do technology surveys every year to see what staff need for training they they they inquire how staff are implementing it we put the badges program into place you may not be familiar with that I am teachers earn badges and as of this year kids are in badges for their technological expertise that all came out of that committee that pot was never part of the technology plan you know again the best way I can say it to people is everything we do every day is dynamic um it's forever changing in response to our kids and the educational environment as well as the city's ability to support what we're

▶ 1:05:10 Jessica Dugan: doing thank you very much ms dugan thanks so much um from a i guess a finance perspective we made a a tremendous investment in chromebooks a couple years ago we still are you installed new carts this summer but i also understand that ptos are still doing some of these purchases chromebook purchases so what do we have a real solid idea on usage for chromebooks and what the gaps still are and how are we making sure that there is equity across our schools when some ptos are supporting some aren't like what's the ask there what's the expectation

▶ 1:05:44 Speaker 8: sure so i know the superintendent uh definitely uh puts an emphasis on equity um with all the schools so uh we recently looked at the ratio the student to chromebook ratio and right now they're around one to uh one chromebook for two students or to roughly around one to two and a half in depending on the school the it's it's it looks good and it's it's pretty pretty close for all the schools so definitely in in schools where there are increasing enrollment we're trying to get more Chromebooks in

▶ 1:06:27 Jessica Dugan: those places so are we still asking PTOs to support this oh yeah we had to

▶ 1:06:30 Speaker 2: because when we did this technology plan the original goal was a one to three ratio on the technology plan we at that time did not predict that we would be up almost 300 kids from the time that we wrote that technology plan we leased the Chromebooks the city put a line item in its budget $300,000 a year for five years and the reason why we wanted that was again that philosophy it's an ongoing expense when the lease is up you roll them over and you get the more updated model we did not anticipate the increase in enrollment the other thing we did not anticipate was the state deciding to mandate that everything go online and what that impact would be so when we ran the pot when it wasn't a pilot when we did the test online at the eighth grade last year we it was a huge learning curve up for us on what is involved with our Chromebooks and at when with the current amount we had so there was a lot of pieces a lot of fact is coming together do not have the funding you know with the choices we make we make these choices in this chamber every of the week and the and the PTO's came to us I did not go to the PTO's they came to us and said you need more Chromebooks I know you told us you wouldn't ask again but we're telling you we have the money you need more Chromebooks and my conversation with citywide is the conversation I always have with citywide that is your choice as PTOs I cannot dictate well how you spend your money but my preference is you act in concert so that we do the equity I came back to Neil we ran the numbers we realized with the increases in enrollment we would need X number that we put into the project we put the six Chromebooks that he just mentioned into the project the FF and E for the modules and the Horace Mann paid for those yet at the middle school where Brent had run the project the middle school PTO was very adamant that they buy another Chromebook I'm not going to say no you know I'm always scrambling for money and scrambling for resources and I'm grateful that they felt so strongly about it so that's

▶ 1:08:56 Speaker 2: that's how we got to this situation if our numbers continue to grow I don't know what to tell you Miss Dugan I don't know how we will fill that need but I asked Neil just recently to run me my ratios and as he said my ratios run they're odd 1.78 to 2.25 from building to building so approximately a two to one ratio when two years ago we were aiming for a three to one I don't know

▶ 1:09:28 Speaker 2: yet how I feel about a one-to-one ratio I have a lot of mixed feelings about it because I also have a fear that a one-to-one ratio I have one or two things happening I have a lot of children sitting in front of screens like this not interacting with each other or interacting with staff or I have carts gathering dust so that is a further conversation for me and the staff the real sword over our heads is the MCAS we have been told everybody will take the MCAS online grades four five seven and eight next year three and six can still be excused from it for one more year I think Neil again is involved in all this with me and the logistics of that alone basically shuts down the system for the month computer wise because you have to convert all your devices Chromebooks PCs whatever device you have you have to convert to a restricted testing mode during the life of the exam and that's the impact that

▶ 1:10:39 Speaker 2: we have at that point again we've always had a BYOD policy in the district we've never stopped children from bringing their own devices they can't take the exam on their own devices although some of my colleagues have figured out how to to do that but it's also very labor-intensive for their tech staff but we will not know the true impact of this until May of next year when we finish going through the MCAS for the first time with at least four grades

▶ 1:11:16 Speaker 2: taking it online and we're dreading it not because of the test because of the

▶ 1:11:19 Jessica Dugan: logistics so thank you for the understanding I think when we worked through the budget last year I wasn't aware that we still had such a significant Chromebook need maybe I should have been and maybe I missed something so if that's the case then that's my fault but I do think that as we enter into budgeting for this year if we know that we're working on a two to one ratio or whatever that is I think that that should be part of the conversation at the table here and if we decide that we can't support that then we should have that conversation here because we know we can't we're super grateful to the PTO's but can't rely on it but again I'm I may not be remembering the process correctly so I apologize for that if I'm not I also think that it would be great to explore the BYOD opportunity a little bit more I don't see many students at the middle school bringing devices to school again maybe I have a limited view there I'm most of them that I know have their own Chromebook at home so I know they can't test on it yes they all have this so why you know if that's the argument why do we need more Chromebooks in middle school I think you know so I guess I'm just looking to explore the depth of the opportunity and especially at the elementary school the less screen time better in my opinion although i see the value um just not all day long so that's my feel um i i do think that there are still some things to explore and that if it's um that if it's a need for a growing population that we should make sure that we factor that in thank you miss castelli thank

▶ 1:13:12 Christine Casatelli: you mr ellis that was dizzying the amount of work that was done i have a good fortune of having the um the technology plan in front of me here and i do have a couple questions uh one thing that we talked about in the plan that the district will aggressively upgrade its network bandwidth over three years it sounds like some work has been done it sounds like from the superintendent the the mcas will pose the greatest strain to the bandwidth is that true uh well not necessarily we

▶ 1:13:46 Speaker 8: um the the way that they set it up they have a a caching server uh so you install a caching server in the district and since we're on a fiber optic network what happens is the the tests download to that caching server uh you test it beforehand with it with a number of devices basically pulls the test down it's all encrypted and when the kids are on the devices doing the test they're basically communicating to that caching server and it's not it's it's actually it's safer was it's safer it's only moving just kind of general text so it's not really bandwidth heavy and it keeps it within the district now this this summer what I didn't mention is right now we're one gigabit going from the schools to all the other schools going to the servers and everything else we're we're we're in the process of updating that to 10 gigabit across which is will never have well problem communicating back and we didn't this this year getting back to that caching server when we did it at the high school middle at the middle school so we don't anticipate a problem getting to that caching server it should be should be fine so the bandwidth in terms of the MCAS wouldn't be an issue I think it's the daily use just the daily use by students and teachers that that really multi device right for student sure I mean I like to I like to think of it as as a three device per student or teacher kind of model I mean they wouldn't all be on at the same time but you know in the future every kid will have you know their phone especially at the high school middle school their phone they'll have a tablet you know they might be using it just for books and whatnot and then a Chromebook or a laptop so any classroom you have 25 kids it's going to be 75 devices so you have to be able to build the infrastructure to handle that which is where are we on that in that on that

▶ 1:15:54 Speaker 8: road to doing that oh we're in good shape I mean that's one of the reasons we ran wired every classroom for those access points and all the ones that we did this summer I ran two wires to every location even though the access points we have right now only except one because there are a lot of access points being made in the future where you can double that bandwidth back to the controller and we might need it another thing we talked about in the tech plan

▶ 1:16:18 Christine Casatelli: is the data center district will also replace core data center systems power backup system select core hardware monitoring solutions that are currently at the end of their life cycles and require opera upgrade to accommodate

▶ 1:16:36 Speaker 8: future growth what's the status of those sure so um one thing we did that we're we're if we're slowly moving we've just been so horrible we do we did buy a data backup solution storage solution to create redundancy in our storage on both sides city in the schools we can move data back and forth the infrastructure itself the switches were purchased with e plus the 2015 purchase that that the superintendent mentioned that included the Chromebooks included a lot of infrastructure so that our infrastructure like switches and then kind of all the behind-the-scenes stuff that's in good shape again we leverage some of what we put into that the money that we put into those systems by again putting on voice over IP phone systems makes it makes it much more valuable

▶ 1:17:38 Speaker 8: uh the you mentioned power power backup backup systems we're we're we're not doing great in that department uh there are several failing units around the school district and several uh closets uh server rooms that that they're i've been walking around looking at them you know they've got red lights the batteries are dead you know if the power goes out those switches go down uh which is not not a good place to be includes our voice over ip the phones in the for instance the phones in the middle school the high school all run through the network uh so if those there's a power outage those phones all go down um the the systems that we built this summer those three elementary schools we we put in place all new power backup systems so those will all be all set uh we're we've got to build out some of the other elementary uh buildings and replace the batteries in the units we already have in the high school but yeah okay and it said the district will

▶ 1:18:35 Christine Casatelli: invest in network printers across all levels sounds like that you're working on that and that's going well yep and um cloud-based solutions will be evaluated as part of every new purchase

▶ 1:18:53 Christine Casatelli: yes okay destiny we're moving it all out off the district will implement technology-based assessment solutions that allow staff to assess data and student progress reports yes so we're

▶ 1:19:02 Speaker 8: using uh symphony learning uh ixl uh what am i forgetting the one that we use at the high school

▶ 1:19:11 Speaker 2: i always want to call it scantron but that's not their name anymore that tells you how old i am which which does the data analysis of the exams yeah i'm blanking but yeah we we have several

▶ 1:19:21 Speaker 8: uh we're doing we do dibbles as well right yeah so last question district leadership will undertake

▶ 1:19:28 Christine Casatelli: aggressive replacement plan to replace all computing devices across the district preferably 2015 to 2016 school year and again in 2020 2021. that's the plan i just referenced okay

▶ 1:19:45 Speaker 8: right so all those PCs were replaced basically we're all replaced by my predecessor in all the schools so those all those computers are our new good functioning computers I mean in the future I'd like to see a more mobile staff you know if you know budgetary restrictions are always in place but you know laptops for for teachers and it there's a lot of things that it opens up a lot of possibilities for teachers and instruction and also for PD off-site PD you know they can do it from home teachers when they work together during a during a curriculum time they can all work on the same curriculum they could set up anywhere sit on the floor here with a bunch of laptops and work on the same curriculum and input it straight into the curriculum building software

▶ 1:20:43 Speaker 2: that we have so it's interesting now when we have big meetings we roll out the Chromebook cats and almost everybody in the room uses a Chromebook so that we

▶ 1:20:53 Christine Casatelli: can do Google Docs together that's good hmm so it sounds like this the tech plan is being implemented almost like a checklist it sounds like you're going down the list that I'm sure very thrilled I'm thrilled to hear about that took a lot of work to put that plan together it's I'm glad it's actually being used as it was intended everything is going down the list everything seems to be in progress it sounds like the only thing that may be a concern is the

▶ 1:21:22 Speaker 8: power backup systems yeah I mean there are several other systems that we need to update or that are that are falling behind or we need to just improve you know there's a lot of you know for instance just the you know the middle school has a different card access system than the rest of the schools and cities so that needs to be kind of pulled in their cameras are old and they were kind of middle of the middle of the road cameras they're black and white a lot of them so those need to get upgraded some of the the software that runs on those and that the like the Lincoln in the the Roosevelt those those security systems are really old and they're analog closed caption systems

▶ 1:22:08 Speaker 2: and one of the things Neil and I have talked about is you get a rate money back for certain investments you make so we have talked about how do you take the a rate money we get back and roll it over into our next project so it's that

▶ 1:22:29 Speaker 2: constant thinking about those type of efficiencies as you know so once we actually Marianne is going to a conference on a right and you know and I are looking at each other one day in Connecticut you know I'm going to that mr. school conference on a rate and so that she can get here what the updates are on the law because as you know um like a lot of federal programs it is being um it's subject

▶ 1:23:00 Speaker 8: to change right now yeah it's been changed quite a bit in the last three or four years and uh well

▶ 1:23:04 Christine Casatelli: it sounds like you have a handle on everything and that you you'd be able to provide the committee with some good um line items for i'm trying expenditures i'll spend your money yeah so

▶ 1:23:14 Christine Casatelli: So thanks for all your good work and I'm really impressed. Thank you.

▶ 1:23:21 Speaker 8: Ms. McAllister-Grand.

▶ 1:23:23 Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for all your work this summer and in general. I have just three questions. With the server upgrades, do you think that, I know there's some academic support programs like Lexia and IXL that.

▶ 1:23:37 Speaker 8: Yes, Lexia, that's what I was trying to think of.

▶ 1:23:38 Speaker 4: Yes. Thank you. Like competitor programs that require more bandwidth memory to be able to run because of graphics or other things yes do you think the server upgrade would allow for schools to be able to look at some of those and be able to run them within the system without bogging it down the the

▶ 1:23:56 Speaker 8: most of those are online so they would be direct out so it would be more a matter of the capacity of the firewall and the bandwidth going through the firewall so what definitely to answer your question we made strides this summer to add on another internet um another internet line in that that will uh kind of be a subsidy to our current line and then it's it'll be a faster and have more capacity we hope to move to it over the next couple years completely and kind of separate the the the city and school internet bandwidth so that it's we have full school bandwidth and you know we shouldn't run into any well I shouldn't say that because every year we bandwidth increases the use increases but we should be in a good place okay yeah

▶ 1:24:58 Speaker 4: thank you and then my second question is about the remote management system that you're using to be able to do repairs and um i'm only familiar with bomb gars a remote oh yeah i don't know if you guys are using something like would would the system that you selected to use allow for you to be able to put the computers into this restricted testing mode remotely or

▶ 1:25:27 Speaker 8: does that have to be done in person so so there's a couple things um the the restricted mode that we launched the computers in from the Google Chrome operating system is done strictly within the Google admin console okay so that will what happens is we make a change in that and then we reboot the Chromebooks and as soon as that happens it goes straight into that software and the kids can't get out of that then on the PCs what we do is we install the application in the state is made you know they foresaw the problem of locking out the computer so when you launch into that software it locks out the rest of the computer they're only in that until until we take them out of that mode okay the kids are in in that so we can do some of that stuff on the back end that's just strictly Windows but it wouldn't be through our remote management software what we're using is is vnc okay um encrypted vnc which is a um it's a free software yeah uh and it it basically allows us to to um get in when a teacher has an issue and they can walk through and show us what the problem is while we're on the phone with them we can it's a little bit easier to book appointments with them and say when you're when your fee free oh i'm free at 10 30 and you can just they can call you or whatever and you can go straight in right at that time and while you're maybe working on three other things

▶ 1:26:57 Speaker 4: so right okay great thank you and then my last question is about the privacy piece you're talking about how you know the law is that under 13 kids shouldn't have any personal accounts so can you just um i know this is in place i'm just not familiar with it how the email account is sort of scaffolded for a student in terms of their growth like they can start using it at some grade level and then they can actually receive messages from outside melrose at some point right right so

▶ 1:27:29 Speaker 8: uh the the it's set up right now so that i believe students all the way through can't receive

▶ 1:27:38 Speaker 2: emails we have postponed making the decision about opening the uh high school accounts okay

▶ 1:27:47 Speaker 4: so we have not made that decision yet so they can send messages to external places but can't receive

▶ 1:27:51 Speaker 2: is that i don't think they can send either it's only they can only send to other melrose schools

▶ 1:27:58 Speaker 4: accounts oh right okay through the end of high school through the end of high school so they

▶ 1:28:06 Speaker 2: can't use it for like college applications that they use the naviance for i believe yeah email

▶ 1:28:10 Speaker 8: through that yeah i'll have to check on that because there are there are yes no but we send

▶ 1:28:12 Speaker 2: this we send the we send a lot of stuff well all the recommendations get downloaded into naviance and then they get sent from there because uh we don't um teachers don't send directly to colleges right no they don't i think they use their personal accounts

▶ 1:28:33 Speaker 2: they have a separate account from their school account yeah i mean one of my concerns is as you all know and when people see me why do you carry two phones because long ago a CIO taught me that he can see everything I do on my phone and like I said you don't have to see how many times I change my hairdresser's appointment so the privacy issue for kids and staff is just as important for us so i really don't want to have access to kids personal emails our kids are very good about sharing this stuff with us as it is as we all know from 10 days ago but i really don't think because everything in melrose public schools has to be archived i don't think that's an avenue that we're ready to go down yet without a deep discussion

▶ 1:29:27 Speaker 8: and just to be clear we we can't see the emails their emails or anybody else's emails going through if there was an issue we could you know stop the account reset the password so the kid couldn't get in if they were doing something inappropriate then we could log in as that student and and see what happened and that kind of thing but on a general basis we can't see that

▶ 1:29:54 Speaker 5: thank you sure any further questions mr. O'Connell just very quickly through the chair of the mayor this probably goes without saying it should go without saying mr. mayor but none of this works without the support of you and the Board of Aldermen on the city side in terms of finances personnel and the work

▶ 1:30:11 Speaker 8: that happens so thank you for that thanks I think one key point is that one of the staff, obviously we'd like to have more staff in IT, but it should be acknowledged that the regionalization agreements that we have with Saugus and Essex pays for one of your staff, and it's just a way that we can create more bodies to do the job. The second is I think last year it's been very revolutionary regarding how we look at IT as a superintendent has said that capital equipment can always be put off for another year it has to because as you know next year like the year before we're going to be spending money on teachers to deal with I guess the next class is the second grade in that trail of staff by leasing and having a capital improvement plan very similar the way we have with equipment and roads is the way to deal with it neil has done a really good job when we lost our entire staff we took the entire staff of wilmington and that's i guess that's how it works because there's very few people as capable as neil and very few people in the i.t sector that want to go to pub want to want to come to do public work and it's a real crisis so we're very lucky to have