001Good evening and welcome to the Monday, February 9th, special board meeting of the Garfield Heights City School District Board of Education. I would like to call this meeting to order. Mr. Oko, may we have roll call? >> Yes. Mr. Dudley, >> Mrs. Irvin Doer, >> here. >> Miss Morrison, >> here. >> Miss Cox, >> here. >> Miss Thomas >> here. May the record show that Miss Dutley is excused from the meeting this evening? >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. Moving on to item 1.3, the adoption of our agenda. May I have a motion to adopt our agenda? Thank you. And a second. >> Second. >> Thank you. That is moved by Miss Cox and seconded by Mrs. Urban Doer. Is there any discussion? >> Seeing none, may we have roll call? >> Miss Cox? >> Yes.
002>> Mrs. Irvin Doer? >> Yes. >> Miss Morrison? >> Yes. >> Miss Thomas? >> Yes. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is a presentation. And I'll pass this over to Dr. Reynold. >> Thank you so much, Madam President. to tonight we will be hearing from our technology department. Um they have done some tremendous tremendous amount of work in the last several years really protecting us from a lot of the things that are happening in in our uh in our society when it comes to cyber security and we have been ahead of the game because of the expertise of Mr. Sean Waitland and he is again the director of technology for our school district and he will be presenting where we are as a as a department. Hello and thank you. Just a little
003bit about our tech department. Uh I'm obviously the tech director for the school district. I'm very lucky to have a wonderful team. Jim Cassuda is a long-standing member of Garfield Height City Schools. He's our network manager. Same thing with Tim Soachinsky who is my lead network technician. I have two wonderful network technicians, Anaz Pier and Larry Cameron. Um, I couldn't do what I do without the team that I work with. We're very lucky to have them supporting our staff and our efforts. Just a little bit about the equipment we support. We've got a lot here at Garfield Heights. We got a lot of students and a lot of staff. We have approximately 500 staff computers and student lab computers in the district that we support. Chromebooks. Now, it's interesting. Chromebooks. Yes, we are onetoone, but
004when you want a onetoone program, it's not one to one to the students. You also have to have loaner devices for when uh Chromebooks go down. In classrooms where we have carts, um we still have carts like at the middle school for example, just to control breakages and things like that, you have to have more Chromebooks in the cart than you have students in the class. So that way they've always got the opportunity to um have a Chromebook available to them. We also provide building loaners and uh specialized classrooms with Chromebooks as well. So we really are a true onetoone program, but it's like I said, we we support about 4,500 Chromebooks in service. Repairs are done by staff on any equipment that's outside of warranty. When we initially buy the Chromebooks, they have a
005warranty. We can mail them back in. Um, but after a year, then we're repairing them all inhouse. What we try to do in order to expedite that is stay within the same model lines as long as we're happy with them because of the fact that you're you're buying set a set controlled amount of parts. Um, as far as um students in our younger grades, that takes care of grades 1 through 12. Um for students in preschool, kindergarten, and special education, we also have approximately 775 staff and student iPads um that we also service as well that we uh manage and roll out um for programming for those students as well. Additional equipment that we support throughout the district is specialized instructional devices and that's a very broad category when you think about just different needs
006that are out there. Also, there's district partnerships which is uh from a variety of different sources and equipment that comes in based on partnerships both inside and outside of the school districts. And we also support visitors for events, meetings, and PD. We have a large network and a very robust network here. Um we have um fiber connections that go between our buildings to provide speedy connections. We have district server servers where we have 24 servers supporting all of our district operational needs. Most of those are virtual servers where we are able to instead of buying a physical server every time we are able to whip up a virtual server that mimics sometimes a more expensive server to control our costs. Um copers and printers. We support over 105 105 copers, printers and related devices. We
007use paper cut to manage printing and copying to try and keep our costs down. Um we manage the camera systems in the district. We have 11 servers with over 406 operating cameras. Um, this is something that Mr. Oo and I are constantly struggling to get um, grants to try and help support because it's a very expensive um, system to upkeep. We also support the door access system. So, when you buzz into the doors, uh, we support that system as well, providing different security accesses dependent on your role in our district to kind of control entry. Um and this is in partnership with HR and uh the business finance department as well as far as uh making sure that our facilities are controlled. We also work with the food service department on the POS system and
008we facility scheduling and support the transportation team on their various technology needs solutions. support over 85 active software web platforms, rostering services through class link, infinite campus um and connect another partner of ours and and more are supported. Um there we're currently implementing many new platforms regularly. Um teaching is very flux on that as far as their needs. So um it's something that we've got to constantly keep up on. It's become a little more complicated in the last two years with Senate Bill 29. If you haven't heard of Senate Bill 29, this is the student data privacy bill that was passed for K to2. Um, this is year two of it and there's much more restrictions on us now. Basically, any platform that you are using that would collect any form of personally identifiable student
009data. Third-party partners that you work with are required to sign a data privacy agreement showing what they will do with that data. um that they're not selling it to third parties, but also when you end that relationship that they get rid of that data so that it's no longer hanging there. Um student data is something that is very attractive to hackers that are out there to the dark web. You hear about that all the time because of the fact that they don't have credit yet. Um so there's an attractive nature to it. That's why schools are such a target. You hear about us being a target for cyber security. It's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of what the spirit of this bill. But when you have all of those platforms that are
010out there, we also have to make sure that we're communicating and actively seeking out those agreements before they're implemented. And that's what's new about Senate Bill 29. You can't on Monday say, "I'm going to use this with kids," and then expect to go in on Tuesday and be able to use it. We have to get these agreements before we can actually enact it. Um it's it's a really good uh u law for that piece. We also implemented an approval process that's in partnership with our special education department and teaching and learning because they have their own platforms that are constantly changing. Our goal is always to facilitate the instructional needs of our students. So, um I seek out the data privacy agreements based on approval from those departments just to make sure we're compliant. Second
011piece of legislation that's coming and this has been a this year legislation, House Bill 96. This is a cyber security uh law and the purpose of this one is to make sure that we're upping our standards. Teach uh school districts you hear about ransomware all the time. The goal with this is making sure that school districts are adopting some form of cyber security standard. There aren't many of them. There's NIST. There's something called CIS that's out there. NIST is the one that we've chosen. And really the reason why we chose NIST is we are working in partnership with the Ohio Cyber Reserve. Um, I know Miss Cox is very familiar with the Ohio Cyber Reserve over at TRIRC. The Ohio Cyber Reserve is um a organization that provides services for us for free. Evaluating our
012school district based on the 110 plus uh standards of NIS. It's a there's a NIS version 2.0. We were evaluated on version 2.0 to make sure that we're currently up to speed. That's the one that includes the govern uh section as well. So, it was nice to uh be up to speed on that one. We've been working with them over the last two years. So, we actually were working with them before this legislation just because we knew it was best practice. So, the nice part is when this came into place, we were already ahead of the game. We were already working on this piece. Um, we just continued um meeting the needs and the requirements of the law. Um, they are the ones that responded to, you've heard about incidents in Cleveland recently in Columbus
013City Schools that were hit. They actually the ones that came out and responded to both of those incidences. uh they have full teams that would come in in the event. So if we ever had an incident, it's good that we're following the standard that they would expect us to operate on. So with House Bill 96, there's a lot of work that's going along with it. One of the things is in our department partnerships is making sure that we're doing an audit of all of our district systems, making sure any old accounts, as you know, we're transient with staff, that those accounts, especially ones with elevated access are deleted. So that way because those passwords aren't changing. If that staff member is no longer with us, they become a vulnerability point um as they're trying to
014brute force in. Um we're going to be starting to make some serious rules starting next school year as far as how we handle personal equipment versus districtowned equipment. Um we have a guest network that's here. It is segmented from our main wireless network. The advantage of that is we can start having staff personal equipment forced over to our guest network. So that way it is not we don't have to worry about what they're doing with their antivirus software, what they've been clicking on. It is not going to be something that can contaminate our network. Um so that way they can still use it here, but they won't be connecting to our servers. They won't be um impacting our environment here. Grants and special purchases, we do need to make some changes with that as well.
015And making sure that we're available to work in partnership with anyone seeking them. We want them seeking those things, but if they're buying equipment, making sure that we are able to patch and update that equipment so that way it stays up to speed and it's meeting the standard requirements. So, this great um instructional implementation is not having a negative impact on our district because this can be very costly from a financial standpoint if we were to hit with a ransomware attack. So, we're trying to make sure that this winds up only being a good thing We've made a lot of investment um in this process of making sure that uh we're taking care of our vulnerabilities. We're it's actually a local platform, Agile Blue. They're in Valley View. Um they are our sock. And what
016they do is they're constantly monitoring all of our network equipment. All of our staff devices, actually the ones that you see around, including some of the ones that you have, are monitored and give us alerts and warnings to any vulnerabilities that could come along. if they notice any weird login, strange behavior from your accounts and things like that. We get immediate email alerts and have the ability to respond, forcing people to reset passwords, things like that. Getting the device off of the network when necessary. I've actually been able to remotely when I've been in Columbus at a conference, tell them get that device off the network. Now, they've been able to isolate it. That person can't do anything with that device at the time, but we're able to come back and examine whether or not
017we've got a problem with that device. It's wonderful having this in place. It's another partner because they're doing that 24/7. It's nice they're handling that at 3 in the morning versus us coming in and finding out because we've got problems. Google for Education, we move to the paid service. Um the advantage of the Google for Education paid service is it has a very robust security center. Um what we can do with that is we're getting a lot of fishing attacks now. It's being very common. I'm sure all of you in your um email have gotten a request to reset Netflix or something like that. You know, it's not one of those. We get a lot of those attacks in our schools too where they mimic because um major players in our school district like uh
018Dr. Reynolds and Mr. Oo, for example, are publicly available on directories. They will sometimes come in using different email addresses pretending to be Dr. Reynolds, Mr. Poco or payroll department HR and send out fishing attacks. Uh staff has gotten very savvy on reporting them to us. We can use a security tool to pull those emails from all of our staff email addresses and warranty them. So we're limiting the number of people that got them. They usually have attachments and things that they want you to click or a link that they want you to go to to get further information. We're using a platform called Action One for patch management to make sure our machines are up to date. know before to send out periodic fishing tests just to get our staff members uh up to
019speed. And we've also got partner relationships. We um have a free membership to MSISAC. We also belong to something called K126 which is specifically for K12 and the Ohio Cyber Reserve as I mentioned before and the Cyber Range have been wonderful partners and the Student Data Privacy Consortium is who we're working with for Senate Bill 29 to make sure that we stay up to speed with that. We have two factor on on um all of our staff accounts where they're available and we also have um Cisco Duo on our VPN and our network switch access um to that way make sure that people are um securely logging into our devices from outside filtering. We have Cisco umbrella and we use line wise for our Chromebooks to protect our students and we have a district firewall
020um that we pay for to control network traffic on top of the one provided by connect. So, we actually have an additional layer on top of the one that some other districts have um to further that. A little bit more about what we do. Technology tickets are subset of what we do, but a major subset. This is how staff communicates with us when they have needs and concerns. Since July 1st, we've closed tickets. Um, a lot of this is great because it's it's an chance for us to take a look at just how efficient we're being and making sure that we're meeting uh the needs of our staff and students. um completed tickets by location. Not uncommon that secondary tends to have greater needs because you've got a lot more students that are, you know,
021onetoone devices. They're doing more with those devices. Staff are doing more robust things. Um but you can actually see all of our instructional buildings do have quite a few needs um to them. Um as well as taking care of the central office, bus garage, and of course the performing arts center as well, which we also support. How do we do all this? Um, I mentioned the network and the robust network. Federal rate is something I'm not sure if you're familiar with. Um, we are very lucky here because of our free and reduced lunch counts here. We actually currently receive 90% of our district purchases for equipment like our our wireless access points like you see up here and our network switches that are in closets for the wired connections. We receive 90% of that for
022category one and category 2. Category two is the network equipment I'm mentioning. I'm from federalate. Category one is our network connectivity. In order for all of you to be on the network right now, for me to be on the network right now, um we are connected to right now we have a partner called Everstream that we work with. Connect bids that out for us. That's like Spectrum at your home, things like that. We pay only 10% of that purchase. 90% is paid from federal funding because of our federal eate. So, as a district, we only pay 10% for those purchases. We're responsible every year for reapplying for federal irate first for category one, making sure our connectivity that we only pay 10% of those costs each year. And category two, as we need to refresh
023these, we then go out to bid and through that bidding process, we get 90% of that dollars based on the number of students that we have. We do run out of that money at some point in time. So, it's not an unlimited amount, but we average about $350,000 that we get from the federal government for category 2. It goes a long way. Our last refresh, just as an example, we were able to do all five of our buildings except for one network closet, William Foster. We are not able to do the board offices out of that because this is not a student served environment. So, we have to do that out of pocket. But when you think about the size of our buildings, we're able to do most of that out of federal rate where
024we only paid 10%. Uh just to give an example of the savings in 2021, that was the last network's physical switch refresh. It was this is a small portion of our refresh, but the approximate cost of that was $53,000. We paid about $8,000 for that. Um for Aruba licenses, that's our wireless. Um there's there's a license that's required every year for that. That's approximately $45,300. We paid about $6,700 for that. And then um for our wireless refresh for all of those around the district, there's 385 of them around the district. That's a $200,000 cost. We paid about $31,300. So a huge opportunity for us. We're very lucky here to have that opportunity. We have um an infrastructure upgrade that we're planning in this current five-year cycle because we just got started for this. We've got
025four network closets. the high school. We have to take care of three network closets at the middle school, two at Maple Leaf, one at Elmwood, two at William Foster, four at central office. Again, those are not eligible for the central office only. And 385 wireless access points that we can keep up to date, only paying 10% of that. It's good for us to have that um broken down into a cycle though. That way, Mr. Oko and I can work on making sure that 10% fits into our budget those years as we go through together. our district firewall that I mentioned that additional layer of protection that is also irradable. So we do enjoy when we refresh that using federal rate and only pay 10% for that and the same thing for our virtual server infrastructure
026that I mentioned those servers that are over there. We do all of that for as well. A project we have coming that I just wanted to put on the radar. There's nothing to do for it for right now. Our phone system, we've enjoyed a rich Cisco phone source system that we've had for years now. It's coming to end of life around 2027. Mr. Oko and I have been talking about this one behind the scenes. I just want to make the board aware that this is coming. What we're looking at to do with this is Bay Village and some other districts around us that have the same phone system have already had to make the migration. They've been moving to uh Zoom phone service. We've been working with data serve on this. The nice part about
027that is it offers additional functionality especially for a lot of our staff members to be able to use the Zoom app to answer their classroom phone, their office phone. Um so you you can actually be more available more easily available um with that particular piece. It also offers texting as an option which is nice in a day and age where we want to separate more our uh texts um for work from personal text. Being able to do all of that through Zoom is going to be in another additional functionality. We are looking at costs for that. We will be providing more information as we pursue that. This is just to put it on your radar. This is a big project that's up and coming that we are going to put in place. We also maintain
028UPS systems. Those are uninterrupted power supplies to make sure our network stays up. We tend to be spotty sometimes with power around here. Um we're very lucky in the fact that we have generators in a lot of places. With network equipment though, you can't have the jarring jump from one kind of power to the other. Uninterrupted power supplies protects that equipment so that way it does not forcibly power down. It is always on a battery backup. If that battery runs out, we average about six to eight hours um for our uptime so we can maintain equipment network equipment being up for that amount of time. Um but if it does have to power down, it's powered down gently versus something that is going to damage the equipment because we want to protect the instructional environment
029here. Another example of a project um we implemented over the summer a brand new website. Um it's a continued work in progress. But one of the things we did with that is um incorporate um a website that is has an app incorporated into it and also staff calling incorporated. One of the reasons why we did that, this one is much easier to update behind the scenes so we can get more staff members involved with reaching out. It also integrates directly into social media. So we're able to post to Facebook and Instagram right from our website. We post a news story. We're making sure it's going to where our audience is instead of them having to chase down the information because we want to be transparent and communicate. Um, this is part of our communication strategic
030plan and it was an August 2026 goal that Dr. Reynolds and I were talking about this originally said, why wait? Let's start moving on this now. So, we're meeting that goal ahead of time. One of the things we try to do as a tech department is when we consolidate services, look for a cost savings. Is there a way we can consolidate services to save some money? We're saving about $7,000 per year with this because we consolidated other unconnected platforms into one that was connected just to provide better services. Our staff directory is now updated daily. Before our staff directories were a mess. Um so the goal with this was what can we do to improve our environment here when people are looking for who's actually working in a building. We have a people works platform
031in HR. It directly pulls from there every night. Every time HR up makes an update, we get it to our website the next day. Um, staff calling list is updated nightly. That was not a thing before. Um, building calendars now we move to a Google calendar. They're updated by our buildings through that Google calendar that links to the website. They're all in their Google platform. Makes it much easier for them to put events um to update what's going on at their building. And we're starting the development of building communications teams um versus single responsibility. When you have that singleton, a lot of things get lost in the shuffle. We can have building communications teams. Uh we can start getting more information out. Just couple last pieces. I'll finish off with you. U we have Mr.
032Oak and I are constantly working on a five-year plan. Um one of the things that have been a big change over the past couple years is err funds and we made a lot of purchases a district through err funds just like everybody else did. Now we've got to incorporate them into a five-year refresh cycle. um while not making that giant purchase that we made before. Um we went to staff laptops during that time, bought lots of Chromebooks during that time. Problem is, they've all got the same end of life date. So, we are making a five-year plan to um basically take a look at current pricing and our district direction as far as where we're going instructionally. um making sure that we have a yearly staff and student device refresh so we can manage this
033uh in and then making sure we take care of our infrastructure maintenance and replacement. We've also started taking a look at display technology. Uh display technology tends to last a lot longer, but in a lot of our classrooms we have projectors. Projectors are becoming very old school and the problem with projectors are they're kind of like a car when you drive it off the lot. The more you use it, the more it diminishes. um if any of you have used them or been in the rooms with them, they start to get washed out very quickly. LCDs, like what I've got in front of me, are a lot more of what we're doing in classrooms now. Um so getting to know more of what's going on in instructional our classrooms. So we're replacing the display tech
034that's there with display tech that will be better for our students, especially for visual learners who need some clarity. Um, and the next major upgrade is we're in the 2026 rate season and we're starting to work on that. Just some five-year cycle considerations for spring and summer 2026. What we're looking at right now, we got to replace about 500 Chromebooks um putting us on that cycle. Chromebooks are getting more expensive now. Chromebooks used to be when I started I was u I was purchasing Chromebooks for 179 a piece. Now we're up to 329 for them. And a lot of this is the chip shortage and things that you're hearing all over the place. Some it's I'll be honest with you, I'm editorializing here, but some it's a little predatory. Um, but it's it's because they
035can get the pricing for them. Staff laptops. Uh, we also incorporate into that a fiveyear um warranty. And the reason behind that is just making sure that we mail them in and that they're able to be properly repaired um by certified technicians. Um, we do we obviously we do the very simple repairs here, but when it's when you're doing the motherboard replacement and stuff like that, they cover all of that. We don't have to pay parts. Um, we do those for about $1,800 each. Um, and then we do have this year, and I don't have pricing on it right now because I'm working very closely with Miss Beasier to see what the instructional program is going to look like. We have two instructional computer labs at the high school that need to be replaced for
036next school year. The instructional programming is going to decide decide what we are putting into those classroom spaces. Not being vague on that. I want to make sure we're buying things that we will get at least a fiveyear lifespan on that will support the instructional goals of those spaces. So, we're currently working on that right now to make sure that um we are making the right purchases to the programming that's going to be there. Um and I mentioned that we're going to be doing interactive displays at K to 5. Uh Dr. Reynolds and Miss Beer and Mr. Oko and I have been talking very carefully about this piece for our littles in particular being able to touch and go up and manipulate. There's a lot of programming and platforms out there where kids can interact
037with the instruction. We're going to make sure that we have interactive displays at K to 5. 6 to 12 is going to be a little mixed based on the instructional department and what they're working on. Some of them are in classroom sessions where just having a LCD display, a large LCD is going to be perfect for that classroom space. But when you get into uh programs like math for example like that and even some of the sciences interactive displays are going to be very useful for instruction. So we're going to be making that plan. There are also some some spaces where projectors are still needed due to the layout of the room. Um there's still projectors that we do need to refresh in the district. So it's this is going to be based on the
038instructional needs and the layout of the environment as we go forward. So, we're actively working on a five-year refresh cycle to get those spaces all cleaned up. The advantage is going to be as we start first with the K to5 interactive displays, we are going to have some gently used projectors that we're going to be able to use to band-aid through our other spaces along the way. So, that way we can effectively pull this off in a five-year cycle while making sure that these instructional spaces continue to be operate as well. Other thing we're working on is we're starting a district AI committee. Um, I sent out a survey um, this year to start garnering interest from our teachers about a district AI committee. Um, I want to get teachers and get them involved us.
039I'm also going to be working very closely with Miss Beaser um, as far as making sure that um, we're we're taking a look at some of the getting some of our teachers up to speed on AI. Our teachers are all over the place. We have some that are incredibly interested in AI that are already actively using it and have been actively using it. We got teachers that fall in the middle that are a little uneasy about it or not as informed about AI and we have teachers who don't want to touch it with a 10-ft pole. That's pretty normal. That's our society right now. Um the goal of what we're going to be doing right now is a focus on rolling out teacher tools first. Just getting an awareness of that. We've signed up with
040chat GPT for education. That is new this year and just actually in the past few months. Um, what that is is it's chat GPT if you've ever used it before, but they now have an education model that if you input data into it, it does not use it to unform the AI. We're a FURPA environment. We need to make sure that we are protecting student data. So, I signed up for this immediately. I'm starting to roll this out to our teachers this week that have expressed interest already so that way they start using chat GPT for education as they're exploring more of AI. We also because we do the paid version of Google Google. We have Gemini for education. So we're rolling that to our out to our staff as well. There is a student
041version of this. We aren't rolling it out to the kids yet because I want to get the teacher capacity there before we start doing that. And also tied into the instructional initiatives of Miss Beer. Um as we're taking a look at that diffit. If you've never seen this before, it's way cool and fun to play with. It's a text leveler. Um, you can actually put any form of PDF text or um, anything that's where it's reads the actual text. PDFs sometimes look as a picture, other times it'll notice it as text. Any text, you can take it from a website, um, an article, anything where it's actual text. Tell it what grade level you want it to level to, and it will automatically level it. Like any AI teacher needs to look over just to
042make sure that everything is appropriate and making sure that the um that the vocabulary being used is not above the needs of the student. But the idea is making sure that any content you're using in your class starts to become more accessible. Leveling text is sometimes very very time consuming. This takes something before that you may not have used with your students and makes it something that in a short order you can use it with kids very quickly. And then Magic School, which is a wide variety of tools available for teachers. Um, Notebook LM is a research tool we have available to us through um through Google. If you haven't played around with that one before, it's a fun one. You can enter any form of articles um and it will compile them into um
043it'll it'll take them and evaluate. So, if you're doing a research project and you pull in three different sources, I'm pulling this book, I'm pulling this website link, and I'm pulling this article. It will compile them together. It will do things like summarize it for you, come up with questions that you can use with kids. It will create a podcast if you so want it to. There's a lot of different cool things. It's all a research driven tool. And it actually will tell you these sources and give you a bibliography, which uh it's a great way to teach kids that sources are important. Where did this actually come from? um in a day and age where they're searching a web the web and don't know if the actual resources have any form of valid backing
044to them. Wrapping up with this just some additional projects that are in development. We have an esports program that we're starting up right now. Uh we're currently seeking out a um coach for the esports program. We have 12 desktops in place. Um we've actually tested them out. They work great. We have a server that's m manning those um uh desktops right now. We are going to be purchasing two TVs and two Nintendo Switches to um that'll serve 18 kids. Um we're following some of the neighboring districts that use esports.org if you are interested at all. They have um it's basically this statewide organization that is guiding the esports program. Students have the ability for two things in this. There's direct scholarships available through esports. There's also the opportunity in order to be a part of
045esports Ohio, they have to join Discord as themselves. They get con contacted connected with colleges who are currently seeking out esports athletes to come to their college. So for students who aren't currently participating extracurriculars that maybe don't have aren't sure what their direction is yet, they can be interacting with colleges and thinking about their future um as a part of this program. Also, it's a great way to have esports activities monitored by adults guiding them to understand that gamer tag that you have there is you. How do you want people viewing you? What do you want to look like? What is your identity? They're getting a lot of poor modeling. It's a great chance for us to offer an opportunity where they're getting positive modeling for identity. We're looking to um implement a student test
046tech club. You and I have talked about this one before, Dr. Reynolds. Um we're looking for a teacher to work with on this one. Um, we've engaged CDWG and Lenovo so my technical staff can get trained to um be a Lenovo repair site. What'll happen with that is our Chromebooks that are here can be actually warranty repaired by our own students. >> Okay. >> Um, which we will then get reimbursed for that. It's a good opportunity for our kids to be a part of a tech club. They can also um repair some laptop work and things like that. So, they're learning here how to do repairs. We're seeking a teacher to work with on this process, but um I it's for $1,000. Um my technical staff can get certified to be warranty repair technicians and
047then you that's the only qualification to be able to do that for the certification I mentioned. We can also get this teacher certified as well for the same purpose. We would support the teacher then in that program. We're also looking to streamline our facility scheduling and permit uh by incorporating those into one single platform. Every summer I attend a cyber guardian event and this is more to get me educated. Um your average school tech director um we come up through the education ranks or even if you come from the business ranks into the tech director realm you're not usually a cyber security trained tech technical employee. Cyber guardian events put on by um the Ohio Cyber Range and the Ohio Cyber Reserve. It's a five-day event where they simulate a ransomware attack multi-stages. I act
048in my role and it's basically they have simulated servers. It's war games, you know, for a lack of better way to say it. Um, you really get to see what it is like if an event was going on, what kind of space they would need. I know like now that if they came here, we would need this space. We would need Dr. Reynolds conference room in order for them to have war rooms set up so they could be coming in here to um make, you know, handle how things work here. I also see the kind of areas where we're vulnerable, you know, potentially from it. So, it's a great activity. I've participated two years in a row. I'm doing again this summer. It's it's five full days of work because it's an actual event, but
049I I don't think I've ever learned so much in such a short period of time. My staff, thanks to the support of this district, we always go to the brainstorm conference, which is specific um conference for people in the various positions that my staff are in. We go there together as a team. They come back with an immense amount of knowledge. They're also interacting with people from other school districts throughout Ohio. So, they're people who are sitting in their seats. We learn a lot about what other districts are doing that we can bring back here to best serve Garfield Heights. I'm doing a conference presentation on Thursday. This week in Columbus, um we're presenting with Delaware local schools and Kyahoga Falls City Schools on the changing role of tech directors. We picked up a lot
050of extra duties along the way and lot of extra positions. Um both of them are in the same position I have or where they've done that throughout their career and we're just sharing survival tactics um as far as you know how how do you incorporate that into an already full-time job when you're doing that. We're doing an ID staff card upgrade. Um when you come in, you'll see those big green badges. We've actually got a much more complex um secure ID card that's going to be rolled out over this summer to all of our staff and you included. Um the reason for that is the ones that we have right now you can buy on Amazon a device to kind of mirror these. >> Um so we upgraded all of the hardware throughout the district.
051Now we need to upgrade the badges. It's not as simple as updating them to be on those readers as well. All of our copers function off of them as well. So we had to upgrade the copers as well before we could actually implement this. That has been done districtwide. So now we're moving to the more secure ID cards. Next generation students have IDs at the middle school and high school. Um those student IDs are being used right now to check in students for attendance purposes. They're also using them for lunch when applicable at the particular building. There's other uses for them because they're scannable ID cards. We're looking for more opportunities to use the student ID cards throughout the year. That way we make them more useful. The students have to have them um as
052not just a as a point of identification. They become the way that they function throughout the uh school district. I gave you a lot. Any questions? >> Yes. Um, first question is, what's the cost of the cyber guardian event? >> Free. >> We we actually donate our time for that. That's a volunteer. Um, I I go for five days and they look for volunteers and honestly the cyber reserve is a volunteer organization. So, um, yeah, that's a I take advantage of the opportunity because the fact it's free learning for me. It's good for us here because now you've got somebody who's actually been through that. So, great question. >> The five-year uh upgrade plan >> um cost is the e rate does it cover the upgrade? >> It for us in the past and so
053that's that's a that's a very hard to answer question. The reason why is the equipment's constantly going up in price. We qualify for $350,000 towards that. Last time through when we did it, and this was right before I started here towards towards the final phases of the last upgrade, um we had to pay for one closet in William Foster. The rest of the district was covered and we had to pay for the board offices. So, it covered everything but one closet at William Foster. Our wireless refresh 385 devices, we uh paid only 10% of that. So, that was that dollar amount that I gave you there. Um, because the prices are ever changing this time around, we will use every bit of the -ate dollars and we'll come before you as far as what we
054have to pay in addition to that. I'm expecting it to be very similar where we're going to have to probably take one we'll refresh in the same order and uh we'll probably won't have to pay for one closet at William Foster again and of course the board offices because we're not eligible for that but covered almost all of it. So, um, the equipment's because of the chip shortages and things like that, the equipment is going to be more expensive this time around. So, we will use every bit of that $350,000 and do the best we can to get most of it through so that way we minimize the impact on the district general budget. >> Last question. The chat GPT for education, is that paid? If it's paid, is it available to all staff? a
055paid version. >> It's free through 2027. >> Okay. >> So, um the answer to that is I'm assuming it's going to be paid after that. >> Yeah. So, this is this is a this is a pilot. Um it's like Google Google. So, we all ran into Google. Google originally had was not going to be paid. You have unlimited storage and things like that. This which it all changed. We knew that was eventually going to do that. This is probably going to be the same thing. But we are signed up for free. It does not have a limit to the number of staff members. So any staff member can um participate in it. I made it a voluntary thing for right now just because the fact that let's get our interested staff members in. Some of
056our staff members are genuinely afraid of AI. They're afraid of putting their information into AI. So part of educating our staff first is educating them what AI is, what AI isn't, and how to safely interact with it. So I don't want to force anybody to be using AI right now that's not comfortable. I want to protect our people that are and I'm really thinking in particular that middle category where we've got interested staff members who just need some guidance to start dipping into it now for our people that are really scared with it. They're going to need a lot more TLC along the way and we'll get them there. Um it's just to uh I think one of the pieces is to show them we're guiding you on the platforms you should use. Here's why
057you should use this platform. This is what it does. So chat GPT for Education because of the fact that we're being safe with student data. We want you to start at places like this. Start with our Gemini for education because of the fact that we're looking to protect our kids with what we're doing and get them educated and and using the with through our AI committee the very the highly interested staff members to help also be our outreach. You know, these are people that they work with on a day-to-day basis, people that they trust who can help uh show them what they're learning and and hopefully do some PD with those staff members. How are you using it in the classroom? So that way they can see the benefits for them. These are all time
058savers that we're rolling out to staff first. Staff are always looking for time. If we roll out AI to them, it saves them time. It's a great way to see, oh, if I do this and also seeing that AI doesn't replace them. They still need I look at as rough copy and good copy. AI is your rough copy. We're bringing some of those concepts back into education. Now, you want to then get the rough copy from AI and then turn that into a good copy that uses the skill set of the teacher to make sure that that is the top quality work. Good questions. Any else? >> Any other questions? >> I appreciate your time. I threw a lot at you. >> I have a few. >> Um, as you were discussing the Chromebook price
059increase, >> um, have we seen those same price increases with Apple? And I asked that because I would not like you to have given me a laptop. I really love this iPad with this keyboard. So, have we seen increases with Apple and is there opportunity for less Chromebooks, maybe more iPads for secondary? >> So, the the advantage of Chromebooks at secondaries, all of our teachers use things like Google Classroom and so sharing of documents throughout our student accounts and things like that. Yes, >> we do have Apple devices at secondary. We have a lab at secondary that is in Mr. in the Luna's room for example where we have Apple devices. I'm very pro Apple actually. My personal laptop that I'm using for this presentation today is a MacBook. >> Um the I don't want
060to divide because we're dividing our accounts and our students ability to share and to share with teachers. >> Um if we were to move in the future to another platform whether it would be Apple or Microsoft or something it would be one that we know would benefit our entire population. There may come a point in time when we do um we would do it at a much larger scale than that. If there's an instructional reason to incorporate iPads into a high school classroom um when I mentioned lab replacement and things like that, we would look at the instructional benefit of having that device in that space and we would look at it for that purpose. >> Um so not against it. It would be one of those. right now the um the advantage is all
061of the interconnectivity of Google >> uh and that that account's been traveling with our kids since they've been here >> and have we seen a price increase with Apple products or >> um pretty standard Apple price increase? Nothing like like a huge leap or anything like that. I also should incorporate our Chromebook price increase. There's two things that have incorporated that. Um, we used to get four gigabyte Chromebooks um with memory. We are upping to 8 gigabyte Chromebooks with memory. So, it's it is that there's been a little bit of a cost increase, which is probably comparable to Apple, but we need the additional onboard memory now just so that way the performance of the Chromebook. We're trying to get when I mentioned the 4500 that we service, we get more than five years out
062of our Chromebooks. We repair them. The nice part about them is they're a very simple device to prepare repair on site. The disadvantage of Apple, the only disadvantage of that is we're not repairing those here. >> Yeah. >> Chromebooks we can repair here as they get older. So when we need loaners, students forget a device at home and we need to make sure that we are continuing on with instruction, we're able to Frankenstein those back together again and make sure they're used for instruction. So that's what that's the other reason why there's an advantage to the Chromebooks right now. >> Yeah. >> Um there's an elegance and the simplicity right now. >> Instruction would drive our decision. >> Awesome. And then um you mentioned the building calendars. Um are those accessible to the public in
063some manner or they on the website? >> They're all on the website. So if you go to the high school page, >> there is a high school events calendar that's on there. That's their Google calendar that's there. >> Okay. >> Um the middle school, same thing. Um every building has them. There's a district one as well. So like the board meetings, for example, and Mr. Oak gave me a list of all the board meetings, I incorporated them into Google. They're all on our website. Now, nice part about that is as we um put the locations of those board meetings up and the special board meetings go up, >> I just bought them in a Google. They're available on the website right away. People subscribe to the app, they can get all that information on their
064app as well. >> So, we're trying to make it very very easy for our families however they choose to interact with our site where they come across casually from going to the web page or they want to subscribe and use they prefer to use an app. um they can encounter our website anyway they want to and get the same information. Great question. >> We we made some of the adjustments according to the feedback provided for us last year and I shared it with him and we he made these things happen. So he's done a great job with it. >> Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. um you have absolutely done some amazing things and made amazing progress um since you've on boarded here and we really do appreciate it and you've done it
065with limited resources. >> I I mentioned my team before I also mentioned the department partnerships. One of the things that um this team in particular, Dr. Reynolds and Mr. Ogo have been wonderful with is just facilitating us all working together. >> You can't do what I do alone. It's it's a team effort. There's a reason why I started on my first mentioning my team. I can't do what I do without them. So, I appreciate you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. And good luck on your conference presentation. >> Awesome. That was a lot of good info about info tip. Um, so moving on to item 3.1. May I have a motion to move and wave the reading of item 3.1? Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. That is moved by Miss
066Cot, seconded by Mrs. Miss Morrison. Is there any discussion? >> Just a sell modification that should have uh probably got in January. So, we're making sure that we get this. >> Awesome. Thank you. Seeing none, may we have roll call? >> Yes. Miss Cox? >> Yes. >> Miss Morrison? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Irvin Doer? >> Yes. >> Miss Thomas? >> Yes. >> Thank you. That motion passes. Item 4.1 on our agenda is alternative agenda review. Are there any questions or discussion on our regular board meeting agenda? >> Madame President, I have a question. >> Yes. for Dr. Reynolds. >> Yes, sir. >> Um I see in 9.1 that we have a retirement coming up of a teacher. How do we handle that when a teacher leaves in the middle of the year because it's March
0671st? >> Yeah. Right now she is in a position that will allow us to to be okay. She she's an awesome teacher. Yeah, >> we we placed her in a position that it it helps our students obviously, but it won't uh increase any class sizes or anything. So, we're okay. But in any other circumstances, um they give us a heads up ahead of time to allow us to to begin searching to to fill positions like that. Um we've had situations that have happened that we we're not so much prepared um where uh something would happen over break and return and we need to make some adjustments. So in those situations, we usually have a sub in place and then we uh we we'll fill a position. But for this one, we we're okay with this.
068>> Okay. Thank you. >> And and just so you know, she's done a tremendous job for us in the school district as well. >> I can personally say I know uh my one of my children has her currently. So, >> yes, I know the type of professional she is. >> Yes. And when we first walked in the door, when I first walked in the door here, we started looking at data within the district. She's led the way in in increasing the growth of our kids in math and it started over when she was way over in in William Foster and then we started making some changes there and and she's done a great job. >> Thank you. is under my is the first one. Is that a typo >> schoolwise >> for under item 9.1?
069>> Can we check on the building location for Miss Porski? >> Yes, we can. >> Yes. Can we get some I have a question about 12.1 during the the renewal process? What is that process? >> So after >> Sorry, Dr. Reynolds. I'm sorry. Oh, no. You're fine. You're you're fine. On on contracts, usually there's a three-year contract, sometimes four. Um, at the renewal part of that is when we want to get ahead of uh the end of their contract to renew their services so they uh can join us back again next year. Um we're doing that at this time because this is kind of the window when um uh you're looking at your contract and you know you're at the end of this contract and we want to give them opportunity to know that uh
070we will be renewing their contracts. So that's where that's what this is all about. These are all except one one is a uh an adjustment that we um uh approved in our last meeting um for the director of technology and operations. That's the one that we we already approved. >> Um that position is because we want that to to start immediately. Um the others is because the contract is coming to an end in August. >> Is there an evaluation period? >> Yes. Yes. Um I handle the evaluations for all central office. uh any other evaluations that's necessary in the build a handle for C central office and for principles for assistant principles uh that's handled by their principles >> are evaluations >> yes board the board has access to to all of that >> whatever
071you would like to Thank you, >> Madam President. >> Yes. >> One more question. >> With the renewals of the contracts, are there is there um like in in my world, there's a sack committee that that there's discussion with the evaluations and >> do you do that? Well, not with the site committee. This is more like hiring. But is there a process when you evaluate the central office? And >> it it's basically just the evaluations and and it's it's based off of what I've seen. um uh is an actual observation in those cases when they come in to present information or they're presenting in a in a PLC to really just ensure that that I'm seeing and I'm experiencing that they are holding to the vision of the district and some of the initiatives that
072we're creating and how we're communicating how we're walking and implementing some of these initiatives and is that evaluations involve those things how we're working with other departments is also part of the evaluation as well. So, I give them pretty much a narrative at the end of their evaluations to really just tell you here are the the strengths, here are the the weaknesses, and here are the things I'm expecting for the upcoming year. Uh, in some cases that we we've seen in the past, um, we we decided to not renew uh to renew um some administrators. Um, in this situation, I've I've evaluated all except one because it's at the building level, the other. and uh they have been consistent in their work here in the school district. A lot of the things that we've seen
073happen in our school district is because of their work uh directly. Uh when we're talking about making sure our data has been where it needs to be to ensure that we are our hiring process, we make sure our hiring process is in place. Um we we've come into situations where we walked in the district and some systems were were not even in place. So we've done a excellent job with creating kind of the foundational pieces so that we can be consistent as a school district and that's happened in all of these levels as a matter of fact. So yeah, there's a process that they they sit with me. We do a usually do a midyear and then we do the end of the year evaluation and that's where we make the decision especially in that
074third year whether or not we're going to redo them or not. >> Because you don't evaluate at the assistant principal levels. Is there I I know that you know we have the agenda but it would be nice to hear the the people that you don't evaluate the people that evaluate them maybe not but just I don't need to say evaluation but it will be nice that as we are putting them on the agenda we have an idea I don't know I know we saw the middle school presentation >> yes >> um and I know we see William Foster presentation but um it would be nice to kind of get the feedback of the person evaluating them and it doesn't have to be um and maybe going to their to the middle school and the other
075schools as we do might be sufficient. >> Yeah. >> But it's nice to know the details of how the evaluations are done at every level. >> Okay. >> So I mean this is helpful. >> Yes. And for for administrators they my evaluations of central office administrators are different from my evaluation of principal administrators. They have something called OPEDs and that's basically through Ohio and we go through the system and we have to make sure we adhere to to certain deadlines and so on and so forth. Um the evaluations that um we do here at central office is more of documentation of certain initiatives that we've done and just more of a narrative of exactly what what I've seen and what I need to see moving forward. Okay. >> So it's a little different. two of
076them are are a little different like the the teachers do OTEDs um the building administrators OPEDs and what we do at central office is more inhouse instead of state level thank you Yes. >> Um under >> second grade. That's exactly right. It was the same issue you was talking about. >> Yeah, but the one underneath is not >> two names are just basically in the wrong place. >> Okay, gotcha. >> Thank you. >> Oh, uh, Dr. Reynolds. >> Yes. >> Um, when will we get another presentation from Miss Pett? Uh, where are we at with >> I don't know where she falls on the calendar, but we we we have we have certain dates that we've selected. I'll go back and look and find out when when hers is up there. >> Is there something
077particular that you want to see that we may need to schedule a special presentation for? Because I do believe it's once a year that we >> where we are with >> Are we looking at presentation? Are we looking at um executive sessions? >> No. >> Okay. >> Um not executive sessions. Um more she gave an update on where we are with open positions and where um I would like to have an idea >> a staffing update. >> Yes. >> If it's would you mind if it's an email of staffing updates or would you like another presentation? >> Not an email. >> Doesn't have to be a presentation. If she can just you can share the information. Um, even though I don't really want to email, but it'll be nice to if I have questions, I'll
078ask the questions, but I I'm more qu I'm more wanting to know where we are with special ed and the intervention specialist roles and that area. So it doesn't have to be presentation. If you can share that information, I mean we can that would be fine. >> All right. Questions, discussion. >> Yes. >> Um, couple of agenda items for all of you. Um, a under uh eight agenda item 8, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 um regular financials for January, four-year forecast resolution that has to be submitted through EMS through the state of Ohio by the end of February. Um so you get a lovely presentation from me on Tuesday. Um 8.3 tax rate resolution. The county will be sending us a tax rate resolution. We have a meeting with them tomorrow morning to see what that will
079look like in regards to our bond millage from tax year 2025. So that will be have to be board approved and then have to be sent down to the state department of taxation to approve so that they can adjust the rate. They also may be adjusting class two which is our commercial and industrial valuations because they omitted a tax in 2025 as well for that. So that will be coming. And then agenda item 16.2 valuation increase complaint. Our board policy allows us to file complaints on class two business and industrial properties only if the appraised value of the property exceeds 10% for the tax year and the board of appeals from the county lowers that um in that process. then we are able to file a complaint that we think the county is correct in
080what they're um appraising the property for so that we don't lose additional revenue from tax collections. Any questions on that? That was a lot. I'm sorry. >> I don't understand the complaint. >> So our Yeah. So it's our board policy allows our um entity to file it's increased complaint. So when um the valuation cycle happens every three and six years and they get their property tax um rates. What happens is they can any taxpayer can file a complaint to the county and they go to the board of appeals and they can argue their case for why they should not pay as much in property tax based on their appraise value. In this case, one of the um complaintants went to board of appeals and um they said that the county's valuation was incorrect. they would
081they only want to pay X amount and the county granted that um and we are filing a complaint because it exceeds the 10% threshold that we're allowed to do it. Um so basically we're just saying we're we're filing with them to not lose the additional revenue from um a complaint down like a decrease in their class 2. We do not do that for residential though. We will not go after or file a complaint against residential taxpayers. >> This is commercial. >> This is only commercial and industrial. Yes. >> And that was we adopted that board policy I believe two years ago to just look at uh com increase complaints for class two. >> So prior to two years ago it was both. It could be residential and commercial. >> Yeah, it could have been. And
082then Niola sent an update through and the board um I believe it was the correct choice to go with class. That was what the recommendation was. >> Question 16.1 >> for the donation. Is that just random as they come in or >> Yeah, it's it's someone who is donating wash and dry and uh before we can accept it, we have to make sure the board is aware and vote whether or not we accept the gift. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> What would we do with the washer and dryer? >> We definitely put it in the building. Um I've been trying to get washer and dryers in in buildings for for a little while now, but some of our buildings are already ready. One of our buildings is ready to receive a washer and dryer. The
083others the the outlets are not available. the the output vent ventilation piece is not there, but it is there for a high school. Um, so that was a conversation I've had with operations for some time trying to figure out how we can do that. There are some kids who just need some help with um washing clothes and and we want to be sure that we we have something that's available to them. So that's why the donation, it'll be good for us to to to accept that donation just helps. It just helps. not something we're required to do, but something that we could do. >> So that would be shared like you know throughout all the buildings. >> Now they could any like right now um because of the only location let's say athletics >> they
084definitely use those things whichever one is available in in the district. So yeah we we just want to make sure we have those kind of resources for our children who may need them. They may need it might be something more than just what we use for athletics. Might be kid who just needs some help. Great discussion. Any more questions? All right, seeing none, we'll move on to our board of education training update. Um, does anyone have anything that they would like to share about board of education training? Any thoughts, updates from Saturday, takeaways? >> Well, Madam President, >> yeah, >> I would like to say I really enjoyed myself. I was able to um get to know you guys on a coworker level and it was great. Um, very informative. Right. She did her thing.
085So, thank you. I appreciate you setting it up. >> Not a problem. >> She was great. >> Yeah, she corrected us. Yes, she did. >> She did. But, you know, her and I'm sure she know it's so easy to say, >> you know, she's watching us. >> Yeah. >> No. Um, I will agree. Our retreat um this weekend was very I left feeling very fulfilled um for the direction of the board um for the collaboration. Um it was really nice to learn about how we all communicate um and I I I'm excited for where we will be able to go as a team. All right. Um item 4.3 on our agenda is our first 2027 um school year calendar reading. Are there any thoughts or discussions for our 2026 2027 school year calendar >> just
086to provide just two of the highlights because it's a lot of times it's some of the most important things. This is the first day of school will be August 19th and that last day of school will be uh May 27th for students. For students, for teachers, new teachers are going to come in the door. We uh we worked out some things to to make sure that we onboard folks correctly, give them a little more time to understand the landscape. So, August 10th through the 12th for our new teachers, then the convocation on the 13th, but the last day for for all teachers will be uh May 28th. It looks like things this school year are falling more evenly. >> Yeah. >> I feel like last year we had like a little jigsaw thing going on.
087>> Yes. >> So this looks um very uniform. >> Yes. >> August 10th through 12th is green. Is that what you just >> Yes, just for the new teacher orientation, uh those new staff members that are coming in the school district just to give them a a head start. Um and because once we get into the work, um we'd like to kind of here's the bathroom is over here. Uh this is where you can make copies. Those those sort of things uh allow them to go into the room to to really start working on the rooms as well. We found that this is a way to ensure that they're not as flustered when everyone comes back or when the school year starts. Gives them a little bit of a head start. >> Any other comments
088or discussion on our school calendar? All right, seeing none, we will conclude the first reading of our 2216 27 school year calendar. Um item 5.1 on our agenda this evening is our adjournment. May I have a motion to adjourn our meeting at 7:14 p.m. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. That is any discussion. Thank you. That is moved by Miss Cox and seconded by Mrs. Urban Doer. >> May we have roll call? >> Miss Cox? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Irvin Doer? >> Yes. >> Miss Morrison? >> Yes. >> Miss Thomas? >> Yes. Thank you. Our meeting is adjourned.