001welcome to the garford height City School Board District regular board meeting today is Tuesday January 16th 2024 I call the meeting to order could I get roll call please yes Miss Cox yes Mrs Daniels yes Miss Thomas Miss Morrison yes Miss King yes can I get an can I get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda as presented so moved may I get a second second that was moved by Miss Daniels and that was seconded by Miss Morrison did I get roll call please Mrs Daniels yes Miss Morrison yes Miss Cox yes Miss King yes at this time can we take a moment of Silent reflection and then we will do the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one
002nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all can I get a motion to approve the minutes from the December 11th special board meeting and the December 18th regular board meeting as presented so moved is there a second second that was moved by Miss Morrison and second by Miss Cox can I get a roll call please miss Morrison yes Miss Cox yes Mrs Daniels yes Miss King yes next on our agenda is the board president's report on behalf of the entire Garfield height City School Board of Education I would like to greet the Bulldog School family for the first time in 2024 as board president and wish you all a very safe and prosperous New Year the excitement and anticipation we as a board of education feel for the forthcoming year matches the compassion
003I know our staff for educa our staff has for Education our students demonstrate for Learning and our families share for supporting our efforts let's have a great 2024 I would like to commend Heather Morrison for becoming vice president of the board of education for this term and we look forward to her leadership also like would like to formerly welcome Tanda Cox to the board of education and congratulate her on her election last November these individuals with along with veteran board members Michelle Daniels and Ashley Thomas and your Garfield Heights Board of Education um it's only befitting that this me this month is board recognition month in the state of Ohio so please join me in extending our Collective gratitude to the individuals who serve as liais zans with the community and Dr Reynolds and his
004team to lead our school district service on the board of education can embody many responsibilities including decision making responsibilities to inquiries and helping make policy and this term's board of education is quite special in Garfield height City Schools as to the best of our team's knowledge represents the very first time in the school district's history with an all female Board of Education with that I ask you ask you to join me in a round of applause for my colleagues on the board of education Dr Reynolds we look forward to working with you in the upcoming year and will work tirelessly to support your vision and your leadership for this School District already we see great educational strides being made in the school year with spelling be competitions co-curricular um co-curricular successes among our student participants
005and an empasis on staying in the gang and being in school we intend to build on such successes finally yesterday was Dr Martin Luther King Jr day and I would like to commemorate the enduring impact of the Eon of the econic iconic Dr Martin Luther King Jr whose tragic death is memorialized every January for his inspiration and being a bold Visionary in the struggle for equality for all without question Dr King was able to connect the love he had for mankind that was rooted in his faith to the most important important justice issues of the day he said that there is no justice without equality and that nonviolence is the absolute commitment to the way of love and it's the active outpouring of one's whole being to one another the Garfield height City schools and
006particularly this board of education has been actively involved in the love that we have for our students staff and greater School family and actively dedicate dedicated to the causes of diversity equity and inclusion we thank Dr Martin Luther King Jr for his guidance his leadership and his nonviolent but dedicated struggle for equality for all this concludes my report are there next on our board agenda our committee reports are there any committee reports Madam president I have a wellness liaison report Miss Morrison recent purchases were new softball and baseball equipment which included bases balls teas and stuff like that the study tables have been going well for those students who had a below a 2.0 GPA we will be able to look at the data once all the final grades have been posted we hired a
007new head football coach coach Robert Andrews who brings wealth of experience including coaching stops at Glenville roads uid and Warren Harding in boy basketball we are currently hold the number one ranking in Northeast Ohio and number three ranking in the state we have a 12 and zero um with three games this week girls basketball has achieved a 9 and4 season record which is already the most wins the girls program has had in The Last 5 Years and wrestling went 4- one in their most recent tournament with several wrestlers placing in the top three of the event and that concludes my Wellness liaison report well thank you Miss Morrison our our scholar athletes are doing tremendous things that's great to hear are there any other reports Madam president I have a finance committee yes report you
008have the floor um so I wanted to give a little bit of some facility updates on our current projects so the revamping of the Middle School gym and music room and the new windows in the Middle School have been completed um our next project is working with William Foster to put in a brand new playground and we're looking in that coming in under budget we're also going to supplement the grant we have for the prek outside classroom at William Foster with some of those Sesser funds and that concludes my report thank Morrison are there any more committee reports I have a legislative liaison report um last month I reported um about House Bill 68 and that it was going to the governor's desk and it now the governor vetoed it but now the house is
009going to um more than likely override The veto and this is the um bill that would prohibit gender affirming um for Miners and also it would um it would also enact that all women's sports I'm sorry it also would enact that there would have to designate a separate Single Sex team for sports at private colleges and higher education um institutions so just something to watch out for um the Senate is scheduled to consider the veto on January 2 24th so we want to keep this um in our foresight so we can see what's going to happen with that because it could potentially affect our district any other reports all right we will move on next on our agenda we have a presentation from um our technology department I will turn it over to Dr Reynolds
010thank you thank you madam president tonight we'll be hearing from Mr Shan Wayan uh as he has been working diligently with his team uh to make sure that we remain connected and also that we remain safe and he'll be talking a little bit about some of the efforts he's been making and some of the plans we're we're thinking about moving forward moving District thank you for your time today I want to give you a quick update on the technology department and first of all just introduce my department um I'm Sean way I'm your director of Technology I'm joined tonight actually by Jim Cuda Jim Cuda who's our network manager and Tim soinski who's our lead network technician we're also supported as a team by Jeff Gibson and Larry Cameron who are both our Network technicians
011this year's been an interesting year um we had as you know reconfiguration of our buildings um our three Elementary buildings along with that um while you're doing a lot of movement of staff and um students between those buildings there's also behind the scenes a number of structures that need to be rebuilt or software structures um they're in many ways their own buildings um we had to rebuild and troubleshoot major changes to progress book our curriculum platforms staff accounts and access rights because now we have staff members who were working at one building previously now they're working at another one they need to be reconfigured for that a lot of Shifting of equipment between buildings um also shifting of where you placed equipment within classrooms because a classroom before that may have been a kindergarten classroom
012is now being used for older students and therefore placement might be very different there's also new platform support we actually had a number of major new platforms that went into effect this year year that needed behind the scenes support for rostering and setup um before then uh our our departments that we partner with um then took over those platforms so it's been a very very busy year some of these pieces that I'm mentioning are pieces that we're still working through right now because some of those platforms don't get interacted with right at the beginning of the year so you don't realize they're having issues until they've gotten to the point where teachers are currently using them um based on the timing of the year equipment we support as a district right now we have approximately
013500 staff computers and student lab computers and you're going to see some approximately numbers in there and the reason for that being is even right now we are currently in the the process of transitioning out old equipment and new equipment so in that process our numbers are um representative of the fact that we have some new equipment and old equipment that we're transitioning out we have approximately 4,500 Chromebooks in service and again we're transitioning out Chromebooks right now as well which is where that number comes from now you'll say from that well we have a one toone by student program well some of those are with students some of those are with staff but when you run a onetoone program a lot of times um what people don't realize is it's not necessarily just one
014to one to each student there are additional um Chromebooks in classroom carts um this is particularly at the secondary level and at the elementary level where um you need additional um if you have a cart you might have 20 students in this period 25 students in this period you need to outfit all of your carts so that way they can handle the Capa differing capacities of your classes as they travel through we also have specialized classrooms that our students interact with that also need those devices in place so that's why your numbers are far more than one to each child um in there you also need building loaners um to be available for repair when repairs are being done by our staff one of the things we do here is uh we do all of
015our repairs inhouse for equipment that's outside of warranty um um we have very skilled technicians here that take care of of that which is really nice we also have 645 iPads we support um that are in a house with students and staff um those mainly are with our younger children but um also in other classrooms in special as cases we also deal with a wide variety of additional equipment specialized instructional devices are spread throughout our district and it's a very broad category things like document cameras to um equipments that um help students through um various different needs throughout the day we support District Partnerships a lot of times staff come to us from a variety of sources um that that come and work with our district and sometimes they bring their own equipment we have
016to have that equipment interacting with our networks because we keep a tight Network structure to protect ourselves for security reasons making sure they can come here and do the things that they need to do sometimes being able to have a two-way interaction with things inside and outside of our district we also support visitors for events events meetings and professional development with their equipment when they come in behind the scenes what makes all that work is Network hardware and software um we have fiber connections that run between our buildings that uh maintain very fast connectivity we have District servers that run throughout the day we have 24 of them supporting all of our district operational needs that's how staff were able to log in but they also handle a wide variety of the network functions that
017control our traffic those are important to note because they all have their own operating systems they all have a wide variety of software systems on them that have to be kept up to dat and maintained on a regular basis for security and function purposes because they keep the lights on they keep us running we support also all the copers and printers in the districts yes we have Partnerships in that but the network connectivity in that is all run by us we have over5 copiers printers and related devices there's also a software behind the scenes called paper cut that hand handles managing Printing and copying solutions for that as well we have camera systems throughout our district we have 11 servers that control those camera systems in each of our buildings um with over 406 cameras
018uh currently operating we also support the door access system which is the AAG car reader um we also can support our security panels that are here and our ID printer and that's in partnership with HR um who we work very closely with with the boarding and offboarding of Staff which has been a great partnership and the business and finance department as well Solutions we support beyond that though are there's day-to-day software that makes this work um we support a wide variety of age ranges of students there's over 85 active software and web platforms that we currently support on a a daily basis um we provide rostering services through programs like class link and progress book and connect and the reason for the variety of that is each of those have very special needs there's more
019that's supported than that 85 that's an estimated number um we're we've actually had to do an audit recently and um I was shocked at the number of platforms that we support on a daily basis from large platforms that impact an entire classroom to smaller ones that support smaller groups and we're currently implementing new platforms even as we speak technology tickets are a subset of what we do because a lot of what I just told you right now aren't really technology ticket related projects that we do this year from July 1st to now we've closed 2,992 tickets that's that's work that's all complete and done we still have Open tickets at this point in time but um it's it's been a very very busy year and a productive year and you can see that covers just
020a wide variety of categories one of the things we take a look there's a lot to learn about where where greatest needs are and some of that makes sense in our secondary buildings because of the fact that they change class cles and there's a wide variety of needs at those buildings but our largest amount of tickets come from our our secondary buildings middle school and high school and then our elementary buildings tend to pretty much so sit in in the same spot which is pretty normal um with lesser needs of some for other buildings but we support a wide variety of locations this year one of the big projects that we have been working on is an upgrade to our Network switches and our wireless I'm going to start with the wireless first we have
021385 wireless access points one of them actually right up here right now a lot of times they look like something you just stick up on the ceiling but behind the scenes on there is a wire that goes all the way back to our Network closets um we have 385 of them throughout our district that provide wireless access and um when you do a upgrade project like that it's not a matter of just having them installed and wired back to the closet there's a lot of configuration that has to go on behind the scenes and in many cases troubleshooting a wide variety of different spaces we have building buildings that have had additions we have buildings that are of a variety of different ages and because of that different construction provides different challenges to signals so
022even to this day we're still going through and fine-tuning some of those access points based on reports that we're getting from staff on their needs to make sure they have a high function the reason why you need to update those is network security but also the newest Wireless protocols so that way new equipment that comes and operates at an optimal optimal piece we also still have to deal with though when you put in brand new equipment some of our older Legacy equipment that still needs to be in function because the fact that we're an educational institution and sometimes those devices have not operated to Modern standards so those have been some particular challenges that are technology team has been working with back to the network switches so those you trace those back to network closets
023there in most of our buildings there's multiple closets um in the case of this year we replaced all of the switches in four Network closets at the high school and all of the switches in three Network closets at the middle school why that's important take a look at the pictures that we have here you'll see the before picture on the left this is over the fact that during the course of the year you troubleshoot problems that are going on in classrooms you have to trace them back to your network closet technicians will work in and they'll run back to classrooms and during that process it turns into a spaghetti mess as you go through because they're rushing back to the next thing that they have to do to help staff when you do a network
024upgrade project there's a chance to clean that up why this is important when you go into troubleshoot the cleaner that is the faster and more responsive you are to staff needs it's just a much cleaner look give you an idea of what our Network closets look like though there are a wide variety of different sizes between our buildings this is an example of it's not just one Rack in these closets there are multiple and our staff are troubleshooting these on a daily basis when they're working with our staff members so it's something that goes on on behind the scenes that you don't um realize that our staff are doing and these cleanup projects are really critical to maintain the function it's not just cleaning up the wiring though behind the scenes there there are there's
025pieces of equipment called Network switches they're what basically provide the connectivity and direct traffic flow um from our district it's it's a two and from um the locations type of equipment they're really critical you have to replace them because of the fact that again after certain point in time even if they're still working they're no longer taking firmware updates and they become a security risk what you're going to hear me talk a little bit more about cyber security later but this is one of the ways that we stay up to date with there cyber security in a district making sure that we're protecting our assets camera system I mentioned before um this is a project that we're currently working on right now three of our camera servers are end of life what that means is
026the hardware even though it's still quote unquote works it's starting to get old it's no longer taking software updates it can't support newest versions of software that becomes a risk we appli for because we we try to maximize um any opportunity to us we applied for the K12 School Safety and Security Grant to replace them it's a grant that we're hoping to get $26,000 from for the district we have a portion of that that we pay ourselves but the $26,000 would what we get from the grant to help towards that project um because they need to have an upgrade it's not just for software updates there's also Alo um hard drives that are in there where they hold house like a DVR like you have at home um it improves reliability of recording making sure
027that if we are looking for a certain incident or certain happening in the building we are able to pull that up with reliability also allowing for future camera upgrades phase two of this project after we get um the server funding and get those servers in place is to apply for our use grant funding to replace analog cameras which are some of our older cameras to increase coverage and and performance this is a big project Jim cover yours um this is a big project that we've been working on our phone system upgrades we've been working with AT&T and data serve to migrate our phone lines over to a more stable platform over time um old phone lines that have been out there are no longer supported by that um company um there's still work right now
028our concern is with that older technology because they no longer support it we're eventually going to get to a point where we're not able to receive reliable phone communication to and from our families at times we need it the most we are migrating over to the current system right now we're partway through this project um Jim has been doing a lot of work beside behind the scenes which is one of the reasons why I mentioned him going through all of our internal phone numbers we have a lot and there are a lot of different types of services that they provide so it was important for him to go through and organize those to make sure that things like alarms elevators and other unique equipment will still have the correct safety functions as we do this
029migration this has to be something where behind the scenes you don't know that this happened um on our end we have stability um the upgrades have been in stages like I said to minimize the disruption of service but we've also been doing them when um student and staffs are are doing minimal use um we taking advantage of things like PD days things like that to make sure that you don't know that these upgrades are going on behind the scenes we haven't had any outages due to it um during times when students are here the other piece that we've been doing as part of this project additional phones which actually just arrived today which is why they say on order they're actually here now we have new spaces that went online as part of our reconfiguration
030um at some of our buildings those spaces did not have phone service before sometimes rooms were um chopped up into smaller rooms that needed phones so we needed to um access new phones to make sure that those spaces have the same connectivity of any of our other classrooms so um we're putting those and we have some extra phones for the purpose of phone fails we have one to immediately get service restored in that space as well UPS systems you know what these are these are uninterrupted power supplies part of our job is to make sure that our services stay up and running through a wide variety of weather conditions and happenings um during days like today where there's heavy winds and things like that you'll have certain buildings and certain locations where lights will Flicker
031and things like that for a network behind the SCS you don't want that happening with your network equipment what happens is part of it will go offline um it's unhealthy for the equipment um causes it to fail and ultimately will um cause problems for us we have UPS systems these are not generators what they are is they're battery backups they will keep the equipment online for a certain amount of time um and when they eventually run out of their battery the equipment Powers down in a way that's not as jarring as your um high-powered outages um and that's the purpose is really to protect the equipment we've needed to replace some of these and we do a really good job of keeping up to date with these we have a large one at the high
032school that's being replaced and batteries for the regular UPS systems to keep them in operation because the systems need the batteries to be refreshed in order to be able to count on them Elmwood has a replacement of batteries in place and um William Foster has a replacement ups and batteries these are all have arrived at the tech office and we are going to be or at least most of them have arrived at the tech office office we're going to be deploying them to um keep that service going cyber security is something I I mentioned Loosely before we have some cyber security initiatives and Online safety initiatives that have been implemented as a district that are just good practice we have two- Factor authentication in place in two major places one is on our network connectivity
033if you are a staff member here and you connect to our servers when you are off site you have to do something called um Cisco Duo authentication it's it's not just your username and password you will also get buzzed on your phone or some other device with a code same thing when you're accessing our Network switches um internally this is to prevent people from the outside who have um ill intentions from accessing our equipment if they do not have access to that Cisco Duo software staff accounts we have two Factor turned on for Google accounts things like that for example and I put down where aail able any of our staff accounts where there's any form of data where we have the option to turn on two Factor we have a as a district have
034put that in place we will continue to monitor that as it goes on to more of our platforms and we'll be helping our staff with rolling that out as the opportunities become available filtering because of the fact that we receive our funding through eate for our connectivity we are required to have filtering in place um we currently use two different platforms for that we use something called Cisco umbrella for our computers and our Windows computers and our Mac computers and we use something called go Guardian for our Chromebooks to protect our students from going to sites that we uh do not want them to we also have a district firewall in place that controls Network traffic and behaviors uh coming um to and from the district that's a pretty critical piece and something I'm going
035to talk a little bit more about later these are some initiatives that are in place this year right now that we are currently working through we've just been implementing something called agile blue and if you want to see a fun competition between tech people come over and see us as we are implementing agel blue what agel blue does is it put it gives us alerts and warnings to vulnerabilities and priorities for Network hardware and staff computers we have um all of our I believe all of our Network switches are now on agel Blue we also have our servers on Adel blue and we have some of our Tech staff computers on there we are going to eventually be rolling in this out to all of our staff computers What it lets you know is there
036are high priority critical updates um critical vulnerabilities on very specific machines or groups of machines so you know to prioritize updating those so we are at less of a risk as a distri um that software is monitored by an outside party we actually receive emails um letting us know hey alert this is a problem that we're noticing um you also get a score for the machines and that's where we get competitive we want our we're all trying to have our machines have the highest scores we've learned a lot in that process though about how the impact of certain software towards a score for a machine it's going to help us learn a lot for how to maintain and protect our staff computers as well it's really um so responsibility piece to make sure that we're
037protecting our district assets again um today you'll hear a lot about ransomware and things like that in the news our goal is to try to do everything we can to put things in place to prevent us from being a story um one of the other pieces that we're putting in place we just entered into a partnership with a program called NOA for this provides fishing training for staff um this is something I'm going let staff know before we do these what you do is you s a fishing tests they'll receive emails that are simulated a fishing attack and the goal for that one is for them to catch it first if they don't it will actually walk them through what they should have seen um if they click to a certain point it simulates things
038like um when somebody pretends to be a staff member and tries to get you to share information it simulates things like links that you would click on where you perhaps cause something to download or go to a site that you shouldn't um or actually something where there's file attachments that people could click on to download as well and warns them of what their behavior should be next time um the goal of this is not a Goa moment for our staff it's just to help educate our staff not just when they're here this is really something that you need to be aware of in everyday life if you've been checking your email lately we all experience fishing these days it is the number one way school districts are attacked so the reason why we're entering into
039that partnership is because we need to educate our staff that's that's where your vulnerability lies in that it's just not preparing your staff for how to handle that we're also developing some partner relationships two of them are two government entities um one is Ms ISAC which is the center for Internet Security it's a major government ear that um guides you through um just Shoring up your networks and security U making sure that we are in into relationships with people that can help us with how to do our jobs better I'm not going to pretend I'm a cyber security expert um that's one of the reasons why you enter into these relationships to get that guidance from people who are so we are implementing best practices here to serve you um the Ohio Ohio cyber range
040and Ohio cyber Reserve is another relationship that we're looking to get involved with um what they will provide for us is a district evaluation they will provide a free evaluation of what our current Network situation is and give us guidance on how to implement a proper incident response plan so if we were to receive any form of attack we're able to respond to it quickly and in a manner that will get us back up and running it's something that you have to put in place um it's not something we ever want to have to deal with but it's always good to know that we know how to respond to an incident if we were ever faced with one last relationship we're trying we actually are involved with right now is the student data privacy Consortium
041this is a fairly new group it's a k to2 nonprofit what they do is they help you with guidance on as you enter into new contracts how to um have the company um basically make sure that they are protecting your student data in a way that um assures your families that they aren't using it with other sources I hear all the time about people selling data and things like that our responsibility is as we start entering into relationships where we're staring sharing student data that we are protecting our students and our families and our staff um and student data privacy consortion their their whole purposes it's all K to2 and it's all for the purpose of making sure that your contracts meet the requirements it's other school districts um sharing best practices uh to make
042sure that um we are entering into the right data relationships with any company we work with other project we're working on right now is some equipment deployment as I mentioned earlier we have some remaining staff desktops that need to be refreshed we have the desktops available for that we are currently handling that piece we are currently in the process of replacing the kindergarten iPads um it's this is actually a really good piece for our wireless connectivity because some of the iPads that we have in place now um have some problems connecting to our wireless network so this will bring them up to our current standards and we um are engaged in a Chromebook replacement a great two three and eight right now just to keep refreshing those out um in the case of when we
043do replacement of things like Chromebooks we don't end of life those what we do is we take the Chromebooks that are still in good condition we turn them into ler devices we repair them along the way um the ones that aren't we part out and we use the parts um the reason why we don't resell them it's actually more coste effective for us to use the screens and keyboards and such that are in those Chromebooks it's it's a better value for us to have those on site to be a will use for own repairs one more project that's really important that we're working on right now two sound system related projects at the high school in the CPA we've uh purchased equipment um body mics headset mics replacement mic sets for Productions and events just
044to improve the sound quality of those events there's also some HDMI encoders being replaced for equipment connecting to our sound system just to improve the stability when you go to one of our events that they run seamlessly and they're not playing playing around with a lot of that in the background because of the fact that that equipment's just not functioning right in the high school gym and the auxiliary gym we had a company come out and they um reworked some of our wiring in there so that temporarily um we have decent sound going through our buildings what's happening right now is two of our amps have gone um and um they've had to take some of our sound equipment offline some of our speakers offline um in order to not blow out the rest of
045the other amp that's remaining there um we're replacing two of the amps um to restore sound throughout both the auxiliary and the main gymnasium there this project will include the troubleshooting of the wiring and making sure there's a proper load for um to the speakers on those amps as well so it's a big project that's going on there something that we're currently doing as well this one is an important one our website redesign is currently going on right now we work with our company e school viw um that's a sample of what our new website's going to look look like um there's going to be a lot of functional changes to our website as well though um when you especially when you use it on a mobile platform our site will now be geared to
046scale to tablets and phones in a way that's much more seamless to what you're used to now um now there's some of our menus that get hidden when you do that um and it's sometimes frustrating to find things on our site it's part of that process too I'm going to be working with some of our departments to give them access to be able to update and manage some of their pages so we can clean clean up and also work with our school buildings for that process um just to get a much more cleaner easy to find website um this this design is um it's going to be a functional Improvement which is really a key piece off of that so that's coming it's going to be in February or March um they're telling me March
047I keep pushing them for February I would like it sooner rather than later one of the last major things that we're going to be working on in a couple other projects to talk to you about but um is our Five-Year Plan we have a technology Five-Year Plan you have to look at that every year um not for the purpose of really adjusting the money that we're spending in it but revising it to current pricing revising it to the district Direction um our directions changing constantly instructional Direction and because of that sometimes your devices that you were choosing have to shift slightly in order to make that happen Chromebooks are a great example of that Chromebooks right now are the big thing are they going to be the big thing in five years I don't know
048um you put a budget piece in place so that way if you're going to make a shift you can make a logical shift a budgeted shift that stays in our lanes that we currently have to whatever is best instructionally for our students um we are going to be taking a look uh this year for the 2024 staff and student device refresh making sure we're following the fiveyear plan on that also making sure we're staying up to date with our infrastructure maintenance and replacement so that way are we can count on our Hardware here to stay up and running um we're also going to take a really close look at our display technology what where we should be heading next with display technology in our classroom so we're making targeted and budgeted decisions as far as
049refreshing our display tech one piece that we've got to look for in that 5year plan our next major Network upgrade I mentioned the fact that we've done so much Network replacement in our district right now our e- rate cycle begins again in 2026 so part of our fiveyear planning is going to be making sure we have a balanced roll out of what the next phase looks like for our Network replacement um 2026 is going really start looking at that that's when that kicks over again and we have another cycle of years that we can gradually roll out our Network refesh refresh so we will be working on that piece as well my last one for you it's um some additional projects that we currently have in development right now we've engaged um cdwg in Esports
050Ohio um for the purpose of taking a look at um potentially implementing an orts program here um the advantage of that for our kids is there's a lot of our kids that really aren't traditional athletes but need that kind of social outlet um and need that kind of guidance and I also think modeling of just online behavior and online identity Esports is a great way to provide that opportunity for kids so we're engaging um these companies for the purpose of getting some guidance as far as what is a strong way to introduce um an orts program and a strong budgeted way to introduce it so that way we can um put a cool space together um potentially to have our kids engage in that we're looking at potentially a student Tech club or student tech
051class we're still developing this place where students would be able to be involved in things like Chromebook repair and potentially maybe even laptop repair we've engaged with cdwg and Lenova for this we've also stopped by some partner districts that um have already have these programs in place to gain guidance on how they implemented the program so we can see what's the right fit for our district to make it something of our own we're hoping to get our students much more involved though in being able to um develop and interest in future potential technology careers for themselves as well we have a network closet at William Foster that needs some TLC um it's we have multiple closets at that building but one location in that building has some end of life switches they do need to
052be replaced before we get to that 2026 cycle so we're gaining pricing for that right now to see what that closet looks like but that's our single Lo closet that um has that problem what we do do is when we pull out some of that Network equipment our campus is not eligible for eate we don't get Federal funding for that so we have switches that are still of use that come out of refreshes like this we need to do though a repurposing of some of those switches to the main CS here um for the board office um so we're going to have to take care of uh things like um the closets at all of these buildings here and um particularly tech office as well so our firewall I mentioned that before before we're looking
053at pricing for a redundancy to our firewall reason being if our firewall goes down we have no network connectivity we can't run our internet because we have to have filtered internet we're required by federal law to have that um we're looking to see if there is a cost benefit to have a redundant firewall in place meaning if one of it's a hardware piece of Hardware equipment if one of them if it goes down there would be another one that would roll over too we're looking to see the cost of that to see if that's something that would be effective for us so that's currently in place last one is a preschool project we have two preschool classrooms that need to be outfitted so that way they're balanced with the other two the other the other
054two the other preschool classrooms that we have we have ordered for those classrooms um interactive display boards and iPads so that will match the other classrooms in their department so that's a project that's currently in play that equipment's on order and in rout so those will be coming uh very very soon I hit you with a lot um certainly not everything we do but a pretty broad scope of what we do do you have any questions for me uh first question is you mentioned that um there were 2,992 tickets what's the average amount of time that a ticket stays open well depends on the ticket um um we try to within 24 to 4 hours start addressing all tickets um depending on projects that creep up like today was a great example we had a
055platform today that was not available to our staff um we spent most of the day working on getting that testing platform back up and running in that particular case it takes us out of the running to be able to help with tickets at that point in time so we but our goal is 24 to 48 hours to start addressing tickets guys if you have anything to on that P yeah and also it depends on how badly we're hit that day tickets if you look at the beginning of August we can get like 100 plus tickets a day getting to all those with five people within 24 hours gets only yeah I'm only asking because I know that that when our devices go down it's like the whole world has to stop to get them fixed
056so I was just curious yeah but we do try for 24 hours that's our always been our goal so one of the things we do well as a team and it's one of the reasons why we ask for Tech tickets though there's five of us looking at those tickets it's the end of prioritizing um in the case of you know if we see somebody's down that's in key position or can't do something instructionally in their classroom we tend to prioritize things like that versus projects where we're like okay this one can wait um we never want to keep anybody waiting but some if it's somebody that's impeded from doing something that is a basic job function we try to get those vers one more question question uh you mentioned the temporary fix to the high
057school amps you said that the amps we we had a company that came out and what they did as part of their first P first visit they were analyzing what is currently going on with the system in that process they took some of the speakers off of the remaining amp that's in place for the purpose of balancing the load and improving the sound quality when we went in there that morning the sound was horrid um by the time we left it's it's not as rich and full room as the sound that you would normally want with the amount of speakers we have there but it's workable for now um certainly not where we want to keep it the purpose of getting the other amps is to restore full service to both of those gips um
058so that's great question any other questions for Mr W and his team Madam president I have a question um first I to say thank you for the presentation and um one thing that really stood out for this presentation um regarding technology um just all the hard work that you do to keep us functioning and especially where education is going now where just we're very dependent on you guys like you guys are truly the foundation work does not get done in the district if the technology is not up and running and so many facets I mean the phones to the lights to the doors opening to everything so today you really showed us how many things that to just even our Safety and Security how you guys play a huge role um in that so I
059just would like to thank you guys for your hard work and um just the many facets that you touch each day but today you really kind of touched in on just a really key classroom pieces and academic pieces um as it relates to technology and you spoke of A Five-Year Plan and just asking you and Dr Reynolds as we're trying to move our students um forward academically and be competitive um and rigor and especially as we're talking about having more Project based and and um introducing our students to um more technology and stem opportunities um are we are we look are we where we need to be or are we aligning his five-year technology plan with your academic plan to really um make our school district more competitive as it relates to giving our students
060um better access to technology and what's available to them yeah we we we have constant continuous conversations just about um staying ahead one of the things that I definitely want to make sure we compliment Mr way is his ability to look forward and also to to kind of lead the way for a lot of the school districts in this area um what he won't tell you is that he's uh spearheading a lot of things for us regionally um school districts regionally and heading a lot of the committees as well um but it's just to make sure that we and I always talk to our departments and I'd like for my department heads to be um the experts in our area so so that other school districts can see us as a resource and we've been
061doing that with his work but making sure that we we're coming up with a plan because a lot of things that we've uh inherited is there's not really been a spending plan you're talking about with things we do in operations some things we do in technology so that we're not caught in a situation where we have to spend plans that we really don't have so we had to be on the spending plan so that's where this 5e plan and also looking at what we're doing from our prek level with the things that the projects that he's working on currently just to make sure that we standing ahead of instructional technology pieces um and even talked about even holding an instructional technology conference as well just to make sure that we are on the Forefront of
062the things that are happening with education or technology with the education so yes we are definitely trying our best to to look ahead and not just kind of be reactive we're trying to St Pro active to ensure that we are consistent where education is taking us in regards to technology so yes we do have cuz I don't like you said Chromebooks today right something tomorrow I just seen a case where on the front page of one of our magazines where we got the kids putting the goggles on with the AI and actually taking them on field trips and actually teach them through actually feeling touching virtual yes yeah so you know we're probably going to be looking to be competitive and giving our kids those opportunities in elementary and and this level of Education we're
063probably going to be looking at that technology in schools probably in the next five to 10 years you're speaking music to his he's containing himself soon as we start talking about virtual reality because we have those sort of conversations we're talking about either virtual reality people is what we talking about with Esports because Esports is a a huge thing that's coming up and our students are are missing out because we didn't jump on that um so we are considering because even on the secondary level um there are colleges that provide opportunities for students uh University of agan uh the illustrious Johnson C Smith University you know I had to throw them in there Johnson C Smith um but they have programs that they've placed a lot of funding and even scholarships for students in in
064E Sports and those are the things that we are trying to make sure that we're staying ahead of um the things that are happening you R somewhere just making sure that we're not trying to catch up we want to stay on the front FR that also to the point of some of your question there when it comes to the technology depart we can't work in as Silo um we have Partnerships with I mean people are sitting here are people that are they're my colleagues um if there's a curricular initiative going on we have to support the curricular initiative and work together and get to know what that curricular initiative is so technology doesn't make those decisions on its own technology works together with curriculum and with the teaching and learning department and making sure that
065those pieces go into place work very closely with HR with data you know I work with Jonah's Department with Gordon I we have we have good relationships here and and you can't work in as Silo you've got to we've got to be here to support and actually you saw with the amount of platforms that we support a lot of times our role is getting it up and running so that way they can do what they need to do day to day and then we jump back in when there's a problem today was an example of a couple big problems that I had we had to jump back into certain platforms and resolve and that's a lot of times our role is sometimes we've in and out of our relationships with departments and their platforms and
066the work that they're doing to make sure that they're back up and running again and there's other things that you know are totally our responsibility I can't do what I do without uh the team that I have backing me I've got a great team that backs what I do but also the knowledge Bank as far as our Five-Year Plan when I talked about The Five-Year Plan it's a five-year financial plan um based on where we're at right now it's the reason why it has to be modified every year because we're trying to keep a budget in place in that budget which you want to account for is making sure that you've got spending in place for your day-to-day operations but also some funding in place that you can use to start taking a look at
067some of those Next Level things and you may think now that like three years down the road you want to purchase this device but now all of a sudden there's a new technology that's come out that actually is better suited to serving an initiative that we want to put in place that's a better opportunity for our students you have to be prepared to shift that budget to that newer technology and trying to keep up with that um it's for me it's trying to stay very well vered in what new technolog is coming out not jumping to buy every piece of technology that's coming out but trying to see which ones are going to have the most instructional benefit because there's some things that are meant to be an entertainment medium there's other things that are
068meant to be um a diverse medium where students can create content students can learn from it and um which ones are the ones that really belong in instructional institutions and lead to Career paths for our kids yeah you know from the earliest year straight on through to high school years depending on um what the technolog it's a constant process and you can't do it alone you you've got to do it in partnership I've got to be very well aware of what's going on with each of our departments and what their goals are and how we can support them any other questions I do have a couple questions how many analog cameras do we still have I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head do you guys know off the top
069of your head still quite quite a bit at the high school you said yeah so hopefully we through this work that you're working that you've talked about will be able to get that down to zero and we have the new and updated cameras for our the high school and you can tell the difference between this it's clear you're looking at a screen full of camera views you can tell which ones on the endog so yeah that's definitely something that we making an adjustment that's part of the reason why we're it's really important for us to update the infrastructure behind the scenes because the the cameras themselves if they don't have somewhere for you to connect to um in a way for you to house the the better images that you're looking for they're pretty useless
070so um we we're looking to put that in place so that way we can do exactly what okay and my last question is you talked about the ups and that if there was a power outage the UPS will um keep things up and going for a certain amount of time what's that amount of time that it would keep us up and going so the honest answer to that is they're rated for a certain amount of time based on the load that's on there many things are plugged in um so it's usually guys we strived for 4 to8 hours per closet but for the main head of our Network and for the high school closets they are and theoretically even uh William Foster May believe leaf and Elwood they have generator backups so we're hoping that
071the UPS keeps on long enough for that generator to kick on and then that generator will kick in recharge the batteries and our equipment will not see an outage at all okay but that generator kicking on that's the uh that's the caveat okay so in my time here one of the things that I've been really proud of and and says a lot about our team and and the network infrastructure that they have in place is the fact that um we've had outages but they haven't been ours we have outside Partners our connectivity comes from the outside we had one on Friday we were out for a half day and that wasn't our outage um and the reason I'm even noting that is it's more of a testament to exactly what Tim's talking about there the
072fact that our equipment stays on the ride we always look to our equipment to see if there's an outage if it's us because if so we have a lot more control of that actually strange this going to seem like a strange thing to say but it's easier if it is us because we have the ability to do something about it when it's an outside partner we're pretty much at the mercy of their response to it whereas when we when it's us we can quickly do something deploy somebody and do something about it um and we always we're troubleshooters we want to fix the situation when we can so um I answer your question it did it did any other questions all right thank you very much to you and your team thank you very much
073all that you do all right next on our agenda is our superintendent report thank you mad president thank you on behalf of everyone in garford Aly City School Happy New Year to our community as we look forward the forthcoming spring semester students and staff will continue to be challenged to prepare for the testing season ahead the help of our parents is critical to ensure that long-term success of our students and your commitment to keeping our children in the classroom is highly important studies Pro that more time in the classroom and less time away from school will improve academic performance so it's precisely why garford the high city schools is align with the Cleveland Browns and their stay in the game initiative so we thank the Cleveland Browns for being such faithful partners and supporters of
074our efforts the start of the of the new calendar year uh means that testing season is right around the corner and then the classroom staff members will be doing their part to prepare of students for the yearly evaluations on the home front a number of helpful reminders uh will supplement the school's steps to prepare and we have listed them here first keep proper rest and sleep patterns in mind a sound diet and healthy uh meal during the testing season also help students remain focused as noted above uh being in school during test prevents catching up and Mis work so from a social emotional standpoint while we as uh adults uh should be mindful of these reminders but putting overt stress on test on our children is always uh useful uh as well encouraging uh the
075the best performance for our students U puts them in the right mindset a lot of things that I've said to my own students just try your best my own children try your best and if we are doing that that will be extremely helpful so please keep in mind as as we approach the all important testing season uh an ex exciting um event will be taking place in the coming month at Elwood Elementary School which is being called are you smarter than the third grader an initiative to further involve parents in the academic work of our students now while we are certain uh certainly learn more about this program which will take place on a given night U that will be announced in the near future parents will learn how to interpret academic reports from the
076fall and the lessons taking place in classroom to prepare for testing now this type of creativity is uh certainly intended to spark and enhance levels of Interest among our parents so please stay tuned for more information I'm actually very excited about that um I was uh kind of giv some information on what it would look like and I think this is something that our parents would be extremely interested in as well so finally the month of January each year is dedicated to honoring the the loyal service of our board board members uh during school board recognition month I would like to thank president mlet King vice president Heather Morrison and members Tanda Cox Michelle M Daniels and Ashley M Thomas for serving as importantly Aon between the community and our school district the Strategic leadership
077you provide and the thoughtful policies that you've helped guide the daily operations of our school district we extend our gratitude so thank you for your service your sacrifice and your compassion for for helping guide the Garfield Heights City Schools thank you all very much and that will conclude my report thank you Dr R res all right our next um agenda item is remarks from the public um we don't have anyone that signed up so we will go on to our next agenda item which is reports and recommendations of the treasurer could I get a motion to move and wave the reading of 81 can I get a second second any discussion sure would you like to absolutely talk a little bit about you know I do um so um this this time of the year
078we're getting into our slow period um the tax budget which you just approved earlier this month kind of um plays into what our budgeting process looks like U moving forward into July we are identifying some errors that we need to fix on our end when it comes to State reporting that's kind of throwing off our revenue from the state so you can see on the board report we had a little bit of a swing and that was for the update from December when the state kicked in some of their payment variables um especially with the economic disadvantaged piece um so that variable changes it's actually changed significantly from last year to this year last year I think the variable was around 4.1 um per pupil was a multiplier now it's about 2.8 and the state
079uses a new matching system to match kids that are programmed with Medicaid the fair school um the national lunch program um C all of that which were a full C District the question now is when are we going to get um when's the state and recognize the matching for some of our kiddos that weren't pulling in originally when that happens our payments are going to be back back uh retro it will be made whole um that's the the only big difference that you would see if you were looking at at um November's financial and December's Financial so otherwise we're humming along as planned and we're looking again uh looking like a pretty solid um ending Surplus for the fiscal year any questions for Phil all right so that was moved by Miss Thomas and seconded
080by Miss Cox can I get roll call yes Miss Thomas yes Miss Cox yes Mrs Daniels yes Miss Morrison yes Miss King yes next is uh superintendent recommendations certified staff I get a motion to move and [Music] wave moving wave um 10 one through [Music] 14 through 13.1 soov second any discussion with no discussion that was moved by uh Miss Morrison and second by Miss Daniels can I get roll call please miss Morrison yes Miss Daniels yes Miss Cox yes Miss Thomas yes Miss King yes we don't have any policy items correct correct mam president yes um I'm sorry could we go back to discussion for that last motion can we go back until we voted the discussion or I can just ask later it's okay I can ask later all right uh we are
081on 15.1 can I get a motion to moov W the reading of 15.1 through 15.8 actually we'll go to 16.1 so that would be um 151 through 16.1 a move can I get a second second second any discussion Madam president Miss K I do have a question um I noticed on uh 15.2 um it was noted that both programs satisfi OD requirements for credit Flex I'm just curious do the other ones um have some type of process to follow any OD requirements um not all of them some of them we have um brought on board and Dr Reynolds probably knows the programs a little better than I do but some of them are brought on board just for some social emotional support and some are brought on board to help um meet some of the
082new OD um requirements around finan finial literacy I'm referring to 15.1 and 15.3 so 15 okay these are programs that we've worked with in the past um we created um some requirements for all the companies that we're working with that are responding to social emotional programming basically for our students and they completed all the pieces that we require for the programming and those in particular are two programs that are focused on our young ladies um they do two separate things what we try to do is to keep it as diverse as possible so that one program that might respond to one a certain group of young ladies may not respond to another group so we try to mix it up a little bit just so that we are responding to the needs of our students
083but queen I am and I am Bella have been two groups that have been worked out for us so do they I guess my question my other question is um do they keep or provide us with the amount of students that they work with in any type of success rate yes so one of the requirements they uh our pup service department created a an RFP program basically requirements in order to work with us these are the things that we are in need and data is one of those um we last year um the board has asked for this information I am heavy on data and I'd like to make sure that if we're working with organizations that there's proof that these that they're doing is actually working so this is a requirement yes for any
084of the companies that we're working with that data has to be provided to show their effectiveness so that we're not just kind of spinning our bills and working with organizations that not really showing an impact on our students and I just want to follow up with Miss Cox because I was going to ask what did the data show us um this year did it show that we were um obviously we were they're making an impact because we brought brought them back but what did it actually show us was was there a decrease in the number of referrals did we see these young ladies um getting more involved with school activities what type of data did what did the data actually show us Dr this is from people service department this is Dr PR Mrs King
085the data showed that a number of our girls who for example uh had difficulty in making friends had difficulty resolving conflict they became more Adept at problem solving getting along better uh listening uh we had young ladies who uh sometimes did not have an interest in school therefore they grade for suffering so these groups that we have as you can see here tonight the focus from all of them is to make them more academically aware and to make them a positive influence in the schools okay thank you there any other any other discussion or questions um I do have a question just about these groups that we're bringing on board overall are we only offering these groups just for our at risk students or are we also just offering these groups just to students who
086may have an interest in um acquiring some of these um social emotional skills that just strengthening the skills so they may not be at risk they not may not be a student that's having challenges in school but they may have they may be shy or they may have trouble building friendships they may not have Direction yet they may not they may have self-esteem issues but they're not showing any typical risk factors at school um but they just may need the supports that these types of groups um could provide them um be more proactive before some of these things come up and can possibly become a risk can are there opportunities for those type of students to participate in those groups some more positive peer models it's all of the above so how we use this
087um there's it's referred to as mtss where there's a tiered approach um and fortunately we have a social emotional uh coordinator social emotional learning coordinator and she provided a a kind of a screener to so that we can identify those kids who need a little bit more it may not be Behavior it may be they need to be a part of something maybe they're a little shy maybe they're working on confidence and they become a part of the tier approach they would probably run into tier two those are students who are were more targeted those are the students that we'll end up putting there but we don't exclude those kids we just want to be a a part of something because that that says a lot as well um in my research those kids who
088are more connected to school do better in school uh so those are we're not going to just limit it to the our kids who have problems they're the only ones that can be a part of these programs no we we do Target our our students who need a little bit more but we also open up for kids we just want to be a part of something okay thank you yes brother M Thomas um I know a lot of the contracts had um ranges so like you know we can serve 20 to 100 59 students um May the board be provided with an update of how many students each program is taken in and what the cost of that is um because although I saw a lot of ranges in how many students they can serve
089I didn't see a range in price gotta um so if there is one price for 160 students can we make sure we got 160 students in here um yeah so if the board could receive a update on how many students and what the final contracted amount for each group is um I would appreciate that sure we we have that information readily available we'll go and get that taken care of any other question all right that was moved by Miss Thomas and second by Miss Morrison um oh I actually have nope I'm good moved by Miss Thomas second by Miss Morrison can I get roll call please yes Miss Thomas yes Miss Morrison yes Miss Cox yes Mrs Daniels yes Miss K yes that's on our agenda is remarks from the public and we don't have
090any remarks our next regular board meeting um is on on February 20th at William faler at 6:00 we also will have a special board meeting work SE session at 6 o' on February 12th at this time I will entertain a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting at want to give me the time 716 is there a motion to adjourn at 76 second is there a second second all right that was moved by Miss Thomas and second by Miss Cox can I get roll call please miss Thomas yes Miss Cox yes M Daniels yes Miss Morrison yes Miss K yes needing a journ