Okay. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for waiting, for those who are in the waiting room. My name is Farad Jimmy Jones. I'm the chair of the Contracts Committee, and this will be the first that we've had in a long while. I don't think we've had one in two years, right? In two years. I think it's been two years since we've had a contracts committee. And so this will be the start, and I'm very, very proud to be the chair of it. So I hope to do the PEP as well as the community proud so we can really get to the
bottom of these contracts. So, it's a small group of us. I have my PEP members here, so I'll just let them be quick introductions, and those who are online can move. So let me get started. Hello, everyone. Aviana Luznera, she/her. I represent Queens CEC on the town educational policy. I also chair the Utilization committees, which will be meeting in this room on Thursday. Hi, everyone. Camille Casserey. I am the Brooklyn Borough president's appointee to the PEP, and I'm thrilled to be here. I also see Yadira
Jimenez is online. Are we able to allow her to introduce herself? Hi, everyone. Yadira Jimenez, mayoral appointee. All right. Is there anyone else that wants to... No? I'm not sure. I think that's it. Okay. So I kind of want to start it off basically talking about some of our norms and kind of discussing how we should begin our norms. I know the first thing I'm going to get tightened up is the time. So 6:00 is probably not the best time to start.
So we're going to be discussing changing the time as a committee, and I would like to see if we can agree on a proper time to start. So we know that 6:00 is not going to work. Maybe 6:30 is not going to work, but maybe 7:00 or 7:30. You have to be. So starting just... Because Noah and I ran through this last year and again this year, if you start at 7:30, that means that three of us need to be here at 7:30. At 7:30. Which is, I'm okay with that, but I don't know if other members will be here, and we have to have quorum in order to do any
official business. Is that right, Noah? Yes. Thank you. So if we do it at 6:00, then it definitely cannot be on the day of the BIRs meeting. Mm-hmm. Because I got spanked on that. So if we want to keep it at 6:00, we got to do it in between those meetings. Did you have- So can we do 6:30? Sure. 6:30? All right. Is that better? So we can agree on that. Well, you have to work late too. Oh, 6:30 is good. Just that if we do it on the days that we're at BIRs- Mm-hmm ... then we already know we can't be here realistically.
Yeah. It's just- Yeah. We tried it. It's not working. You could also pace it around when the PEP meeting is. I have found that we've fallen into a rhythm of having the Utilization Committee a week before PEP. A week before the PEP. So we have kind of worked it that way, whereas we're getting as close to PEP with as much information we can have- Mm-hmm ... so that we can have a complete conversation or as complete a conversation as we can. Okay, so we- And BIR is difficult to schedule around. Yes. It's impossible. Well- Well, you have the dates already, though, right? Yes, we have the dates, but we will adjust the times.
Yeah. For 6:30. So we have an agreement pretty much on that. The next one is, of course, our agenda in terms of constructing our agenda. Should our agenda just remain the same as- The same as what? I mean the same as the rest of the committees, the way that they structure. What do you think? For the agenda, it can be whatever you want. All right. Can we just keep it uniform to- Yeah. That's fine ... that until we can- Yeah ... add to it, since this is our first one? And I kind of want to just go ahead and
get that all out the way. And in terms of communication, we will take care of the communication in terms of notifying our CECs and our public so that we can build the capacity. So that will be another thing that we need to work on in terms of communication. So we'll do that. And Noah, I'll make sure that you are communicated with that too. All right. And we had our contracts briefing this afternoon. Is there anything that we need to really discuss
at this time that we can bring up to the PEP meeting? I like Camille's suggestion, her offline suggestion about... Sorry. Panel member Casserey's offline suggestion about maybe discussing the different types ofContracts and the different types of agreements that we are presented with. If anything, this recording can be used for us to reference in the future or for future committee members to reference to understand the different types of contracts that we are reviewing. Okay. Thank you for that. Yeah. As far as what she says.
Yeah. Okay. Sure. I just wasn't sure what you were going to say. No. So you said discuss the contracts that just- Yeah, the different types. Different types. So basically, we would define what request for proposals is, what MTAC is, multiple task award contract, what a competitive sealed bid is, what negotiated services are, what it means to amend or extend- Mm-hmm ... a contract, what a listing application
is, what discretionary grant or other required method is. Basically go through all the types of contracts and what those mean and how they impact schools, where the money's flowing from, where the money's flowing to. Does it show up in a school allocation memorandum with SAM? So we're going to demystify the language that's in there so that it's more understandable and digestible for our
public. So that is the work that we will begin doing and then begin our sessions with. If I join, can I put something on the screen for you? Yes. If I join on Zoom, can I put something on screen? Yes. Thank you. Just like hear me. Hear me. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure. Be honest. But there's no audio. Huh? No audio, yeah. Okay. So are there any specific contracts? I know that we talked about-- I know AI was discussed earlier today. Yeah. So I'm going to enter this, and then we can maybe pull up just the contracts agenda that's available on the TX website.
But I'm trying to get into this meeting right now. I got these. Because then we can just go through it in real time. Thank you. In case you want to the page over. See. Mm-hmm. Oh. Are you in, or... I don't see you yet. I'm trying to find the link. Oh, just go to learndoe.org/pep. Yeah, that was probably the easier way to do it. There we go. That is where our... So I guess we're all... Is everyone- I have it open. I'll just- Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
It's loading the progress of this. So there we are. Thank you. Let me just promote it and you have to say yes. This will be good here. There we go. Yeah. Can you zoom? Yeah. Thank you. I feel like your zoom might be better. It's a better zoom.
And do you want to just have the audience view now? I think everyone can see it hopefully. Yeah. It's available to the public too, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, all of them. That's another thing too, is we can figure out a way to- That we should share the accounts available. We can connect that to our attendees. Okay. That's cool. All right. So to find the contracts agenda, we're just going to use my favorite way of finding stuff, which is Googling NYCPS PEP, and then we can go to the meeting schedule right here. We're going to navigate over to the 29th, and then we're going to go to-
Which should be the voting date ... which should be the voting date, correct. That is the meeting date and the voting date. And then we're going to click here to Contracts Agenda, and it's going to open us up into a new page. That is the method that you can use, or the route that you can use to find the contracts agenda every month, unless it hasn't been posted yet, in which case there will be no hyperlink. And the learndoe.org is committees. That is where they find it. Yeah, it says Government Affairs for some reason, but if you just enter it there, it'll pull you into this one. Cool. All right. Okay. So we want to discuss some of the
items that are on the agenda that was knowledge of earlier today.We have agenda items ranging from the proposals all the way to discretionary grants. And, I think that's it. The discretionary grants and the multiple tasks and war contracts. Okay. And then also the competitive sealed, the bidding contracts that are there too. Mm-hmm. Is there anything that we are...
I know there's many things that we're concerned with that we want to bring to the surface and discuss. I know that you raised something earlier today about one of these contracts. The dissection table? Yes. Okay. That was- Well, maybe let's go backwards a second. Yes. And just... So the PEP meets once a month with procurement and the deputy chief procurement officer, Jodi Sammons Chen, and her staff.
Shout out to Brant Douglas and- Thank you, Brant ... Alicia Buhlert. And so we get a briefing every month from the team, and they present each one of these contracts in detail to us, and the PEP is able to ask a myriad of questions related to the contracts. And so, if our questions can't be answered right there during the meeting, the team will either write to us
afterwards and, so we're able to get our answers. And at today's meeting, there were, as Faraji was mentioning, 30 items on the agenda. Yes. What I had talked about specifically was item number 11, which is a competitive sealed bid for a virtual dissection table. And there's $333,333
estimated highest annual spend. And so, I will ask my lovely assistant, Adrianna, here. So you know what, can you go back a page- Yeah. ... just to- Sure ... explain how this works? For sure. So if you go on the very bottom, you can go back to page one. Ah, yeah. Like right there. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So now, the way that the DOE has created this document, which is really brilliant, is there's a cover page that lists each item, and then if you
click on the item, it will bring you directly into the document. So you can see there's 153 pages in this particular contract package. And we are going to go to item 11 to look at the dissection table. Now I can't read that. Is that... What is that? I think we can zoom if you click this little button. No, it's okay. You can leave it. I'll just take a copy of it. Here. Yeah, zoom. Oh, that'd be great. So, maybe come to the top so that we can identify all of these different items. There we go.
So as you can see, agenda item 11 on the right, request for authorization to contract with Anatomage Inc. for virtual dissection table. So each one of these contract descriptions is going to have a title, procurement method, request for bids per DOE procurement policy and procedures, section 3-02. So the DOE policy and procedures manual is a public document-
Mm-hmm ... I believe. Yeah. I'm assuming you can find that on InfoHub probably. I think, yeah. You can type in PPP. Mm-hmm. Okay. PPP. And, so you're going to get a lot of information just right at the very top of each document. So the annual amount that is the high spend, and then the total amount would be, this particular contract is a three-year term, so we're going to do three
through three, times three, is going to be a million-dollar spend. And the funding source is tax levy. Sometimes these funding sources will be different depending on where they're coming from, the money. And so the contract is not retroactive. So, it's not going to keep rolling over and rolling over. And this contract term is three years. However, there are two one-year options. Mm-hmm. Which means that after the three years passes- Mm-hmm ... if the DOE wants to
extend the contractThey would have the ability to do that for two more years at the estimated highest annual amount, 333,333. And so then, in theory, we are actually looking at $1,666,000. Right. Okay. So you want to scroll down and get into- Yeah. Yeah. So now you see the vendor name is there. Sometimes, multiple task award contracts will have multiple vendors, but in this
particular scenario, we just have the one vendor. And for transparency, there is their address. The contract manager is the person at the DOE office who is the contact person. So Alicia Chang works for our Office of Student Pathways. And then lead contracting officer. These are all the people at the DOE that if we, PEP members or members of the public, have a question,
those are the people who are in charge of this contract and can answer those questions. And so if any of you have ever had the opportunity to go on college tours, you may have come across one of these virtual dissection tables. Coincidentally, I saw one for the first time last weekend, and it's very, very interesting to see how it works. Thank you for giving that demonstration. Mm-hmm. It's everything that you would think it could do.
So it's like a classroom table. Mm-hmm. You could fit maybe 10, 12 people around it standing. And it's interactive. Per our questions today, this is a very advanced machine. And so it would be used by schools that- Have a healthcare pathway ... have the CTE healthcare pathway. We discussed in the contract, it said that there were 1,400 hours of training required.
So this was an in-depth conversation we've had because I felt like that was a lot of hours to ask. And so then, ultimately, it was concluded that 1,400 hours would allow the person training to really be an expert. For example, if you were a surgeon trying to use this table to just work out your thought process before you are actually moving on to a live subject. So these are some of the conversations that were happening
during these contract bids. And one of our schools, I'm not sure if another one does, but I know at the very least that Northwell Health in Queens has one of these vivisection tables, and it is incredible. When the chancellor visited a couple of months ago, panel member Alban and I joined him at Northwell, and we were able to use the table, or I said vivisection, I meant dissection table, in real-time. And it is amazing. And it shows the students as they are interacting with the
table exactly what is happening. So if they're dissecting or cutting into the skin, it shows the layers of the skin that they are cutting into. It is quite cool, quite amazing without having to have storage for body parts. Yeah. Yeah. Cadaver storage. Exactly. And it's not dynamic. That's what I heard. So Camille, if we can, can we touch on the differences? So for this one, this is a competitive sealed bid, and that's a lot different. I mean, all of us can talk about it, but that's a lot different than a multiple task award contract, which we see so much more often, the
MTAF. And we can go to one of those. So a concealed bid is a what? A competitive sealed bid. Yeah. So you know what? Let's look at item number three. Mm-hmm. Now I'm about to see that. Okay, because item number three is a really fun, great art education services. Yeah. So why don't you run through that- Yeah ... and I'll just look something up. This is a multiple task award contract that we discussed today, will be voted on, on the 29th,
for arts services. So this is the funding source here. Sorry, arts services for arts programming, educational programming. The funding source here is also a tax levy. The contract term is five years with one three-year option. So five and three is eight. You may have heard the panel in the past having conversations about a five-year term limit for a contract term being too long and not allowing us enough opportunity to have touch back with the vendor, or vendors. And five years
also has a tendency to feel like a foregone conclusion in a lot of ways. That if they make it to the five years, they will automatically receive the extension, and there's really no opportunity to discuss improvements or discuss additional services or things like that. We have to start the process all over again, essentially. So we continue to have conversations about the PEPsInterest in moving forward without a five-year contract, but following some-- and thank you to the Contracts and Procurement office for explaining this to us so
diligently and so many times. There is a longer process that we have to go through to begin putting out contracts that are shorter than five years, so two to three years. So now that we've covered that bit, we can move forward. So as Camille mentioned, for the dissection table, the contract manager, all of the information to contact folks at the DOE is listed here. And I jump to this one first because, again, as Camille mentioned a minute ago, when there are multiple vendors, they will not necessarily be listed here. If there are too many of them, they'll be listed down the row-
Down ... down below. Yeah. So this one has a table itself, and we can get to that in a second. So for this multiple task award contract, you can see that the programs that will be offered are in dance, music, theater, visual arts, moving image. And they have their information about how the program will work and essentially what it is that we're paying for. Okay. I can take it over. Okay. Thank you. So the multiple task award contracts, so MTACs, function like a pre-qualification list.
Once a vendor receives a contract, they go into a pool of vendors with contracts for a specified component. For example, direct student services, arts education. And if a school or office needs the service, they will issue a task order with a scope of work, and the pre-qualified MTAC vendors will then bid on the work. No MTAC vendor is guaranteed any spend through their contract. It is only paid based on the orders they win and the services they provide.
So MTAC vendors are proposed on a rolling basis, and it's essentially an open-ended request for proposal, RFP, request for proposal. In order to change the MTACs to three-year terms, we need to terminate all the vendor contracts and start over. So this is why although the PAC would like to see contracts that are not five years, the five-year rule, let's say, actually lives in the city, not at the DOA. So right
now, MTACs are going to be five years. Working on some changes. Okay, so these are the different tasks offered. So Dance Wave offers a childhood residency program. Education Through Music offers music instruction. Yeah. And you can go through this section or this section of information for this contract to see all of the other tasks, essentially, that the vendors would provide. Okay. To the top? Yes. To the top. Okay. Let's see. The other one that we're looking at. Let's see.
We got negotiated services. Yeah. Which agenda number is that? Twelve. Twelve. So that contract says, it's the request for authorization for a negotiated services contract for the city transition seats, and it is the estimated highest annual amount of $2,884,169. The estimated total amount is 2 million, 800... I already said that. And the funding source is from city tax seven.
The contract is retroactive. And the contract term is from July 1st, 2025, to June 30th this year, There is an option to extend for one year, which brings the option amount to the same amount. The vendor's name is Monique Scales and under the contract, those are all the contract managers listed there, Operations of Division of Early Childhood Education. Oops, sorry.
And then, of course, the lead contracting officer, JoDina Clanton, who's also the Senior Director of Research and Special Projects, Division of Early Childhood Education. All right. So the whole purpose behind this particular contract is to request authorization from the pad to enter into a negotiated services contract with the vendors listed, for one year, to provide high-quality instructional programming as part of the Pre-K for All and the 3K for All programs. And so in the discussion,
in the request for proposals, which was released in March 5th, 2019, sought to identify eligible high-quality vendors willing to collaborate with the DECE. And I want to unpack that acronym, which is- Department of Early Childhood Education. Yes. All right. So, umTo provide Head Start services for eligible children ages six weeks to five years old. Wow. Through the RFP, that's request for proposal, right?
Mm-hmm. Okay. Vendors were awarded a specified number of slots for each age group, per child rates were negotiated for each age group. All right, so I'm going to scroll down a little bit. And so, in that paragraph, the DOE has made their commitments for the 2025/2026 school year. To prevent service disruption, given delays in the federal award notifications, the city of New York is providing one year of a new program model to ensure these providers can continue offering early childhood education to families.
Yeah. And so we've seen a lot of these award contracts. Because of the delays in the federal funding rewards, these families were at risk of losing access to care and services. And so to prevent service disruption, the City of New York is providing one year of support to ensure these providers can continue offering services. And that's essentially what the negotiated services contracts are that we look
at, is us purchasing or paying for services that we have already used, that were negotiated in terms of hours, location, number of students, et cetera. You do have a hand raised. Someone, I think our speaker, Rima, is here. Yes. Can we have her as a panelist? She's one of the pep members. She's invited, but- Oh, great. Okay. Hi, Rima. Rima, did you want to speak? Oh, she's unmuted. No, I just wanted to be promoted. Good evening, I wanted to say that I was here. Thank you. Hi. Welcome, Rima. Hi, Rima. Okay. And I see Lupe Hernandez also, and...
Yes. President Elkabbi, is that you? No. Oh, wait. It's that person. Christina, is that you? Thank you. Jennifer? No, we're just proceeding. I don't see a lot of this. Christina from CEC 30. Yes. That's me. Hi. Hi. Good evening. Thank you for being here, everybody. Thank you for opening it up. Decided. Okay. For those who are just joining us, we have decided to change the time of our committee meetings to 6:30, so we can start on time. So, we have been going through the agenda items.
So far, we went through agenda item number 11, item number three- Mm-hmm ... and item number seven. Was it? Did we go four? Item number four. I don't think we did number one, but we did three. I- We did- Oh, we, 11. Yeah, we did a few of them. Yeah. So we talked about the virtual dissection tables. Is there any one of you that are participating that... Rima, is there something that you want to also discuss in terms of the agenda item that's on the contracts event agenda?
Not at the moment. Okay. And then we also have Lupe Hernandez. Hi, Lupe. Good evening. I'm under the weather, so just listening, but if something comes up, I'll definitely raise my hand. Thank you. Okay. So we're just basically, since this is the first time in two years that we've had a contract agenda, I kind of want to assure everyone that we're going to try to build more capacity around this, because this is kind of like where the meat is on the bone. And, we want as many people to be aware of where that money is
being spent and what contracts are actually active, which ones that are seeking for extension, and the ones, the proposals, that are up for a vote. So, those are the things that we kind of want to ensure transparency on for the public, and so that they know exactly how that money's being spent and where it's going. And so, we want to build capacity around that. So that's going to be the goal of this contract
committee. And then going through with some of these contracts with a fine-tooth comb, and then that will help us ensure that we have public backing on the votes that we make during our pep meetings.Um, is there any other contract agendas that might, um- Let's explain what a listing application is. Okay. So those are items 22
through 24. So, listing applications are a way for the DOE to obtain proprietary and sole source education software, books, and instructional materials while ensuring data privacy and securing compliance, as well as getting the best pricing. Listing applications do not guarantee that any school or office will purchase these products. So basically, these are negotiated contracts that the
DOE makes with vendors so that schools can get the best prices. But the money actually comes out of the school's budget. So the DOE is negotiating terms, and it's a lot less expensive than if the school was trying to contract with these vendors directly. So in this case, the three listing applications happen to be educational software, Age of Learning, a vendor called iTutor and Kaplan.
And so, do you want to talk about it? Thank you. Yeah. So the vendor called iTutor also does business as Full Mind. They note that, or the contracts office notes when any vendor DBAs as something else. So that one is noted there. I think maybe for Kaplan, we just go over that one since it is like a- Mm-hmm ... buzzy vendor. So, this is item number 24, request for authorization to contract with Kaplan K to 12 Learning Services to provide the entire line of Kaplan K to 12
Learning Services. And so a lot of our schools are actually currently working with Kaplan. Kaplan has a contract that offers test preparation books for summer and fall programs designed to help students prepare for the specialized high school exam and the scholastic aptitude test, which is the SHSAT and the SAT. Mm-hmm. So both of those tests have transitioned to
digital platforms, which means that our students need to be prepared to work with these digital resources and be familiar with them. And so this contract allows an opportunity for students to partake in test prep. Right. And so what was brought to our attention is that although Kaplan offers an AI product, the student-facing AI
product is not part of this contract. And principals had been solicited and relayed that even in the schools where they are currently using this software, the schools are not using the AI component. So there's no AI component in this contract at all, nor is there an AI component in the other two listing application software. Excuse me. Thank you. That is a new thing that the Contracts and Procurement Office is doing,
and I would like to thank them again for the extra work that they do on the back end to have a sentence as simple as that. "This educational software line does not include any AI products." I'm sure that took hours of work to nail down that sentence alone, so thank you for doing that and including that. Another part of these contract agendas that I really appreciate is this vendor responsibility section. Kaplan has a reputation, good or bad, it does. And in this vendor responsibility section, they do include that information. So there is a level of transparency that is
included directly in the contract's agenda. So if you have a concern, which I usually do, I go right to there first, and if the answer is not present in there, then I have questions, of course. So they do address an article that was released back in 2021. So that was five years ago. It was quite some time ago. And then they also put in essentially their answer for why they choose to proceed with Kaplan- Mm-hmm ... or with any of the vendors, if there's an issue that is noted.
They do answer for it there. Maybe it's not an answer you like, but it's an answer. Yeah. I know that there may be-- We're not endorsing any of the vendors at all. That's not what the purpose of the contracts committee is. But we want to spotlight who those vendors are and how to do the proper research in finding out what they are, what their business is, and why is the Department of Education invested in having them provide services for our students. So,
we definitely want to make sure that we bring those things to the surface so that we can have more informative questions to askUm, instead of keep wondering who Carolyn is, we actually have done-- we want to do the research that is going to ask those questions. So is there anything-- does anybody out there may have any concerns or questions about um, this agenda item? Go ahead, Susan. For this one, no. But if we can just for a minute, because Rima and Lupe are on the line as well.
It will apply to everyone because we all care. But if we jump to contract agenda item number 27. Oh, can I interrupt? Yes, please. So item 25 through 30. These are discretionary grant or other required method, quote, unquote. Mm-hmm. In this case, these items are discretionary items that have been funded by city council. And so the DOE just acts as a pass-through. This is money that city
council has gifted, let's say, to specific schools, typically. And then, the way that the money filters through is that it comes into the DOE budget and then goes to where it's going to go. Go ahead. Okay. So for contract item number 27, this is a request to do business with the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families to provide college and career readiness programs. Now, the reason that I wanted to highlight this one is because,
I pick up the AM New York newspaper every morning to do the crossword on the back, or on the last page. Rather, it's not on the back, it's on the last page. And a couple of days ago, there was this really interesting article in English and in Spanish, and it's titled "CUNY Students Face Tough Job Market in NYC with Latino Graduates Hit Hardest." I'm not going to read the entire thing, it's available on their website. But there's a section here that says, "While more and more New Yorkers are pursuing college degrees as a ticket to the middle class, if the jobs aren't available at the finish line, then it really raises the bar for
what policymakers and our city's largest urban university system need to do to ensure that those degrees actually translate into careers and economic mobility." Now, I do not like patting any arm of the government on the back or any bureaucracy on the back, but I am quite impressed that we have this sitting on our contracts agenda for this month, given how critical this has gotten that it's made its way into something like the AM New York newspaper. I would like to discuss how our contracts and our services that we offer within our schools are able to
kind of target these concerns more closely. I'd love for all of us to talk about that and kind of provide assistance or provide solutions instead of just always asking them questions. So I think that this contract really is worthwhile because it could help the DOE create some guidelines- Absolutely ... and pathways for better support for specifically at-risk high school students.
Mm-hmm. What I do want to flag is that this contract, which is for almost $70,000 annual, only is going to service 21 students. Mm-hmm. But it does offer 24 hours of foundational career readiness training. For example, resume writing, interviewing, mentorship, college exposure with budding branches, and hands-on experience like job shadowing and cybersecurity instruction.
There's a mandatory pre-internship training, and this program leads to paid internships, advancing equity and economic stability for youth typically limited to professional exposure. So, I mean, just saying that out loud, it just sounds like that should be part of- Our everyday work ... our everyday work. Yeah. And I think the goal is to kind of get there. We need to have these goals. Mm-hmm. This is very targeted
one-on-one support, which is great. Personally, I just wish that it was reaching more than 21 children. And there's no option for extension, which is- Right, because it's just like- The city council ... the city council's got that money, and it's that. Is there any feedback out there at all based on what we discussed? Also, maybe we can provide where to find the contracts so it can be looked at. We can do that again. Yeah. I want to flag that Alice Ho is here with us, tech
member and- Hi, Alice ... Juan McClain, CEC 16 president. Welcome. Hi, guys. Can you hear me? Yes. I just want to reiterate, I think it was the first contracts call this morning at 11:00. I don't know who was on that one. Did I hear correctly when, I think, Camille, you had asked the question about the virtualWhat is it called when you're performing a dissection? Dissection. Yeah. And I thought one of the great responses they mentioned was if
not just funding and procurement this way, potentially grants were another method in which we could get funding for these really necessary contracts. Is that what they said to us at 11? Well, yeah. They were saying that schools typically, for the dissection table or for any tools that are that expensive, they typically will write and then get a grant to pay for them, or the tool or whatever it is, is donated directly to the school. So here's one question I have to ask.
Did that just sound like a software item, or did that also sound like an actual physical machine? So it is an actual physical machine. This is what our schools would be purchasing. Sorry. This is the exact one. Yeah. It's Anatomage's table, their 3D, fully interactive dissection table. At the beginning of the meeting, we discussed this very briefly, and I was reiterating that the Northwell School over in Queens has one of these tables.
I don't know if they have more than one. They definitely have one. And it's incredible. A bunch of students can fit around it, and the software gets really granular. You can see the layers of tissue as you do a dissection, and you can see exactly what is happening in the body as you're proceeding through the exercise. Very cool stuff. So what I liked was Camille's question about 1,400 hours, and I'm like, how did that work? And I think they gave us a response that was kind of questionable. But in general, for example, now that I see the actual item, I'm like, oh, this kind of also becomes more like
a hardware-software situation where- Yeah ... if you don't have this, it's like a 3D printer. If you don't have the actual hardware, is the software even viable? Which it isn't. So again- Yeah ... it is, in my mind, I don't know if this is just a pilot, but again, I don't know how many schools have the ability to have this in their space. But I did like the question, Camille, of you saying, what, 1,400 hours for whom exactly? And is it spread-- And this is just professional development, right? That wasn't even for students.
That was for faculty to have 1,400 hours dedicated to using the software. Was that what we heard? Yeah. So I think what the vendor has to give their-- So this is a table that medical students are using. Yes. Mm-hmm. And so a surgeon- Correct ... would be the one training the medical students on this particular machine. And so when the vendor says instructional training, 1,400 hours minimum,
they basically mean if you were a surgeon teaching med students, this is the type of training you would need to get into the minutia of how you could use this table in a practical way prior to entering the OR. But that is not what is going to be required of our teachers. So I think what happened here in this particular scenario is that the vendor is just
giving the amount of hours to properly use this machine- Correct ... in a real-world setting, not necessarily in a classroom setting- Correct ... for high school students. And does it sound like it comes with a maintenance contract with it, or is it a lease situation, or are you- No, it's a purchase, and it has a five-year warranty, including on-site repair, the software updates when applicable, and technical support.
Okay. So in my mind, the way to make this a viable option is, number one, it has to be used 1,400 hours. Good Lord. Wow. Okay. And we know this is at least one location. And again, this would be really coming out of the budget of the school in deciding that they would do this. So we'll see how it launches. I feel like this is just a pilot of a couple of different opportunities. It seems rather advanced. So I'm very curious by this one. But as you said that, thank you for asking those questions.
I was on a separate call that I couldn't ask those questions. But, and thank you for obliging me, and because they were great questions, and this sounds like a fascinating device and opportunity. Again, besides Northwell, did they say any other potential schools at this current time that could house a device like this? Yeah. So Northwell already has one. Right. And so the schools that would be eligible for this are the ones that have medical pathways or healthcare pathways. Got it. It would not be appropriate for
Breads and Roses to have this you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Okay. I'd love to hear about follow-up on this one. Is there a follow-up in here, Dylan? There are no-- It's right there.I was walking around because we were leaving next. You guys — So, it's about 7:24. Oh my God. Thank you. I'm going to open it up just for a few more questions, if there are any one out there. I know that I see Tanisha Grant has just joined us. Welcome. Hello. Hey, welcome. And- Oh my God, thank you so much, Noah
... Lefon, did you have anything you wanted to say? No, thank you all for bringing this back. I forgot about it, so thank you for sending me the link. I sent it out so people may start joining, but I just sent it out. Yeah. We're about to dissect all of this contract business for the whole public. So just be on the lookout for more communication for the next contract committee meeting. We really want to delve into this, and really try to just notify people about how this money is being
spent. I'm not going to hold everyone. I know you got to get back to your families, but I just want to appreciate everyone for coming out. Again, I'm extremely honored to be chairing this committee. Thank you to my fellow PEP members. And Noah. And Noah. And John. And John. John and Noah for providing us the tech- Yes ... so I don't have to. Doing all the- Thank you so much, Noah and John. And, thank you to my two PEP members, Adriana and Camille, who are definitely the superstars.
And we'll keep pushing forward. Thank you all for coming. There's more to come. Thank you, Rima, Alice, Lupe, for joining us, and Tanisha for joining us. There's going to be a lot more to come. Adriana. Yes. Is your SUP happening at 6 or 7 o'clock on Thursday? It is at 6:00 PM. Thank you. I don't know who's talking, but- It's Alice ... email me and I will send... Oh, hi, Alice. I will forward you the invite. You should have received a separate calendar invite from me. I will make sure you're on it, and I'll forward it to you. Thank you, my love. No problem. Thank you, all.
Good night, everyone