minutes as soon as they come. >> Exactly. Correct. >> Good morning and welcome to the TAC committee meeting uh today and we're glad that you are all here. Um do we
have any public comments today that Okay, I see none. And I'd like to recognize a couple board members that we have online. uh Gloria Branch and Marcia Andrews. So uh >> good morning. >> Good morning. >> Good morning.
>> We're we're glad that you are with us today and u any uh conflict of interest declarations that we need to talk about today. Okay. We really don't have any approval
items other than our minutes at this point. We do not have a quorum for the uh voting portion of the T committee. So if we have a couple more members join, we can move that to the end of the
agenda. Otherwise, we'll approve the uh minutes when we come in. And actually we have another TAC member uh just coming in. So one more and we will have a quorum. So we will uh move to approve
the agenda at a later time is there. So uh we haveformational items today and the first one that we have is uh the student onetoone devices um and that is going to be done by
Richard from IT solutions. Okay. Rich Leonard, IT project management office. >> Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for your time. I am Rich Leonard. As it says there, I am the manager of
the IT project management office. Uh today we are going to talk about the student onetoone device refresh. So, this presentation is about a thousand words, but I thought that maybe if you actually saw what we're talking about
when we say device. I have one here. Uh, I'll go ahead and pass it down for those of you who haven't had a chance to see it. Open it up, have a look. I haven't signed on to it because I have my director of security sitting to my left and my CIO sitting to my right. So,
all right, we'll go from there. Uh, device refresh. What I'm going to do today is take you through what we're doing, why we're doing it, where we stand, and where we're headed from there. So, a while ago, the district approved refreshing all of the devices
currently used at K through 12 schools. Why they're doing it, the gear that's currently out there, it's not at end of life, uh, but it's getting close to or past end of service. uh maintaining that gear is going to get expensive real
soon. So, a little bit more about what we're doing. If you look at the ded features, of course, we're replacing every Chromebook for K through 12. We're replacing the laptops for CTE courses. I
don't remember what CTE stands for but those are basically courses that are need larger processing or larger screens like Photoshop or CAD drawing >> career in technical education. >> Thank you sir.
carrying on and the gear is being upgraded. Technically, everything's going out with touchscreens, as you'll see on the device that was flying around, uh, stylus capable, and their Chromebooks are coming out with protective cases.
Allocations, as I mentioned, one for every student. Handling and delivering, we've got some amazing partners working with us. They're doing the etching and tagging. You'll see every device has property of Palm Beach County Schools etched on it. You cannot get that off.
They're also doing the imaging. They're taking our standard image and they're putting them on the devices before they bring them out. They're also putting the protective cases on and they're doing the delivery. Anything that shows up dead on arrival or broken, it's also their responsibility to go back and make
sure it's correct. our principles and our school techs once they get there it's their responsibility to get the gear over to the students then collect the old gear and we don't want anything back that's not working so we have a process called e-waste that
they can get rid of the devices are no longer of value where we stand that is a lot of devices so we broke it down into four phases the first phases was high schools and alternative Alternative schools, we targeted the beginning of school year
25. We hit that target. Elementary schools, there's a lot of elementary schools. We had to break that down into two. Uh phase two, we were targeting uh May of 26. We actually beat that target, got it done in December of
25 because of that. The team kept rolling, moved right into phase three. That was targeted uh for May 26. We're actually 94% complete. We only have three more schools uh to go. And last but not least, middle schools. We are
targeting uh to have the new devices out by the start of a new school year. Scope and volume. Scope. I've already mentioned all those bullet points. Uh the volume there. I put the numbers there because the uh timeline had broad numbers. Those are
actual numbers. Uh you can see the quantity of devices that we're dealing with down to the middle schools. The middle schools we haven't done yet. So that's a swag. Successes and challenges, vendor communication and coordination. We've got some amazing vendors working with
us. They take the amount of devices and the ship to locations. They do their route optimization and say, "Hey, this is when we can deliver the uh devices out to your school." We the district say that's wonderful, but we're doing blacktop here. Uh we're doing floors
there and we're testing over here. How about if we do this? And our vendors have been very accommodating and kept us ahead of schedule. Principles and school staff, uh the district is 4 day weeks during the summer. We've had plenty of
principles and school techs on site with us throughout Fridays and Saturdays making sure we keep keep on track. old equipment triage. You can imagine with this old gear coming back, we've had over a 100,000 devices that we have to go through and figure out, hey, can
we still use them? Can we repurpose them? Are they worth fixing or should they be e-wasted? So, one of the things we do is we bring in summer interns to help us with that initiative. Case study, uh, that is actually just a play on words, but I told you that, uh,
we put cases on the Chromebooks this year. So before I put this together, I asked the team, "Hey, uh, last year, how many open incidents did we have for broken Chromebooks?" They gave me a number. I said, "Okay, how about this year? How many incidents came in for
broken Chromebooks?" The number actually dropped 93%. Of course, there's a lot of variables. That was old gear. Um, you know, this isn't really a case study, but if we look at it from a return on investment, the decision that Deepo made a very
small percentage of the cost of these Chromebooks to uh put the cases on them, if that's number 50% of that or even 25, it's going to be a wonderful return on investment. Point of that, lots of Chromebooks
coming back. There's our interns uh helping us go through them. challenges. Got to have some challenges. RAM Intel processing shortage driven by AI. I'm not a sure exactly what that is, but you've probably heard the term AI.
Well, apparently our processing companies have found out they can make more money selling the memory to the large AI warehouses and they're not necessarily creating the smaller chips for laptops and Chromebooks. What does that do? that is causing the prices to
spike, manufacturing of these devices to slow down and inventory shortages hard to uh manage the inventory. Some other hurdles that we faced supply chain um our case manufacturer decided
to move their manufacturing from China to Mexico incidentally right around the first round of tariffs. Was it related? I don't know. uh but that was to be seamless to the customer. It wasn't as seamless as we hoped for. We did experience some delays and then we found
out that China to US uh customs are a little different than uh Mexico to US. So we took another delay. Some of our laptops did have to go to the school uh late. I think we missed two schools for the
beginning of the school year. the laptops themselves. We started that initiative and we started delivering laptops to the schools. Realized a lot of school, not a lot of schools but a handful, hey, these are too many, these are not enough. So, we had to stop start
that initiative. Start it back up with new counts to keep on track. And then for the laptops, we moved from a onetoone relationship uh laptop to student to classroom sets. some of the teachers and principles um you know it's
changed to their natural flow so we're experiencing a little bit of difficulty with that where do we go from here uh as I mentioned we're having issue with uh the chips and the supply chain our first RFQ
went out to get phase 4 done uh when we started the planning process our supplier we picked the vendor and then when we started Ed doing the planning with them, they realized that the inventory that they committed to, they no longer had. So that forced us to put
out an additional RFQ. That RFQ is out to the vendors. The vendor quotes are back. That's currently with purchasing. Uh their next step will be to select a vendor. I cannot speak to which vendor and uh when that will be done. rumor on
the street is that the quotes because of the price hikes are coming back relatively high and phase four may have to slip out a little bit. If that happens and we get a vendor, it's kind of standard. We're going to take the vendor, we're going to start committing uh requisitions, we're going to do the
logistics, we're going to get them out there, we're going to execute, and then we're going to celebrate. I'm not sure how big or expensive that celebration is, but Deepo maybe can speak to that. I think there were some decisions made
CFO and um I think the Mr. Burke I think what we're going to do is we're going to delay the middle school refresh to another year. We have one more year left on them. So we don't want to pay $600. We want to watch the market and see if the prices go down. Um so so we we we're
going to hold the uh middle school refresh for another year. So that's the decision that was made just yesterday. >> Excellent. Thank you, sir. >> Questions um about the funding since you're
holding the cost. Is there a were these allocated as part of the um sales tax funding? Is the funding fixed? >> Correct. They're part of the sales tax funding. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions or comments uh
regarding the one to one project? I know it's uh I just asked Deepo it's second round of uh of uh one to one. So it's awesome to see it continuing. Hopefully the prices will come down so that it remains affordable.
The the positive thing in all this is we have saved almost like 80 to 90% breakage costs basically which was incredible. Kar and her team incred incredible work by providing um the cases I think we have we've cut down quite a bit of breakage. Um and I think
it it has helped our budget as well. Um it's it's almost like 80% down all our all our u break and fix budget. So that's a that's a very positive thing. Okay, any other questions or comments? Okay, with that, it's not a voting item.
So, let's go to the next one. >> Miss Andrews has a question. >> Okay. >> Yes. Yes. I just want and I hear that you have the um the e uh ways weights for those that are the uh Chromebooks that are no longer in use or so on that
you can just put them into uh some kind of e system to discard them. But what happens to the ones that can be used and we're actually giving this the new ones to everybody? What do you do with the ones that are workable and can be used
phone books? So, so the devices that are that are being taken out are usually towards the end of the life because they've been with kids for over five years. So, they're beat up pretty bad. So, the vast majority go to e-waste. There is sometimes there's some opportunities for some nonprofits to take these devices as well. And we have
done that in the past as well, but majority go to e-waste because they are really beaten up at that point in time. >> Thank you. Okay. Any other comments before we move on? Okay. So, our next item is enterprise
service management update and uh Rich Leonard gets to take another one. So, pass it along to Rich. >> Good morning and thank you for your time. I'm next topic enterprise service management
with service now again I'll take you do through what we're doing why we're doing it where we stand and where do we go from here years ago I don't know how many years ago the ITIL framework software here at
the district was called eupport uh that worked well for service desk help desk incidents but also So other organizations in the district said, "Hey, that's pretty cool. We want to do that, too." So that system uh grew and
grew and grew. Some forward thinkers here at the district said, "Hey, guess what? We've got a lot of eggs in this basket. Let's look at this basket and make sure it's the right way to go." You'll see the bullet points on the bottom. They realized, well, it's on
prem. We are in South Florida. You know what that means. it's been highly customized. Uh that means technical debt of course makes it really hard to upgrade that thing. So we really couldn't upgrade it. Uh we would have to go to the latest and greatest inversion.
And of course that software was not free. So they stepped back and said maybe we should look for a more enterprise solution. And in 2024 they made the decision to partner with Service Now. Now if you look at the bullet points down there, it mitigates
those on the left. It's cloud-based. It's scalable. Not that we're going to have a bunch of new students. Uh hopefully we do, but that's not the scalability to bring a new organization into this software. My technical opinion is it's very easy to do. Why? Because
it's super configurable. If somebody had to customize this code to implement it, I would have to see the use case. And also, it's supported by a soontobe local uh software provider. You all have read the news. service now is moving to Palm Beach. So they will be local software
provider. Moving on from there, where are we? When we started this initiative two years ago, Deepo gave us 13 14 initiatives uh to take care of with the solution out of the gate. You can see we're doing pretty
good on pro progress. uh the completed column we've done change management contract management for IT incident management our service desk of course we've created a tremendous knowledge base with over 5,000 articles we've also
incorporated an AI powered virtual agent chatbot which I'll pin because I'm going to talk about that a little bit as we go service catalog service request management asset management and then The nonIT organizations that were currently
in e support we have completed those bring them in bringing them into service now so we could discontinue those licenses in progress. We're currently working on the HR call center. We're actually working on a lot of other things but Deepo has us focused on these so I'm not
going to tell you what they are. Not started yet. Uh we still have an outage page that's basically a dashboard for a knock. Then we have ERP ticketing and transportation ticketing which are both using two unique softwares which we're going to convert over into
Service. Now that is basically where we are, what we're doing, and where we're heading. But if you'll allow me a couple more minutes, I've got some cool things to show you. As I mentioned, we put the AI chat onto the district website. Please don't take my word for it. You can pull
your phone out. You can go to the district and you can start talking to the thing. So there is our chat. That's what it looks like. You can pull it up on your phone. And then I put this little snapshot over on the left that says, "Hey, sorry we couldn't help you.
Would you like to open a ticket?" So if somebody in the district or actually anywhere in the world is using our chatbot and it does not give you an answer, you have the ability to enter a ticket, which is really pretty cool. We've got what we call a mitigation team
at the service desk and they're currently, you know, answering the incidents back that are open through the system. We also trained all our most of our organizations within the district how to handle the tickets. So, if anything comes through that the service
desk can't answer, they can put it out to the subject matter experts. Not my place to say, but I would think that there's no other district in the United States allowing this sort of thing. It's very cutting edge for the district. Roadmap to AI. Where did we get how did
we get to that virtual agent? That's kind of busy, but I'll walk us through us through it. About a year ago, we implemented the chatbot onto the hub. That's the district's intranet site. It was good. Uh its brain was built around
our knowledge base. Um it if it had the answer, it gave you the answer. It wasn't conversational, but it worked. We got it out into the wild to see how it was going to operate. We knew before we went out to the actual website to the
public that we wanted to have AI incorporated and have it actually talk with you. So, at the same time, we started building our own in-house AI agent. We were using chat GBT. We had some technical hurdles but this is a technical conversation and we would have
overcome those hurdles. But the more scary part is when Deepo looked me in the eyes and said well how much is this going to cost? Uh that model was a little hard even though I have a degree in math uh to figure that out based on
tokens licensing uh it was really hard to forecast what it was going to cost to run that chat here at the district. So about the same time uh as we were struggling, Service Now came out with their new virtual AI package and the
district had a look at that and said, you know what, maybe we should partner again with Service Now. We've got um you know, a provider down soon to be down the road. Their costing model is very upfront. We actually have a dashboard so we can see where we stand. we know what
the next uh cost uh threshold will be and if we're getting close to it, we can dial the chat down a little bit. If we're not even near it, we can keep making the chat better and better. So, uh we went live with that. We put it on the desk district website and that is
the screenshot that I showed prior. Additional AI offerings that you get with Service Now. I am not a Service Now salesman, but they do give you some really cool things just by for purchasing it. The items on the right, we did not incorporate uh just because
we chose not to uh chat. We're a Google shop. We don't want to force our folks to have to use Service Now chat. And then the CI stuff, we currently don't have a formal CMDB software, so we didn't need the CI stuff. All the items
on the on the left are currently live and in use. Uh some of them are very self-explanatory. I won't go through them all, but some of the cool ones I think knowledgebased article generation. So if somebody at the service desk gets
a really niche question that they haven't had to answer before and it's complicated, they answer it, they close the incident, they can hit a button and it creates a knowledgebased article which trains the AI agent to answer that question going forward.
If they look at their past questions and say, "Wow, people have been asking this silly question a hundred times this month." uh they can just take that incident, hit the button, it creates an article so our chat can answer that going forward. Pretty neat stuff.
Uh down to the bottom, multi-turn catalog ordering. That sounds very fancy, but that one's near to and dear to me. I've been with the district two years and when you started the district, anything that goes wrong, like your microphone is broken, everybody at the
district tells you, "Well, enter an incident in eupport and you're a new and it's like, wow, what's that?" And you go to the old esport and there's close to a hundred service items in there and all you want is a microphone and it's very hard to figure out what it is you're supposed to do. Well, now you just go
into service now and say, "Hey, my microphone's broke." and it gets back and says, "Hey, silly human, you just enter, click this button here and open a service request to uh have a new microphone sent to you." Pretty neat
stuff. So, we've been live on the website for about a month. I took these numbers um like two weeks ago when I put this together. Realize this is organic growth. So, we have not communicated out to the district. We don't have any
banners on the website. We really just snuck it down in the corner because we wanted to crawl before we walked. We want to see how it's working. So, some rough numbers. We're a averaging about one incident a day and we're having about seven interactions. I looked at
the the numbers this morning and they're really moving even with without promoting it. I'd say by now those numbers have doubled. Where do we go from here? for Service Now delivery. The items that we committed to, we have to get done. Strategic partnership, continue to
leverage the partnership with Service Now. When they get here in Palm Beach, our district will be one of their largest customers. So, of course, we're going to leverage that partnership. AI automation, uh, AI and automation. Of
course, the AI agent learns as it goes, but we continue to train it and build its so-called brain so it can answer more and more questions and stop more phone calls for us. And then ESM expansion, looking across the district landscape and seeing what other
organizations are ripe for next coming into service now. And that's all I have about that. >> Thank you. And are there any questions or comments regarding >> I have a question. This is Gloria Branch. I couldn't figure out how to do
the raise hand thing. um the AI when anybody all over the world can ask a question opens a ticket you know I and I know you guys are wellversed on hackers and stuff people trying to get into our system so just
they ask a question and creates a ticket they're not given they're just given information via you know an answer words not anything else >> my my my brain goes to hackers >> so Yes. Uh they're given words. So when
you close an incident in service now, it automatically sends an email back to the email that you provided to us. Uh it's not mandatory, but you can also give us a phone number and if you have a phone number and we can't answer uh the agent
has the option to give you a call back, but it would either be a phone call or an email and that's it. >> Okay. Just does the email open us up for any kind of hacker because it's, you know, obviously an email from the
district for them to I mean, obviously anything's possible. I'm not asking for an answer, but my concern is just hackers trying to get into our system. >> Understood. And I'll take that and let Ray take over. I'm the least technical in the room, but the email is just a
text field and this information is in a cloud-based software and there's security built around it, but I am looking at my security director to my right who's going to add to that. >> Yeah, good question. I appreciate it. Um, no, there is this is just a simple
email. There is no they don't come into our network at all. So, that's that's the benefit. So, while they do get an email from the district, they don't enter our network in any way, shape, or form. They're just asking a question that is separated from our network.
>> Okay. Thank you. There's, you know, so many scammers out there that need to get a job instead of trying to scam everyone. But thank you very much. I appreciate it. >> No, and I appreciate the the the question and thank you for being diligent. It's appreciate it. >> Quick comment. Uh, first,
congratulations. you know, sounds like a great project and um it it sounds like we're elevating the service uh being provided to the constituents which is always great. My question is uh you know beyond it sounded like we're consolidating systems which is always great and from an efficiency standpoint
are there other efficiencies that we're looking at from a workforce standpoint or uh any any of those kind of things related to the deployment of AI? So absolutely I know our service desk manager is not here, our director is not here but I think uh we're going to be
looking at efficiencies what AI provides uh especially on the on the service desk side so that we can we can maybe do some uh better job for efficiency as far as we're taking calls and maybe cut maybe do some um call call monitoring as well
as u workflow automation as well as maybe workforce automation as well. So we're going to look at that. >> Great. Thank you. >> Okay, very good. Any other uh questions? So, that was anformational item as well.
The uh next one is going to be anformational item. Uh EdTE, my former department. So, I'm so happy to uh hear from them and see some updates. So, uh, Rebecca Smeckla, director, and Michael
Goldstein, one of the managers. >> Uh, good morning everybody. My name is Mike Goldstein. I'm a project manager over in EdTech. Uh, just talking today about some of our current AV and construction projects we've got going on. Uh, so first off, in in recent months, we have modernized Rise Academy,
formerly known as South Intensive. This was a school that historically has always been in portables. We've moved them into a building now with state-of-the-art classroom technology for instructional use. Um our and then we are also working on building out West
Riviera Elementary which should open in August and then beginning the design phase of the west new Westlake area elementary school uh which will be similar to Blue Lake Elementary and Saddle View Elementary. When we look at what our instructional classroom looks
like in these new schools, we're take uh if you look at the picture on the left there, we've got a wall-mounted smart panel that's interactive at the front of the classroom. We've got a secondary display, whether it's a mobile smart panel, a TV mounted somewhere in the
classroom. This is giving the teacher flexibility in how they they present their lesson. Uh we've seen it where they have a document camera up on one. they've got um instructional content on the other display. I've seen, you know, you'll have a teacher will put up a
video, a picture, and then a writing prompt on on the other display. Sometimes they'll use it in a more um flexible setting where you have the teacher takes a small group to the back of the classroom. They've got the mobile smart panel. They've got the display in the back that they're using to teach a
small group of students while the rest of the class is learning off the content on that main smart panel. We also have sound field enhancement made by audio enhancement in all of our classrooms ties into our intercom system. We have
we have state-of-the-art document cameras. We have teach teacher PCs. And then we're giving the uh teachers wireless keyboard and mice to allow them to be flexible. They can now teach from anywhere in the classroom. they're not tied to that front desk like we remember back in the day. And then also in these
new um these new buildings, we're adding digital signage throughout the campus to help market the school, help with branding, help with um you know, we've got a book fair tonight. Come out to Chick-fil-A night, help support our school. So, we've got all these ways to help the school communicate their
message. We also have an ongoing audio enhancement refresh. Uh we've got all these old audio enhancement systems that are 10 plus years old and these systems exist to help students hear better in the classroom. Uh basically wherever the
student is sitting in the classroom, they get an equitable hearing experience. So the student that's sitting in the back of the classroom is hearing just the same as the student in the front of the classroom. And then we're saving the teacher voice so that the teachers don't have to yell and then they're not blasting the student in the
front so that the student in the back can hear. Um, and we've had multiple studies that show that when you can hear better, it your comprehension is better and therefore you can learn better. Uh, one of the best demos I was ever ever given of the system was um teacher was
talking mids sentence they turned off the mic continued to talk in their same voice and you can just feel your comprehension power increasing so that you can hear the teacher just the same. So we've been replacing these 10 plus year old systems. Um they used an old
outdated infrared system. So, if the teacher turned their back, uh, you lost a signal. Um, we can't buy parts for for those anymore. They they've since stopped making them. Audio enhancements new system is called XD. It's a digital technology using RF. Uh, it's a
different bandwidth than what Wi-Fi uses, so we're not interrupting the spectrum there. Uh, it gives us clearer, crisper audio. Now, when the teacher turns their back, they go into a closet, you know, they briefly step out of the classroom for a second, they can still have that communication with their
classroom. These new systems are also PoE based, so they're powered by our existing network infrastructure. Um, so we've been using that. Beauty of that is now we can mount these amps on the wall. There's less cables so that when the custodians are cleaning floors during the summer, there's less things to get
damaged, broken that need to be fixed and teachers can just continue teaching without having to worry about getting their broken system fixed. Since FY23, we've replaced 8,800 systems. We are plugging through and
over the next two years, we will have all of the classrooms updated on these new modern audio enhancement systems. The goal of this replacement project in addition to providing better audio for the classrooms is also to upgrade school
intercoms. So by having these classrooms with the new amps, they are now considered what we call epic ready, which is ready for us to upgrade the school's intercom to a new networkbased um intercom system. We've done 58
schools to date and we've usually right now we're taking on about another one to two schools a month. Um this summer we'll probably take five or six more schools. Epic. The beauty of Epic is that you know in addition to being intercom paging and bells now as a as an
instructional leader I can zone my school and ring bells in certain areas while not ringing bells in others. So, for example, during testing season that we're entering, I can lock down part of my campus, not ring bells in the areas where we're testing, but school can
continue like normal in the areas where we're not testing, and they can ring bells. Bell schedule, something the school can set themselves. They don't need to put in a work order like they had to do for traditional systems. Schools love um they can make their own
bell tones. It's as simple as uploading a wave file, MP3 file. They play custom audio. We've got some schools every holiday, every Friday has different bells. Um, it's great for school culture, spirit. Um, so they're enjoying that.
We've also been working hard to refresh our high school media centers and make them from a a space that was very um traditionally bookheavy and move it into a more modern learning environment. It's more of a learning commons than than a
library than it would have been. Um so we've taken all the these areas, we've brightened them up, new furniture, new floors, new lighting. Uh we've refreshed the in working with the construction and facilities departments. We've updated
all the AV systems so we have newer, brighter projectors so that when you have a faculty meeting, you don't have to turn off all the lights to be able to see what's on the projection screen. Uh we've replaced all the cabling so that it's it's new HDMI and Cat 6 cabling
versus the old VGA cabling that we used to use over years ago. Um, we've also added, you know, to make it more like what you see in higher ed, we've added small groupoup conference rooms. So, they're the small glass conference rooms you can see in those pictures where we
had a small conference table, a TV, um, computer so that students can come in there, they can work collaboratively, they can pull up content on a display, um, but they still have the supervision of the teacher or media specialist so they can see what's going on. Uh we've also been updating adding digital
signage to those areas as well as upgrading the audio enhancement systems in those areas as well. Um over the past uh couple of months we've updated media centers at Jupiter High, Boon Beach High, Village Academy, and Lakew Worth High School. We've got four more schools
currently in the permitting and design process so that we can start construction this summer. Um and then hopefully, you know, winter break time turn them back over to the schools w updated and and brand new. We've also been updating
conference room displays in all of our schools. Um we've been putting in flat screen TVs with a computer, webcam, wireless keyboard, and mouse. Um so that when your principles, your ESSE contacts, um whoever's leading meetings at schools, making instructional
decisions, writing IEP plans, um when they're in these meetings, they've got state-of-the-art displays. Uh what we found was when we went to schools, a lot of them had commandeered smart panels from classrooms. So they've taken a display from a classroom, put it in the conference room. We're by us putting
these new displays in, it looks more modern. it allow, you know, gives them the real estate back by getting that smart panel out of there, but more most importantly, it gets that smart panel back to the classroom for instructional use. Um, so far we've done 133 schools as of this month, and we are blowing
through and trying to get the rest of them done, too. We're also working on digital signage projects to help schools with communications and branding. Um be by the end of this week we should have mobile digital signage delivered to
all schools. Um this is a battery operated uh outdoor rated display that the schools can roll around wherever. They can take it to the dismissal line. They can put it in the office. They can use it in the cafeteria when they have a parent night. Um, I can't tell you how
many schools I've rolled up to and they've got the old school sandwich boards, you know, talking about, you know, what what upcoming events they have or they've got, you know, red paper taped to every pillar in the car line that I can't read as I'm driving through. This way, they get that communications item right in the in the
car line. Everybody sees it. It looks modern. Um, so we've delivered that to all of our we'll have had that delivered to all of our schools by the end of this week. Um, we've also replaced 76 outdated uh V-bick boxes um that were in
common areas like offices, cafeterias, hallways. Um these boxes were IT security risk. They were 10 plus years old. Um they they were an outdated device. We needed to update them. So we've put new digital signage appliances behind all of those TVs. And then we're
working on replacing all of our outdated TVs as well. Um, and then we've replaced digital signage hardware at 26 school cafeterias over the last couple of months. So that way we've got a unified digital signage platform. Um, we had
some schools that were just had a computer hooked up to a display. Um, in cafeterias, we had Chrome boxes. We've had the V-Bri settop boxes. We had stuff that was all over. So now we have a unified device behind all of our digital signage. And then we're working to
replace all of the old TVs that we keep finding in schools. That way, everything is now commercial grade with five-year warranties. We know it's made to be left on 24/7. Um, we have standard devices so that when they fail, our techs can go out and replace them and service them and just keep schools communications and
branding um up and running at all times. >> Thank you, Mike. Hi, everyone. My name is Rebecca. I'm the director of edtech and I'm going to uh conclude with the edtech updates. So um I lead up uh one of our strategic initiatives Z1C and this initiative is on artificial
intelligence. Um we've had it going for a couple of years now. Um our major milestone that we just accomplished last week. Very proud to say that AI policy 2505 has been adopted by our district. Um I do want to take note that that isn't
just an edtech accomplishment. That is an accomplishment that has been a district-wide collaboration. Um, I want to recognize our executive sponsor, Miss Wyatt, deputy superintendent. Our sponsor, Dr. Miller, chief of performance and accountability. And on that workg group, we have uh
representatives from edtech, IT, research evaluation and assessment, student data management, teaching and learning, CTE, operations, legal. We also have teacher representation on that workg group. Um, in addition to that, after the policy draft was um,
completed, we have lots of other departments that weighed in on it, including our ESC department, multicultural, safe schools, uh, principles, our upper leadership, our board members, and our superintendent. So, this wasn't just an edtech update. I wanted to make sure that it was a
district-wide up update and a collaboration um, among all. Um, other milestones, we had tons of AI training this year for our teachers and staff members. um AI training for our students and grades 3 through 12. Um we opened up Canva Education AI tools to our middle
school students as in addition to our high school students. Currently we do have um a pilot going on with Gemini for teens at one of our high schools. And we have a notebook LLM pilot at four of our secondary schools and our goal is to go live with notebook LM for all of our
high school students um at the beginning of May. um initiative D1C has also been selected to continue as one of those uh initiatives that will continue to go on. As we know artificial intelligence, we can't really close that initiative out.
Um it continues on into the future. Um additionally, just uh a few updates for our training. We uh have been focusing this year really heavily on Google Gemini and Gyms and Notebook LM. Those are all now integrated into our Google Classroom system. So, they're
right there for our teachers to use um right there embedded in the native um Google Classroom. We did provide 83 trainings this year. Um almost 7,000 district staff members uh were able to attend that. Um we did have the opportunity to pay our teachers a $25
stipen using Title 4 funds if they attended any training after hours. So, we're really happy that we were able to do that for them. Uh this year was our 25th annual technology conference. So we celebrated our silver anniversary. We're really proud of that. Um we had over 600
in attendance. We had over 70 sessions uh including 27 of those that did focus on AI. Um we had 37 district partners and uh exhibitors there as well. Um we were at uh Dr. Wen High School, Garcia High School um for the second year. It's
a wonderful campus. If you haven't been there, I do highly advise you um visit. Um if you do look in the the left on the picture, we also had a very famous person Moby also attended our conference this year. So that was really exciting to have him. Um in addition, we also
have our KIGO ambassador program that continued for the second year. Um this is representatives from um 56 schools. We had 110 teachers uh represented this year and of that we were also able to provide them with a $25 stipen for each of the trainings that they attended with
the title four funds. And last but not least, esports updates. Scholastic Esports continues strong here in Palm Beach County. We um we hosted the second annual Battle of the Beaches, a Minecraft esports event. So we did compete against Broward um for that. Uh
Brower did take home the elementary, but we uh Palm Beach secured the middle and the high school uh wins. Um if you haven't heard, there is a new program opening at Rosvelt Middle School with an FPNL grant, and we're working on building a pathway from Roosevelt Elementary to Roosevelt Middle to Palm
Beach Lakes High School for the Scholastic Esports. So that's pretty exciting. And finally, it has grown to include over 110 schools that have a designated Scholastic Esports facilitator. So, it continues to grow here in our county and giving those kids
opportunities um to to expand with their esports initiatives. Thank you. Any questions? >> Miss Andrew, >> I have a question. I have a couple questions. First of all, uh congratulations on the great work
that you do uh in this department. I'm pretty familiar because I'm in the schools a lot and uh and I've seen the the new refresh with the bell sounds uh the mobile uh the mobile uh transporting of the systems all around the campus. Uh
I was just at Polo Park on yesterday and I saw the um the smart panel uh in the principal conference area where they can actually um uh work with the teachers and Mr. Burke was there with me and he was talking about when they have the um
meetings for the principles with the systems that we have in place now you almost don't have to get in a big big school building to uh or or auditorium to kind of interact with everybody. You almost have the equipment now to have people stay right in their schools and
be able to connect without having the big meetings all over the district where everybody comes and the parking and everything's sometimes it's tremendous. But I really want to tell you you're doing a great job. But my first question talks about the Rise Academy. I'm so happy with all the updated uh equipment
and things that you've done there. And we also have another alternative school uh Crossroads Academy. and I've been out there many times and I've seen the smartboards and some of the equipment, but I just want to know if the same kind of work that you've done to kind of upgrade Rise and what you're going to be
doing for my Western Community Elementary School that's coming uh within the next year. Uh have you done this kind of work or at Crossroads Academy? >> So, we're in the process of just starting the digital signage refresh. So
we are going to be hitting all schools including Rise Academy. So it's going to be our elementary, middle, and high as well as all our alternative schools. So what we see in our new schools, we will see in all of our existing schools as well. >> So you haven't done Crossroads. I just want to make sure because Western
Academy is new and I see most of what we're talking about in most of our schools, but this is a school that's uh certainly gets left out. So, I really do want to make sure they have the basic operations and it's high on the priority list because this is another school that's just like uh Rise Academy. You
know, we don't have many of those where you have kids that are kind of left behind because of issues. So, make sure we put a a mark on that. And I was going to say just from this meeting today, it's very good and I love it when you all come to the school board uh and present uh uh uh Mr. Deepo and uh
Heather. But, you know, are these minutes and um the notes of this meeting that we're having today out there on uh for all of the schoolboard members to read and kind of keep up with because this is so much valuable information and I'm sitting here as one of the
representatives for for uh the technology committee, but I don't know if my other partners on the school board get a chance to see this. So, is it posted somewhere? I know they may not always be able to click into the meeting, but is it out there so that they can see it and know that this is
big information that you're giving to us, which I appreciate, but is it out there for the other board members to see? >> I'll give you a short answer. Yes, we have a we are a tax site and all the minutes are posted there. So, my my assistant post that so Debbie, make sure
this meeting is posted also. >> And if you could just alert the board members because maybe they're not looking at that. We're we're not in the building. are out on the ground all the time. But I mean, just a little reminder maybe to our technician, our uh our executives that, you know, you may want to look at it because it really does
give you a real great update on what we're doing. And I love the new AI and and with the Chromebooks, all of this is very big information and it's current. So, you don't want somebody just to fall into it because they didn't look at your website. So, it should be a way that it
can click into schoolboard members so that they can see it or be reminded that we just had a meeting, review it quickly and get a little u a little uh update on it because it's moving quickly. A lot of great things are happening and we thank you all so much.
>> As a former director of educational technology, it warms my heart to see all these projects continuing. many of those, you know, they're talking about these old items that they can't get parts for. Well, I was around when we put those in. I hope they can keep getting parts for me, but uh it's uh
awesome to see the updates and the continuation of the work uh for the classrooms. So, thank you very much. Any other comments or questions? >> This is uh Gloria Branch. I agree with Mrs. Andrews. This is wonderful
information and I'm so happy that we are staying ahead of the technology, you know, ongoing, keeping things updated. So, this is great information. Great job to everyone. Thank you. >> Okay, any other questions or comments?
Okay. So, this takes us to our next item. Focused consolidation. Another question. >> Okay. Do we have another question online? Okay. So, we will go to
>> hand raised, but I don't know if she meant to take it down or she has a question. >> Yeah. I just want to add something right quick. Can you hear me just one more time? >> Yes. >> Um I don't know if everybody else gets
this information too because there was a big discussion about the Chromebooks at one of our schoolboard meetings recently that we had purchased them and I know the principles and everybody in the schools know about the new Chromebooks because I'm in the schools and I know about it too. But I don't know if the classroom teachers association know.
That's why I'm saying this information that we're talking about that you know the Chromebooks uh were deficient and you know they're no good for anybody else. This is why we bought all these Chromebooks. That's why I'm saying the knowledge from these meetings is important not just for the schoolboard
me uh members but maybe for others and maybe everybody's just not looking on your website. So, I don't know how we can communicate to people when you hear people talking about what we're doing here in the district and we're doing some great things just like this one piece right here when we have these meetings. I just think these minutes and
notes need to go out and be highlighted so that even our classroom teachers association uh president and everybody else will know this is why we do what we do for our children uh to keep them ahead, keep our staffs ahead and our schools ahead. So, I just want to emphasize that again because I you you
can hear things out there, but if you don't know exactly what's going on based on what we're discussing today, then people get the wrong impression. Thank you. >> You are a thousand% correct, Mrs. Andrews, and I knew that's what you meant. And hopefully we can get this information out so people understand
what we're doing for the children. >> So, I will say that all of the information is posted in the new uh system, Diligent. So our agenda, our meetings and so forth are all posted there uh so that you can see that.
>> Yeah. And additionally uh the meetings are recorded and posted to YouTube for anyone to see. >> And I'll make a I'll make a note also we twice a year I do a newsletter which is called as time technology in motion for
education and that has all our projects. All this is all given in there. So, we'll make sure that comes uh that's also posted uh it's posted on my IT website, but I think we're going to make sure that it's posted also on on on the TAC website as well.
Okay, any other questions or comments before we move on? Okay. So, our next uh item is focus EDW consolidation and uh that will be presented by Jason Smith, director of FTE and student information.
>> Thanks, Gary. It's good to see you. I haven't seen you while you uh thanks to Mike for reminding me this is on YouTube because the last time I presented to you guys, it was when I watched the YouTube afterwards, I realized it was time to give up the ghost on the hair based on the really bad camera angle that was presented. So maybe next time I'll lose
50 pounds. It'll be fantastic. I'm here to give you guys a very brief overview of a project we took on um uh starting last summer about um how we report student information uh through EDW and the migration of those reports over to
the SIS. um very briefly and uh Rich is here uh you know uh presenting for other things but he's also been the project manager on this uh project as well and he's been invaluable and a great resource for us and I thank him for all the work he's done. Um we have a uh as you know an educational
data warehouse and that uh and we'll talk about the history of why that came to be a while ago but um for this project specifically we're talking about the reporting function on sitting on top of EDW and that reporting function is through a software called Cognos um and our goal is to sunset Cognos uh
for school year 27 and have schools rely on the same information coming out of the SIS which is our student information system and so we will um we've been working over the last year to migrate all those reporting uh functions to the SIS. Um as you know very brief history of uh
student information in the school district for uh about 30 years we relied on uh student terms to be our student information system and as you know it's a mainframe product that was uh you know required coal programmers to maintain but there wasn't very much um
exportability of student information out of terms and so sometime in the early 2000s I don't have the exact date maybe Don would have a exact date for that um sometime in the early 2000s Um we uh as a district uh instituted an educational data warehouse which is just a SQL database that um houses a bunch of
information that we would export from terms as well as assessment information and other stuff that wasn't sitting in terms to be able to give us uh some better reporting functions and like I said the um reporting tool sitting on top of EW's Cognos uh and uh starting in
2017 we migrated off of terms to the SIS which is um much more robust uh system that we use to uh manage all of our schools. Um use it for all all the functions of terms plus but on top of that we integrated gradebook. We integrated attendance. We integrated all
kinds of functions that were kind of these little islands of information that were out there. And one of the goals at the time was to look at EDW and see if we could start moving some of that stuff over. But as um large scale projects, many of you probably know, get into motion, um scope creep happens and we
kind of can't do everything we want to do. And so over time we've been trying to figure out um if this is something that we could take on. And so last year uh when over the summer we we took this project on. Um
like I mentioned that the original terms of focus migration had us trying to look at EDW to see if it's something that we could um you start doing some of the reporting of there. Um and we finally were able to take this on last year. the uh existing EDW database
where actually houses the data is uh housed in uh on prem with us. Uh we maintain that ourselves. It's not a product that we purchase and so we're going to maintain that database but um reporting all that information out of EDW will now rely on the SIS. We have a new district analytics function um which
is a dashboarding feature that is much like PowerBI for Microsoft but it's run by Amazon Amazon quicksites. And so we're able to connect to that EDW database through this quicksites uh function and and report information out of the database without migrating the data but then uh use this and along with
other tools to be able to uh move that information over and not really necessarily need to migrate data which is something we've been trying to avoid because there's a lot of information in EDW. Um our timeline for this project um we
uh kicked off the project last July. The EW team move over to it and then we started with um getting a handle on how many reports we had out in the EDW that we needed to move over. We ended up with um a list of over 300 reports that we
needed to kind of migrate over. And after meeting with all the process owners uh throughout all the the fall and into early uh winter or through the winter um we started meeting with you know ESC department multicultural all the departments that had reports that were in our uh EW database made sure
that we uh found out why they were using those reports. Um what we kind of learned was that kind of over time there was some things that they used to have that would sit in EDW and as we you know we've been doing this we've been on the SIS now for this our eighth year. got
time flies when you're having a great time. Um, eight years of the SIS, many of the reports that we used to rely on 100% EW kind of migrated over to our current um, student information system. And so the transition uh, for certain
departments wasn't as large. We had some departments that had about, you know, 10 to 15 reports that really only needed us to do one or two to move over. So it's that part of it has been um, been a lot better than we anticipated. Um the biggest chunk of stuff that we have is
um because EDW stores a lot of our assessment results and assessment information, we needed to kind of come up with a reworking of how we report that stuff out. So our school improvement uh department has been the the leading department on trying to uh come up with some um some different
ideas about how we have traditionally reported that information out. We're working with them closely to uh build out their reports which is the the biggest chunk of those and um right now we are at the point where we have um decided and Don can
speak on this if if there's more detail that I'm leaving out but um the licensing for Cognos the reporting layer um we are going to uh sunset that at the end of June uh which will just only we'll still be able to maintain um the reporting for uh if we need to kind of
just keep some things alive for just uh readonly viewing purposes. But we will uh we've sunseted the support and the um and the licensing for that. And then uh we'll just uh you know keep on working on finishing up the the migration and then uh we should be ready to retire
that uh soon into school year 27. And so like I said, we're finalizing this report migration. Um the assessment section is the largest one. Uh, and we're right in the middle of that right now. That's it's been challenging, but we've we've been able to work through
that. Um, and then as we've been going along, we've been kind of trying to get our departments that are, you know, the subject matter experts to why we had these reports built to uh work with uh staff at at school sites and other uh district uh staff to make sure that they're aware of the new location for
this information. Um and then our ongoing goal is instead of having this be like a one-time thing where we um meet with the department once move the reports over and kind of like you know just see wait for things to happen uh we're going to come up with a more uh repeatable schedule of checking in with
our subject matter experts our departments and making sure that all the information that they u have displayed in these reports and everything else that we do is the most accurate thing lining up with state legislative requirements and DOE requirements and things like that. So, we're going to we're going to have a more refined
schedule of how we uh work with with our customers, which which all the departments in the school district. Like I said, that was a brief overview. It's a big project, but um you know, it's it's something we're excited about because uh we we like having a more consolidated um approach to how we do
student data. Um and so far, the response to this has been pretty good. We've um we've had some challenges along the way, but we're we're uh doing a good job of kind of overcoming those. and we are on schedule to to uh have a good opening of school year 27. So, we're
excited about it. Any questions? >> I dazzled you with all this great information. >> So, a lot of the uh student data that's out there, I know that we incorporated a parent a parental component to that. So
are parents able to see how their students are doing uh in consolidating that data so that they can work with their uh children? So the parental so the thing that the major change we've made to uh parent access over the last year is that uh in conjunction with the
communications department we've we've expanded our ability for the parent portal to link to outside sources of information. um we use it as a kind of a landing page and a hub for things like transportation or how to uh find information about various different things that are going on in the school
district. Um part of that parent uh accesses their view into the SIS that they have. And so um we developed some some screens within the SIS that kind of helps them understand what's going on with um their their their students in the school district. um the
the amount of information that's uh available to parents kind of increases as their kid goes along through their educational journey. And so for our kindergarters and first graders, there's just not much that we can give them that is, you know, easily digestible without
a lot of explanation. And so we, you know, we find that the parents have more engagement and value as they get their kids into middle school and high school. But that is something that we've um been trying to increase parent portal participation in the SIS ever since we've turned that on a few years back.
But this uh this this land uh this ability for them to kind of get into sign into the SIS and then be able to log into school cache or log into uh find my bus or other programs is something we've been working on to improve for them so that way they can get more information about what's you know important to them. The other main
thing we've done, and this is not so much about the information coming back to the parents, but um we've been focusing on making sure that uh that was a good pun because our vendors focus um we've been focusing on making sure that the information that's in the SIS about
their kids is updated and accurate. And so last year we finally were able to make it so that parents can go in uh have an easy way of viewing what their most recent phone number, address, um contacts for pickup, um health consent information, all the things that are
kind of like we want to keep updated yeartoear. We institute a new student verification update ability for them to go in, check that information, make a update to that information. alert goes to the data processor, they review it and then all they do is hit a button and then it's save in the SIS which prevents
them the data processor from needing to collect all this information, review it against what's in the SIS, look for changes on a one by one by one by one by one basis and um and then make the updates by hand. So, we've been trying to make that process more efficient so we can have the best most recent
information about our students. um that's been a huge change as far as how schools um um are able to manage their their their kids information. And that's more of like the other direction what you were asking about, but we're trying to make it so that the the SIS is a a really good hub for parents to be able
to get good information about their kids and keep us updated about what's changed at home that we can uh better contact and service their students. >> Thank you. Any other questions? Any questions online?
one uh I'm sorry, Miss Andrews, real quick before I uh your question, one of the things that um we once we update we updated the information about collecting from schools um it's been about a year and so we're going to be reaching out to our uh school sites to kind of um see
how that change has impacted them because we, you know, we we worked with with schools to say, "Hey, we want to make some changes to how we collect student information, but um we put that into place and so we're going to getting some uh schools together from all the different regions and kind of get a
how's it been kind of meeting with them to update uh us about what the challenges have been about um how uh all these changes have impacted their day-to-day operations and how they how they work on uh on getting this kind of information into the SIS. So, we're
trying to refine that process for everybody so it makes it as equitable across the district for all the different schools and their needs. I'm sorry, Miss Andrews. >> Thank you so much. And I really love SIS. Parents love it. I'm using it with my grandkids and schools love it. But I just wanted to ask, I'm back from the
EDW days with Mark Baron. Some of you may remember him. And I just know a lot of your people that we hired back in the day during the time that I worked in human resources, hiring a lot of people for uh for your department, Deepo, as well as Adam Miller, you know, all these
people we brought forth. But we're making so many changes now. Uh, and I don't know if you can answer this question, but how are we getting some of these people uh um knowledge to know that maybe the skill set that they had when they came into the district has
changed and they may not be able to um uh flow into the new processes or systems that we're using now. Now that we're making a lot of changes, that's very unique and good for parents, students, schools, and everybody else.
And so we still probably have a uh a lot of people in your departments that were valued in the day that we did EDW back in the Mark Baron days. And so what are we doing to help these people know that maybe their jobs might be phased out or they may not be able to fit the new
technology uh AI and the things that we're doing? So, what are we doing to help these people as we move forth uh with their numbers uh in your department and maybe some of them may no longer be needed anymore because they may not fit the mode of what we're talking about.
>> Sure. Uh Don uh can probably speak to that better than uh I could, but we um there's two sides of this. one um and I know this is not related to the question specifically you asked but uh we have a obviously a um a training issue with not an issue but a training need for
everybody that has been relying on EDW for anything they do in their jobs across the district and so we're addressing that with the uh departments that are pardon me with the departments who uh oversee individual reporting needs
within their uh what they use in EDW So for a department like uh multicultural who's had um some people in their departments who relied on EDW, we would help them to understand, you know, what the the changes were that allowed them to get their jobs done, make sure they have everything they need
when we migrate these reports over and give them the opportunity to be up to speed about what is um you know, what is changing, what is what is updated, where they can find information. And we're doing that in conjunction with all these departments because we see the subject matter experts as the ones in the departments that are the ones that
communicate with the end users to be able to let them know what uh they can do to to uh access the information they've always had to do their job. Uh as far as you know the question you had about how our programmers from EDW or from other staff members that were
working on the EW project, Don could speak to more about that. Oh, there we go. Yeah. So, several of the EDW folks transitioned to my department as well as some of them to Jason's as well. Some of them stayed in the ED original EDW department. And when
those folks came over, we had extensive training weekly, multiple times during the week to try and get them acclimated to the new system. Um you know there is since we did consolidate there was a considerable amount of savings with that
and some of the folks did not um there was some non-renewals on some of the folks um some of the um and it was due to um job function elimination. Um you know when we do consolidations which we're looking at because you know we do
have some budget issues in in the district here. when you do the consolidation that happens sometimes is that you have this group of people and this group of people and when you consolidate you don't need as many people or you go through a training and some retire and some just don't want to do the new technology. So we've kind of
been going through those process over the last um six months or so and um I think that's where we're at now. we have a a considerable savings with our consolidation and um I think Heather presented that actually in the budget uh
committee that she recently um I think it was recent it was the end of March >> you okay any other uh questions or comments so this brings us to a conclusion clusion of the items that we have for the technology advisory committee
meeting today. Um, we still don't have a quorum, so we're going to postpone the voting of minutes until our next meeting, which leads us to tenatively July 15th will be our next meeting.
Do I have a move for adjournment? >> So moved. I second. >> Okay. So, our meeting is officially adjourned and we'll see you July 15th. Watch your email for final verification.
>> Thank you.