Skip to main content
District

Smart Bond Public Hearing (05.06.20)

Public Hearing held on a Zoom live stream with Q&A

  • Good morning every we're here this morning for our smart School Technology bond hearing and I'm going to turn things over to Matthew Perry after I remind community members in our Board of Education that the taxpayer is X back in 2014 and it's the charge of the school district in our technology committee led by mr. Perry to really develop a program that makes the most sense for our community using those so I will turn things over to mr. I'm to share some information about our smart schools bond proposal hello my name is Matthew Perry I'm the director of Technology here at the Alexander school and I have a presentation or that I'll be sharing with you should be seeing on your screens right now okay we're going to be presenting the Alexander smartbond here today if you have any questions will be a Q&A at the end of this presentation however if you would like to contact me or if you're not show me a temporary at Alexander csd.org my phone number is also up here with the closure and maybe ask her to just go ahead and email me so this temptation is actually based on a full smart bond proposal that is written up and is on the IT department section of our website questions to please go ahead and click on this document you just go to our homepage click on departments and then click on it department and right at the top you'll see the 20/20 Alexander Central Mart on the proposal show completely writes up what the committee was thinking of how we plan this how this matches our three-year technology plan and the goals written in that everybody to go ahead and take a look at that so the smart schools Bond act it was an Act passed by the New York State referendum in November of 2014 billion dollars New York state school districts for the purpose of improving learning and opportunity to the funding of educational technology and infrastructure improvements Alexander 960 1920s from despondent the money that I'm proposing to spend today was already approved New York in 2014 for our District's asking of additional funds for this coming current year essentially whatever we will spend in this if approved will come back to 100% I do need to thank the Alexander technology committee who helped me work on this he is as the members of me the District Library in the high school high school teacher in elementary teacher the director of pupil personnel and the elementary principal very hard since the ending of our first smartbond which we completed two years ago and writing this a smartphone and planning for this so thank you very much everybody worked on it again if you look at written proposal that we have up on the website and there's much more detailed explanation of what we are purchasing in this summary of the products that will be going through and I'll be going to in this presentation total for this is $499,900 and let's go ahead and just talk about the items that will be purchasing for this what are the what are the purchases will be doing is purchasing a t one of these interactive displays by promethium of the classroom and the projectors that shine on them these devices have a really long life expectancy much like the products that they are replacing in our classrooms we've had the smart boards in there in some cases and they definitely showing their age and do need to be replaced so these products that will be purchasing we are hoping to get a good 10 years a decade out of as well so definitely pick these specific Promethean boards based on having different vendors bring in different product we actually had five different products into the district and this wasn't just showing setup we have loaners coming District we put them in classrooms and in high traffic areas with teachers and staff and students go to these products and give us their recommendation or what they thought was the best musky City year additionally we're looking at 75 in as the size of these boards and that is based on our classroom sizes and I really want to make sure that every student has the best viewing experience of these this place we also used industry standard viewing formulas that give us a ratio of how big the screen is too how far the child is sitting away from the screen and I'm basically 75in is the best average everybody no matter where they are sitting in the classroom gets the best viewing angle and a built-in sound front facing stereo audio really work Wells classroom size this way we can put jack sound not have to worry about buying a digital audio equipment or speakers so really the product was the best it for Alexander in that respect along with these were going to purchase the active LPS digital signage player this is an add-on module 2 goes right into each one of the other devices directly to the display itself giving the teacher and students more control and more Hands-On learning at while using these projecting units I'm sorry interactive display allows for additional educational apps to be installed cloud storage staff member any student has and it'll allow for district management this will allow us to send out announcements directly to the display module purchase with the interactive display along with that we are going to have to upgrade the monitor that is hooked up to the workstation that each teacher has in their classroom how you can see in the picture below hear the current monitors match the aspect ratio of so are smart boards have an aspect ratio for X3 that basically makes them a square so for the teacher workstation to be cloned perfectly to the displays the teacher is sure of what they are showing they have to have a monitor that match anywhere interactive displays are the newer 16 x green rectangle aspect ratio monitor resolution as the display so again teacher is a shirt that what they are saying in front of them is the same thing that's on the display for all the students to see and again this has built-in speakers because teachers do use sounds their own personal reasons to set up classes and classroom so it's important that we purchase that along with it small item here are the slimtouch 4040 is basically a keyboard and touchpad is a very inexpensive but can really do a lot for this classroom model project personal a Windows PC instead of having to run keyboard or mouse or run directly to the interactive display touch it also means the teacher can handle the device again these are very inexpensive but they can really do Allah for the teaching in class we've already tested this unit out in classrooms as they were quite well and they have a built-in battery so they can be recharged off the teacher work station and we don't have to purchase additional batteries to do so so easy product and really we get a lot out of it okay so we have to also purchase about 4 stands for the installation of these interactive displays basically shows that are shaped in such a way that they're out of the ordinary and there's not an easy way for us to wall mount the display this is kind of a 1/4 replacement of the fact that we have four classrooms and that have honest and classrooms for me to stand for the place directly made by the same company and they are rated the weight of the much larger 86 in unit display units so we know that these stands. These displays safely and they actually have arm brackets to come out to make sure that oh and we also have tested these in the school and they work perfectly so will be purchasing four of these so we do need a team of people to help us install all this new equipment and take down the old apartment we have partnered with the BOCES facility services for Wayne Finger Lakes this is the same thing that helped us with our first they ran the cat 6A wiring you are ceilings and the access points in every classroom so they're very familiar with our district they were professionals rate with us and we are still very very pleased with the project that they had done and how well that went again are looking to them to go ahead and help us take down the old equipment and projectors and then put up these wall mounts and display brightness classroom they've already gone through the entire school and done a survey to make sure that our walls are safe or handling the way till we putting on them and they will even actually the case up different classroom putting in a special bracket to help reinforce to make sure that these These are put on accurately firmly and most importantly thank you for that everybody uses them will be a safe experience using and the nice thing about this true is that if they can't work in the summer time because this project is approved normal time and we're back at school school hours so they won't be interrupting our normal class Flow by putting into this equipment so another big part of this project is the purchasing a Chromebook and again this is written up in our for your technology plan or if you want to read the actual documents for the smartphone that I expressed earlier purchasing 334 Chromebook food in the district of 121 everywhere from the first grade all the way up to the truck right if I want the one I mean every student would have their own device this the nice thing about this installation is that it would also be why are the older Windows Labs the windows Labs expensive to maintain and they also take up valuable classroom space that we would be able to free out there Furniture wiring and we are looking to purchase Acer clamshell Chromebooks the ones that we have already purchased these have been worried free action around me and we've had very problem problems with the breakdowns or any hardware issues so now it's difficult for me to say that they will get this we don't know what a soul they coming out with a by the time you get it again green clamshell from Acer's what will be looking for and whatever they replace this bottle with finally the debt that will be purchasing here are cases again we want to get the full five years of life out of these Chromebooks at Google promises to support these devices and to do so we want to make sure that there is actor bump and drop protection for the even though we will actively discourage it it's very possible stickers another ornamentation will come on be Side by System of course it's much easier and cheaper to replace the shelves and it is an entire device or an outside again so I will open this up Q&A right now that is what we are looking to purchase or this what is project so if you can't do the Q&A here you're if you're watching this recorded please feel free to email me any and let me see if we have any qna right now if you can you can go ahead at the bottom and hit the cue in a section questions your head and ask them right now okay I am getting a question what is the time frame expected for approval from the state during the current situation that we are dealing with now with the closure of the school the state has tried to expedite a lot of these especially Monza cars that have additional devices that can be very useful during the closure sew in the past it has taken a while but the state has improved their speed so we are hoping that if I get this in next week that the state will look through it and that maybe we can go ahead and get approval by the summer time so that would be the best-case scenario but again it's kind of up to the state where they take you for the question are there other questions for Matthew yes you did a remarkable job with this very clear and very responsive to the needs of our district and what modified a bet based on our current situation with the closure I do see that there's another question and it's simply a thank you from this is Grand Matthew Perry and thanks to all of you for being here this morning anybody has any questions please feel free to reach out to mr. Perry using the email address on his presentation thank you everyone and have a fantastic day