Elementary shift moving along

The Norwood School Committee met last Wednesday, and Superintendent Timothy Luff updated members on the elementary school redistricting.

Basically, the Norwood Public Schools District (NPS) decided to move the fifth grade into the new Coakley Middle School, redistribute all the kindergarten students from the Willett to their neighborhood elementary schools, and make the Willett a regular K-4 school.

This has caused some friction for some families on the edges of those new districts. Luff said he is looking at requests from families to stay in their current districts, but said parents shouldn't hold their breath.

“I am continuing to review family requests to stay,” he said. “I am not honoring those unless there is an extenuating circumstance. I have not responded to those; I am waiting on what the kindergarten response will come out to be. Parents should expect [their children] will go to the school where they are zoned, but per the policy, any parent is able to ask me if they can be in a different district and, under extenuating circumstances, I might.”

Luff said the elementary schools have sent out open house invitations to new students to help build the school communities there.

Related to that, Luff said they opened kindergarten registration on Jan. 12 and have asked parents to complete registration by Feb. 27 to help with planning for the next year; the idea being they don't want to shift more teachers after the district already placed most if not all of its teachers.

“We know it will not be complete by then, but we have asked parents to do that so we can have the most updated information for staffing purposes for our newly redistricted schools,” he said. “At this time, we have no need for additional budgeted staff based on the current numbers we have.”

Luff said they have entered kindergarten registration, which he said hasn't filled up but is looking good, for the most part.

“We are looking at a possible higher class size at the Balch, and we are having a conversation about a possible multi-grade that was brought up by a teacher,” he said. “We're not sure if we'll be able to do that or even if we need to do that, but there is a thought process around it about which I thought you should be aware.”

Luff said he's been meeting with all paraprofessionals out of the Willett, and he said the plan is to move each staff member with their respective kindergarten teacher; however, he cautioned a few won't be able to do that, and they're still figuring that out.

“We should have those placements all completed in the next few weeks,” he said.

Luff said he would next update the committee on the transition on Feb. 27.

In other news, Luff welcomed newly-minted Facilities Director Chris Folan, who is taking over for Paul Riccardi after his retirement. Luff said the Town administration and the NPS both met with candidates and chose Folan, who was until then the Facilities Assistant Director.

“We are happy to have offered Folan the job, which he has gratefully accepted, so congratulations to Chris Folan, who will be our next director of Facilities,” he said.

“Congrats to Chris,” said member Anne Marie Mazzola. “Carry on that good work.”

“Big shoes to fill,” said Chair David Hiltz.

NPS Technology Director Joe Kidd also voiced his congratulations for Riccardi and Norwood Community Media Director Jack Tolman.

“I'd like to offer congratulations to Paul Riccardi and Jack Tolman, who are retiring,” he said. “I've done tons of work with them over the last 15 years. They're just unbelievable.”

It should be noted that Tolman is only partially retiring and will be sticking around NCM for the foreseeable future.

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In related news, Kidd gave an overview of the technology department during the meeting and touched on several challenges the staff is facing.

First of all, he said security has been a growing concern in the last few years he's been in the position, so much so it's impacting other technology issues within the schools. “And this is not just Norwood, this is everywhere,” he said. “I like to say, 15 years ago when I started here, I thought about security, but it wasn't everything. Today it's 95 percent of what we think about every single day. And it's getting worse, as far as the threats are concerned.”

“Other issues are competing projects and time.” Kidd said. “There are lots of projects, lots of things to do. A lot of the projects listed in this presentation are things that have been on the list for some years now, and they just get pushed down the list based on priority.”

Kidd said the current artificial intelligence (AI) boom has put a steep increase in pricing for specific computer components, mainly RAM and graphics processor units (GPUs). RAM is basically the computer's rate of speed as it handles tasks, and GPUs deal with image processing (they're also known as graphics cards).

AI developers figured out they could put most of the required processing power for the recent large language model boom from these pieces of hardware, and now, Kidd said, they're very hard to find.

“We're still waiting for some quotes on some student Chromebooks next year,” he said. “There are rising costs for RAM and GPUs due to artificial intelligence and the servers and chips being used for those. For the forecasted budget, that's a challenge.”

Speaking of AI, Kidd said they've been running into more and more sophisticated scam attempts from scammers using the software, mainly for phishing scams (an email pretends to be from the school or other trusted source but is a backdoor for a scammer).

“We're already seeing it: the use of AI as a means to phish our staff members and trick them into giving up their credentials and getting access to our network,” he said. “But on the other, there is opportunity to use AI, and there are a number of people here who know how to use it and use it well.”

Though Kidd did say that AI has been extremely helpful in coding tasks that the department has to undertake, he said also they are working to make sure that the systems do not share any personal identifiable data with any company the department is using.