Pleasanton school board approves reorganization of technological services

The Pleasanton school board approved a reorganization plan earlier this month for the Information Technology Department that will see tech specialists assigned to multiple schools and work off a dispatch model.

According to the plan, nine technology specialists will be divided into three teams — each team will be responsible for one middle school and three elementary schools and will support their group of schools on a rotational basis.

Two technology specialists will remain at their respective high schools due to “the campus size and support needs.” One will be reassigned to Village High School, the Pleasanton Virtual Academy and provide support for the district office.

“As we move forward to this plan, yes, it is going to be difficult to transition,” said Robert Torres, chief technology officer. “After we get over the shock and we get this thing going, we’ll see the benefits in the long-term as we move in this new direction.”

Torres said during his presentation of the plan to the board on Aug. 11 that this school year will serve as a pilot year for the proposed dispatch model and that tech tickets, which are how teachers put in service requests, will be compiled and analyzed to find out where to make improvements.

Dispatching technology specialists is just part of the overall reorganization of the technology department. One of the upper level changes will be in administrative roles and responsibilities.

Torres said that it all starts from the top and by creating a centralized base of operations with new administrator roles, you now have people providing support remotely and also fixing systemic problems — allowing site technicians to take care of the smaller fire.

“We’re operating in silos,” he said. “I have no idea how tickets flow in. Most of them flow from email, straight to technicians or through a walkie talkie … and we have no visibility. So we don’t know where sort of higher level system issues are that we can troubleshoot from downtown.”

Torres said by creating a help desk system where all the tech tickets can be sent and properly organized by importance, helps decide whether the problem can be dealt with remotely or a site technician must be dispatched.

“Remote support … is underutilized in this district,” he said. “In fact, I’ll say I’ll go as far as is non-existent.”

But moving to a remote focused and dispatch model is something that has raised a little skepticism among some board members on how well it will work.

“I’ve been hearing a lot of comments from teachers and even a few principals feeling like they’ve been left out of the loop,” Trustee Mary Jo Carreon said. “I’m hoping that you have a plan in place where you can engage the teachers and engage the principals and let them know.”

That missing communication is something that Cheryl Atkins, secretary for the Association of Pleasanton Teachers, felt uncomfortable with as well.

“Teachers were really surprised to come back and find out that this had been a discussion that they have not heard yet,” Atkins said. “I appreciate your saying that we would get in the loop and be in that discussion because right now I’m sure that lots of teachers are feeling like I am.”

Board Vice President Steve Maher, who was the lone dissenting vote for the reorganization, said his main concern was not having a site technician at every school readily available.

His critique of schools not being able to get a full day technician because they are being shared was coupled with another concern which was why the plan is being implemented during the fall, rather than over the summer.

But Torres assured Maher that the dispatch model will assure that site technicians will be available every morning for every school and Julio Hernandez, assistant superintendent of human resources, echoed that by saying technicians need to be more flexible in their services.

“While that technician is not there, the teachers are not restricted or not without coverage because they could reach out to be able to use the remote support model,” Hernandez said.

The shift to remote support is also something that trustees Kelly Mokashi and Joan Laursen said is important as the district moves into the future with higher-grade technological equipment.

“Even though teachers are used to working with students remotely and on Zoom, dealing with those tech issues they’re used to that physical hand … and we just need to help prepare everyone so that they don’t feel that loss of physical touch,” Mokashi said.

Laursen said that while she understands the fear of the unknown, after being on the board for so long she has seen multiple similar reorganizations and said this particular one is important.

“We’re putting out fires right now … as opposed to (asking) where are the problems in the system? Where are the problems with the technology?” Laursen said. “All of those things are system issues and you have to get in front of them in order to solve them and make it easier.”

In other business

* Mallory McGoff, project and operations manager for the Go Green Initiative, updated the board on how the district is doing with its waste reduction and diversion compliance programs.

The Go Green Initiative is a nonprofit organization that works with districts to improve their environmental health, safety and sustainability. Apart from the district, each school site has a “green team” that works to help their respective school comply with several State Assembly bills focused on waste reduction and diversion.

McGoff said that a huge task of the green teams is to educate all their students and staff on how to comply with the new laws and how to reduce and prevent waste. She added that it’s important to get more people involved and the only way to do that is to tell the kids why it’s important to track your waste.

“It’s not just about landfills filling up, which is important as well, but it’s about climate change and that running waste in the landfill and it’s methane, which is contributing to climate change,” McGoff said. “That’s something that’s within everyone’s locus of control, is to take responsibility for what they do with their waste.”

Each team has an administrator, teacher, custodian and student who make sure recycling and composting is happening across campus, that bins are contamination free and that staff and students are educated about how to properly dispose of waste.

The district’s green team also provided the board a report that evaluated how school sites in the district are complying with the new waste laws by collecting feedback from stakeholders participating in these programs with the intention of optimizing and institutionalizing better waste practices.

In the report, the green team included suggested equipment, practices and programs so that schools can achieve better waste management.

Some of these recommendations are to re-establish green teams at each school, which McGoff said already happened, and facilitate training for students, teachers and staff as well as setting up quarterly progress report funding for waste tracking.

McGoff said that one challenge last year was getting staff to participate but that the team will do better in recruiting this year..

Included in the report are also examples of schools showcasing success with contaminator-free bins, which illustrates how students are throwing their waste away in the appropriate bins.

“I’ve been to multiple sites where the kids take this responsibility very seriously, and I think that the literacy that they are gaining will really have an impact,” said Ahmad Sheikholeslami, assistant superintendent of business services.

Some of the requests the green team made in the report was more lids for compost and recycling bins at different middle and high schools as well as re-launching the food share program, which is meant to reduce food waste.

Food share programs would allow students to give away their unwanted, still sealed or unbitten food items, so other students can select these food and beverages at no cost.

* One example of the environmental work being done in the district was when the board awarded Amador Valley High School senior Aryan Jain with the Presidential Volunteer Service Award.

A participant in the Go Green Initiative in the 2021 summer internship program and a member of his school’s Local Leaders Club, Jain became interested in solutions for assessing different contributors of greenhouse gas emissions waste.

That’s what led him to develop a scalable waste tracking app that integrates with the Environmental Protection Agency tool, Energy Star Portfolio Manager. The free tool is used by organizations across the country, including Pleasanton, to benchmark utility use and environmental impacts of facilities.

Jain piloted the app at Amador and is now preparing a demonstration for the EPA to show how his program integrates with their existing infrastructure so that he can make it available across the country.

“I just want to say thank you to all of you guys because everything that I’ve been able to do has stemmed from my PUSD education,” he said. “Going back to my time at Mohr Elementary, that’s when I first learned about climate change and how it was an important issue … that even students need to be informed and we need to take action on this issue.”

As he prepares to scale his app to serve the rest of the schools in the district, Superintendent David Haglund told Jain that he is a prime example of the district’s mission statement of preparing students so that they can make the world better.

“I want to say thank you for stepping out and doing something that you knew was important,” Haglund said.

* The board approved the appointment of Theresa Gonsalves as the new Harvest Park Middle School vice principal.

The popular eighth-grade science teacher has called Harvest Park home for just over two decades and has been with the district for 27 years after relocating from the San Joaquin Valley to Pleasanton during her early years of teaching. She was named the 2019 Teacher of the Year for that long-term commitment.

“Thank you so much for the opportunity to continue to serve the Harvest Park community,” Gonsalves said. “I look forward to this year, I expect to learn a lot and I’m going to do what I can to help our students grow.”