The New Haven School District Finance & Operations Committee reviewed a set of proposed IT purchases and contracts Wednesday that would change how the district manages classroom monitoring, account authentication and student-information reporting. The committee voted to forward the packet, including the purchase orders and contracts, to the full board for approval after staff follow-up on pricing and implementation questions.

Among the items discussed were a proposed purchase of Securly Classroom (to replace GoGuardian), Microsoft licensing and identity-management tooling via SHI, Clever identity management (single sign-on) and a request to hire temporary staff to assist with migrating PowerSchool reporting to a cloud service.

Mister Brown, who presented the technology items, said the district plans to adopt Securly Classroom in place of GoGuardian to avoid expected price hikes and to consolidate monitoring features with an existing Securly product the district uses for email monitoring. Brown said the Securly Classroom purchase would cost about $70,200 for the coming year and that moving platforms could yield annual savings compared with continuing to renew GoGuardian.

Board members asked several procurement and policy questions. Miss Downer asked whether staff had sought multi-year pricing; Brown said he tended not to recommend multi-year contracts for unfamiliar software and agreed to get a multi-year price. Several members asked staff to survey other districts about experience with the vendor and to provide a multi-year cost-comparison to show whether locking price saves money.

The committee also discussed identity management. Brown said Clever IDM would unify sign-on across Microsoft and Google accounts and would help the district secure student and staff credentials without requiring separate credentials for each platform. Brown said that, with current systems, students often have distinct Microsoft and Google account credentials and the proposed system would let the district authenticate users from a single identity manager. Board members expressed concern about routing licensing and identity functions through third-party resellers; staff said SHI is an existing vendor the district uses to procure software and that Brown would double-check direct-vendor options and confirm projected savings figures with Microsoft partners.

The committee heard a separate presentation about PowerSchool reporting. The district needs technical help converting locally hosted reports and scripts so PowerSchool Online can replicate existing outputs; staff recommended temporary contract staffing (Insight Global) to decode legacy scripts and preserve reporting during migration.

At the meetings close, the committee adopted a motion to forward the packet of amendments, MOUs, purchase orders and contracts to the full board. The committee also requested that staff: provide multi-year pricing for major software purchases, confirm the projected $110,000 savings cited for the identity-management approach, and check peer districts experiences with Securly Classroom and Clever.

The committee did not approve final contract awards; final authority rests with the full board.