The Finance & Operations Committee reviewed two memoranda of understanding on Jan. 8: a data-sharing MOU with tutoring provider New Haven Counts and a community-service tracking MOU with MobileServe LLC.

Mister Nguyen described New Haven Counts as a tutoring program seeking student assessment data to measure its effects on state (SBA) and district (iReady) outcomes for 2022–25. "New Haven Counts is a tutoring program to boost literacy and numeracy among students," Nguyen said. He said the group requested SBA levels for 2022–25 and iReady levels for 2022–24 to evaluate program effectiveness.

Doctor Yarbrough asked whether the shared data would be anonymized and who would need to sign to permit sharing. Mister Nguyen said the program would need to obtain parent permission and that he would follow up with more details on how programs acquire parent consent. Later in the discussion staff noted the paperwork cites a school-official exception to FERPA and includes a district data-privacy agreement. "My reading of the documentation is that it would be identifiable data because it's gonna have specific test scores, and it's citing a school official exception to FERPA," a committee member said. The committee asked in-house counsel to review and confirm what student-identifying information would be shared and whether parental consent is required.

MobileServe LLC’s MOU would provide an interface for a school to track community-service hours. Mister Nguyen said the school requested fields including first and last name, school email and cohort year so MobileServe can log and report hours. Committee members asked how community-service hours are currently tracked and whether MobileServe would be a pilot that would inform future vendor decisions.

Attorney Alexiadis noted she had been reviewing legal questions in the background and would coordinate offline with district counsel. Committee Chair Mister Wilcox said staff should circulate legal conclusions and any corrected MOU attachments before the full board meeting. The committee forwarded both MOUs to the full board with a recommendation to approve, with the request that legal clarifications about identifiable data and parental consent be completed first.

No final contract was executed at the committee meeting; the items were forwarded to the full board for consideration.