The Finance & Operations Committee considered a proposed data‑sharing agreement with Varsity Tutors that would pair free tutoring services for Hill Central and East Rock (grades 3–8) with a Mathematica research study to evaluate effectiveness for student subgroups.

Mr. Nguyen described the program and the data fields Varsity Tutors requested for the study: district ID, grade level, gender, race, SPED and multilingual‑learner flags and benchmark assessments. "This is strictly a free, at no cost study to us," an unidentified staff member told the committee, noting the district expected no charges to families.

Committee members asked whether personally identifiable information would be passed to Mathematica. Jason Botel of Varsity Tutors said, "Mathematica, the research partner, will not have access to any personally identifiable data. ... They will only receive ... district ID numbers that are not able to tie to students' identities." Members requested that the district memo explicitly describe the study purpose, the data fields requested, and the privacy safeguards.

Members also asked about Institutional Review Board (IRB) and research oversight. Staff said Mathematica had not yet completed IRB paperwork but that the district planned to pursue IRB review as part of the process; the committee asked staff to clarify whether IRB or equivalent research vetting would be completed before the full board considers formal approval. Staff committed to report back to the committee by Friday with a plan for IRB review and the minimum data elements to be shared.

Botel described platform features for classroom and after‑school use — live human chat‑based tutoring, an AI tutor designed to guide rather than give answers, teacher and administrator portals with usage metrics and recorded sessions for review — and said the service can support scheduled 15/30/45‑minute high‑dosage tutoring or on‑demand chat sessions.

The committee voted to forward the data‑sharing agreement to the full board as part of a package of items; staff will update the cover memo with clearer explanations of the study, the data elements requested and the vetting status before the full‑board meeting.