Operations team credits SmartPass, testing changes and attendance outreach for improved middle-school metrics; principals urge filling vacant operations role

Allison Pledo and Mr. Han, the district’s coordinators for operations, data and assessment, told the committee that intentional operational work has reduced instructional disruptions and supported attendance improvements across middle schools.

They outlined three operational priorities: (1) staff coverage and real-time coordination to avoid uncovered classrooms; (2) organizing ACCESS and MCAS testing (they estimated 75 hours for ACCESS and 140–190 hours for MCAS planning across middle-school populations); and (3) managing technology logistics. After losing more than 70 devices in previous years, Garfield Middle School switched from take-home Chromebooks to classroom Chromebook carts (six carts per grade; 540 devices allocated), which administrators said reduced damage and logistic overhead.

Pledo described SmartPass, the district’s digital pass system: students type their ID at a classroom Chromebook when leaving; a five-minute timer runs for bathroom passes and administrators can monitor time out of class, set encounter-prevention limits and pull data for parent meetings. "You can show a student that they’ve missed X hours this year," an operations presenter said, describing how data prompts targeted family outreach.

The operations team also presented attendance interventions: daily attendance reports drive early outreach (administrators start engagement around three absences) and targeted meetings for chronically absent students; presenters said the work led to improvements for students previously missing 10%+ of days (GMS had 54 students in that category and over 80% of that cohort showed attendance improvement this year).

Several students described the impact. GMS student Lnell Pisilo Queevas credited attendance meetings and staff outreach with improving confidence and grades.

Principal Wlette and other building leaders raised a separate but related staffing concern: one middle school (SBA) lost its operations assistant three weeks earlier and administrators said that vacancy has removed the real-time capacity to coordinate coverage, testing and proactive attendance follow-up. Wlette described routine examples where substitute no-shows forced assistant principals out of scheduled professional time; she asked the committee to prioritize filling the post, arguing the vacancy creates inequitable capacity across middle schools.

Committee members acknowledged budget pressures and internal posting rules but several said the presentation made the operational value clear. Mr. Kingston said SmartPass "works really well," and asked the committee to consider internal candidates and, if feasible, a short-term posting to preserve school capacity while budget decisions are finalized.

The district did not present dollar amounts for hiring in this session. Administrators said they will continue to supply attendance and discipline trend data and asked the committee to consider the operations assistant role as essential to sustaining observed gains.