Malden School Technology Subcommittee Meeting

In attendance:

Chair Keith Bernard

Member Peter Piazza

Member Dawn Macklin

Member Rob McCarthy

Superintendent Timothy Sippel

Guest Mark Racine

On Tuesday, August 25, 2026 the subcommittee on technology of the Malden School Committee held a meeting. Reconnect Malden is providing this recap to help keep the community updated.

The biggest takeaways are:

1) While the administration and technology subcommittee considers the AI & Learning Working Group's recommendations, chatbot products are disabled for students in Malden Public Schools.

2) New software is being used this school year at MPS to filter applications that students use on Chromebooks, and to block YouTube except for videos specified by a teacher.

Note: Although the technology subcommittee meeting was not recorded, you can watch Dr. Sippel explain the GoGuardian and YouTube changes at the August 31 school committee here (the technology updates begin at approximately 43 minutes). Also, the District has a FAQ on GoGuardian here.

3) The next subcommittee meeting will be held Tuesday, September 15 at 6:00pm at City Hall. 

During the meeting, the members went through each section of the AI and Learning Working Group's recommendations and based on their initial review, identified where the administration can take action now and where the school committee may want to enact policies. Before any policy is finalized, there will be an opportunity for public feedback. At the August 31 school committee meeting, the subcommittee Chair Keith Bernard asked all members to familiarize themselves with the recommendations and to engage with the community around these issues in preparation to develop policies. He emphasized that since we are taking a proactive approach, we're in the minority in a new frontier and that the end goal is good policy.