Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, flanked by Police Superindendent Larry Akers and Superintendent of Schools Sonia Dinnall, addresses a hoax threat made against Springfield Public Day Elementary School in October 2024. In-school cameras were used to determine a report of an active shooter was false.
Reminder Publishing file photo
SPRINGFIELD — After an arduous several months of discussions, a new memorandum of understanding regarding access to school cameras is officially implemented.
During its March 13 meeting, the School Committee approved a five-year interdepartmental agreement between the Police Department and School Department that delineates protocol about who can access interior and exterior surveillance cameras across Springfield Public Schools, along with when and how the cameras can be accessed.
The vote comes after School Committee’s Legislative and Contracts Subcommittee spent several meetings shaping the new contract to make it much more transparent and user-friendly than it was before.
“This has been a very tedious process yet very intentionally so, because we wanted to make sure that we had the community input, the students’ input, our families, our educators, as well as our staff who have been doing a phenomenal job,” said LaTonia Monroe Naylor, School Committee member and chair of Legislative and Contracts. “We were able to do that really in tandem with the Police Department under the leadership of [Police] Superintendent [Larry] Akers to make sure that we are very transparent.”
The reason why the School Committee voted on a new five-year agreement between the two departments is because this prior one was expiring. The previous iteration of the MOU, a three-year agreement that began in 2021, mainly allowed the Springfield Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Analysis Center and the civilian video analyst access to live or stored recordings by the cameras inside the schools.
However, SPD supervisors and officers could also access the interior cameras if they are responding to or investigating an incident “believed to be depicted on such images and recordings.”
In the case of a public safety emergency, all of those parties could access the cameras, according to the 2021 MOU, and in the case of a non-emergency investigation, SPD would need a written approval from the Springfield Public Schools Safety and Security Office to look at the surveillance.
The 2021 MOU also stated that interior and exterior cameras could only be used for law enforcement purposes, and “still images” or “video images” of students could not be released to entities that are not a part of the MOU agreement.
Ian Keefe, a local attorney representing the School Committee, said on Jan. 29 that the updated five-year MOU does not change the practice of this previous iteration, but it is more “transparent” and “user-friendly.”
“The purpose of the changes here were not made to change any actual current practice and there were no issues raised with the current practice,” Keefe said at the time. “The issues really were understanding what the contract said and making sure that captured what was going on, and I believe this updated revision captures the actual current practice between the schools and the Police Department.”
The implementation of the updated MOU comes months after two public meetings in late 2024 where students in Springfield Public Schools expressed concern about police access to these cameras, with some asking for more transparency and better clarity in the prior agreement.
Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Sonia Dinnall said in early January that those two public comment meetings yielded “amazing, thoughtful [and] insightful ideas” by students and family members that attended.
“We are so grateful that we have arrived at an MOU that reflects not only the safety of our students, but also the needs and the wishes of the community,” Dinnall said during a Feb. 11 School Committee meeting.
Keefe told the subcommittee in late January that the new MOU has a clear definitions section, which he said was a major request by students who attended those two public meetings.
The new agreement also clearly defines who will mainly view the video, which Keefe said are the civilians at RTC and the civilian/officer SPD Video Analyst unit.
“We appreciate our attorney Keefe really going through things with his colleague … and combing through and having conversations with anyone who was engaged in this process to make sure that [the new MOU] reflects what is actually happening as well as being very transparent about what it is that we’re doing to maintain safety for our children and for the folks that are in our schools,” Monroe Naylor said.
Every School Committee member voted “yes” on the MOU except member Denise Hurst, who supported the new agreement, but not the five-year length.
“I too am prepared to vote in favor of the motion,” Hurst said. “However, I am not in favor of a five-year contract. We are in an election cycle. We could very possibly have a brand-new School Committee, and I don’t believe it’s fair to extend something outside of a potentially new body coming in.”
School Committee member Joesiah Gonzalez proposed the five-year MOU instead of three because he said he wants to prevent any future lapses in the contract that could jeopardize school safety.
The new MOU was not posted on the SPS website, as of press time.
