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 — A new memorandum of understanding that lets police patch into school cameras during emergencies is officially at the finish line.
The School Committee’s Legislative and Contracts Subcommittee conducted several meetings over the last few months to shape language for a revised MOU between the School Department and Police Department, with the goal of making a much-debated school cameras contract much more transparent and user-friendly than it is now.
That goal is now in sight after the Legislative and Contracts Subcommittee unanimously recommended a new five-year MOU to the full committee during its March 6 meeting. The expectation is that the full School Committee will vote on it during its March 13 regular gathering.
The previous MOU, which began in 2021, was a three-year contract.
“We’re grateful for the hard work of all the attorneys who had eyes on this MOU and we’re grateful that we’re looking at a five-year MOU as opposed to a shorter period of time ensuring the safety of our students and staff inside Springfield Public Schools,” said Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Sonia Dinnall.
As of right now, the current school camera policy from 2021 allows the Springfield Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Analysis Center and the civilian video analyst live access to the cameras inside the schools only in the event of emergencies, like when there is an active shooter, or other life-threatening situations.
The current MOU states that SPD supervisors and officers are also allowed to access the interior cameras if they are responding to or investigating an incident “believed to be depicted on such images and recordings.”
SPD can only access these interior cameras during a non-emergency investigation if they receive written approval from the Springfield Public Schools Safety and Security Office.
The current MOU also states that the SPS exterior cameras can be accessed at any time by SPD’s Real-Time Crime Analysis Center and the civilian video analyst, along with SPD officers and supervisors “responding to or in good faith investigating an incident depicted on such images and recordings.”
The interior and exterior cameras can only be used for law enforcement purposes, and no “still images” or “video images” of students can be released to entities that are not a part of the MOU agreement.
Since the inception of this camera agreement more than three years ago, the interior cameras have been accessed eight times in total.
Seven of those times were prank “swatting” calls while the other involved the incident at Springfield’s High School of Science and Technology in the spring where shots were fired inside the school. The Sci-Tech incident was considered the only “real-time use” for the cameras.
The reason why the School Committee is voting on a new five-year MOU between the two departments is because this current one was set to expire in 2024.
Ian Keefe, a local attorney representing the School Committee, said on Jan. 29 that the new MOU does not change the practice of the current MOU, 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. “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 final draft of this new 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 current one.
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.
Readers can learn more about this new MOU process by visiting previous Reminder Publishing reporting: https://tinyurl.com/39zpbz8n. People can also view the current three-year MOU by visiting https://tinyurl.com/9cr2ab52.
Reminder Publishing will have more information on the updated MOU in a future edition.
