SCSD Special Board Meeting 7-8-2021

001Okay, we're recording. Great. Good evening, we'll call the order the seven July 8 of 2021, a special board meeting, I do need to make a change to the agenda. So part of what we'll do is part of seven includes a discussion that needs to be an open session so we'll keep the same title for it's not going to be evaluation but it's going to be goal setting will move out and we'll call it for a for an action discussion item around goal setting. So that will be the open session will maintain a closed session, just in case we need it for now, but that's the one change we need to make to the agenda trustees any other changes that you see. Okay, kind of motion then to approve the agenda with those changes. I move

002to approve the agenda with those changes. Thank you, Wendy. Is there a second. Second. Thank you, Sarah. All in favor of the agenda with those changes please say by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposition. Hearing none. That will carry five, zero. Okay. We will move us then to the consent agenda consent agenda again is items that we find to be routine in nature, or not requiring a lot of discussion or debate trustees based off your view the consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda. I move the consent agenda items 3A through 3D. Thank you, Irene. Is there a second. Second. Thank you, Wendy. All in favor please state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposition. Hearing none that will carry five, zero, as well. All right, we'll then move us to,

003we're going for a part of our discussion around goal setting and evaluation and the great William Hewitt is back again to discuss with us. He, you know, St. Carlos it's just like everything else bill once you're in, you're in for life. There you go. I'm happy to be in for life. So welcome back thanks for helping us with this process, and kind of going through it as well so I will let you take the floor I know I sent out a couple emails kind of get everyone kind of the thumbnail and you sent some information to us that Veronica is going to attach as well for the public. I think it was watching at home. So I remember one thing to when you do have any public comment before we get started. I didn't see

004any but I just had to check. Well, hey, it's great to see everybody again. And, you know, your new superintendent now is that in place is a highly experienced after a week on the job. And so we're ready to set some objectives for the superintendent. The fifth phase of what McPherson and Jacobson does in your regular contract is to, we call it getting off to a good start we help the district set the objectives the first year or the first six month objectives for the board with the superintendent. I really take to this a lot and I've worked up a presentation that I do with boards, and I also add a few extra things in there about how you might want to get into a continuous cycle of work in looking at goals objectives and

005assessments, and also I tie this into the superintendent's evaluation a little bit too. And so there's a couple of things that I've shared with Neil that at the end of the day, I will. Veronica, do you have the slide presentation? Are you going to put it up or do you want me to screen share? You screen sharing would actually be easiest, but I could set that up. That probably would be and I'm not great at this but I've done it a few times so I should be able to do it. I'll give it a shot here. Okay, I wonder if anybody remembers how to get the screen share. You see the little icons at the bottom of the screen. I have an iPad so mine are at the top. And usually what I do is

006hit the more button and look for it. And it's not in chat. It's not. Gosh, let's see if it's under there. No. So here it is share content right in front of me. Okay, and then I think what I have to do is go to screen. Anybody remember? Because I need to go to my, let's see. Yeah, that's it. All right. And then I got to bring up the, bring it up. Oh, that's wrong. Okay, that should do it. And here we go. Come on, start broadcast. All right. It didn't bring up what I wanted it to bring up, did it? Let me see if I can get it. Bill, I might be able to do it. Let me try one more thing and then I'll hand it over to you. I always have a

007little struggle here at the beginning with this. Let's see if that did it. We can see it. We can see it there. Could you see it? We could for a minute, yeah. Okay, all right. That's all right. I need to write, so you can see it now, right? Yeah. Cause you, you have to like click on it and then share or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always forget how to do it. Okay. So I'm going to take you through a little presentation on what we're going to do tonight and take you through a few things on yearly goals and objectives. And this really should say board and superintendent, yearly goals and objectives. Okay. So that's what we're going to do tonight. We'll go ahead and review the purpose and characteristics of setting goals and objectives.

008And I actually will ask you to think about why you're a board member at the beginning of that 20 minutes. And, and then to give some feedback, we'll go ahead and look at, you, you actually have a strategic plan. You have a strategic plan that you can follow. You have a strategic plan with a few goals and you have an L cap with a few goals. So we'll look at those to give you some food for thought. On those. You don't have really what is traditionally. A set of board goals that move you forward. You more or less have a strategic plan that can follow. Most of the time this evening will be spent on setting the of time doing that. I've asked Jennifer to kind of, I mean, she's so experienced now. I've asked

009Jennifer to go ahead and look at the district and to think about what some first-year goals might be and we'll take a look at those. We'll also ask you to contribute from, you know, sort of your passions, desires, and goal setting and experience as board members. I want to emphasize that that's what our product will be, will be to set in general no more than five objective areas for the superintendent. However, I also want to say that there'll be a lot more work to be done after this is concluded tonight by you and the superintendent. I hope at the end of the night we have a good feeling for what the objective areas are and what they may kind of flesh out to be. But as you'll see, we like for you to see that

010a goal has an objective measure and is tied directly to the board goals. And I also want to mention that you have a new superintendent, very new, and I've kidded a little bit about it, but in a month some of those perspectives that the superintendent have and you may influence what the objectives are. So by no way tonight will we get to a final product, but it should be a good starting point for you to define some objectives. Then I'll go ahead and I'll talk to you about evaluation criteria and then also, so what comes next? What comes next after that? And if we have time, if you have time, I'll go ahead and show you an example of an evaluation that I recently did for another district and show you how all of this

011work kind of falls into the end of the year evaluation. Does that sound good? Sound like a good agenda, folks? Do you have any questions? Do you want to change anything before we start? I just wanted to ask you and Neil if you had talked earlier about time frame. I mean, I appreciate you putting minutes here, but I don't think I envisioned a meeting going till 730 or 8 o'clock tonight, given we started at 530. So I'm just asking to put some parameters in place and just see what we agree to. Normally, a lot of that depends on you all, but normally it takes an hour and a half. And so my goal is to be done at 7 o'clock. Okay. Thank you. Is that okay? All right. We got a little bit of a

012late start, so maybe a little after that. Normally it takes 90 minutes. Okay. Okay. Let's get started then. All right. So we all know the responsibilities of a school board and what you're doing tonight really falls at least in three of these areas. The board has the responsibility to set direction for the school district. And obviously setting objectives for a superintendent is helping set the direction. You're emphasizing what's important. Establishing effective and efficient structure for the school district. Some of your goals may very well talk about the structure and the four-year school district, whether that's in facilities or organization or budget, to provide support. Board members provide a lot of support to the superintendent when they can clearly define what important work should be focused on for the year. And number four is very clearly

013one of our objectives in this whole thing is to make sure that you demonstrate accountability and that the superintendent embraces accountability so that the entire district sees that model. So as we talk tonight, we'll talk oftentimes about how do we measure these objectives. And then finally, acting as community leaders, that is always an objective and a role of the board to be able to be the liaison between the community needs and the organization of the school district. So really, tonight we're addressing all five responsibilities of a school board as defined by CSBA. All right. I want you to take a couple of minutes and think about what is your personal agenda for being a board member? What are you really passionate about? Why did you run for the school board? I mean, these are all

014the same question. I'd like you to be able to focus on one or two items or initiatives, if you will, of things that you really would like to see done. Now, when I do this in person, I'd like you to discuss it with another board member, but of course, we don't have that ability. So we'll just briefly do a round robin on the table and listen to each of you briefly say, you know, what are the one or two things that you're really passionate about? And then to give you a little preview of why we're doing this, then we're going to see is what the board really is focused on and really wants to board members individually. Is that what is collective about the board? Because the superintendent is going to address objectives from the

015collective of the board, but it's helpful to know what each individual's personal agenda is all about. So take now, you know, three to five minutes. And actually, sometimes it's helpful to write these down if you have a pen and paper there. One or two things that you're really passionate about as a board member. Why is it you ran for the board? What is the thing you keep coming back to when you're doing your work as a board person? Ready, set, go. That's the problem with this. Did we lose my screen? Hey y'all, can you hear me? Yes. I'm trying to join from another device, not my phone, but it's saying that a meeting host needs to let me in. I don't know if somebody can let me in. Yeah, I'm trying to enter from another

016device. Veronica, let us know if you have any problems with Ben coming in. We'll work with him. Thanks. How's everybody doing? Do we need more time? That's about three minutes. I think we're ready. Okay. Neil, why don't you go ahead and go first then? Sure. I think, you know, what are the one or two things that you're really passionate about? What is the, what are the initiatives or the items that you keep coming back to that you'd like to see change or be improved upon or initiated? I think for me it's kind of, I mean, no, that's necessarily too high level for this topic, but we're not high level, but high thought is a lot of it for me is just, I think, creating the systems that provide for, I think, efficiency and, you know,

017the right kind of structure to have kids succeed and learn. So, you know, a lot of things, the example that would be, there's a lot of things just at the district office level or working with community partners that you want to make sure efficient and everything knows what's going on because if there's any bumps in the road there, it always comes back to affect the kids. And I think the other one is just, you know, big things passion for me is just creating opportunities. I think everyone learns at different paces and over different ways and different abilities. So, whatever, you know, I can do as a school board member to have different ways for kids to learn, provide them with different opportunities or different languages or different subjects. You know, whatever is going to spark

018their passion, I think as many opportunities we can create for kids the better. Those are kind of my two passions. Yeah, that's great. So, there is, you know, clearly one area is this area of having systems of support so that things work and run well and that you know, there's some organizational integrity to the school district. And then the second one is this notion that the school district is for all students and that you recognize the need to have a variety of opportunities, as you put it, and instructional strategies and abilities to have all students reach their potential, which is very much in line with your mission and your goals. So, great. Okay. Who'd like to go next? I bet Irene would like to go next. I'm happy to go next. You know, Bill, at

019first I got a little nervous when you put up the words personal agenda because I often feel my goal is to try to support our professional educators, right? And to make sure that we have like a shared agenda, not a personal one. But I think we're all here because of our shared kind of a lot of the strategic plan. I will say that there are certain parts of the strategic vision that really leaped out to me. And that was like the concept of personalizing learning and in particular having like this like project-based approach. We've made such a big investment there that I'd love to see that be incorporated as we kind of refresh. But I mean, at a higher altitude, you know, we've talked about helping kids with the five C's and the habits of

020mind and anything we can do to really, we talk about student agency and having them own more of their own goal setting. So there's a lot that initiatives that would be related, you know, student agency, goal setting, conferencing, you know, portfolios that show student growth because it also shows the work that they're doing and the progress they're making. And then project-based learning because it's very kind of like meaty challenges that give students voice and choice and also allows for various depths of learning, right? That's excellent. So I know what you're saying about the personal agenda. And you know, I've felt the same way when I went to some workshops on setting goals and objectives. But it is so important that every board member has the opportunity to get what is important to them out there.

021But we all recognize that we're one of five and it is the collective. But the reality is is that we do have things we're passionate about. And from time to time, we need to express those to our peers, you know? So I know exactly what you're saying about because we also teach board members, you know, it's not all about what you want. It's about what the whole board want. Yet, on the other hand, we do need to know what motivates us, don't we? So your focus really seems to be on that strong... Well, I'll start with project-based learning and the notion that we should have an educational system that is really authentic and really meets the needs of kids where they are and engages them at a high degree and level. And somewhat similar to

022one of Neil's passions about, you know, having instruction at different levels. I mean, I think there's an overlap there between those. And you go back then a lot to the strategic plan and the strategic plan is rich with the talk about how we have a meaningful, relevant curriculum and work in which there's a great student agency. And in fact, I spent some time reading through your strategic plan again, and I heard a lot about the five C's, but then I didn't realize that you're not really the five C's. You're the O and the five C's, right? That you all put six things in there. You have the first one is ownership. And I thought, oh, you know, that hit me. That kind of hit me because you at some point with your strategic plan, you

023made a big point about certainly doing the five C's of collaboration and compassion and citizenship on this one or two of them, I'm sure communication. But you made a point about the first thing you put there is we want to have a school district where students take ownership for their learning. So that's what I heard you say. Very good. Okay. Who would like to go next? Sarah, how about you? You're the person that has the great Smoky Mountains in your background. That's me. I think it's Wendy. I was in North Carolina last week. Sarah's now there. Okay. Sarah, do you want to flip a coin or should I just jump in? Go ahead. Just jump in. Just go ahead. Okay. I kind of want to piggyback off of Irene because I have a couple passions

024that I wrote down. My passion aligns with our vision statement around the whole child and really gets to the heart of also what Irene was talking about, about being student centered. That was something we articulated in our search for our superintendent, right? That that's a value we have. And I very much believe in student agency, student ownership. And I think what I wanted to just add to that is that obviously we are looking at the system as a whole to see where policies are supporting that and how that's being put into practice. And I think from my personal experience having a child now in the middle school, gone through the early elementary, upper elementary, middle school, I think we just need to really ensure that that vision is very clear with staff and that we're

025able to reiterate that often. And that it really does influence decision making of our leaders at all levels because I have seen where student leadership is really encouraged starting at grade four or five. And that is one of the things that I think the site leadership really takes on board at that age. Let's promote that. What I'm trying to say is that I think we want to ensure that all of our leaders and our teachers embrace that vision. And like Irene said, revisit PBL, do the things that we know have worked well and continue to do that. And also really embrace continuous improvement because I don't know, we've been doing these things for a while, but we have new teachers that come in. And I think if the vision is very clear and it is

026reiterated often and it's sort of in the water we drink, then I think we can really, well, that'll just be our North Star and ensure that our quality is really high. I just want to add to that that equity is something that I did bring up that I'm passionate about. And I think the element that I want to just touch on is that I really believe in inclusive stakeholder engagement and that we're not doing things just for the LCAP purpose, but we're really trying hard to have inclusive stakeholder engagement to ensure that those students who are most at risk or most at need, that those families are supported. And I'm just going to add on to that, that in the context of COVID, that equity also, we're going to have to really hone in on

027those kids that didn't do as well last year and are in need. So that's where my equity focus is. Oh, there's a lot there. Boy, thank you. And that was Wendy, right? Yeah. Good. Okay. Wendy's the one that I had forgotten. Wendy, you're the one with the mountains in the background. By the way, they're getting a lot of rain right now. We need it. We wish. Yeah. We need it. I know. We need it out here. So I heard from you that your first passion is really about the core vision of the school district really is that the, and this aligns with Irene. In fact, you said it piggybacks on Irene and also what Neil has said. So we're seeing some pattern here with three of you, of the board members, that the whole thing

028of student agency, of project-based learning, of taking ownership for your learning, these are things that the board is passionate about and sees as the work in the district. But you also then added some unique things that I hadn't heard before. And that centered around engagement of parents and especially about equity and thinking about equity in terms of the crisis that the COVID crisis that we're coming out of and making sure that all students are getting what they need and are able to, some, I'm sure, we recognize that we need to do some special things, some makeup, if you will, some extended learning opportunities for students who have missed things this year. And that's different for different groups of kids. So that's great. That's great. Thank you, Wendy. Okay. So Sarah, I think you should be

029next if you can, because I confused you and Wendy. I'm sorry of your backgrounds. Not the people, but backgrounds. I'm in Tennessee right now, so I do have a green background. Oh, good. Good. So at this point, I think I've spoken to the board several times about how racial equity in particular is what inspired me to initially consider being on the school board. And so I think DEI is one of my passions. But in thinking about it tonight, I think I want to highlight that at times it becomes, the way that we talk about it, it sort of becomes this kind of separate initiative that we do over here. And I want to think about it more as part of DEI being part of everything we do. And I think that's actually really well connected

030to things that have already been highlighted, like personalized learning, like focus on the whole child, like student agency. All of those things are linked. So focus on equity is not this thing over here. It's part of all of that. And then the other thing that came to mind when thinking about this was just the importance of building a community that works together in positive ways. It's the next generation of good humans, right? That's really, in essence, the work that we're trying to do together. And this past year has been challenging in a lot of ways and wanting to just be part of building that community in a positive way. I want to commend all of the board members. You're very thoughtful. And I know that Nicole and I really loved, enjoyed working with you and

031the selection of your superintendent. And to that, Sarah, you've been clear and consistent in why you're a board member. And I think that's really important for all of us to recognize. You're obviously a board member to be a part of the team and to be a contributor in many ways. But I think this is why we bring out this personal agenda. For you, equity is the centerpiece of what drives you and what you think about when the district takes action. You said one thing there that I want to see if I have right is that you would like equity to be more, rather than something that we have a workshop on, something on the side or something extra that we do, you would like it to be more center of all of the things that

032we do. And that's a transition for a lot of districts right now. I'm so fortunate to work with Nicole because she's just an expert in this field. And I too share your feelings about equity, about being the centerpiece about what drives me to be an educator and what did drive me to be a superintendent and principal. But that's a big change. That's a big change for a lot of districts, a lot of educators, a lot of people that you serve. So there's a good example of a personal agenda and something you're passionate about and something that we all need to know. Okay, now I'm sorry, but we have a new board member. I think he did join us. You're going to have to introduce yourself to me and you get an opportunity as well. Hi,

033I'm Ben. Ben Cornell, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. And this is my fifth or sixth board meeting, but I've only been on the board for a month and a half. Ben, did they tell you that they meet every week? Did they tell you that? Well, Neil said, I've got good news for you. We're moving to monthly meetings, but you'll have to meet every week for the next six weeks straight or something like that. Actually, his good news, bad news was, good news is you're on the board. Bad news is no one else signed up to be on the board. So it's just you. So I think I would add on to what everybody else said and as a new board member, one personal objective I have is just learning. So

034I'm going to be a little bit in a year of asking questions and learning. And I hope that it's not annoying to other board members when I'm trying to dive deeper on stuff, just because I really am trying to get the ground under me, just so I know how to be a good board member. But the two things that I would just maybe emphasize, because I feel like they've already come up, is the first one is repairing community trust and healing. And when I say the word community, I mean, like, not just community, like parents, but I mean, like, the parent, the educator community, the school communities, the central office community, I just think we've all been through a lot. And if nothing happened other than our everyone who's involved in San Carlos School District

035touched by it in some way felt like a deeper connection and that their voice was heard, that they mattered, and that they felt connected, I feel like that would be a huge win. And that's why I joined, is I wanted to foster that connection. And so the second one is a little bit in more of the how, but also I think connects with what everybody said. I think we should double down on what makes San Carlos School District special. And so I think it means the learning models that we talked about, but I also think it means about communications, and just communicating what we're doing really great. And so I think that, you know, a personal agenda of mine is to help people understand what's special about our school so that they can lean in

036there, stick with it and keep making it special for every child. And then I have a lot of questions, but those were the two main. Yeah, I'm going to focus on the one that you just talked about, because Sarah also said this, and certainly in the work that we did. By the way, Ben, if you get a chance, make sure to look at the the stakeholder input for the superintendent search. I don't know if you've had a chance to get that yet or not, but one of the services that we provide is that we interview a lot of folks and then we report that back to the board. And if you haven't seen that, there might be some insights in there that you pick up as your learning progresses. But during that process, and then

037during our superintendent search, we talked a lot about, you know, how do we communicate with our public? How do we have things in a more positive way with our teachers in our community? And how do we repair some of the, you know, some of the damage that's been done with the public and the school district over COVID and over remote learning as opposed to in-person learning? And that notion of having positive stories and getting back to some of the core great things that San Carlos does with kids is very important to many, I'm sure all of you, all of the board members. But I'm glad, Sarah, you mentioned it, and Ben, as a new board member, I'm glad you ran on that too. So, okay, all right. Well, I always spend a little extra time

038on that, but I think it's important for all of you to think about what is it that's important to you and to hear it from your partners. I saw some patterns. I saw a pattern of what we're about, what our vision is about, and project-based learning, taking ownership for learning, building student agency. I saw also a pattern about making sure that we have a district that works well with our stakeholders and has a, you know, a positive relationship and a positive story to tell. And it's interesting, there's a few things I didn't hear from you. I didn't hear any of you say that facilities was a big passion. I'm not being critical. I'm just saying it's to be thoughtful. We need to think about what is it that we're passionate about and what is it

039maybe we're not as passionate about, not that it's not important, but that it doesn't come to the highest level. I want to go ahead and go in now to talk about your district and then about setting objectives for your superintendent. So here we go. Whoops. There we go. I just left it. Here we go. So question, does what you've said just align with your strategic plan and your goals? Here are the three items of your strategic plan, developing, delivering innovative and engaging curriculum, leveraging human capitals to support staff and 21st century educators, and building learning environments that reflect support and sustain 21st century learners. And one of the things that I mentioned is that your strategic plan, I know we've all said it's been around for a while and maybe it needs to be upgraded,

040but certainly a lot of what you said addressed goal number one and two. And as I've just mentioned, not quite very much under goal number three. So it's something to think about and reflect upon. Any thoughts, comments on that? I think it depends on what you mean by learning environment. I mean, that could mean facilities. There's a lot of other pieces to a learning environment as well. Yeah. Yeah. I agree entirely. I'm just, I'm thinking about what I read in the details of it. You had more, it wasn't all just facilities. You're right about that. So if we're looking at building a learning environment and that talks to engaging students at their level and project-based learning sort of things, yes, you're right on that. It could be seen that way. Okay. One thing that feels

041like it's missing is like something around like community engagement. Exactly. Right. Right. That does. You're right. You're right. We don't see a lot there about community engagement in these three goals in your strategic plan. Yeah. Yeah. They're very, they're very, your strategic plan was very focused on programmatic and what's happening in the classroom and what you envisioned it being. And frankly, it's served, it has served a very positive purpose in the school district for years. You also have an LCAP and there's three LCAP goals that you have. And two of them kind of look the same to me, but you can help me out with this, I think. The first one is to, that all students will get a core instruction in well-maintained facilities. There's your facility statement from educators who are fully credentialed and

042appropriately assigned. So this is kind of the, all systems are there to support what we do. And we're going to focus on then the context of it is the whole child, the state standards, the national science standards and state health guidelines. And then of course, there's an outcome for well-rounded college career ready individuals in a global society. That's a heck of a goal, you guys. That is really probably about five goals all in one right there. The next one is to increase student achievement across all sites. And then the third one is to create structures to support personalized learning opportunities for students and talking about developmental stages and other things relevant to the grade level configurations you have. And Neil, that one kind of lines up with what one of your passions is, that third

043LCAP goal area. Any thoughts, any more thoughts about your strategic goals and your LCAP goals and how they align with what your thinking is? Bill, I think there are two more LCAP goals. Yeah, I was going to, sorry to interrupt Irene. I was trying to point out that these are, that we have new LCAP goals for 21-24. And I think there's actually a little bit better alignment between our new LCAP goals and our strategic plan and some pretty good alignment with what I heard from each of the board members. So I, and I could share those later because I think they are more relevant certainly for what we're facing in the future. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And I went back to one of your past LCAPs. That's right. I just pulled off what I got

044on the internet. Yep. Excellent. Okay. So I want to talk now a little bit about what we're doing and what your work is. You've set a mission and vision. We've talked about that and missions are timeless that they, they're the reason that you have existence and what you are about as an organization. They're usually short, one sentence, maybe two or three. And they, you know, they're memorable. You remember what a mission is. Your vision is a picture of what you want to have happen, what you see you being in usually about five years time. It's a picture of a successful future is what a vision is. Your goals are a lot like what you've done in your strategic plan and what you're doing in your LCAP. They're long-term. They're usually three to five years. As

045you just mentioned, you have new LCAP goals and it sounds like they're, are they three-year LCAP goals? Is that what they are? There's one in there that's a one-year goal about recovering and coming back together, but the balance of them are three-year goals. Good. Yep. And then, and you can see I got this out of the business world, this pyramid, because it says major business objectives. I just say that this green one is what we're working on tonight. We're working on objectives and objectives really are one-year short-term initiatives that make a difference. And we'll talk about the criteria for those in just a minute. Typically, the top three parts of this pyramid are in the board purview. The mission, the vision, and the goals of the school district really are accepted, developed, and worked over

046by a board of education. That's that 30,000-foot level of work that you do. And the objectives are kind of the go-between between the next level, which is the superintendent and administrative level, where the development objectives are put together so that they will support those top three parts of the pyramid and especially will support the goals. Then strategies and tactics are typically put together by principals, administrators, and your professional and classified staff. I like this pyramid because it puts kind of everything in order and in priority. Okay. Can I have one quick question in terms of just time? Because going back to the front, is this all of your slides? Is that the presentation? And then we'll go into... Okay. We gave it 20 minutes. We've been going for about 35. So if we can cook

047a little bit. Okay. All right. I'll move quickly. All right. Okay. So why do we develop goals and objectives focused on what's most important to provide a unified direction for your team and to achieve more and devote less energy to non-critical tasks and to motivate your staff and to establish institutional effectiveness? I think we've talked mostly about characteristics of a goal already. They're three to five years broad in scope, and they'll make a difference over time. What are the characteristics of objectives? Also, we've talked about that. They're shorter. They're usually one year. They're focused, and they need to be specific. And they're oftentimes the work that is credited to one aspect of the district or one department. I think some of you have probably heard about smart goals and objectives. These are just characteristics of

048when you write a goal or especially an objective. As educators, a lot of us have been trained in this acronym of SMART, that they should be specific, measurable, obtainable, relevant, and time-bound. So I'd like to go over with boards and ask you, as you develop an objective with the superintendent, to look at three criteria, to make it simple. You want to pick objectives for your superintendent this year that have impact, are going to make a difference. It's doable or obtainable. Right out of that SMART goal, it's something that can be done. But most importantly, they can be measured. You'll be able to say later that this is work that we've been able to say we've accomplished, and it's worked to this level, or it hasn't worked for some reason. We can determine why. As we

049look at your goals and we look at impact and you look at your objectives, you really want to find just some objectives. And I would say, try to limit yourself to no more than five or six objectives for your superintendent. They're going to do a lot more than that during the year, but you want to bring some focus to what the important things are when you're doing your objectives. Objectives should be observable and clear in their description, and it should support the work of your staff and the achievement of your students. This is important, is this notion about as you look at an objective, make sure it's something that can be done in a prescribed period of time. It can be part of a bigger picture. I like to use the example of improving math

050performance. If you want to improve math performance, you basically are looking at probably a three-year program. So what is it that you do in the first year? An objective, first objective may be that you have to define the issues and the problems that you have about students not achieving in mathematics. The second year may be a program implementation, and a third year might be revising and assessing what worked and what didn't work. Sometimes, with a new superintendent, you may want to go ahead and find what I call low-hanging fruit, an objective that can clearly be done but has a significant impact, especially on staff. It's always beneficial for a board and a new superintendent to work on something that the staff thinks is really important. As your superintendent goes out there and talks to folks,

051especially teachers and principals, a lot of information is going to come to Jennifer, and I will bet you anything that there'll be something that bubbles up to the top that's very doable, that staff would really benefit from, see they would see it as beneficial. I want to give you a very quick example of a new principal who I gave this advice to, and she went out and asked her staff, you know, what is it that's really important, and she never thought that this thing was very important, but the staff did, and it was have a cell phone policy, something as simple as that. So instead of doing, you know, something that she thought was important as a new superintendent, she came up with a cell phone policy for the staff, and that got her off

052to a really good start with the staff, and whether or not it was the most important thing to move the needle, it was really important for her to set up a great relationship with her staff so that they saw her as, you know, a servant leader to some extent, okay, and I think that this is relevant for your school district. Finally, it's got to be measurable. You really have to have the ability at the end of the year to be able to say, this is, these are the objectives that a superintendent set out to do, and here's how they were done, giving that feedback, and here's what we need to do in the next cycle of goals and objectives. Okay, all right, and just a quick word about bringing focus to the work. Too often,

053and I love these waterfall analogies, and I'm always searching for the perfect waterfall. These are, this is a picture I took of Yosemite Falls, beautiful waterfalls, my prettiest waterfall, I think it's a straight and narrow, very focused at the top, and actually, you know, it's, it kind of is a ribbon, it comes down a ribbon, it spreads out a little bit at the bottom, but it's a pretty focused waterfall. Another one, Niagara Falls, kind of the opposite, it's very broad at the top and basically almost chaotic at the bottom of the falls. If you've ever been there and been on the maid in the mist, this is all very tumultuous water at the bottom, sometimes you can't even see. Sorry for the dog background here. And likewise, here is a, oh, I can't, this is

054a Jamaican waterfall, I don't know about the bathing beauties in it, but as you can see, it starts off very diffused and has many riblets at the bottom. And the reason I use this analogy is to get boards and superintendents to focus on the high leverage items that make a difference. We all have to be careful about trying to do too much and spreading ourselves too thin. This is just sort of an example of that. You know, let's suppose a district has five goals, I'd like a district to have two or three goals, but if you have five goals, and each goal has five objectives, and each objective has four strategies, and each strategy has six top tactics, and you have five action plan steps for each tactic, going right down that pyramid, then you

055end up with during the year, 3,000 actions that need to be accomplished, which is beyond anybody's expectation and beyond what's realistic. So the best work that we see with boards and superintendents is to focus, is to bring more focus into the work and to pick things that are going to make a difference that are high leverage. Okay. And again, focus with intensity and coherence. All right. So that's pretty much the conclusion, if you will, of my presentation. I want to do mention that you'll have some next steps after we get back online here to start working on the objectives. And I think the last 45 minutes of our work tonight, we'll go ahead and we'll start the work of going ahead and putting together the objectives for the superintendent. But the future work is to

056take a look at those objectives, to have the superintendent bring them back to you, maybe sometime this month or next, to adopt action plans that support them, to check on the progress that occurs with those objectives, and then to assess that progress at the end of the year, say in May, and evaluate the superintendent on the progress that has been made on the objectives, and then to set new objectives. And to recognize that a cycle of continuous improvement where you plan, implement, evaluate, and then decide on next steps is something the board should do on a continuing basis in your work in holding the district accountable. Okay. Any questions before we get started? Everybody still there? Is anybody still there? We're here. Yeah. All right. Let me get back to us. All right. And stop

057it. There we go. Okay. Get everybody on the screen. All right. So one of the things... Okay. We all on? There we go. One of the things that I wanted to work on, there's Jennifer, I think, right? Do I see her there? Okay. There she is. I had asked Jennifer to take a look at the objectives and the goals and to talk about some of her observations and what she thinks might be work for this year. And then what I would like to do is to go round table with all of you to see what your take is on what objectives you see supporting your goals and objectives for the year. And then from there, we'll see if we can winter that down and align them with your goals. Does that sound good? Okay. All

058right. Jennifer, go ahead. You got to unmute. She's looking for her mute button. Actually, I'm trying to share my screen. I'm so sorry. I am having problems sharing my screen. Let's see if it'll allow Zoom to share. Open system preferences. These are the challenges when you shift computers. And platform. Yeah, exactly. It will be a huge disappointment if I can't share this. But I'll punt if I can't. Yeah, so later. Yeah, it's not letting me on. That's okay. Let me just talk through this. Well, it's regretful because I do have images to share, but that's all right because in the interest of time, let me go ahead and share a little bit about what I did after talking with Neil and Bill on a sprint is I looked at our LCAP goals and our strategic

059plan goals. And I looked at those through the lens of the criteria that you said was most important when you were looking for a superintendent. And then I also looked for alignments between things I've heard from each of you since that time about what's important. And I landed on what I thought were four reasonable objectives that fit the criteria of the information that Bill shared. And they are, you know, they're manageable, they're reasonable, and they seem worthy of putting my shoulder to, especially in light of the things that I heard tonight about priorities for all of you. Obviously, our LCAP does set steerage for the teaching and learning program. But then there's this thing around enabling conditions, which is embedded, I think, in your strategic plan, especially goal three. And then I like a lot

060what Sarah's been saying about, you know, how do we apply the goggle of equity versus making this a separate initiative. And I think that's a reasonable student centered sort of approach to it. And so even though you don't have this to look at, I can read where I landed on objectives and then invite any feedback. How does that sound? Sorry, I can't share with my new computer. So objective one is, I think it would be reasonable to monitor and evaluate the implementation of our LCAP goals, goals one through five. There's a lot of actions in there. And providing progress reports that highlight both early wins and places of, you know, maybe a necessary mid course correction, one in January and one in June, would be something that could be helpful to the board. This is

061just an executive summary that would let you know how we're doing on implementation. The second objective, I think, is to really put my shoulder to goal one. Goal one is the return and recover goal. We've put a big investment in that, a lot of the additional resources that we got, and it would ensure each individual student's academic, social, and emotional needs are met as measured by reading and survey data, and that I could report that progress quarterly. That not only would fit with things that I've heard from some of you about making site visits, because, you know, it would be reasonable to go and, you know, examine how that's looking in real time. Thinking about Neil and I, we met with the Healthy Cities tutoring, you know, how do all these little pieces work together?

062Objective three, I think ties pretty well to goal five in our LCAP, but also more broadly, it's reflective of sort of the collective needs I hear all of you talking about that we want to make sure voice and choice is in there, and this is to continue and identify improvements for staff, student, family, community, and city engagement as measured by surveys. There's abundant stakeholder feedback, which I again reviewed that you use to, you know, sort of shape this whole process and identifying your next superintendent, but beyond that we have surveys, and I've heard Ben talk about some of the results, and it seems reasonable to have an objective around that that we could then measure progress on. I think annual basis would be reasonable. And then objective four, I think it really ties to that

063strategic plan goal of number three, because obviously looking at sort of the fiscal health of the district, the facilities of the district, and long-range planning, particularly in a declining enrollment environment, could also shape a rebranding, if you will, or marketing of everything we want to do, and so I actually made this about my involvement in the FCMAT CDO mentor training, because already I'm identifying what Bill refers to as low-hanging fruit about ways that we could improve systems and efficiencies, and so completing that program and then using San Carlos as the, you know, sort of case study for all of the exercises I do could really benefit our sort of next strategic planning process, but also long-range business processes. Now that is only four, but I feel like it's a lot. It's not undoable from my

064perspective, but I invite any feedback. Jennifer, could you just, I did not hear number three. It was about identifying improvements for like staff, student, parent, but could you just read that one again, please? Yeah, so I feel like my process right now around the listening and learning sort of tour that I'm doing is to identify opportunities for, you know, what do we want to continue and what do we need to improve for staff, student, family, community, and city engagement, and surveys are the primary instrument we have for that right now. I think long-term the goal is to use that to inform, like you and I talked about a little bit about the narrative and reshaping the narrative for the district, but the immediate term would be this well-being and this sort of community engagement so

065that we heal together and that we address and name the challenge that we all experienced and find ways to optimistically approach the new year. Do you have the slides that you're going to show us that you could email to us so we could open them? Yeah, I can, I think, send it to all of you. I was trying to do that while I was talking and it wasn't working, but I will try to do that. I think that would be helpful and if you can include me on it too, then I'm one that sometimes has to see it too. Yeah, I definitely have to see it and regret that I spent all this time to prepare something that I can't share, but I will find a way to share it with everybody. Well, my comments

066would just be like sometimes there's the benefit of full presentation and sometimes it's the benefit of the thoughtfulness of it and I would just say like specifically goal number two and number three really spoke to me as like really powerful goals and the idea that, you know, in our LCAP we have this one unique one-year goal that is only for this year. I think it would be a huge miss not to include that and that giving you that like focus around meeting the learner needs upon re-entry like that one really, really spoke to me and on the one about engaging the stakeholders, I do wonder like just are there ways to get data or feedback or inputs ahead of like an annualized survey and the goals serve two purposes. One is like for accountability's sake,

067but I wonder if there's a way visibly for you to achieve a goal in a quarterly basis around that objective that you could that could actually communicate out to stakeholders that you're taking action on that goal. So while I, you know, sometimes the goal is for to accomplish it and sometimes it is just to raise the visibility of what you're doing and I, you know, I just wonder about that one and then the last comment I have is just I noticed that I wonder like as we as a board have we accepted declining enrollment as the reality or like are we trying to set goals about like stabilizing enrollment or improving enrollment and I want to just, you know, caution that that's I acknowledge the full naiveness of my question given that I guarantee for

068the last five years like people have been asking that one, I just wanted to call it out and I don't know maybe Neil or Irene you have a little bit more history on that one. Just to answer that quick question Ben, sometimes it feels like you're just throwing darts, right? You have the demographer who helps the most so and the demographers fairly spot on but at the same point in time they can often be off a little bit here and there so you know I think maybe the short answer to that is are we obviously we're in a declining enrollment and obviously if you look back at the numbers from what we predicted over the last two to three years it's gone down and even at a bigger rate than we anticipated so it's hard

069to say from understanding correctly like it's hard to say when you bottom out or necessarily when you go but I think what you're trying to say is maybe creating a better system in the budgetary in the budget process to understand really what the forecasts are and dive deeper into that information which we have not historically done as a board. And just let me say where it's coming from like a charter school network you know I've been on the board of charter schools before the CEO's goal is improve enrollment you know like grow enrollment like that's always like a top line thing you know in public schools and district schools it's a little bit different but I just think it's worth at least the board discussing where that should fit and Jennifer I believe you mentioned

070that as like part of the FICMAT thing which I also think is a great idea but like is it to understand the impact of declining enrollment or is it to try to alter that trend that that would be a you know question I think we should at least come out with a stance on. Historically just so you are aware though and everyone else we have not been a board that has ever historically been a advertised to increase enrollment right so we have never been a board that has historically said we're going to go out and tell people in other districts that we are open for business and come in so if that's what you're looking for that historically we have a precedent for in the past so obviously there's always continued conversations but historically we

071have never been out and like let's go increase enrollment by recruiting. We just to add one more detail on that is we actually have had explicit board conversations that we didn't want to aggressively recruit students to come from say Redwood City to come to San Carlos because we just knew that helping us would also just be hurting a neighbor and we wanted to be um good neighbors as well but we have had a board policy of how many out of district transfer students might come and we have provided guidance or set direction to the superintendent be on the same page as to how many we might might think of accepting. I do think that that we do want financial stability so that should be a goal I think we should recognize that enrollment is critical.

072I do think that some of our objectives of like Ben that you said trust healing communicating out what makes us special is what then kind of attracts and and in some senses maybe enrollment becomes almost kind of like a measurement of how well we're doing against those higher level things of being an amazing school district that families want to live in. I just want to add to the context that we know that we did exit surveys this past year and we know that this year was an extreme year of change and unpredictability because of COVID but we also know that 40 percent left and went to private schools and that is part of image and branding and it's a quandary for the entire state of California for public school systems so I do think we

073need to have we need to focus on that but what you just said Irene is could be part of a strategy those things that you hit on but I think we need to keep in mind that we have suffered you know for a variety of reasons and that we should focus I think on sort of this recovery phase and it's not rebranding but it is but we are in a new phase we have a new superintendent and we have new energy so I think we really have to capitalize on that. Is it all right if I just close the loop on this? I wanted to say Ben to your earlier point one of the things I expect from my listening tour is to kind of roll up what I'm learning and sharing that back as

074themes and I haven't met with enough people to feel really comfortable doing that yet but I am learning so much I can't believe it and I seek alternative perspectives so that I don't get any preference bias I am nothing if not a skilled researcher and so yes you wouldn't just be at the end of the year hearing that and then the other thing I'll go to is the theme that I heard from Irene around making sure that we're you know responsible fiscal agents and as enrollment is a portion of that but also being mindful that we came out of a year where we may need to course correct on what we hold most dear around whole child and project-based learning and being crystal clear that these continue to be our priorities can be part of

075that and then a better demographer study because things are changing in our whole area the state of California did suffer some through COVID-19 it's not just San Carlos so making sure that I evaluate that landscape and FCMAT is such a great place to do that because it's you know across the state representation. It seems like to me that there's a consensus on at least one of these objectives with the board through the FCMAT training that you're getting but with an emphasis on either what does declining enrollment have as an impact to the district I also reminded the district that you're on the cusp of being a basic aid district and with the increased value of homes if you have significant turnover or any turnover in your home values you may become basic aid faster than

076you thought you were going to going to I know that's happening in different areas of California but I think that is a very objective one-year goal that you that are objective that the superintendent should have something to the effect that that it's studied and reported and that options are are given to the board about the direction to take you know I heard things on both sides of the coin from the board about do we do we go out and recruit or not we don't like to recruit from other public schools because it's not a good neighbor to do so on the other hand private schools and probably some charters are probably taking more of your kids than they used to so there is a need for recruiting those kids back so I think that that

077some tailoring of this objective Jennifer is going to be needed what you've taken if you can embellish that a little bit with putting it in the context of declining enrollment would be you know would be a good objective for the year some of that bill would oh I wanted to say that Veronica pushed it out and all of you should know it's super messy and drafty and it was not intended to send but we sent because I couldn't share but I also expect that if we land on these objectives that some of those things would be actions that fall underneath it yeah right I'm gonna go look and see what you have did it come in email that's what Veronica said she pushed out I wasn't able to share it but she was okay I

078got it it's there thanks yep I got it so you have questions though yeah go ahead go ahead so you sent an example of a of an evaluation for a superintendent right and so I just wanted to ask these are these are large objectives that Dr. Frances has outlined but how like is this where we would want to discuss with with her about maybe they're more specific objectives to that about what she would be evaluated on such as like communication because that that was a big topic that we all talked about and I'm not really sure how that's tied into these objectives yeah so I thank you for that Wendy so as as you look at the superintendent's objectives you want to be able to have the what what has been presented are pretty broad

079right now and what you want to do is you want to be able it's you want to be able to have more specific objectives that are going to be able to leverage the goals and what you desire for students so for instance what we were just talking about with FICMAT and and business that's that's a very broad area a more specific area would be to say what are we going to do with declining enrollment okay and is that does that rise to an objective level where we examine where our kids are going what's happening to them who are we losing and what are the things that we should be doing about it that would be a great objective for for a single year in the area of business and finance and it would make a

080big difference if you could get a handle on declining enrollment and figure out how how to deal with it right so I just use that as one example Jennifer what you have with new superintendent priority qualities against against strategic goals and draft objectives action plan to be informed by a listening tour are those the four objectives there that you're looking at monitor and evaluate implementation of cap goals and yeah so so in the interest of full disclosure I did not have your samples when I drafted these but I did draft smart objectives essentially tied to and what I tried to do is include the documents I used to inform these and so each of those four objectives uh the previous slides sort of share where the information came from and there are measures in here

081I feel like the communication Wendy to your point kind of comes under this objective number three because it really is engagement and the two-way communication and you do have ample survey and stakeholder feedback data that we could assess again as to how well that went because your stakeholder groups were were pretty broad and the theme was pretty consistent that there needs to be some improvement in that that engagement which is a form of communication so here's here's my thought process on this I'd like to have the board focus on those four objectives that Jennifer brought forward do you see them it's draft objectives action plan to be informed by listening you got it we got that somewhere where they can see it so um I think the task is for you to take what you

082um what you talked about earlier tonight and what your new superintendent is saying the areas are that we need we need to I you know I think I could have the most influence but to craft something more specific than what what you have here for instance on number four that was the example that I just gave so when she's saying that a fourth objective would be to complete the financial crisis management team the FICMAT training um so that's that's a you know that's that that is a very broad sort of a uh objective and then it says develop a facilities master plan now that's more specific so you have to decide within that objective what's important what is it that really needs to be done and I think you need I don't think you're going

083to get this all done tonight just I think it's early in your superintendent's tenure um but you've got to start on it and sometimes that's the best you know the best thing to do is to get a start and then come back two or three weeks later and get it concluded uh maybe after Jennifer finishes her listening tour but I think as an example under number four you either have to set an objective to deal with declining enrollment or to um put together a facilities master plan those would be two different objectives um uh I want to talk about uh number three uh because I think objective number three aligns with what we heard the board say a lot um the notion about improving the relationships between your stakeholders and yourselves it's one a great

084opportunity then secondly it's it's um from the work that we did in listening to your stakeholders it's it's really needed and it's going to make a vast difference in the performance of kids so the question that I have is what does that look like and what is it that you think the superintendent should do this year and what initiative should be taken to bring back a tighter relationship between the board itself and its teachers the board itself and its community as we look at this we all know that the relationship with the community um you know I think uh I think even through it through um covid uh is better than most places right uh but covid damaged it some so the question is is that the objective is to overcome what happened in covid

085either with town hall meetings or with uh talking to um uh the community about what type of uh programs are at place but where a lot of damage was done uh during covid and then uh just in um change in role uh was with your teachers and that may be some low-hanging fruit for the superintendent it may be some low hanging fruit for you to have an objective where uh very specifically you're going to have some strategies on how to um engage teachers in a meaningful way about how you come out of covid you know you might hit hit all three of things like that that's the type of thing that you need to get to um and I'd certainly be willing to come back in in a few weeks to conclude this sometimes I

086do two of these sessions with boards um what does is that clear does that help go ahead yeah I think so and maybe we can just as a board just maybe taking those two that you've given out bill and just kind of dive into a little deeper because I think um that would be a good start for us um and one thing I'd like to say first is Jennifer thank you for doing this because it's uh all right you you're coming in as a superintendent we're all doing this like the first time ever as well so you know expectations are low but we're all kind of flying blind here um the one thing I think I would add so I think you know when I'm trying to dive deeper I think all these objectives are

087all part of our goals I just think we're just trying to find the same shared vocabulary um inferior amount so a couple of things for me in terms of just focusing on those I'll just take it first objective two I'm just going to call it for three um I'm just going to call it the way I focus that is kind of our communications piece and I don't know what the best way to say it is I don't know if it's improved communications um I'm going to call it consistency of communications amongst board community and staff um and community partnerships so and the way I think I would measure it um in my world would be a uh a consistent cadence um so if you're going to communicate to the board it's going to be a

088you know did that come to us weekly monthly uh bi-weekly whatever it is just as long as it's kind of a set expectation um as well as the community that um if there's going to be you know more frequent community emails that you think is part of your communication strategy that they come at a pace of whether that's monthly um whether it's monthly plus emergencies or whether it's just you know whatever it is you want to do and especially the staff how you want to communicate with them um on a consistent basis as well I think um the other part around that communications for me is how we will work as a group and measure how we're all on the same page so um what talking points are distributed around major topics uh having time

089for all of us to be prepared um you know part of that's measured preparation prior to meetings um as well as preparation for the public right because you know everything that we say is recorded and said throughout time so um the more preparation ahead of time that we'll know what's going on is going to be helpful for us um as a board so that's kind of that's what I lump goal three into I kind of objective that's how I you know maybe I'm just not as good at this stuff as other people but um that's just kind of how I'd say it so I'm interested to hear what um I know it's been a big topic in the community too so I'll go to you next but I know it's kind of a I'm interested

090to hear what everyone says. Thanks Neil I think I just wanted to um I wrote down what Bill said um the criteria for the objectives so thinking about impact doable attainable and measurable and so I I just think like using number three we're working on that objective three you're talking about that one I think impact we need to think about um you know what is the impact of of that objective and for me what is missing is about building a culture of trust that has been broken and I think the word trust collaboration like that has to be the impact and so we can talk about communication and engagement and those are easy to measure but thinking about um staff's um sense or or yeah just that overall um sense and culture of trust um

091I think if we can continue to work on all these I I think using the those criteria that Bill gave us I think would be really helpful. I support that. Yeah so maybe that's something that we can ask Jennifer for you to think about based on some of the feedback you're getting from us right now how to reframe objective three a little bit more in detail um around communication and around building you know trust um I have a great rubric um that I can share with you Jennifer that I have hit on this multiple times since I've started as a board trustee that there is a whole um labor management initiative initiative across the state um and it's all focused on building trust and collaboration between um teacher unions management um classified staff and so

092I just really want to emphasize this idea of trust on that particular objective um I love what Bill the framework you know you've helped us to frame this. And it does have high impact I mean Wendy I think that you know I'm glad that um you're using that criteria because in looking at progress as students looking at our mission you know there has to be a high level of trust between um staff and board and to set that as uh you know one of the objectives and we have to be more specific than where it is now you can't just say build trust um there has to be some specifics and I think that's why you know Jennifer needs more time and so do you all but that's going in the right direction you know.

093I just want to support that I think using your pyramid um um framework is trust and collaboration is that the level above of that um right is that goal we're working for and Wendy thank you for driving that home and then the objective Jennifer is is that improved engagement and communication. Mm-hmm and and I think I'm thanks for bringing the pyramid back in because then also Jennifer then will set up you know the strategies and tactics for doing that right. I mean each one of these objectives will have an action plan that goes uh goes down and and it will be given to her administrative staff uh to help her with it. I mean she's not an island of above you know she these are things she does all by herself. I have a question

094for Jennifer and the and the group the whole team is um we talk even starting with the interview process about the need to kind of refresh the vision um and plan so we have something to work towards and I am wondering if people are thinking that it would begin this school year because if so that's a very significant objective. Jennifer what are you thinking? Uh I think it's premature for me to weigh in on that um definitely I obviously was attracted by the existing vision mission and strategic plan um and I predict the that life will be really different for a lot of people as they start the fall um and so I wonder um you know I wonder what that would look like if we also thought we could re-vision the vision and the

095mission um especially given how many people are so enrolled in it in present company here so I just I'll put it out to the group. I would just say that um when we were listening to kind of all of our stakeholders but in particularly a lot to the staff and the cabinet and to the principals they were really thirsty for a leader to come here be visionary and to refresh the plan. I thought the board was fairly aligned with that though Ben of course we want to kind of check them with you um and by no means I don't want to rush us there listen you have to have that time to listen you have to have that time where our district is but my concern is like if we didn't if we don't explicitly

096say that the six of us think that that process will get started this year are we de facto thinking that the process is going to get started next September? Yeah I think it's an important conversation I want to go to objective one that uh that Jennifer had in context of what you're saying Irene um um uh I mean of the objective one is too broad the way it is right now because it's basically saying you know just take a look at everything that we're doing and and come up with um uh monitor and evaluate uh all of the the goals. The the question that I would have on this is isn't what you really want to do here is to see whether the the action the strategic plan is still relevant I mean isn't that

097really the the conversation is is the action is the strategic plan what we want to hold on to for the next five years or is an objective for this year to review the strategic plan and make recommendations about a process about where it's where it's going to be for the next five years. I mean that that could be one objective that you have is to revise the strategic plan a very specific one it's doable it's doable and it has high impact um and it's easy to measure because it's a you know it's specifically you're going to have a product um something to think about in objective number one rather than rather than monitor and evaluate I know and and this is pushing Jennifer a little bit because you know you're you're brand new to this

098but I know in listening to the my dog agrees I know in listening to the board and talking to the community that everybody respects the strategic plan but they also think it's dated and that it needs revision and it needs uh you know a reboot if you will so it's a thought it's a thought for you guys I mean I'll just weigh in I think that um uh Jennifer if you said I'm gung-ho on this or if you said no way on this that would hold a lot of sway with yeah from my perspective but um I think that like uh what I'm hearing collectively from you and your goals is that the first six months you want to take a listening stance and you want to have the goals and objectives come from the

099community and I worry that coming out and saying I want to rewrite a strategic plan out of this goal session at this time might send the opposite message of that whereas um good point like I would be all in favor if in January or February having heard from the community that they want a refresh plan that you would begin the stakeholder engagement in the springtime and you're looking for people to raise their hand to get involved and then you know like next year is the year of the strategic plan like to me I just um I am I feel the energy and urgency but I also really love the theme that you wove into your goals around uh the listening stance yeah and I think that that's needed um and I will say I know

100we've talked about COVID recovery but there was a vote of no confidence from our educators in the prior superintendent there was a fiscal crisis that some may not have understood why there were changes at the district um and so I I say that not to cast any dispersions but just to say Jennifer you're digging out not just from COVID there's other stuff going on that you're trying to win hearts and minds and so I think it's um it's that's that's a real hill to climb Ben that's that's really astute I I'm glad you said that because we have to keep in mind about winning the hearts and minds and to go and to go too aggressively and too fast could be could be send the wrong message and be counterproductive right and I appreciate your

101no I just wanted to go go Jennifer no you go ahead Irene I just want to say Ben I really appreciate those comments I think it would be a mistake to say at the start of the gate when somebody's new and listening vote that there would be a rewrite of the strategic plan so by just to clarify my own position that is not my intent I do have an intent of wanting to make sure that the six of us are on the same page as to kind of pacing and I I care about understanding everybody's expectations like Sarah Wendy Neils and stuff um in my own mind I was somewhere between January and next September as a start yeah because we eventually need to have that refreshed because that becomes our north star to kind

102of steer everything right yeah can we I mean make one process suggestion bill or maybe just kind of a clarification is um because it sounds like we probably do this for a long time um but just in terms of timing and what you gave us so maybe it sounds like the objectives we're trying as a group as a governance team to make the objectives a little bit more specific right um as kind of what Jennifer's identified so I don't know if you can kind of help us as maybe if we go through as a team and just everyone kind of gives their thoughts and what these kind of main objectives are telling them and then they can kind of help us narrow it down because if I'm understanding everything correctly the objectives of what we're

103giving Jennifer is going to be let's just take what we're just talking about right now is going to be you know strategic plan still relevant right if we agree that that is a good objective to just determine it we would then maybe necessarily come back and talk about what the specifics are right like hey maybe it's just as simple as understanding the strategic plan and giving a recommendation maybe it's just as simple as or maybe it's more in depth as having a committee formed but it sounds like we need to kind of narrow the focus of what the species you know what I mean uh on the um objectives first is that okay yeah I think you know I think you've identified the areas I think tonight what you've done is identify the areas but

104not the objectives and I think you need another session to get to the objectives I think Jennifer needs more time uh to hear and listen and understand and I think that the board needs to reflect upon what you've said to each other tonight and also what Jennifer has given you the areas are great you know the areas are really great and and and sometimes you know you you have to take a little bit of time with the objectives especially with the new superintendent um we maybe summarize the area this is what I'd suggest Neil I appreciate it I would suggest that for tonight we summarize where we think we are that each board member and Jennifer summarize where we think we are and that we set then another uh date maybe in about um a

105month um to uh work and get a little more specific about what the objectives are going to be and also at that time um talk about uh how this fits in uh to the superintendent's evaluation to the continuous improvement of progress to development of strategic plans and LCAP goals how does it all fit together uh would be another topic of conversation because we're not going to have time to do that justice right now we've had had to have this conversation first yeah that sounds good sounds great maybe we can start with just a quick summary of what we all think the areas are the four areas yeah we start there yep so one major area here is going to be communications right we'll call that just that's been what three is right that's kind of

106major area yeah and I and I think that the that be if I if I can add on to it I think a lot of the communication centers around trust so I I think we've got to figure out um what are the communication vehicles that are going to build that are going to build trust it seems like that's what I heard from from you all communication is important but to what end yeah I would probably use the word engagement just because yeah communication is one way and engagements two way I'm going to put down this communications trust engagement for my notes all is kind of one lump super yeah number four it sounds like to me is kind of um the only way I I mean a simple man uh I put it down as

107this budget right so everything around stability is going to be budgetary physical health yeah physical health yeah and I think and I think the thing to reflect upon between now and a month from now is so what is the what do you want the superintendent uh to focus on the most there are going to be a lot of budget things to focus on but what do you want is it declining enrollment or is it something else in budget you know I don't really know but that's that's what Jennifer needs to know and that's what you all need to to think about yep fiscal health is too broad for uh an objective um so give that some thought um I just want to point out that um our enterprise programs are something that bring in significant

108revenue so that's an area for that you need to understand and also with um transitional kindergarten or preschool that extra year of school that is going to be impacting our preschool revenues and it will be important for Christine to begin to think about future what that means for us it's a source of revenue but now there's going to be a policy change that will also mean a loss of revenue from that uh also if I'm hearing us um well thanks for that ring tube um just sort of remember write that down if I went to number one I'm going to call it vision um for the district I don't that's what I'm going to call um and that's kind of slash review of strategic plan slash future isn't that also the area bill like this

109is also about like student achievement yeah uh it it could be um it probably is um so again this is very very broad right now and the superintendent and the board need to think about what is it that is going to have the greatest impact is going to be focused and it's something that we can do this year to make a difference in student achievement and to make a difference in um the education of of uh students it might be to review all the plans and to uh judge their effectiveness and the intent of making uh improvements and enhancements up to this strategic plan um but these are areas right so we're just talking areas and we'll get a little deeper yeah all right yeah and then sorry can you summarize what you called that

110area again vision ah all right and then I'm not quite sure how to summarize number two so I'm going to ask for some help I think it's returning returning to school recovering from COVID yeah so I want to mention something about objective number two you know I've done a number of these this year and every one of them has had that in there so there's not a single district that I've worked with that hasn't had that as an objective uh because it's front and center you know um and it's a reality that um we've got to focus on bringing the kids back and get and getting them to recover from uh the previous year and a half and it's very doable and boy you sure can measure it so there's a lot of measurements that

111one is the closest one to completion of an objective number two okay Jennifer do these resonate with what you kind of initially had um are we kind of talking the same vocabulary or is there anything you want to clarify or make different um obviously I serve at the will of the board um and you all set the objectives um I think there was a healthy dose of caution uh in Ben's comments about assigning me a review of a plan when I'm trying to inspire trust regards collaboration engagement so that that would be the only thing I'd or just to think about again if that's what we want to call number one it was a hidden um opportunity to evaluate everything and give you feedback so that in January I can bring information um but I

112want to be thoughtful about how some people having read the stakeholder comments said things like I was asked about something but then something was done that I want to make sure that I'm really listening with an open mind in the beginning yep great very astute very thoughtful very good um there is one thing that uh two or three of you mentioned uh at the beginning of the night that I don't see reflected in these scores for an awful lots um it may be embedded I'm sure it is is equity and oftentimes there is an equity objective um that a that a superintendent will have so you might think about that as as another objective if um as you do your travels and you look around Jennifer if you see uh some equity issue or some

113equity initiative that makes sense uh you might think about bringing that forward as well at the next round so one thing bill um I know based on my experience is that um setting a lens and a litmus test for everything we do through a lens of equity um such that every one of these objectives uh that the board helps me think about what would that litmus test be um that that sometimes could be really effective given that the district's already embarked on some equity work but I just haven't learned enough about that work to know whether or not it should at least stand along yeah I and I agree I think having uh you know all of it uh go through a lens or a criteria of equity is effective okay all right can I

114ask this one question maybe what we can do is because I probably would agree with you for process-wise bills um you know this work isn't done in three hours especially from a board that's kind of starting it right away um maybe what we can do though is just have everyone if they can weigh in just one quickly because I know Jennifer and I will work on it offline before we come back um as well but maybe if the board can kind of just go around if we go through each area and then just kind of identify at least for Jennifer and I um what you think that objective is right because as Bill's discussed and helped us out um very well could be you know like one can be as broad as vision and it

115could be as specific as you know increased achievement numbers um but it would just be good to know for myself and Jennifer as we plan this out and work with Bill um offline and everything else is just what your expectations would be or what your objectives may be so we can kind of see if there's a consensus or anything like that does that seem like an okay plan for everyone yeah I just have a question about process um is there a way to communicate that some of that to you or to Jennifer between now and the next meeting without violating the brown act I think some of these things I'm gonna stew on a little bit and we'll probably have ideas you know in the middle of the night that I'm not thinking of right

116now so yeah I think the quickest answer to that will be um noodle on things as you well and then you're all going to individually meet with Jennifer hopefully um as we continue forward and as you do um think about those objectives with her and then as her and I work through everything and setting the agenda that will come to light of how she does my advice is do it directly with the superintendent um and then as she works with um uh Neil uh she'll bring those into play without using you know names and not violating the brown act that's fine okay I mean I'll start with one um on uh I looked at her vision I think um I think how I would object the vision is I would say I would um want

117to have a more concrete long-term plan at the end of the year um for from Jennifer that would be how I would interpret that would be my objective um presenting to the board after the year after listening and learning a concrete long-term plan that involves either it's a redo of the strategic plan or whatever it may be but that would be um my thought for one I'm just going to jump in on number one with my ideas I I would say the superintendent will conduct a listening tour that includes the presentation of a summarized start stop and continue uh report to the board mid year with follow-up action items and uh plans for next steps by end of school year good good work anybody else I plus one to what Ben said I had something

118much less cohesive written down so thank you well and I just wanted to uh understand if I mean she she highlighted you know looking at the five LCAP goals um and I think it is good to have data you know across the those areas so I agree with that I mean you know you were talking kind of bigger picture longer term vision but I also think um I guess I'm just trying to feedback and see if Ben too are you saying like start stop continue around those LCAP goals or kind of just broadly on what we're hearing hearing yeah I'm I think in the spirit of what you wrote Jennifer number one you know I'm thinking about the deliverable is a start stop continue in the middle and uh plan with next steps at the

119end and um yeah you know some language that includes like academic social emotional community which LCAP covers a lot of that stuff however you want to wordsmith it and I'm just putting out as a idea for thought not a prescription here hey Ben I like while I like the specificity of what you said for shared understanding among the six of us as to what a deliverable like be I like you know how you were so astute in talking about not putting a fear of change in people I wouldn't necessarily I wouldn't literally use the words start stop continue in an objective for her that gets shared among staff because day one August 1st people think that she's here to start stop and continue stuff yeah and maybe maybe that like complete a feedback rubric or

120summarize community feedback around the you know LCAP goals meeting with you know of diversity of stakeholders I mean basically I want to describe what you're already doing it sounds like Jennifer yeah I think as a matter of fact I actually am now liking the words Jennifer that you put understanding the word like the meaning behind the words now right monitoring evaluating providing progress reports highlight early wins I think there's also something about like I want while Jennifer's you know she's doing all of this great listening and learning and how does that come back to us you know is there is there some what's the deliverable on because if we're going to develop a vision you know with her as a board all these things that she's learning obviously will need to inform that and so

121I do think you know it would be premature to start you know the beginning of the year with redoing our strategic plan but how you know how does the how are we setting a goal for what she's going to do with what she's learning let's do this just because we could wordsmith to death I turned to wordsmith I'm just that's my idea for where this goal is got it so you're looking for more of a deliverable plan as well a deliverable to the board I think so that's related to how we're going to get to that next version of our vision okay Irene anything on that one is it a plan to plan yeah it could be a strategic planning process and we don't we're not talking time frame now but the output is a

122strategic planning process yeah yeah and I oftentimes see that with a new superintendent and board is that the board really want to plan to plan and I think that that meets you know our our caution about building trust I think it also meets those specifics that Jennifer had in monitoring and evaluating and assessing the efficacy of things that are and listening so yeah this is a strategic planning process it's collaborative that's right yeah and it engages collaborative spirit and process yeah good so two is pretty specific I guess in terms of what we said about COVID recovery but what would everyone add to it I guess for an objective for COVID recovery and bill you can help us out if you have other districts what they've done in terms of word yeah I'll give you

123a little bit of feedback about a couple of districts what they've done so if there's this whole I don't know if this applies to San Carlos because of your student population but there's this whole fear worry that a lot of kids are going to drop out so there's this whole thing a very objective thing about search and serve and engaging families and students to get back to school now now I don't know if that's going to be the case in San yeah San Carlos or not but it is in the two other districts I have it was a great objective highly measurable really needed a lot of impact met all the checked all the boxes but another one that I worked with they really wanted to make sure this was with second language kids because

124there's this and I think it's an absolute truth is that the second language kids are regressing in their English learning learning of English and so they wanted to put in place specific interventions and assessments about catch-up you know having second language kids who have actually lost ground get more than what they would normally and I think almost every district has a lot of extra funds that have been put out there so so that that became a very doable objective and one it also could be assessed so those are two examples one is recovering students and the other one is intervening with a targeted academic intervention to have kids recover I don't know a target for us because I don't know if we fit into those categories what are you going to do with your COVID

125money you know that's the whole discussion I know where I can tell you where a lot of it is is in that goal number one which I embedded in number two but let me just say that there is abundant evidence that trauma informed practices will be necessary across socioeconomic status across racial groups because of what we know about adverse child experiences and that essentially all the youngsters experienced one and all of us experienced a traumatic experience at different levels and so naming it will allow us to to address it and tame it some and depathologize it but if we don't address it that it comes out across the board in you know whether it's behaviors or lack of engagement in class etc so it's really consistent with whole child instruction that we would double down

126on social emotional and mental health given all that information that's out there right now about how important that empathy is and that seems so appropriate for san carlos to me you know it lines up with your whole with your whole child emphasis and focus and what the real needs are of your student population I mean I think that's where you you know kind of focus this objective is in the is in the area of overcoming this trauma and how that how that occurs that's good let's go to three then sorry Neil I couldn't unmute can I just say one thing I mean we've talked about engagement and that's super important but on this particular goal I'm just wondering if there's a way to because it's very student-centered it's very focused on the students those are

127any way that we can broaden it a bit because on on families um because that is one thing that I think we talked quite a bit about uh well yeah I was about to then also talk about staff like when you think about well well-being like the child is supported by the family and you've also got to have the well-being of our educators otherwise we can't support our kids it's like putting on the oxygen mask first you know to the adult because I was just on an airplane and reminded that um so I don't know that's just like something that's coming up for me and we kept saying too that like we had to flip the switch on teaching where parents had to be the educators and suddenly if we flip the switch again and

128like pretend that the parents are over here and we're not engaging them that is not that's not what we wanted to so anyways I just really think that that recovery it's we've got to think uh holistically no I think that's great I think that's a definite ad all right now the number three uh which we lumped in as uh communications trust engagement on it um objective wise I think uh well letting someone else go first on things that they would like to see objective potentially right and we're not gonna you know get it all out there and then we'll narrow it down as we think we can to the next session I think Wendy summed it up pretty well at the goal level which is rebuilding a culture of trust and collaboration and then but

129objective wise yeah I think we have some I mean I think your your idea about consistency of communication and cadence of communication is a good one but I don't know does that drill down too much to strategies and you know tactics so I I'm struggling with what is the what's the correct level there for an objective I want to I want to um just put something out there to see if it rings with anybody um I I heard so many teachers say that uh I was gaslighted or I just had lip service what true or not that's how they felt and um I think this whole item of trust really comes comes down to are we truly listening uh to our stakeholders and at least teacher stakeholders because that's that I think I think I

130heard it loudest there so if we are looking at an objective here saying we're gonna have better communication to me doesn't really hit the need um I keep going back to what Ben said about real true engagement um I I don't know how to articulate what an objective will be exactly but I know the work I've done in shared decision making and and um true engagement is is a need for you guys and it's a it is it would be a high impact objective the one thing I guess the thing I would like I agree with all those things Bill um the one thing I think then the question becomes an objective right is this thing has to be measurable yeah yeah can't be as like you said true engagement isn't just putting people in

131a room and right in a discussion right um right so that's what I'm struggling with about how you create trust with true engagement you know uh for it that that's what I struggle with so you know this comes out oftentimes in 360 evaluations uh there are there are a lot of questionnaires and surveys about you know is is um you know is the school district really um listening and hearing what I'm taking in but of course it's all subjective really you know that's very subjective that Jennifer do you have any insights into into this and your experiences well so one of the things that's tricky about this is that um my experience with teachers and school leaders is that this is less about emails and you know a cadence of um materials that I send

132to everyone with talking points which is more important probably for the governance team and for the executive team but it's more about being present and listening and hearing and like you said this shared decision making that when we make decisions that we make decisions yeah and that when I represent something that should happen that I make it really clear to this governance board all the audiences I met with and what it represents and that representatives of that those groups are with me when I do it and so the 360 is somewhat problematic for that because really it's more about the outputs such that the talking points the board has are not lip service right like they can trust me that when I say I've been at every school this many times I've met with this

133many teachers and leaders and together we put together this and I'm going to let these two or three people share it that that's what will tell them but how do you measure it so that's why I put surveys in because at the end of the day you know having a tell on that will be helpful um it's inadequate so it's it's hard like measuring because really truly this is a how right about all the other goals right and um but inspiring confidence and trust and being kind and you know empathetic and listening um is probably the most important thing I need to do here in the next you know six months so um but measures are hard I'm sorry Jennifer I didn't mean to jump on on your lessons there um I um I just

134also think you know the goals that you set um in an ideal world they're all really measurable and we use them to hold you accountable but they're also a communication tool of your priorities and so I would just um caution against like um changing the goals such that they can be measurable and losing the impact of the communication value here which is like one of my top five goals is building trust and community like that being able to say that and have it written down that that will speak loudly and that will also be good for the board because the community needs to know that we know that that is like a primary objective yeah I think actually what everyone's saying um and this is you know I think we do probably have I think

135Jennifer has identified that well to be present and I think um it's not necessarily conversation it's conversation for a closed session part of it in terms of valuation but we do do a robust 360 that has um that we should talk about as a group in terms of that regards um but I do think it does um if we're okay with those things or talk about it I can kind of who's evaluated or who's participating I think we can get even if it is survey data isn't great I think we can do well so I do think we're all on the kind of same page and I just listening to that Irene would you agree with me um Neil if you were so Neil I was just where I'm sorry where my head was was

136thinking that let's just use really simple words I was um for objective number three on the trust and the collaboration no I agree I think overall I think I think Jennifer put it well of what is needed um I think my my measurable part can be overcome by what we do um for the closed session stuff yeah so yeah and I think the first I think the first thing is to get the objective and then and then we'll go to what we how we'll measure it all right uh last one I have was uh physical health stabilization uh long-term what is what's the issue I think the biggest issue I think Bill for me is um the past three years we've ridden a wave of short-term problems um that have put giant dance I think

137in long-term planning uh so I think it's the way I would describe what the objective would be is to have a understanding and plan um for long-term health of the district but understanding the short term of where we're going right is it declining enrollment short but going to increase in a few years out um and being able to kind of stabilize and um maintain the programming I guess would be kind of the way I'd put it but uh that would be described that would have been I think our problem over the past couple years is we've you know gone from it decreasing enrollment which has caused budget problems which has caused layoffs which is was affected by COVID which doubled down like everything all came at once and how you now we're looking at how

138you um handle enterprise and then after how you handle enterprise of what the county will let us do in those regards so all of those things need I think long-term planning um because they all go together and affect us in the short term um to you know kind of put they started fires I like to say yeah I say we can't really afford to make any more cuts we've gone through big cuts so the financial stability will probably have to either come from parcel tax or increasing our enrollment if we stay a you know LCFF yeah yeah I mean that's the issue that I heard uh Irene is that um that oh what was the what was the phrase that oh I think that somebody said that we are a low wealth where no we're

139uh we're we're in a high wealth neighborhood and we're a low wealth district something like that so in a situation like that you can't cut more because the high wealth district I mean the high wealth neighborhood wants it all right you know they want their program so that's really the issue so the objective has got to match up against that so the objective has got to be how to you know how do we address that yeah what is it that we're going to do to address it and maybe that becomes the the objective for lack of uh for lack of it's not very focused yet but I always like to go back to what the issue is and what the need is and it seems like that it's that we don't have enough money for

140the expectation that our community has maybe it's what um Neil said at the beginning about goal number one which is by in by the end of the year to have some optionality uh regards the long range um and what do we need to do short term and long term um you know to align our resources with our priorities because we have lots of choices we've just executed some and without I think um a complete picture of those optionality so you know that's definitely something I can deliver on is you know some good insight into what those options are so that it's not just making the decision right this second for the thing right in front of us yeah yeah it might be my thing well Neil I feel like we're in a good spot this

141at this point um I think that if anybody does want to um you know some of the board members maybe all of you are people that like to think about this and then write down your thoughts and forward them to the superintendent and then I heard that you and Jennifer then might want to do some crafting of some language and bring it back and I'd be more than willing to attend if you wish um if if you want to handle it that's that's good as well uh it's delightful working with you though this is a great board and I think you have a real fine and Jennifer by the way Don Shelby says hello to all of you I I had lunch with him yesterday so he wanted to know how Jennifer was doing yeah

142I think that's great I mean I we definitely appreciate it Bill and if you would help us out through it as we get I certainly would yeah it's a learning experience for me too always or does that sound like a decent plan I feel like we're at a good stopping point um and then we can try we can go through the uh pain of trying to find dates where we can all come back together uh but I'm sure it'll work out uh again um does that sound like an okay plan everyone yeah I imagine we'll all be on the same time zone then so it'll be good yeah oh yeah I think poor Sarah it's getting late it's very dark in your window where are you Sarah I'm in Tennessee I'm two hours ahead oh

143okay well okay perfect so let's plan on doing that um Bill again as always thank you like I said you once you get in San Carlos become a lifer so you know it's a pleasure it's a pleasure yeah I'm invested all right all right perfect thank you Bill thank you take care everybody board I do have one uh thank you I'll leave and let I think you have a closed item or something so I will leave take care okay uh I sent everyone did everyone get the link for closed session yeah okay I have one thing I just want to go over with you should be quick um five to ten minutes but let's take a five minute break and then we'll uh meet there at 7 55 okay uh Wendy any comments on closed

144session or probably come out in closed session one second it's on my other device went to sleep nothing came in great I will adjourn us then to closed session um and we'll be back all right thanks everyone okay I'll return us back from closed session at this time there is nothing to report out of closed session so I will adjourn the meeting this time thanks