2-17-22 SMUSD BOE Special

001good afternoon it is february 17th 4 30 p.m welcome to the san marino unified school district board of education special meeting here's your board president nam jack good afternoon everyone we are here on february 17th in person in the boardroom you can also join us via zoom at the meetings of the board of education are open to members of the public unless publicly notices confidential closed session is allowed by law members of the public may address the board as outlined in the public comment section of the agenda the audio of all meetings is recorded and the member of the public may be held liable for any slanders or otherwise defamatory statements in consideration of the board and members of the audience please turn off silence your cell phones while in the boardroom and i would

002ask that all our board members do the same the school district encourages those with disabilities to participate fully in the public meeting process if you need a disability related modification or accommodation including auxiliary aids or services to participate in the public meeting contact the assistant to the superintendent at jdeletory at smusd.us or one three 626-299-7000 zero at least 48 hours before the scheduled board meeting so that we may make every reasonable effort to accommodate you documents provided to a majority of the board regarding an open session item on this agenda will be made available for public exp inspection in the district office located at one six six five west drive san marino during normal business hours in addition such writings and documents may be viewed on the district's website at www.smusd.us so now that i

003call the meeting to order we will do the pledge of allegiance please stand i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right so now we go to item 2b which is the approval of the agenda it is an action item will someone make a motion to approve the agenda please so moved okay mrs ryan second second mr chang um any discussion uh all right we will now vote mr kalaki aye this is ryan aye aye for uh nam jack all right that uh the motion has been approved for the agenda public comments procedural item the board has adopted board policy 9323b to ensure the public's right to be heard in any matters

004relating to the school district persons who wish to provide public comment will have three options to submit public comments one through an online form request to speak during the meeting via q a and phone dialing three requests to speak during the meeting in person via the public comment card with respect to submitting an online form the public may submit online comments to the open session on february 17 from 11 11 am to 2 pm comments received during this time will not be read during the meeting but will be provided to the board have any um public comments been made before 2 o'clock no all right thank you request to speak during the meeting via q a and phone dialing during this process the meeting will pause for one minute to take requests to speak the

005raise hand function is used to take requests during the public comment period for online attendees press the raise hand icon icon to add yourself to the queue for phone attendees dial star 9. the speaking order will be determined based on the order of requests received individual speakers will be unmuted and called to speak mr joy dr choi thank you we're pausing for one minute to take requests to speak regarding matters on the agenda if you'd like to make a request please press the raise hand icon style star 9 or submit a public comment card 30 seconds remain if you'd like to make a request to speak please press the raise hand icon dao star 9 or submit a public comment card president jack we have no requests thank you dr choi the third method is

006request to speak during the meeting in person via the public comment card please complete the public comment card submit the card to the designated dropbox with the assistant to the superintendent no later than when the agenda section is called by the board president opportunities for public comment are offered prior to the discussion section matters on the agenda the board reserves a right to add a public comment period prior to any individual item on the agenda five minutes may be allotted to each speaker and a maximum of 20 minutes to each subject matter however in the event there are more than four speakers at the same on the same subject matter the board president retains the discretion to adjust and limit the time allocated to each speaker to ensure that all wishing to speak will be

007heard within the 20-minute allotment um communications from the audience concerning matters on the agenda may be heard at this time but not responded to by the board um however we do have a very important guest here uh so we have linda wah who is our pcc trustee who represents our district uh and she is here on behalf of pcc thank you so much president jack honorable board members um so i just wanted to give you a couple of updates on pcc which i think will be of interest to you i did send a information oh okay i did send information to dr deletori that funding and the grant funding for the k-12 strong workforce the monies are available for application one of the things that's happened that's different in the past is that we the

008regional consortium used to be la and orange county as of this year we have split just to la and pcc will be the fiscal agent for distributing those funds so i encourage you all to think about i'm encouraging all the districts to think about applying for those funds especially as you're looking at career education pathways and the monies that could be used for those districts and i've sent those links out and i'm happy to send them out again if anyone needs them other comments i want to make i really liked your priorities um in your state of the school district and i think one of the things that was really important was um focusing on social well-being well-being and mental health and it is one of the priorities of pcc so i also wanted to

009offer if there's any opportunities for a partnership of resources please feel free to call on us i also wanted to comment that i know you all are thinking about other kinds of enrichment enrichment educational opportunities for the san marino school i was really happy to see that the three dual enrollment classes are in san marino kinesiology psychology and sociology so far i'm hearing good reports back but i also wanted to offer to you that you know if there are i think we have a lot of great opportunities in the health science and technology business continues to be one of the primary majors that many of our students want to go to and i think i sent you information that this year pcc transferred 39 students directly from pcc into the cal state business school i'm

010working with the president i sit on the president's council at cal state la and so i asked them to consider a two plus two plus two which would partner link the dual enrollment for business to then only two more years to get the bachelor's and then two years into the mba and um and next year i think we will be establishing a um a phd satellite with cal state la's charter college of education so for those students who are interested in going to education i think it's a great opportunity so i just want you all to consider that and i wanted you to update it so thank you very much for giving me that opportunity thank you linda by the way i asked clock i think today is a special meeting i think the the

011public comment has to just uh point to the focus on this subject yeah thank you thank you mr chain all right now we're gonna go to super intended search firm interviews the board will interview firms to determine their suitability expertise and experience in finding and placing superintendents in the school district um before we go the order that they will be presented will be leadership associates at 435 around 515 would be approximately ray and associates 555 mcpherson and jacobson in 635 the costco group uh so i wanted to apprise uh the board that i had contacted a representative of each of the search firms that had responded to the proposal and asked three basic questions uh you know are you available today uh to um to be interviewed by us uh and uh whether uh who

012it would be uh and whether or not they would be appearing in person or via zoom so um leadership associates mcpherson and the costco group will appear in person ray and associates will appear by zoom in terms of uh the the way that uh the time frames were uh uh determined um i asked each of the four representatives of the search firms how much time they needed and all four responded about 30 minutes 15 minutes for their presentation and 15 minutes for um our questions which is why the time frames are determined in this uh manner in terms of asking questions after the presentation i would ask that each one of us ask one question each and then we keep going around so um that would be what i would request and then we'll keep

013going around until we're finished all right so uh uh i have a question sure so to to be fair to the all four uh consulting company so how either we will recall the time each one they were yeah and also the probably this value were difficult because i also have a q and a so how we want to control the time well i think in terms of the presentations right i do think right we can limit them i think 15 to 20 no more than 20 minutes through the presentations i think for each should i set a timer for 20 minutes and once we hit the 20 minute mark i will remind the board that it's been 20 minutes i think that would be fair is that all right is that all right i mean

014they all said 15 minutes so i think they could meet that time frame that's all right then we'll do it that way in terms of the q a i don't want to limit that um so uh i don't want to i mean i would like to know if we've gone past 20 minutes in terms of the q a but i don't want to limit that in case you know people have more questions so in that respect i'd like to to go but um so mr chang i do think it's fair that they are limited in terms of their presentation but in terms of our q a let's try to uh will give us you know unlimited well not unlimited but uh a reasonable time frame i think thank you for that question all right if

015we're ready to start uh i would like to introduce uh leadership and associates and if you could come up to the podium and introduce yourselves and get ready for the presentation we'd appreciate it thank you so much for coming thank you very much can you hear me okay yes good very very good thank you president jack and uh vice president sean clark uh mr chang mr kalaki and mrs ryan i was going to say ms but mrs ryan thank you so much we are honored to be here and to present leadership associates as a potential firm to do your superintendent search we have been in business for a long time since 1996 i've been with the firm since 2006. we were all successful superintendents we've had a very successful track record for all of these

016years done about 600 searches as a firm and we again would be honored to to be selected by you to help you find the best possible superintendent that's out there i just have to say i learned how to drive on huntington drive i lived in duarte and the only place my folks would let me drive was huntington because it's wide right so lots of memories there i appreciate that i'd like to now have my partners come up and they will introduce themselves okay first uh sandy sanchez thorsensen good evening it's a pleasure to be here with you i'm sandy sanchez thorstenson i was the superintendent of the whittier union high school district for 14 years and served my entire career there in whittier union and i have served as the chair of the ccee in

017sacramento for a few years and chair of the state superintendency council and i'm very pleased to be here this evening thank you if i may for a moment that's us up there president jack trustees again once again thank you so much first and foremost for the opportunity to present this evening i'm the third leadership associate partner dedicated to the san marino usd search my name is dr david verdugo retired superintendent from paramount unified school district the school district of approximately 17 000 students a very urban school district in los angeles county i'm the former deputy superintendent of schools in placenta or belinda in orange county following retirement i was the executive director of khalsa the california association of latino superintendents for six years and also olafs the national organization as the superintendent's leadership academy director

018in washington dc where i coached and mentored aspiring superintendents if i may i'd like to mention that i was the interim superintendent in pasadena for approximately five months during dr mcdonald's absence we're going to continue on if i may dr chow we're good right okay um i want to mention and make particular important uh information regarding our administrative support during this search you can see there on your screens that becky banning penny pyle and betty hall are the executive assistants that are assigned to this search and leadership associates has highly qualified executive assistants assigned to each search and all are former senior executive assistants two actual superintendents we provide comprehensive on-call support guidance that the board might need or perhaps jennifer de la toda might need with any board agenda protocols or brown act items

019personalized written guidelines templates samples checklist and documents and very very prompt responsive response should there be a question should jennifer have a question for example and we think that this is one particular feature that is particularly important provides again the assistance and support that you need going on we do in fact recognize and commend the accomplishments and the accolades of san marino unified school district you can see them there on the screen as well whether it's the renewal of measure e the outstanding graduation rate of course at san marino high school continuing on really the summer academy that you have as well huntington middle school's recognition i believe it was last year as a national blue ribbon school it's my understanding that that is the only middle school in the entire state of california that

020was provided that particular uh honor going on here is a sampling of some of the school districts that we have been involved with the vast vast majority of searches of course are in california 600 as was mentioned by mr thumb since 1996 we have been involved with the superintendent searches of some next door neighbors monrovia for example duarte la habra city school district fullerton joint union high school district tustin los alamitos and newport mesa were all uh school districts that we did have the uh the opportunity and the honor to do those searches and i'm really proud to say by the way that leadership associates conducted approximately 76 of all superintendent searches in the state of california in 2021 and the volume may be surpassed as we move into the 2022 school year sandy thank

021you very very much on this slide we'd like to point out that we have 17 partners in leadership associates and the reason that that's uh important is so much of the process that we follow will be very similar you'll hear very similar steps uh throughout the evening from the other search firms there's a couple of things that really have a major factor in the differences and that is that one that dr verdugo mentioned to you that we have this team of administrative assistants who were superintendents who worked for superintendents who had been through this search on their end of it so if we were honored to be selected then jennifer would work very closely with penny pyle um our teammate on this search and will be of a tremendous asset and value to her as

022well on this slide you'll see that throughout the whole state throughout northern central and southern california we have partners that are located in various parts of the state but we do work up and down the state all three of us have done work in northern california central but the the um special thing about about our team is we're not um individual consultants that just come on for a short period of time this is our work we work together we meet every other tuesday morning via zoom we share with one another if if we're to be selected you'll get the three of us and you'll be well be boots on the ground serving you but you'll also have all of our other partners who are on our team and they will be helping us recruit and

023vet we all have networks throughout the state so we have access to a lot of very very strong candidates out there through our networks and through our um our superintendent leadership series and and other work that we do that we'll speak about in a short while so we we will be able to find candidates who are a really good match for you there are lots of people out there that are applying for superintendencies but they're not always going to be the best match for this particular community so we're um very very pleased to be able to provide you with our services and our whole team that will be backing this up and i'll just turn to the next slide i mentioned our connections our network so all of the entire leadership associates team uh we

024have several uh with close ties in membership to networks across california and throughout the whole country and here's a list of some of them aasa khalsa alas axa csba casa sss the serbian suburban schools superintendents california collaborative for district reform american leadership forum and ccesa the county superintendent's organization so of those 17 that you saw on the map and the previous slide some of these superintendents these former superintendents who are partners were county superintendents they were leaders up in northern california david did a lot of work in washington dc i did a lot of work in sacramento so again it's it's a very rich and robust network that we bring to you to be able to find and recruit and thoroughly vet the candidates so that way when we finish all of that vetting we

025can bring to you a slate of very top top tiered top quality candidates that will be a good match for you thank you i wanted to point out that one of our keys to success is that we own the company this is us you will meet with us all the time all three of us we don't farm anything out we're not hired for just this job we are really truly partners but we wanted to share a little bit about our our purpose why why did these guys decide to do this after they were successful superintendents and the reason is pretty clear we believe so strongly in education deeply in our hearts that to really form a high-powered democratic society schools are critically important that's our why we want to put the best leaders in the

026school districts because we realize that that makes a really big difference in the 13 years the children are in your school system we believe that in our schools in our school district that impact if done right changes lives it clearly changes lives so when we all decided to accept the invitation as successful superintendents to join this firm it was for that very reason that you can really make a difference in the world and i know we all were watching the news and how do we make a difference how do we get children to really understand values become productive citizens understand peace and justice become good human beings it's schools have a major part obviously parents play a large part as well so we really value that and that's why we are here we're very very

027clear about the fact that we value diversity big time our partners are all diverse individuals different languages and races um we try and be as inclusive as possible sandy mentioned every other week we meet we talk to each other every day this is our main work it's not like we're out there doing other things and then we take a gig if you will it's not us by the way i'm smiling you can't see it but i am as i'm because i'm so proud of leadership associates i'm so pleased to be here um and by the way i was a football player and played against san marino a lot in 63 and 64. now you guys were good they really were but back to what i was saying so everybody deserves a good leader and we

028have been so fortunate as david mentioned 76 we the reason that we're able to achieve that is because we really do customize you really you really will control your own search we don't like have a template or a and we customize we'll find out what you want and we'll go out and get it so thank you for listening to that um so our executive searches uh leave no stone unturned we we really do recruit nationally even over a california firm we realize that although it's difficult for folks from out of state to come here and afford to live and understand that we have collective bargaining that they're you know we're not a state that has you know free reign we have to always negotiate contracts etc but we realize that if if we can bring

029people in that believe that when a teacher gets a credential that's not the end that's the beginning it's a license to learn we believe in professional growth fully and we really advocate for that with anybody that we are fortunate to lead you to in our search process so we we also can are very very proud and sandy will mention it that we train about a third of the superintendents in california and sandy we'll go into that in another slide but i just wanted to mention that because our why is really critical to why we've been successful i think it is probably with every profession um why are you doing this and if you're doing it for a job and money it doesn't work you've got to do it from the heart and that's what we

030do and i think you're up next dr produco mr film why but why us is really the question uh in terms of uh the selection of the search firm some of those why's why us i've tried to demonstrate or answer on this particular slide we remain actively engaged many of us are still involved in a variety of associations and organizations we have a variety of leadership experiences as well as partners as was emphasized we are not consultants we do not consider ourselves consultants we're very mission focused we've always been involved with continuous improvement we're dedicated to partnering with trustees with boards of education highly quality culturally responsive leaders and help those leaders continue to prove improve the quality of their work as was mentioned the diverse needs of california's diverse population is particularly important to

031us i think one thing that i would point out in 2020 21 67 of our finalists selected were women or candidates of color and i believe that's an important aspect and again it's been emphasized california-based and california savvy thank you i mentioned a moment ago that we in addition to serving school boards through executive searches we also have executive leadership development that we're engaged in so we pro we are committed to helping school boards find the very best leaders to serve the boards their school districts and the students that you all serve we also are committed to providing ongoing support and training for superintendents to support them in a very very challenging job extremely challenging under the best of circumstances and even more so given coveton and all the other challenges of our current time

032so through this executive leadership development work that we do as you can see up on the screen we work with seven counties with 180 districts through seven counties in the superintendent leadership series i helped to i co-facilitate for los angeles county san diego and orange counties and we also have superintendent leadership networks by the way the superintendent leadership series there's no cost to the school district the county office supports the superintendents in that training and the the networks have served 47 districts we also work with assistant superintendents and we also provide interactive board governance workshops organizational audits board super evaluations to help support and facilitate that process and on as you see there on the bulleted list this work is gratifying to us because it's it's important not just to be able to provide you

033with the top tier of quality candidates but to help you ensure that that person is going to be highly successful the work matters you know there's children's lives that you're affecting day-to-day today that'll have long-term effect and when we were superintendents and stepped off our superintendency we didn't lose the passion for this work and serving children so it's very gratifying for us to be able to work with school boards and superintendents and their assistant superintendents to ensure that kids are getting the very best it's also helpful through this work that we see these people regularly superintendents and assistant superintendents so we can see the quality of the leadership out there up and down the state so it really helps us immensely in our recruiting efforts too so the executive leadership development side of our firm

034and the executive search side is integrated it's very wonderful symbiotic relationship that helps support one another thank you we're three minutes away from the 20 minute mark okay good so we uh we have a formula and it's up here on the screen and i won't go through all of it but we make sure that our searches start with you they end with you obviously because you make a selection so throughout our process and it's in our timeline that you will see we have a phase in which we do the recruitment i mean you hire a firm to do extensive recruitment background checking and to bring you the highest quality candidates that you can that is spelled out here uh in our chart but literally what i'll say to you is that if you ch you

035know we hope you choose us but these things have to be done you have to know number one that we're going to communicate with you the worst thing is if search room you hire and then you never hear from them that's not a good thing um and then also you want that vetting you want that background checking and you want all of that uh finally we come back show you all the candidates not just the ones that we think are good but all of them we recommend some that we believe are the the perfect match i gotta hurry before my 20 minutes is up so here's a timeline that kind of tells you what we'd like to do this is variable when we meet if we're selected we'll meet and we'll make this solid but

036we will get this done as you can see somewhere mid-may or early may depending on how rapid you want to search but again that's your call because you want to make sure that we've had time and you've had time to vet all of the candidates um closing thoughts uh you know we don't charge extra we have to come come up here all the time we don't charge you miley's we don't charge you you know housing none of that all-inclusive fee our search is your search and i mean that from the bottom of my heart our team is highly qualified makes it easy on uh mrs de la torre because there's a little bit that the district has to do personalized as i mentioned effective and high-tech high-tech and that everything we you you need is

037online so that you can wherever you are you can you can tune in and hear what's going on and again we have a national reach california firm i just want to say in closing and i probably have five seconds right in closing i want to say that uh you are a tremendous board you know we've we've studied you deeply in the last couple of weeks last month actually and you know the fact that you were able to pass e proposition e the measure e i'm sorry that you have produced graduates of the quality that you have um is it hurt yeah yes this is jack what's that oh oh very very good i see um you know the 126 uh graduates i don't need you know the numbers we put them in our thing as

038well but it's always the board you're the leaders you guide us the superintendents we really do look to your guidance and sometimes it seems like the superintendent's off just doing his thing never would a good superintendent not be listening to the board daily about what you need with that i guess it's time for question sir all right well rich thank you so much sandy and david uh very very much we will start our questioning and dr choi if you could start the time not that that will limit our questions but mr kalaki would you like to start i have to apologize i need to in about five five ten or so i have to be on a zoom call for a please a legal matter but i'm just going to go and my our team

039is here uh but i'll stay here for a little bit thank you thank you so much for taking the time to come we would very very much appreciate it kalaki yes thank you um you know i'd like to know what you consider will be san marino unified's the the benefits and the challenges uh of our district with regard to candidates we'll start off with that your quality you want a high quality person for sure someone that seriously understands the success you've had and doesn't come in with a template from the last district but really continue the great work you've done because look at the results that you have made i mean it's just incredible so that's really important challenges i mean everyone says covet of course covet is a is a dark cloud over us

040hopefully slowly dissipating that'll be a challenge um you know we'll find some good very good candidates the challenges they'll face are a california budget that isn't always where we'd like it to be you know you're not totally you're required to you're not state you know mandated to do everything but the the budget situation is always a challenge and obviously accelerating student achievement for those that may fall behind anything else oh i would just say again that some of those things are generic in the sense that if you're looking at the horizon the fiscal aspects of things the social emotional needs of students of course that have been affected by the closure of schools or the virtual learning and the lack of personalized attention in the classroom that type of thing thank you thank you good

041question mr chang for the last two years i mean from january 2020 to now how many superintendent search agreement you retain how many we retain yeah i think we i believe i can answer that i believe that the numbers um 85 percent of all the superintendents that were uh held to be placed um have been there at least five years or more does that answer that question is that right in fact mr chang if i may add to that we will not recruit someone who's not been in a school district for a minimum of five years we think the research indicates that the five to seven year pattern of longevity is really very critical now that's not to say that there aren't outstanding individuals that are ready for the superintendency so i want to make

042sure that i understand that you can understand that but the point being is that that's the commitment that we make to the school districts and to the individuals and to the trustees as well thank you by the way we we will not ever come back if we bring you a superstar which we think we can we'll never come back and try and pull that person and say hey there's another job up there in the bay area what about that we don't do that mrs chung thank you um i was wondering if you could speak a little bit more to your recruitment strategies for whether or not you're actively recruiting or if you're relying on publications and networks um and also along those lines if you represent uh people who are seeking superintendent positions as well

043yeah let me start with the last question you know we don't represent any superintendents we represent the board and we make that very clear to the candidates our networking strategy i mean our recruitment strategy has to do a lot with our networks the fact that we've been the longest lasting firm and the highest successful firm in the last five years or so gives us a tremendous network of people that we can call and say you know we know that you went through our process you know of anybody that would be great we knock on doors of people that are sitting superintendents that don't know they're going to come to san marino you know they they just they don't know that we're going to recruit them but we do that recruitment but we do it through

044large networks we have county superintendents among our active partners we have people in all areas of the state as sandy indicated that they we have contacts state and national we use those contacts and that's what we do daily we're on the phone recruiting so we actually recruit certainly do not rely on just people that apply nor do we have quote unquote a stable of people over here that hey jack here's a new one i'm sorry about using the word jack hey tom here's a new one [Music] with respect to that thank you very much i'll excuse myself with your permission thank you thank you very much much of that mrs chong depends on the match and the fit of course the characteristics and the traits that you folks desire that position description is extremely important

045as we capture those not only from the trustees but also from the stakeholders accordingly i'm sorry thank you all right thank you mrs ryan um so san marino is a high-performing [Music] active engaged community we have partnerships as you heard with pcc and other agencies when you are recruiting what are the qualities that you look for knowing the characteristics of our community and how will you speak to how they will be able to transition from you know brand new honeymoon stage to a more um you know after the first year in terms of helping with matching that candidate to the changes that are coming down david had mentioned a little earlier and all the firms will will do stakeholder input sessions so there's really two major keys to all of this work initially the stakeholder

046input sessions and that begins with the board to ask all of you what specifically are you looking for as far as the skills qualities characteristics what matters most to you not just in technical skills but really leadership style that would fit your particular community and then we have we obtain a list from you the board of all the different groups in the entire school district certificated classified staff administrative staff parents students community leaders any others that that are voices that need to be involved in this process and then we we ask them the same questions what's most important to san marino what's most important in the type of leader that is needed to serve the kids of san marino unified so we we compile all of that data we provide you with the report with

047all that data and that helps us to develop a position description that is a wonderful recruiting tool that helps us to identify people who leaders who are a good match not everyone's going to be the right fit for san marino so when we are recruiting then we know we have in mind and on our regular calls with our partners we tell them this is what we're looking for this type of person and they'll help us through all of our networks that we shared previously to help find the a pool of really really strong candidates from which you will choose and then we'll um continue on with support for that person and if we will invite them to join the superintendent leadership series and uh and hopefully they would have a coach as well it's a

048very challenging position so it's important for anybody in that high level of a position to have uh advisement mrs ryan we go a step further in regards to those characteristics and traits that we need to acquire from you folks and obviously your stakeholders and that is what are the strengths of the districts and what are the challenges of the district so that we have a stronger sense of the type of character and leader that you need that we need to recruit and of course the vetting the comprehensive vetting process or reference checking is extremely important and we do that whether it's financial criminal google searches so on and so forth but again that's prior to bringing you every person that applies for the position we will however be able to provide you what we might

049call tier one candidates those that are the best match and fit but then we will deliberate and describe those for you accordingly the report that we provide to you after all of the data that we collect on the stakeholder input sessions is is a real value to you as the board it's also a real value to whoever it is that you select as your new superintendent they receive that and as david mentioned it'll have the community's input on what they believe are the one the best strengths of san marino unified what are the challenges the school district faces and what do they really expect as far as qualities and leadership style it's a wealth of information and a real treasure for a brand new superintendent to read through this very very extensive report have understanding

050before they even start day one to know what the expectations are from the board and also of the staff and community then i should mention also if i might mrs ryan the fact that we have a electronic survey that is made available to all of your constituents as well in various languages accordingly that information also gets embedded into the executive summary for you as well once that executive summary is in the hands of you and or the new superintendent then you can actually begin to strategize on that 100-day plan that 90-day plan those priorities those challenges accordingly thank you my question has to do uh with um what what is the market for what you believe is the individual that we are looking for i mean is it are there a lot of uh superintendent

051job opening openings you know is the market large is it you know is there a large pool of candidates that are looking to move are there a large pool of job openings and what does it look like for a small district like ours well if i may i'll begin and then sandy might want to chip in a little bit as well the volume of resignations in the state of california as it relates to superintendents has never been higher you can imagine the stress and the pressure as a result of kovid and some of the other aspects of leadership having said that we are keenly looking at and determined to get a stronger sense of who's filling those gaps who's in line for that seat if i can put it that way bluntly what sandy mentioned

052earlier about the work that we do with assisted superintendents up and down the state gives us a much better sense and feel of the potential candidates that would be out there that are that match and fit so granted in reality there's a number of openings particularly in 2021 we're beginning to see a high volume of of superintendent saying if i meet the criteria pension wise and so on i'm going to leave um again that there's a gap there but we believe through leadership associates and the work that we do on the other side of the house has really started to prepare us even better for again the filling of those gaps there are lots of openings but there are also an amazing number of people who are still very passionate about wanting to lead despite

053the uh challenges of covet and and other issues so we uh we are absolutely confident that san reno is going to attract strong candidates it's a highly regarded highly respected school district rightfully so and uh that helps us that helps us in our recruiting efforts so uh you won't have to worry thank you mr kolacki yeah um with regard to the the stakeholder input can you tell me what what stakeholder groups you would include and how would that input everyone you want and we provide a template or a list that we provide and work with jennifer in this case in order to generate that opportunity we can either do it via zoom or we can do it in person including a community forum and perhaps one of your gymnasiums or multi-purpose rooms we are available

054for you that typically takes over two days sometimes three days to acquire as much information as we can but that's part of the stakeholder input then i mentioned the survey as well but the initial list that we provide the board you are more than welcome in fact we suggest add to it is the foundation not on there is pasadena city college not on there you want to add that uh is the rotary members not on there so very flexible but it really is a template for you to utilize and then we in turn take that information we also provide information through the administrative assistant to jennifer and others dr chao for example how to best get that survey on your website how do we best advertise it how do we monitor it we monitor that

055survey typically every every other day to determine if the numbers are are being generated that should be there and if not might we have some kind of social media to send out to your stakeholders to increase that number and penny pyle who i mentioned previously is our teammate she will be working side by side you're going to absolutely love penny if you get to work with her she she knows this work really well and she's extremely adept at technology and helping to make sure working hand in hand with with jennifer so that way that online survey is up and running and it'll be on your website for a couple of weeks and then we'll also provide you with all that data all the responses in a report it's uh fascinating information it's really really helpful

056going forward for the school board i've been retired for about eight years eight and a half years and i still call my executive assistant for assistance in my former school district so we know how important jennifer is in that regard me too mr chang what is the average tenure of a superintendent in california right now oh their average tenure my question have a two portion so this first one you after you answer then i will okay sure it really depends on the size of the district large urban school districts uh it's maybe two and a half three years as a average tenure it's better for uh smaller districts and it really depends on the geography and and so probably the biggest factor is really the political climate of the school district sandy was a superintendent

057for 13 14 14 years i was a superintendent for nine years yes that that's amazing but my next question because your firm has been served for our school district during my tenure so three superintendent so every day uh like you stay less than three years so you think it's normal or there's something it's very very hard to get work deeply rooted in just three years you know it's it's uh it's work that that has to be you have to till the soil come constantly you know it's not something that can be done uh in just a few years so it's why it's so important for superintendents to have coaching to have support you know and when we work with them in the executive leadership development side of our firm we have them network with other

058superintendents of like-sized districts of like political climate districts so that way they have um they have others that they can lean on so we facilitate that in leadership associates we provide content for them it's rich and relevant very timely a lot of things are going on right now that we provide them we research we spend a lot of time researching the harvard business review all sorts of other uh sources that have um very applicable um articles and and readings that will help superintendents navigate this political climate the very you know intense polarization across our country and and with cobin in particular and if i may we're very familiar with very high performing school districts such as you um in fact uh i happen to have been the search consultant for los alamitos the highest performing

059orange county school district also reed kentville in marin county so we have experience with those dynamics thank you mrs chan thank you um given covid the changes and challenges in education over the last few years the changes in economics and politics and political climate how has your search processes changed over the last few years five years 10 years whatever you identify for me because i don't know we certainly have uh have adapted as everyone else had as we mentioned that the outreach to the community is so critical we used to do all of that in person and since um covet first started in the early 2020 we've done it all via zoom and what we found is there's actually been an increase in participation by offering the the zoom that we still will um push

060out the online survey constantly to make sure everybody knows that that uh almost to the point of ad nauseam that my people don't forget we really need to have your response to the online survey so it's it's we have just um switched to be more um rely relying more on technology to be able to reach out to people so we um we we meet everybody's needs you know there's it's not uh we certainly have protocols that we follow because all of us are we have a standard of excellence that we all serve within all of our partners but we also want to make sure that it's a very personalized search every community is a little bit different every board's a little bit different so we here are here to serve you what we tell people

061when we are on these stakeholder input sessions is that we're the ambassadors for the board that the board has sent us to talk with them because they the board is very very committed to inclusive and very inclusive process so it's uh it's been a pleasure to do this work and we hope to serve you and that opportunity to obtain stakeholder input we do that on an individual basis as well so if the board would provide us the opportunity or you have a desire for us to speak to somebody independently uniquely individually we certainly have that outreach opportunity as well thank you mrs ryan um no questions at this time all right uh so i looked over your proposal and it says that you'll provide a one-year guarantee if the superintendent leaves um but many search

062firms have two year guarantees so uh my question to you is uh is that one year guarantee set in stone is that you know excellent we just had an extensive conversation about that among our partners and we thought because we believe so strongly and the governance team uh working together the superintendent and the board members and we decided as a team that we would be willing to offer two-year guarantee if if the um the board and the superintendent are are uh committed to providing uh a mid-year evaluation for the superintendent having a a formal evaluation at the end of the year and having uh support provided to that superintendent because that's so critical it's not it's it's what's necessary to make sure that the superintendent is going to be successful and having you know throwing

063somebody into the deep end you know without any support is is not the way to guarantee success so as long as there's support there and and that there's uh regular communication and there's uh it and the majority of the board is stays in place because sometimes there's not only um a change up with superintendents and having a short tenure but also it's very difficult when there's a lack of stability at the board level the board matters tremendously and if there's a stable high quality board it's smooth sailing and the superintendents will uh will be fine with support base we believe that healthy organization is really very very critical for the needs of the students and families that you serve obviously i personally and i know i can speak for sandy on this um her being

064a superintendent for 14 years me for nine years it was the closest thing to a marriage that i ever discovered and in june i'll be married 50 years so as i twitch a little bit here just kidding but my point is that we do believe that that's really very very critical that opportunity to communicate to to be a team we don't even call them retreats anymore we call them advances when we do meet with boards and governance teams so i guess my question is so you would do a two-year guarantee that there would be conditions attached to that exactly right so okay all right thank you mr kalatin okay no questions right now thanks mr chain uh my question the since your firm has a experience with us a couple times so i i don't

065know how you will recommend the candidate to ask because look like [Music] the the past superintendent they don't stay very long i i know definitely is not your issue i think it's a very complicated all effects together but but i mean the how can find a motivate the candidate they have a stronger awareness they can overcome during the the beginning the couple year then you know they can make the community and uh school community to to to uh persuade them that this the the the superintendent we we need to work together for a long time yeah we've uh i apologize to interrupt i just wanted to remind the board that we have exhausted the second 20 minute mark oh it's been starting all right okay please just answer okay thank you thank you very much

066we um we just compiled some data and looked at the number of school district school boards that we've served multiple times that that shows amazing repeat business we hadn't actually looked at that data before but we looked at that and we have served um school districts up and down as part of the reason why we we have such a high percentage of searches that that we um serve in throughout the state we also tell people who are applying for super tendency that's not for the faint of heart it's not an easy position it's it's a great challenge but it's such an important commitment to make it's incredibly gratifying work although it's incredibly challenging as well and we tell them it's they have to have very frequent communication with their board very frequent communication with staff

067and community the highest level of effective communication clarity that they need to provide inclusiveness that they need to seek high visibility on the campuses and in the community so we share with them all these things that have to be absolutely in place for them to be successful and then provide them conceal continual support so there's a lot of factors you're absolutely right it's a complex job it's um if the board stays intact and there's that regular communication and the evaluation is in the gotcha but it's a it's really a communication all the way through the whole process then there's a much greater chance for success which it doesn't have to be a revolving door which speaks volumes of relationships the fact that is that relationships are really critical the building of trust the bringing end

068of good strong systems problem solving potential problem solving all of those things come in unison with you as a team and the superintendent of course yeah i couldn't agree more trusting relationships for the foundation thank you mrs um i just said i don't know if it's gonna be a hard question to answer or not of the 85 percent um that you that have a five-year retention rate how many of those would be new to be a superintendent as opposed to they had moved from one superintendency to another oh that's a good question i don't know that data off the top of my head do you know that no i'm going to generalize uh mrs chon to say that probably three quarters of the group of people that are hired as superintendents by leadership associates in

069the buried school districts have already been in the seat and that the balance is most likely those that are coming from deputy superintendent positions associate superintendent positions according to the hierarchy or your org assistant superintendents but those i would say are extremely comprehensive by that i mean it's not someone who simply has hr experience if this were 0708 when we were going through the great recession many school districts were hiring primarily as their superintendents cbo's chief business officers we now know because of the lcap and lcff the need really to work together in all of those various cabinet departments so i think the point i would make is that all of those people have a very comprehensive skill set thank you all right uh and uh this is my last question so and i and

070i can't remember whether you guys had already responded but uh do you guys uh you know have that non-compete you know non-contact provision for a set period of time so you won't be contacting our superintendent absolutely to take his or her place so what is that time frame two years what is it it's five years five years okay i think you did say that okay all right thank you um all right uh i believe mr kalacki doesn't i believe mrs ryan you were done uh mr chang are you done with your questions all right great mrs chen oh i have one question how many searches do you do you engage in during the season one season um i'm i'm doing one other search at this point in time um i do a lot of work

071on the executive leadership development side of our house so i do the super leadership superintendent leadership series and network and some coaching and i just completed the santa maria bonito superintendent search for the elementary school district on the central coast i'm also coming to closure on the lancaster elementary school district and that's the only active searches that i'm on good good question as a matter of fact thank you all right well thank you on behalf of the board we appreciate you taking the time to come uh sandy david we really really appreciate it so thank you very very much and we're going to ask you to exit that away thank you thank you very much all right dr choi thank you good evening thank you okay we do have ray and associates team on in

072the waiting room i will go ahead and admit them thank you okay president jack it looks like the ray and associates team is now online all right good afternoon thank you for waiting i apologize as you can imagine everything seems to take a lot longer than we thought so we appreciate you taking the time uh to come uh and present to us via zoom if you would like to introduce yourselves and uh begin your presentation we would appreciate it in the um uh in order to be fair uh we are giving each search for 20 minutes to make a presentation uh in terms of board questions we will not be limited to the 20 minutes so just to let you know ahead of time that it will be at 20 minutes and dr choi will

073be um timing it so thank you welcome and please introduce yourselves okay good evening honorable san marino board of education members can you hear me okay yes okay thank you i thank you for for providing us the opportunity to join you this evening we really do appreciate the um ability to participate with you virtually this evening our team is delighted to be with you this evening and to share with you what sets us apart in our approach to superintendent searches um since you have our rhq responses but we do not plan in because of the amount of time available to us to cover that its content with you during this presentation but rather we'll provide a quick overview addressing some of the areas you seek to learn about and then welcome questions from the board

074for the remainder of our allotted time first off i'd like to allow you allow me please to introduce to you our team we all come to you as current experienced public education you have our bios in the um rfq uh you know with a broad stroke we come to you with over 100 years in public education experience and 85 years in leadership roles we really do have a deep understanding of that policy and laws and the historical context of public education across this country we do this work because it gives us all an opportunity to help school districts find their right leader to fulfill this most important role it's our way of giving back to public education and the profession we honor next slide please uh go back please uh one more sorry okay this

075is our team um bob mata jan besley barb goodwin steve steve chestnut so um if you will we'll t each of us will take just a minute to uh introduce ourselves to you i've taught i've been in the profession across four different states new mexico colorado iowa and california and um ultimately as a superintendent i served a k-12 district that was a bilingual school district all across the k-12 experience i'm a nationally certified multicultural trainer and i'm presently working with the state of california to help implement the california roadmap uh as part of my work jen get off of good evening my name is dr jan besley and i come to this search with 45 years in education most recently as a superintendent in a highly diverse high-performing school district where most schools are recognized

076on arizona's a plus list with two of those schools with blue ribbon distinction my consulting work has reached throughout the united states but includes several districts throughout california including several years of work with monrovia school district i would welcome the opportunity to support san marino's superintendent search process barb good evening my name is dr barbara goodwin and i come to you with 37 years of public education experience both in a k-8 system and a k-12 system both rural and suburban uh the last district in which i served i um there were 98 of the students came in with their primary language other than english and so i've worked in high economic high economic district and also very low socioeconomic district my expertise that i'm bringing to the team is 20 years of leading hr departments

077in very large school districts my doctorate degree is in organizational psychology so i focus on systems and making sure that we're in compliance good evening my name is steve chestnut i was a k-12 superintendent for 21 years in washington state and then another six years in arizona i retired two years ago from the scottsdale unified school district as a district administrator scottsdale unified is a high expectation high achievement district very much like san marino and i continue to live in scottsdale since retiring in addition to working part-time with ray and i've worked part-time as an executive consultant with learn platform which is an ed tech ed tech effectiveness system for school districts where i've been responsible for outreach to superintendents in seven western states so it's a pleasure to be with you this evening thank

078you folks next slide please as you can see on the slide right associates have been in the school executive search business since 1975 we are approaching 50 years in very soon here we do have a strong recruitment network of associates across the country a full-time staff that lives the burden off the school of the district staff as we proceed with our searches um recruiting we recruit the nation's educational leaders that is our primary business our experience has taught us that continual improvement of our process will keep us on the cutting edge of the profession along with including in this work a very strong vetting process a betting process that allows no surprises on candidates next slide please over 40 percent of our associates are women and persons of color providing different perspective as we vet

079candidates have prepared our candidate pools the videos of we we offer you videos of our top candidates as part of the application materials and we do have a scoring instrument matrix to build consensus with the board um on candidates as this business too around diversity similar to your organization our organization values strategies that build upon the strengths found in diversity equity and inclusion efforts it would be an honor to work with a district such as yourselves who have a deep commitment to to dei next slide please this is our background information related to our values and beliefs regarding inclusion equity and elimination of institutional racism what's important to note is your commitment as we have come to learn to inclusion and equity and and the evidence of that is we've been studying about san marino

080or the educational services that meet the needs of at least 18 different ethnic populations tk12 in your district we also know that you have a pk program for developmentally developmentally disabled students that there are high academic standards and offerings across all grades and also too that you also include summer academies and the right at school programs uh before and after school programs what's also nice in looking at and beginning to understand and learning about your district is that when you look at your information across the schools it's very evident that your handbooks at all levels emphasize respect and value for living in the multi-ethnic world and that your resources through the alcap and the local control funding formula are specifically designated to support high needs students in your district there is we are also aware

081of the fact that um your district is a high-ranking district across california and and you are a and assets you've been able to provide very important services and allowing students to exceed standards even for example along the cast i know when i worked at the la county office of education when the index was the california api san marino was constantly up either at the top or in the top five okay next slide please we draw candidates from our national and regional pools to ensure that we find candidates that are aligned to your profile that you have defined for your next superintendent through rigorous recruitment efforts we typically secure 30 to 40 completed applications but we've also had this number go up significantly depending upon the district we work closely with our applicants to maintain strong

082interest to gain well-qualified and aligned candidates that you're seeking next slide slide please first and foremost we want to reassure you that this is your search the san marina board of education provides direction for all phases of the search process which begins with identifying the profile of your ideal candidate and ends with your selection of your new superintendent next slide please we will also establish timelines and processes with the board for the desired scope of community involvement and activities to reach our targeted selection deadline to develop a profile for your ideal candidate we conduct individual board interviews to gather data regarding your desired qualities and characteristics for the incoming superintendent all board interview data is then summarized into a confidential report for the entire board to review another component of our profile in collecting data

083is collecting data among all of your stakeholder candidates with a 33 quality survey to include board members as well along with the targeted san marino community to collect the ad then we collect the aggregated prioritization of desired qualities for your next superintendent so we send out this survey to all of the stakeholder groups that you identify and as well as the board that takes a survey and then it helps then we will aggregate all of that data into the um different subgroups and be able to share a comprehensive report with the board which really begins to help the board see what the patterns and trends are from their stakeholders about what are those desired characteristics our team will also conduct focused stakeholder group sessions to collect qualitative narrative around what qualities experience character traits that

084they seek in the next superintendent again we work with the board on the selection of the stakeholder or those focus groups that you would like for us to conduct those focus group sessions all data is aggregated by groups and again presented to the board by the ray and associates team which you will utilize to create a profile to be used for advertising and screening of applicants next slide please [Music] with san marino's superintendent completed profile our team is in ready to begin our recruitment utilizing associates throughout the country we personally recruit candidates who have the specific skills that you have identified for your district this is a significant strength of our firm we not only use our associates but utilize recruitment activities such as various state and national conventions our website which routinely receives over

085twenty eight thousand monthly inquiries and a database of five thousand potential candidates candidates that we reach out to with every superintendent posting we also advertise a position in productive national venues and through other channels such as facebook twitter and media known for high readership by educational leaders in the next slide my colleague dr goodwin will discuss our candidate pool thank you so much i'm going to go a little bit more in depth so that you can feel confident that we bring you the highest quality candidates we generally recommend that you have an open window of four weeks for us to do our work do our outreach we do it a significant amount throughout that four weeks and as a team we keep you updated weekly on the number of completed or in-process applicants your ray

086and associates team would be working tirelessly throughout the application window and we do in-depth we use an in-depth training tool to vet the applicants and bring you the highest quality our motto is we want to do the heavy lifting for you but we also want to make your job difficult because we bring you such a strong pool of candidates that you're going to have to really work to decide which one you'd like to choose as your next leader of your district we use as i said an in-depth screening tool and that's based on those qualities and characteristics that jan talked about in the couple of slides ago which is driven by you the governing board not only do we complete in-depth depth paper screening we also complete an extensive social media check we call and

087interview all references personally we interview each of the top candidates ourselves and create an in-depth report which we will then share with you we also have the top eight to 12 candidates complete a short video answering questions created by you or your constituency groups all of this is shared with you prior to you the san marino board of education selecting who you would like to move forward to the first round of interviews your finalists also receive a complete criminal civil social security check motor vehicle records check verification of educational records degrees and certification another one of our mottos is as bob said earlier we want no surprises for the governing boards that we serve next slide please i'm going to talk a little bit about your selection of the candidates you control totally who moves

088forward through the interview process we facilitate your discussion by providing you with various data points you will look at all candidates both quantitatively and qualitatively you as board members drive the decision-making process next slide please as we're finalizing the search once your finalists have been selected we work alongside you as you move into that final round of interviews sometimes you choose to have a community forum other times you choose to have a video taped where people can watch it it goes to a wide variety of folks that you'd send it to and they can give you feedback through impression sheets which you can take into consideration as you move into your finalist round once your finalist is selected we work alongside you and your legal counsel to finalize the contractual agreement once completed we circle

089back in a few months later and we ask you as a board to complete a self-assessment regarding the process and its success this information is helpful to you as you continue to build your leadership team now i'm going to turn it over to my colleague steve thank you barb next slide please there we go as you can imagine school boards say good things about us and we're very proud of that in fact that second quote is from alhambra elementary school district here in phoenix and uh bob barb and i were on that team and had a very successful search there so as bob mentioned this is something that we greatly enjoy working with uh boards of education to find outstanding superintendents for their vacancies next slide please so just in summary so we get your

090questions we have a unique size and scope as we have described we believe in engagement and that is either virtual or in person we have really become expert in the last two years during the pandemic at virtual superintendent searches and we know that our audience is very accustomed to virtual as well and we're happy to do a virtual search entirely we're happy to do a hybrid where we are on site for some events and virtual for some so if you need us there in person one two or three of us we can be there and that is not a problem we are committed to diversity equity and inclusion in the search process as bob mentioned uh we facilitate the san marino board's leadership in the search process this is your search we customize searches to

091meet your needs we're very accustomed to that and we recognize that we are working for you to find the next superintendent and then we provide guarantees and we have a two-year guarantee that if there is a resignation or termination in that two-year period we will come back and conduct that search for free the only charge would be for travel if that was included but we're also very proud of the fact that our average 10 year of superintendence that we place is eight years which is really quite an extraordinary number and it speaks i think to the high quality of candidates that we have been placing in recent years we also have a five-year guarantee that we will not recruit uh your superintendent during that time period and uh we guarantee you to do that and

092uh in the interest of time i think i'll skip the last two slides and i do believe we're ready for your questions all right thank you very much for your presentation and we're now going to start with mr chain would you like to ask the first question uh please explain your understanding of experience with the submariner community in the school district i believe as bob said earlier we've all done research we had a we had a phone conference earlier today talking about your district going extensively into your background uh the qualities of programs the the high academic achievement we've also looked at your surrounding communities the length of those of you that have served on the board thank you very much we're all very appreciative of that as well your teaching staff your lack of

093turnover that you have high retention but we also understand that times have changed in the last couple of years so we want to be open to new issues that maybe aren't as easily found on the internet or tracking down information around what you have to offer we're all extremely excited about this opportunity though you're an amazing district very clear thank you mrs chon i just had an easy question um do you represent candidates as uh people who are seeking super employment superintendency employment as well i'm not sure i'm correct me if i'm not understanding this correctly we do have a pool of candidates but 70 of our placements don't come from our pool we do extensive outreach uh through a variety of media and we attract i mean on all of the i think probably

094between all of us we've probably all worked on 30 or 40 uh superintendent searches we have a different pool every time and sometimes they're brand new to rain associates so we're not pushing candidates on you we're trying to find the best candidates for you based on the criteria that you set that's why we spend the time that we do helping um for you to identify your profile of the candidate that had the ideal characteristics and traits and once that profile is identified then all of us go out into our networks and we look for candidates that are very close match to the the components that you have identified that are incredibly important to your district i know we just recently completed um a search in um the phoenix area madison school district very very similar

095to your district and um it became very obvious that there was an individual in another district that was very closely aligned but she wasn't necessarily going to apply for that district but we reached out um to her and in fact she was the candidate that was selected because she was such a good match and so that's a part of our work in terms of um identifying candidates based on the profile that you develop and then we go out into our networks and start working to bring those candidates to you thank you this is ryan thank you mrs jack um you what area are you guys from where um like where are you located okay i'm i'm located in cathedral city just a couple hours east of you uh jan barb and steve are in arizona

096in the phoenix area and tucson and so um how robust are your candidates in terms of the california area and the reason why i asked that question is um candidates have various um leadership skills but indicative of the area you have to be familiar with the qualifications the politics the economics the um the things that make california unique so how will you help us find those candidates and so i'd like to hear about that well we just recently completed a search for culver city um which we can speak to that but we become very familiarized first of all we we we know what the california expectation the state department of education expectations are for superintendent certification and so we look and we screen for those identifiers but at the same time we are also collecting

097lots of information about uh local context regional contexts and and bob um living in that area is you know one of our local experts and i can and i can say that with the the culver city search um i i don't have that data in front of me here but ultimately when we when we got the number to the the not only just the applicant pool but then down to the candidates we were paying very specific attention to the demographics of that district which is what we would do with your district and uh subsequently we we brought to the board uh a field of candidates uh that i think it was correct me if i'm wrong ten candidates or thereabouts that um a majority of which were from california so um it it it it

098connected in many ways that did not exclude the national aspect of it but the recruiting side of us reaching out to people in california continues to be very positive and very extensive thank you uh so my question has to do with looking over your proposal right and i didn't really understand it to be honest with you in terms of the cost estimate so it says on there that everything is a flat fee and then it says but dot dot dot so the but is that the um it doesn't include estimated advertising which you know so i would like an estimate of what that might potentially cost or candidate expenses for interviews i'd like an estimate of what that might cost and then uh you didn't include possible travel expenses it's listed on there but uh

099and i don't want to you know talk so with the travel expenses what is you know uh what is that obviously if you know it's weather as you pointed out it's a hybrid right and you're willing to bring two or three or four people here but what is the cost of bringing two or three or four people here so um i understand there's a flat fee i get that but i'd like an estimate of the other three factors that are not included in that flat fee i can tell you from experience from just recent searches that the four of us because we're the west coast team um that they generally districts generally choose to spend not more than like fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars extra on advertisement uh rain associates like we said we

100do have a large pool of applicants but we also feel like we want to encourage you to advertise in education week um we want you to advertise with uh the arizona latino and black school administrators um you know there are lots of other options to expand our diversity and that's totally driven by you but there are there are some things that are covered by rain associates as far as the advertising but if you choose to expand it further that's where there's those extra costs would come in as far as having us come to you um i can give you an example as to what we just did recently in madison um they chose to to um manage their costs a little bit by just having one of us come to be in person uh many

101times and then the other two of us were able were were via zoom or their the webcast that they used um so that cut down on expenses as well so really the reason that it's i think kind of a gray area is because it's really all driven by you the more you do virtually the less travel we'll have the more you want us there face to face that would that would change what what it looks like but it's driven by you completely and i know in culver city our candidates were quite they were local candidates they came from the los angeles area and so there was really no expenses associated with um candidates coming to interview um in the district uh but should you opt to have an out-of-state candidate um the travel expenses are

102vary depending upon where that candidate lives because it would be the cost of airfare and the cost of hotel so that may or may not um happen um you may have all uh california candidates that you um seek to interview but if should you seek to interview a out of state candidate then it would be dependent upon how far they lived and what the the travel costs would be associated for their flight and hotel thank you mr kalacki yes um what from what you know of our district what do you believe will be the challenges if any uh specific to san marino with regard to finding a successful candidate that is a good fit well i personally speaking as a just recently retired superintendent like dr chestnut i would find your district highly desirable as

103a as a potential superintendent predominantly because of the size because in a smaller district such as san marino you have a lot of opportunity to affect positive change to be very visible to really know the teachers the staff the um the administrators and to really work collaboratively not only with the district but with the community so personally speaking i would think that that would be a significant draw and plus the fact that you have such an established track record of excellence academic excellence and a wide array of well-rounded um activities and options for students so that is a very attractive package for a prospective superintendent and it's a very nice size district to walk into dr chestnut do you have anything else you would add well i would agree with what jan said but i

104would also add that we've come to a very difficult two-year period i mean every school district in the nation has and that includes san marino i bet with great interest you're learning continuity plan where you describe what you've done during the during the pandemic how you've handled learning with students we know that there will still be issues for the new superintendent to deal with next year when he or she arrives and for social emotional issues for our students there's uh issues with staff there's really some healing that needs to take place in recovery we need a candidate that's sensitive to that obviously uh candidates uh have been experiencing that in their current districts and i think uh we need somebody that uh knows how to handle that issue well and i i'd also just like

105to add to the the fact that in looking at your lcap and your lcff it is very obvious in those action steps and the way you're looking at the resources that are that are coming to the district as well as your own resources that you have been very very keen experts in making those resources work on behalf of all learners it is not easy i think all of us can say to you when you have a diverse population of ethnic populations as well as languages those services get ratcheted up in terms of opportunities and because you so care about each student in your district and uh and and the inclusive side of the district a superintendent looking at san marino and i'll have to be honest with you when i was working at la county

106office i looked at to san marino for the the strategies and for the support that were going on for kids as models so um and that continues to this day for your district thank you um mr chain how many uh superintendents search have you come back at the southern california for last two year go ahead uh well we conducted and completed culver city most recently we did palos verdes peninsula unified school district po-way unified school district san ysidro school district and then there's probably uh you know another 15 or so within the you know the last few years beyond that okay uh mrs john thank you um in your rfq response you wrote that you provide a matrix to assess the top candidates um i i'm not looking to for you to divulge your secrets

107but can you speak a little bit more to what that entails and what that means i think our expert on that is bart so please it's a it's a tool to drive your conversation it helps us facilitate your conversation and it's a data point um and so what we have you do is you do a comparison it's kind of a forced choice when and you do it independently prior to any board discussion because we don't want anyone influenced by anyone else's feelings so you do that independently it's ranked and then we bring it back to you and it's a point it's a data point for further discussion but in addition to that we also use the qualities and characteristics we have you look at those um we also have you rate their responses um in

108the interview so we have we create several data points but the matrix what we call the matrix is kind of the launching ramp for conversation mrs ryan nothing at this time all right can you what do you think is a market for the type of individual that we're looking for here in california i mean how's it going how does it look like out there and i don't mean in arizona but i mean in california i know in culver city we we had about um also i think of another very attractive district um and uh we had about 60 applications completed applications for that that school district so it was rather positive no i guess i'm asking how many openings do you think are there a lot of openings in california are there that's i guess

109i apologize for that correctly very good uh there are a lot of openings throughout the united states and i don't think california is any different than any other um state there's you know um a lot of us like steve and i that are baby boomers i hope i'm not insulting you steve but uh you know we just uh we were at a a retirement age and there's a lot of folks that fall in that category and i also think the onset of the pandemic um also has created a larger pool of retirements than we may have seen another year so i do think probably california has probably um several openings and it's the same in arizona and the same throughout the west um in all the states that we have worked in all right thank

110you so much mr kalacki yes um what tools will you use and what what methods will you use to gather input from the community and various stakeholders in the community so there's a couple of pieces we do have a 31 we call it a 31 quality survey which are the 31 sort of most highly sought after standards for superintendents and we identify with you who are those who do you want those surveys to go to some districts want it to go just open it up to everybody and their community and others specifically want feedback from within their community so parents staff administrators teachers um from within the community you define who you want that data collect from so we leave that survey open for a period of time within the established timeline that we have

111designed with you and then we bring back that survey data it's aggregated by the subgroups and by the questions and we do a presentation to the board showing you what the trends and patterns were amongst all of the subgroups that were identified in that survey we also conduct focus groups and those focus groups are again with the stakeholder groups that you define i know in culver city i did a focus group um with students i did a focus group when we all do we we divide and conquer in this area i did a focus group with community leaders so i met with the mayor and um the chief of police and several business and community leaders and we have a series of the same questions that we go through um during those focus group sessions

112and we collect again qualitative data from those asking them questions about what are they seeking in the next superintendent um what questions would they like you to consider to ask of the superintendent during the interview process so we collect a series of data points for you again we do we aggregate all of that information bring it back to you and present that data that we have collected during those focus groups and again you you define and decide what groups you want us to meet with but typically it's teachers staff students administrators sometimes district leaders parents community members if you would like to reach out or you can even define what the community members are it might be your parent teacher group organization it might be other groups within your community that are important for you

113to get feedback from um the rest of the team have other thoughts one of the other things that some districts like to do is they like to do a community forum and that can be rolled out in several different ways we have extensive experience at this point at doing them online as far as either having folks come together online or having a pre-recorded questions and that are open for viewing by the folks that you would send the link to it could be your parents your community your clergy your leader community leadership whoever you choose your business owners and then they're given an opportunity to give feedback which is then synthesized and presented to you as well before your finalists interview we've also had uh community forums where they've come in on a rotating basis and

114the candidates have gone into different rooms with different constituency groups where they can ask questions that's generally in partnership with the district as far as facilitating that but we it's throughout the process that and it's but again it's also driven by you if you would just like them involved at the beginning if you want them involved throughout we're here to support you and what your decisions are and typically those community forums we serve as a moderator just recently we did a um in december a community forum where they had three different groups that met with each of the candidates and there were three finalist candidates and as barb said the candidates rotated from group to group and then the district facilitated just uh you know on the phone app that they could then um give

115the board direct feedback about from that app um which candidate they would um is the most closely aligned candidate for the superintendent did not want to come in person so there's a lot of creative ways to do the community forum along those lines too even from the get-go the quality survey that goes out to the community to start this process can be conducted in as many languages as you deem necessary and so we want to make sure that uh that that ability to expand the reach out to your community is there as well as when we do meet with focus groups or constituency groups uh how that all plays out and your degree of of uh how you wish to have that represented we have the ability to also provide uh language support in those

116sessions as well too for you thank you um mr chang mrs john um mrs ryan uh i don't have any questions mr clackey all right i think we're done and thank you very very very much for taking the time i know you guys are in arizona we really appreciate it thank you so much i know you're here in cathedral city so yeah thank you very very much we appreciate the time and the effort thank you well and thank you all so very much have a wonderful rest of the evening folks and we look forward to hearing from you thank you so much good night good night oh yes so i think we're gonna take a a three to five minute break so we can refresh thank you yes point please board if you can't hear

117me because of the mask because i sound like vader just let me know okay sure thank you thank you so much all right so now we have mcpherson and jacobson and i believe mr johnson yes uh so uh welcome uh to our meeting uh thank you so much for agreeing uh to present to us so i will let you um uh uh you know take the laboring or now the one thing i would like to say is in the interest of fairness we have told all of the search firms that they have 20 minutes to do the presentation in terms of the board questions that's an unlimited time period but uh if it's all right we're going to limit you to 20 and i think when you and i spoke you said you know 15

118would be sufficient so i'm hoping 20 will be good i can't present in 20 minutes then i'm not listening to what you said right okay thank you mr johnson thank you so um board thank you very much for your time today i i know that this process is um obviously the most important thing you've heard that probably from every firm that's the most important things that boards do right is the hiring of your superintendent and i'll give you a brief background on myself i was a board member in outboard unified for 21 years um mcpherson actually on our searches uses a board member typically and if somebody was a superintendent not that one is better or worse than the other but it does provide a different perspective a different lens as you go through this

119process um the first thing i like to say this is your search we are not a firm that is work we don't work for superintendents we work for boards and that is partly reason why california school boards chose mcpherson so if you if you know kind of the rfp process the process you're going through now california school boards do the exact same thing all the firms that are firms that you would probably see in this kind of process apply for this process um mcpherson was awarded for a couple of reasons and and i the most important is about really aligning to your needs your goal and your vision in fact vernon billy the ceo of csba said hiring the right executive firm to serve as superintendent is critical for any district and the partnership with

120mcpherson provides that in a new effective resource for boards so as you think about all the resources you have as a board that you use california school boards for um we are one of those resources so that's who you are that's your mission and as i think about your mission and your vision that's kind of what hopefully we'll use to kind of drive your search process in addition to setting up criteria for your next leader give you back on our search team even though our corporate office is based in the midwest we are california consultants all those consultants that would work on your process are based in california so as mentioned i live depending on the freeway in in this marketplace i actually did hassay in the palapa days search process as well we have

121a diverse team which i think is critical because as our student population is diverse our communities are diverse and diversity in every way that means as far as what type of searches we've done as consultants um male female and really completely diverse backgrounds from our from our team what's critical is as you look at um all the challenges that you're facing as board members you want a superintendent that's going to hit the ground running and also be here from enough time to have a proper impact on your district and so when you look at our our retention rates eighty percent of the consultants that are excuse me superintendents that are put in place are still in place at five years at ten years fifty five percent and at fifteen years forty one percent and in

122fact um we are so confident of our process we weighed a lot of it on the bat on the front on front end um that if you for any reason um your superintendent leaves within two years we come back and do the search for your own district for free so it's no surprise this is all about our number one customer and that's the students that you have in this district and we believe just like you do that every student is entitled to a high quality education so every child can really realize their own potential your district has done an outstanding job in that area but those 2997 students that you work for every day is why you're all here so i think i've touched on this already so this is what everyone wants to know

123how much is the search process gonna cover the search as we looked at it is 19 500 that includes all phases it's a do not exceed so that's all expenses advertising videos really the complete process in addition um because we are at csba for we will match any offer from a competitive firm so let me kind of walk through the phases briefly from a high level phase one is really as i mentioned the place where we start to talk about what's specific and unique for your district so the criteria is important um from the board what the board's vision is but as we go through our process we'll also be getting information from your stakeholders so we'll establish a timeline and we'll look and see from your what you're when you want to bring your

124new leader on and we'll work our way backwards to um really kind of making sure we are aggressive with our search and you're really actually starting this at a good time because a lot of dishes probably won't start till march so in my opinion you're going to get out ahead of other districts um my gut is we could have your search process done by the time you come back from spring break if we're if we're really assertive um but we'll talk about the timeline we'll talk about what kind of stakeholder what kind of process you want to have at first do you want to include a community panel do you not what stakeholder groups are you going to want to have in your process and then we get really we start recruiting candidates once we're

125hired we do not wait for applications to come in that's that's not doing a search you could you could do that yourself right the objective is to look at the criteria the specific needs of your community make sure we find the right person that's a match i think the other piece that's important is we do not move candidates from district to district um you may hear that there's like kind of a cohort of people that kind of get moved around um that doesn't serve you well and it doesn't serve the other districts well we really really want to make sure that when you when you find that right person because well i'll go to this in a second but when you go through your process at the very beginning you're going to get candidates that

126don't align to your values and your mission may not even have the right um kind of background that you want but once we kind of clear through that process when we get to your what we call a short list of candidates the candidates that kind of align to your criteria to your goals then it really truly is about fit and so before we show anybody to you we spend a lot of time talking people we do all those kind of background checks before you see any candidate um so states phase two is our stakeholder input meetings and by the district size and some of the things that i've looked on your website my guess is you probably have eight to ten stakeholder groups and those were very specific groups that you would identify but for

127example each bargaining unit could be a group your foundation um pta may be a group and then the board would tell us who are the other specific groups that you would want to identify that we would have individual meetings with and the reason why we have those individual meetings is because each one of those groups have a different voice we take all that information we compile on a report that we give to the board we suggest the board makes that that document public but it really focuses on four key areas what do these groups like about the community what are these groups like about the district what are the challenges obstacles um need to know information that person should consider before coming to the district and the last piece or what are characteristics attributes that

128that those individual groups want in your next and their next leader so you'll get a document that'll have all that con fought out we also in addition to having in-person meetings we also have it available online because some people do not have the time to meet even if they're virtual meetings and we can do those meetings in person or virtually whatever the board decides the board will get a document we will provide an executive summary of that and then we share that document with the candidates as well so the candidates have a full knowledge of what's happening in the district phase three is i alluded to it a minute ago is about reference checks and background checks we do all that before we even bring you one person the last thing we want you to

129do is bring your candidate and there's no prizes that's the last thing i think that's important where i wanted i think i probably said the same for you there shouldn't be any surprises in this process and then we'll talk about um in phase four what candidates do you want to interview i suggest the boards typically enter between three and five candidates so it should be a very difficult process for the board to say which one of the candidates from our short list you want to see because if we've listened and done our work upfront then you're going to hopefully see eight to ten really quality candidates i put the comment in there about candidates meet with stakeholders because if the board chooses to do a community panel i'll explain that briefly um that's a board

130choice but a community panel is usually a small group of people between eight to ten that interview the candidates on specific questions that the board identifies but they do not rank the candidates so that process is another step that gives the board information about what this panel saw in the candidates and it also helps us because we're part of that process to see if there's any any disco any disconnect between what they tell the board and what we saw with the community panel again that's that's an option for the board what i failed to mention before we get to our um when we review the candidates in our short list you'll have packets of each candidate their resume their background information we also have them do a short video we believe it's important that especially

131in today's world there could be a camera put in front of your leader at any time and how to be effective on camera is important too plus it gets you to see a different side of that candidate beside what's on paper and that's all part of the process that happens when i said our short list before the process when you determine who do you um who do you want to interview and then you select your next leader and then within 30 to 60 days i like doing it around a 60-day period we come back and we help the board and your superintendent set goals and objectives and really focusing on what you find as a priority we take information that came from your community and we asked the board and the super new superintendent to

132develop those goals and objectives for the next year i said a lot any questions so far no we'll wait until the very end so you can finish your 20-minute presentation so i i covered that all these pieces for you um so i want to talk a little bit about the interview process so there are and it's it's just when you look here phase four according to the interview process there are a wide variety of things the board can pick to do and during your interview process so for example some boards will choose to do a riding scenario some boards will also want to include um a presentation like if some event happened in your community how would that person handle it we also recommend if if we're not dealing with a spike again that um

133we'll set up meals with the board members two board members and one candidate so if you're unless you're interviewing two candidates two board members would go out candidate a two board members would go to a meal with candidate b like say breakfast and then lunch they would switch so you're not asking that person questions about the interview process you're just getting to know that person because as we talked about when you get down to this piece it really is about fit in your process and then we also can do a writing sample because the communication piece as most of you know and especially when we're dealing with unprecedented times how they write and communicate with the public is important as well and then as i mentioned we do come back at that period and do

134a um we do a goal setting session with your leader i'm going to stop here right well i think i'll just say this too we really recognize that um this is a difficult process the challenge process we respect everybody during this process um so we do also try to maintain confidentiality so there are times where we'll um not provide all the information to some of your your um your stakeholders but really making sure that we treat every candidate fair and equitable and i'll stop talking now and open up for questions thank you uh thank you ben um so we i we will start the questioning with mrs chan um i'm sorry i missed it i'm not sure if i caught it are you a previous board member or superintendent or i was a board member

135for 21 years so will there be another superintendent okay and then do you how is that how does that look and how does that happen um i will talk to the board about some of the things that you're looking for in your um as far as our team what things you think are important and and who else will be available from our group but we have a wide variety of um other people that could serve as as my partner and co-lead on this process thank you okay mrs ryan thank you one of the things you have in your information is sustainability and leadership how have you managed to drill down to um get the quality candidates to stay for longer periods of time thank you great question i think first of all is past performance

136as an indicator of future performance so we'll look and see if someone been a jumper have they moved around a lot and then we'll also look at how they how do they perform their previous job we can't tell someone to stay somewhere for a long period but if we spend a lot of time on the back and aligning those goals and excuse me those criteria to the things that the board's looking for and those things match up well we typically have good sex success the second piece that definitely makes a difference is the goal setting session when those goal-setting sessions don't happen usually what unfortunately happens is that you may have five different ideas of what that superintendent's goals and objectives are and when that occurs you don't have continuity and there usually is someone

137leaving early or someone's being asked to leave early so interesting that you say that um because while you may think there may be um five diverse uh expectations or goals here on the board we also have a very active community and there's high expectations as well in the community so how will your candidates ensure the transition into more sustainability and leadership sorry did i take two questions no no no it's a follow-up yeah no i think i think it's a it's a so i all i can speak so i can't tell you what that person's gonna do do but i do think it's it's being intentional about those criteria being very specific about that criteria and really the board coming into alignment um so without getting into a governance training exercise the one thing that

138we do know that makes sustainability higher is everyone staying in their lane right board members understanding their roles and aligning those roles to the superintendent's roles and then as a governance team um building that that really that common vision for how you move forward um and it does mean you have to hold the superintendent accountable and your dis your community should have that high expectations because it is about the students but but i do think well i know that when those things are very specific and they're targeted and there's that shared vision of how to move forward we just see good results but it's every step of the process right looking at the previous experience looking at what they've done looking at how long they've been in their positions um and then really building a

139kind of a pipeline of what are the goals and objectives that you're all aligned to to help that person move forward thank you so much you're welcome um so my question has to do with uh you know in terms of the cost we talk about um you know that's all-inclusive and it says uh one day of in-person stakeholder meetings so what if we want to expand that to have two days worth you know meaning like one day of stakeholder meetings in the then the other you got me on record if you need two days if you need three days that price includes it all okay all right thank you so much sorry can you repeat that answer i said um sorry oh yeah no i said even though it says one day whatever you need

140to make sure you get the proper kind of stakeholder process whether it's two days i even said three days it's all included thank you thank you mr collapse thank you what is your team's track record with finding successful superintendents in communities like san marino and particularly our district being a a small district um heavily dependent upon local funding in your process congratulations um i i think so that again i think whenever you're doing no matter if it's a small the smallest district i ever did was 120 students or you know superintendent principal district and i've done districts this size and i've done larger districts i think the one common factor is we want parents as partners in our community as partners right you can't do this in isolation it actually hurts your next leader and

141hurts the board if that process isn't done so i really make myself available even though i did run for my my seat four years ago five years ago whatever whatever it's been now um the process and and ensuring that you include people and you're available to people is important because um especially now i mean you you you live it but this has been really a challenging time for for all of our leaders whereas some communities 50 percent of the people love you and 49 of the people hate even one percent depends on the day of the week right so it's even more that we're intentional about our process and and we have to recognize that that's why we have so many ways parents and community can be involved in the old days we'd have old

142days three years ago we'd have like an auditorium where you'd have people come to the meeting and you'd have 20 people show up even if you had this thing so it's we do that but we still do it because somebody wants to be there in person we have the individual group and we do the online group and then i give my phone number out to everybody because um i think it's that important um did i answer all your pieces um yeah i that and i that was helpful but i'm also wondering um as far as the length of tenure what's your sorry that was your position that was your big piece um i i have to i would say that i've been doing searches for seven years now um and we i have not had

143any board ask any one of the leaders that have left one person took a position because of something else that happened with a family member but we've all had we've had a good tenure with all the searches i've done and um we want that right we wanna we that the average tenure is is 2.3 years across the country um we're far exceeding that um and we we we do want to be able to come back to you and and and say to you 10 years from now did you like your your last leader were they good for you and and hopefully you'll invite us back but not within two or three years i i can't give you a percentage right now because i don't know that off the top of my head but but it's

144higher than the 80 my mind personally is probably closer to thank you mr chang so uh what is a relationship uh between your search firm and csva look like uh uh how lucky you know the uh so those are two great questions so um we went through an rfp process with csba just like the other firms did so um and this is our second time being we were just renewed again last year um so they had a vetting process i would say the reason why was um [Music] i think the transparency was the big reason why the the piece that we do include community we're we're intentional about the community other firms will i'm not knocking me firm but we we really try to talk to boards about including your community is a another piece

145of information right it provides you the ability to say to your community you really truly did hear us and and we've heard in other groups and you're sure you've heard it as board members you do a project and you invite whatever group to kind of have input but you don't use that input we use the input and we publish it we tell the board to publish it and to make it visible and have conversation around it it doesn't mean and that's why when we do if 4g is a community panel i am very specific that um the panel is not ranking candidates right they're only giving input but as much information as a board can have to make this decision the better the better start your new leader has i'm answering your question on the

146long run that way um and that's i think the big piece why csba chose mcpherson um and we we've always had a diverse group of people we have i mentioned were um a nationwide search firm even though all the con we have right now we have 12 consultants in california we have about 85 nationwide that are really kind of just know their business and the the so it doesn't mean that you're going to pick someone from out of state but it doesn't mean i always tell boards when you're doing a search process think about a funnel right here the reverse funnel bring as many candidates in that kind of meet your criteria and down here exclude them but see a wide span of people that can bring different ideas and different things to your district

147and um and i think that's another piece to the fact that we're nationwide and and the third piece that i'm confident is too is that we we don't work for superintendents and that's a big distinction right we don't we don't move superintendents around from district to district and have a cohort of one particular area we are very mindful of when we do a search and we come up criteria we send it out to every single search consultant that we have in our network so 85 roughly a little bit higher sometimes but 85 i'm thinking of right now that really kind of are responsive to that and we work we help each other because if i do a search there could be somebody that made it as a finalist didn't get picked but is a wild

148candidate and i call one of my colleagues you gotta see this guy and at least let the boys see this person so i think that's the pieces why that like we were picked um and a guarantee the guarantee is unique the fact that if for any reason within two years that person leaves your district even at year one 364 days they leave we come back and do the search for you for free so those are i think the main reasons why csb picked us so how often uh csva will certify your company i mean is that how to do a reassessment from your search result uh well we have to go back and be certified every two years and they take input from boards and from and we and we go through a process of

149our boards happy do they like what we're doing we're not perfect we're not going to be make everybody happy but um i would say that when you look at little especially some of the larger this we've done this in the challenge district's done we've done some great work for boards and they invite us to come back to do other things and answer your question i answer your question effectively thank you this is john um i was just wondering if you could speak a little bit more to your uh active recruitment strategies or to ensure yeah absolutely um well the first thing is i would say it's important that when we do any process we try to set aside time to do just that process so like if we're doing criteria i would say let's not

150do it at the end of a regular board right because um we're all exhausted as board members after a long session so setting aside time to like really be again each step is important so the first step is the criteria and we go through an exercise where we help well the board tells us what criteria they want for your candidate and then once that happens um we start looking for candidates right like a lot of times when we do these processes on these interviews um sometimes the board at the end of that meeting will say we want to do the criteria session now so we'll spend a couple hours like usually an hour and a half to two hours doing a criteria session and when i get home or depending on the time i'm like

151thinking about who who can i start thinking about who can i start recruiting um the the next big piece is the community i will we'll go through the um i say this trying to i'll just say it when we go to that third question of whether what are the things that next leaders should know about the community or the district before making a decision to come there that's a big piece because there are some challenges let me say this there are challenges in every district no matter where you go there's there's going to be challenges and things that are unique to that district and spending the time to make sure that some people interview well some people put together a great cv right they look good on paper but it's talking to people so when

152they give us when we do background reference checks and we talk to them about someone give me a packet and they'll say call this person i call that person well we call those people because that's what we've been given but we don't just talk to people they tell us to talk to because people don't usually tell you to talk to people that are going to say things that aren't always so great about them so we go three deep we so if they give us one person at the at the end of that conversation with that person we will ask that person who else can talk to this person's character um background job performance those kind of issues and then next person we ask the same thing and because we have a pretty large network um

153i would say of all the search firms the largest that are in california that are doing searches we know other people as well and so we work for boards and so asking those questions that not saying somebody isn't a great candidate but may not be a great candidate for you and understanding how to spend the time as i said on the front end so when you get your list of candidates and when we do that short list interview process um we've heard strengths and opportunities in all those candidates um to me that's the biggest piece because um i i've seen [Music] in other districts when they haven't done that and um the time and effort wasn't spent to really spend that because that's a lot of time right talking to people about other people takes

154time but it's the most probably one of the most important pieces that we do because we want to make sure that you get that right fit and that person is sustainable um i i haven't had a situation where a board has used a guarantee because we really spend a lot of time making sure not making sure it's right um after we do all that background check and you want me to go further into the background okay thank you uh mrs ryan no not this time all right um so um uh you know we're talking about your team right so uh it would be you and can you just kind of uh you know give us a little more detail about who would be part of your team i would pick i would pick another superintendent

155there's two people that i'm thinking of i just i don't want to have someone that's got too much else going on i want to keep so i i have to check and see what somebody else's schedule is like our home office team team does um the line share of the work the only thing we putting that much need from jennifer is amazing by the way um really great representation of your organization she truly is um would be who are the people like who are the stakeholder groups and helping us communicate those kind of things is where we would use um hopefully her help to do that because we wouldn't have that information um but we really our home office staff does the majority of the work puts the packages together sends those to the board

156um and then we and then the other thing would be we would spend time talking about how you want to communicate with me do you want everybody to receive like those kind of things are important because every board has different needs and some boards are like no just give it to the president we're done so we would spend time talking about what the board wants and how they want that search to look and how they want the communication to work right thank you thank you um mr kalaki nothing right now thank you mr chain all right mrs chung nothing okay i think we're done so thank you so much for taking the time to come here uh star district we really appreciate the presentation we really do thank you so much and whether you pick

157us or somebody else good luck on your process oh thank you so much thank you uh jennifer no i think mr johnson we're gonna have you go out that way it's a pathway ready for the next thank you okay uh and i believe you have copies of our handout i brought some but i think i'll just hold on to them you can press right to proceed uh advanced very good so let me i may be blocking the screen but if you've got the copies we have two we have two screens so i think we're right now well it's so nice to be here oh thank you so much and thank you for coming and presenting uh we really appreciate it and um so uh in the interests of fairness we have limited the presentation time

158to 20 minutes for each of the search firms in terms of the questions afterwards it'll be uh unlimited from the board that's great so thank you and uh please begin thank you thank you and uh i'm joel shapiro and this is from the costco group and we're delighted to be able to meet with you this evening and tell you why we think we would be the perfect group to conduct your search the costco group whoops the costco group as you can see we also go by tcg and we like to say tcg stands for trust commitment and guidance and those are very important to us trust in particular has to do with confidentiality when we conduct searches confidentiality is going to be so important to the board your entire district staff and particularly to the

159candidates commitment we like to tell you and this is very important if you bring us on board to do the search we are totally committed to san marino we will not be working on any other searches at the time we're working for san marino jan and i would do only one district yours and i know that's not true for every firm guidance we provide all the guidance but we are aware that the decisions regarding candidates and the decisions regarding steps in the process are yours we guide the board but we're very aware that you make the decisions well we'd be delighted to work in san marino a wonderful district with an outstanding reputation for so many years at the top or right near the top in terms of academic achievement in the state very well

160known well known for the tremendous involvement and cooperation of your parents and community including financial support and the dedicated staff that you have many of whom have been here for many many years it's got an outstanding reputation and we would be delighted to work with you a little bit about us my background puts me oops puts me right next door i was the superintendent in south pasadena before i retired and then when i retired in 2014 i became a partner in the costco group i'm currently the president of the costco group and uh prior to that i was in burbank in glendale i was an educator for 42 years prior to retiring a principal at both elementary and secondary levels worked in various positions in central office loved being the superintendent in south pasadena i

161live in uh sierra madre so i know this area particularly well and i know san marino very well known many people who've been citizens here as well as staff members here i'm going to ask uh dr brits to talk a little bit about herself okay good evening i'm just kind of outlining i need first to know which one i'm doing thank you okay um i was in education for 40 years taught all the way from elementary through college i don't see what that i'm so sorry and um i also uh retired in 2015 a year later from burbank unified school district i was superintendent there an assistant superintendent i also was in charge of human resource in south pasadena i had three principalships two of the three i brought for excelling schools in the state

162of california for california distinguished schools and blue ribbon i've worked at the college level and um i also are currently i actually worked four months already this year coaching administrators and filling in for administrative jobs so once education is your passion you just don't give that up oh and i will add that since i retired as superintendent not only have i been a partner with the cusco group but i've done a great deal of educational consulting coaching superintendents coaching other district administrators and principals throughout southern california so what about the costco group makes us special many things the very first thing i'd like to point out is our longevity of people that we have placed we have a little bit more than 95 of the superintendents that we have placed who have remained in their

163positions for five or more years which is very unusual in california now obviously there are a couple of reasons for that the most important one is you help the district select the right person who's the best match and who's committed to staying there but there's another reason as well and that is unlike some firms we will never recruit somebody that we place for another position so if we work with you and we place the superintendent here we will never recruit that person to go to a larger district or go to another district we believe in the longevity is very important we're also selective in the districts we choose to work with we do not apply for every search that's out there we apply for the districts that we think we could serve best and in

164the last several years in particular we have specialized in smaller districts because there's a special culture in smaller districts so most of the searches we've done in the last several years have been in smaller districts we tailor our search to fit your needs we focus on your criteria the board with input from your stakeholders will tell us what you're looking for in the superintendent and that is the kind of person we will go after we also believe in full disclosure we communicate with the board all through the process frequently sometimes you even say are they talking to us again they're communicating with us all the time but we know it's important to you to know what's going on in every step of the process something else that sets us apart is our open candidate pool

165we do not work with a stable of candidates and i will tell you that some firms do they have a group of people that they're continually trying to place from district to district we don't do that we have a number of very qualified people we've worked with but when we open a search we specifically recruit people that fit the profile of the district and what you are looking for so we don't bring the same people forward necessarily because we brought them to another uh to another district the other another thing that sets us apart is the full disclosure of all applicant materials to the board when we've received all the applications and we have assessed them and we have done our reference checks and talked to candidates we will recommend to you who we think

166are the most qualified that we think are worthy of being interviewed but you will see everybody's full paperwork and you will determine who you want to interview and you're going to talk about our phases of the search so why don't you come on okay great all right i'm going to start out before i start out with the phase one of the search i just want to say that the board drives the search and although if you look at our faces they're very common with a lot of other search firms but we feel the details that we include in it are the most important ones that really make a difference so i'm not going to go through every bullet on each of the face i'm just going to highlight some things that might not be in

167there you know we start with the board and from the board we ask you to give us some information about your district you know what's going well in san marino what are your challenges and what kind of leadership skills would you like to see in the superintendent but then we go out to the stakeholders and one of the things that we um that we have gotten really positive feedback is when we ask those same questions to the stakeholders we actually either chart it out or if we're doing a zoom meeting we put it on on the screen so they can see what we write and we write exactly what they say word for word and we let the stakeholders know that we put that all in a report and the board gets to see that

168so we don't hide any kind of maybe some hidden things in there so you get to see it right from the stakeholders the important thing of writing those state of word for word is at the end when you select your superintendent they've established trust in your decision right from the beginning you want to hear what they have to say and they know that you've seen everything they said so when you announce that superintendent there's a great about a great amount of trust with the um with the board also we've had some really big success by doing zoom meetings but we also can do them in person that really would be whatever the board would like us to do we do it as many meetings of stakeholders as you wish we don't limit it all to

169a number and um in addition to that after we get the stakeholder input and you read the report you get to adjust what you see it would be the best thing for those three questions and that becomes the beginning of our brochure advertising brochure okay and then on phase two um one of the things that we feel uh that we get um even with some of the small districts sometimes the board will say you know how many candidates do you think you we will have and they kind of guess a number we've always really for all the ones that i've done and i know for joel 2 it's over and above we get a really good number of um candidates for the positions that we post even some of the our reputation shows too that

170we really work with good districts and we work with finding a superintendent that meets the needs of the district we maintain all the files and the records and so whatever they give us for the applications you get to see that we don't leave anything out there so sometimes you may get a list like this of all of them because some of them really put in a really fat packet but you get to see that phase three as we start the initial reference checks our initial reference checks throughout the process are not with just with the references that they give us we have a really big network with the costco group we put this out with our partners they're a part of it and they will contact people sometimes for us and let us know with

171people they know in that district what kind of things they will say and as we do those references on our chart that we give you you get to see that information we have 29 partners in the costco group so we have a lot of people working with us you get all of the candidate files even if we see a candidate that would not be appropriate for any reason um to be a superintendent in san marino or anywhere else we're going to share that with you it's not like we're going to pull that application and say that's not right for your district you get to see it and we will explain why so we we tell you everything we know about these um candidates and um what else do i want to say i guess that's

172it so then once we get to the interview selection you've seen all that information and we also have a meeting where we can really talk about that and have some dialogue so you have a feeling before you meet the people that you want to interview some things that you would want to ask them we go into phase four and because by that time we've learned a lot about your district we actually will create some interview questions that's designed custom designed for san marino and then some of you will have some questions of your own and so we go through and say how many questions do we want to ask how long we put those questions in and then we do all the paperwork as well after the first interview again we accept we assess where

173we are we help to bring the board to a con consensus of who is going to go to a second interview we will help you do that and then we do all of the calling with the contact people the district doesn't have to be concerned about that we do all the paperwork all of that so we try to make it as easy as possible not just on the board members but also on your on staff as well and then five when it gets time to appoint the superintendent again we notify all of the candidates if um they're coming to the last interview or if they haven't been selected we do all of that communication um we will help with negotiations on the contract sometimes we can be the middle persons to make that as smooth

174as possible and help you in any way we can there and then when you get to the final announcements again you will see that you'll have some stakeholders there that attended our meeting and they're going to feel really good about the selection that you made we help with um you're announcing the new superintendent we can write something out for your website for the local paper and also if you want a written um introduction for the board meeting where you appoint the superintendent we help you with that as well after the search is over and you've selected that right superintendent okay we can also help you um help you with this new superintendent on the post search as far as performance objectives because you by working with you all this time we know some needs and

175some qualities that you want some things to address we can help with that we conduct a leadership alignment governance workshop we just finished doing that with one of the districts it was a very successful experience and we help you with that at a time that's convenient for all of you and that's a really good bonding workshop because even though you understand many of the things that you have is your responsibility of a board as well as the new superintendent excuse me just having that time to work on those policies and procedures is so successful and it really is a good foundation for your leadership team with the board and the new superintendent and then we provide two years of superintendent mentoring at no cost and we keep in touch with that superintendent to make sure

176that they can be as successful as possible in your district okay just to touch on something that jen already mentioned but uh just from personal experience we talked about reference checking we probably go so deep in reference checking that i'm amazed when i've talked to some other people a particular candidate that we're looking at we may be talking to nine or ten people in doing reference checks and we don't just talk to the people that they list those are the easy ones typically we will dig very deep to find people that have worked with this candidate and it's been interesting how many times when you go a little deeper on reference checking you really get to some things that make a big difference in whether or not we can recommend a candidate so that becomes

177very critical besides doing all the normal checks on social media and things like that we also work with an agency that helps us do background checks to find out if there's anything in the candidate's background that could be an issue for you okay let's go to the next slide a proposed timeline and this is a proposed timeline but it's up to the board when we get the search and we meet with you at our very first meeting we will finalize the timeline but you could see that if we were to begin as early as let's say next week that we would be able to begin the recruitment process by mid-march and take us through about five or six weeks of recruitment we like to give ourselves enough time to do that and then the candidate

178selection and interview would be done by the 13th of may and we'd be able to appoint the superintendent by the end of may and that can be modified based on your needs we can make it move up a little faster but this would give us an adequate amount of time to cover all the different phases so what is it that we want you to really remember about the costco group first of all we are cost effective our fee is all-inclusive when you agree to hire us there are no additional charges for anything all of our expenses for the for the consultants we cover unlimited consultant time unlimited number of meetings with your stakeholders and we have the support of all of our partners again as i mentioned before we will do your search in no

179other district we give you a two-year guarantee which means if within two years your superintendent leaves for any reason either the superintendent's desire or your desire we would repeat the search for free and this rarely happens but if during the search we don't end up selecting the candidate that you are satisfied with to be your superintendent we would conduct the search again at no cost and i want to emphasize again that we will never recruit a superintendent that we place in your district to go somewhere else we've got the all-inclusive fee that i've mentioned and something that becomes important is we help you with the compensation study we look at districts of a similar size similar uh area and demographics and we give you an idea what compensation looks like for superintendents so that you're

180you have an idea when you're working on a contract what would be appropriate and we do help as jan mentioned with the employment negotiation appointment contract negotiations if you'd like us to many districts ask us to do a lot of that some rely more on their attorneys but we're willing to help as much as you like with that our guarantees you are involved in every decision the full disclosure on all applicants you determine who gets to be interviewed with our guidance but it's your decision you make the final choice and again we have the free repeat search if it's necessary and a free repeat search within two years if necessary we are here to serve you and we're very proud of the testimonials we receive from all the districts we've worked with how satisfied they've

181been with the level of service we provide not only the board but the stakeholders that we work with because they feel that they've been heard and that their input has really made a difference so we will conclude by just saying that we recognize that this is the most important decision you're ever going to make as a board selecting your superintendent we are committed to finding the best candidate to suit san marino's needs and we'd be honored to serve you and we're ready for some questions thank you for your presentation thank you so much we'll start the questions with uh mrs ryan thank you mrs jack thank you so much for your presentation when you're talking about the letters tcg trust commitment and guidance can you uh delve a little deeper into that and um help

182us to understand how that applies in our particular unique community well the trust of not only the board which is critical because you're the ones who are going to make this decision but the trust of your school staff your district staff and your stakeholders your parents and community members in the process is critical they need to know that things have been transparent they knew what was going to occur when they knew the timeline they knew the criteria that you were looking for all of that becomes public so there's trust in the community and as i mentioned earlier the confidentiality of the process so that when it's time to so that candidates those applicants they remain confidential because i've seen situations in other districts where if that confidentiality is broken candidates actually withdraw from the process

183because they feel that they can't trust the process so that trust applies to the candidates knowing that as well as the board and as well as community members the commitment i think we've been very clear that we're totally committed to one district our we will have other partners that will be involved with other searches but dr brits and i would only be working uh committed to san marino and the guidance part we want you to know that although we do this hard work we are we are guiding you through the process you are making the final decisions and that's very very important thank you um so my question has to do with um what is the market like uh for the type of individual that we're looking for there are a lot of openings for

184superintendents so there are a lot of candidates you know is it a tight market you know how competitive is it well i think you're probably aware that there have been a number of openings because this is a very unusual and difficult time in education and you probably paid as much attention to that as anybody and there have been different uh superintendents choosing to retire a little bit earlier than they normally would because the pandemic has made things very difficult but districts can be so different and many of the districts where superintendents are retired have retired are so different from san marino and when you ask what's the market like for a district like yours to be honest there aren't many districts like san marino the unique qualities of the small district the incredible uh commitment

185to student academic excellence the incredible commitment of your community to supporting the schools makes san marino a little bit different and we know that we would be able to find candidates that are nest that are looking for a district like san marino and those people are out there there are some outstanding people who are both current superintendents who would be who would love to work in san marino and people who are aspiring superintendents who would be a good fit as well and i think because of the great reputation that san marino has i think we don't have candidates that will want to stay here for a long time it's not just you know going up the ladder it's like i want a stable district a community you know oriented district as well so i think

186you will find some candidates like that as we um and i think that's important you're looking for somebody to make a commitment you're not looking for somebody to come and say in two years i want to look for a larger district or something you want somebody committed to being here and that becomes very important when we talk to candidates and look at them do they have a history of being very stable in their employment can we trust that they would make a long-term commitment that becomes critical you don't want to turn over you've dealt with some of that thank you mr kalaki thank you um what is the the geographic area that most of your searches with districts that you're working with we have seven we focus on california we're a california based search based

187firm we have done searches from the very southernmost to the very northernmost part of california uh we jan and i because we're both superintendents in this area are particularly familiar with people in the southern california area but we also know people all throughout the state that we have worked with and we have partners located throughout the state that we work with so i would not restrict the candidates that we're looking at necessarily to just southern california but we have a very uh robust network of people that we know particularly through southern california can i just quickly follow up on that with regard to the network that you you work with are there specific universities that you tend to work with well we have connections at a number of universities we have connections at usc where

188jan got our doctorate and we have connections through people that in our firm through ucla and we have connections with some private institutions such as pepperdine and others uh going up north because of the background of many of our search partners and the people we have worked with so yeah account a few of the cal state so we have a number not only our own personal connections but when you hire us you're hiring our whole firm we involve our partners to help recruit candidates that they uh that they can recommend from throughout the state thank you mr chain so no matter how good uh san manino unified school district is but because we are the smaller school district so conversation may not be attractive competitive so you think the candidate for will be like uh

189the first time superintendent or maybe or we may get the sum the season superintendent candidate i think you're going to find that there are people who want to be in san marino and the compensation is not going to be the key thing that drives them there'll be some candidates who will be first looking to be first-time superintendents and are highly qualified but there are also people and i've known even from the history here who have come from other districts who would find that they're ready to come to san marino and the compensation is not going to be a problem for them you know you're not trying to compete with the districts that can offer so much more money the very large ones you're in a different situation but i think the benefits of coming to

190san marino for the right candidates are going to compensate for the fact that you won't necessarily pay what some very large districts would pay yeah i think uh you know we both get a certain mammoth and we both just finished the search intact okay very different communities than san marino and they have some um things in both of those communities that you would think how many people really want to live in mammoth or how many people want to live in town and working with the board members of both school districts they were very surprised with the number of applicants we had and the quality of applicants that we had i mean it was really quite impressive and certain they were very um well and the reputation of this district is going to drive a lot

191of candidates to be interested i mean this is a district that's well known throughout the state so it's not a matter of how many candidates it's the quality of candidates it's finding the right ones because i have no doubt we would have a lot of interested candidates but it's really finding the highest quality which we we know we can do thank you mrs john you mentioned in your presentation that you are selective in who you choose to apply to rfq's rfps for what made you choose to apply for this one well for one thing we have a familiarity with this area as i say our background my living locally and sierra madre having been the superintendent in south pasadena i know many people from this area i feel very a comfort level that i understand

192this community and jan having been in burbank and also knowing the san gabriel valley so if there's an area that we feel we really understand and know that's an attraction right there and with some of our other partners they have similar feeling where they feel a connection to an area where they can really know the needs of that community very well okay okay this is right i'm nothing at this time all right um um what is the average jenner tenure of a superintendent in california and how does that compare with the tenure of the superintendents that you have well i think it's maybe even gone down since the last time i was looking at the research but at one point it was between two and three years and it may even be less it may

193be maybe close to two years is the average tenure because this has been a difficult time but we want to point out that the our average rate of superintendents five or more years is 95 and i was looking at the background of many people we placed who've been in their positions 10 12 15 years so finding the right person who's willing to make a long-term commitment is a key assuming that do a good job and the board wants them to stay we want people who are committed to being in that position and we're very proud of that longevity rate that we have okay thank you mr kalaki yeah thank you um based on what you know of our community and our district what do you believe are the pluses and the minuses the the the

194benefits and the challenges that we will face in uh finding the best candidate well i think the challenges that many districts are facing now are financial especially districts that are looking at any kind of uh decreased enrollment there's always challenges on what we have in terms of our own infrastructure and what we're able to maintain in terms of staffing so that's a challenge here i believe in it as it is in a lot of different places and in a smaller district it can be even a bit more of a challenge just maintaining being able to maintain the staffing so that a superintendent would be able to come in and feel comfortable that they can get the job done the advantages i see is really the two major advantages in san marino i think is you're

195working with a population of students who historically have performed well and it's not a matter of trying to take students take schools from very well performing to high performing it's taking students who have historically done well to the next level and maintaining that and being able to keep up that record of excellence the other advantages and i experience this fortunately in south pasadena is the is the opportunity to work with a community that wants to be involved and wants to be and wants to help as much as the community here has helped i think that's a tremendous advantage because particularly uh being able to provide financial support through partial tax and through foundation and other means you just don't find that in a lot of districts so that becomes a positive at the same time

196community involvement is not 100 positive we all know that sometimes community involvement can have the other piece but the right superintendent can can handle that beautifully and i think most candidates [Music] they want that community interaction you know they know that and they know they have to dedicate some time and some resources you know to get you to keep the community involved and you know you don't want a superintendent who's going to come into the office and stay in the office you want a superintendent who's going to be out there involved visible the community the parents in the community know that person that person goes to events and activities in a district of this size you can't have somebody who's just in the office they have to be out there and involved and that's the

197kind of person that i believe you'll be looking for so i saw the uh you put a south pasadena unified school district on your client list did you recall the current superintendent or the current superintendent was the person who followed me when i retired so i was not involved in that search because i was retired but i know him very well but he uh that's the person uh dr yance in south pasadena who uh took over for me when i retired so first when did you do a search for south florida confirmed it i did not i personally did not because i was working there but our friend yeah i know but your company did yeah right twice in 2009 and again in 2014. 2009 and then again in 2014. south pasadena and in fact

198the board was so impressed with the koska group who had placed me when i was superintendent then it was time when i was retiring they did not interview other companies they simply said we want to use the customer group again thank you because they were that impressed thank you this is sean for their question right uh mrs ryan mr clackey all right well thank you so much um for uh coming and giving the presentation and taking the time to do so we really appreciate it you're very welcome and i'm going to tell you you will not find two people that you enjoy working with as much as it was that's another guarantee we can make thank you that when we're done you'll be sorry to see us go ah thank you so much thank you

199all right have a good baby jennifer um okay um if it's all right may i take a five minute break before we begin our discussion action item section thank you very much dr troy if we could all right we are back uh after having taken uh a break um so we are now at um item number 4a superintendent search firm approval it's an action item the board will engage in discussion and take action to hire a search firm so um uh would you like to have a discussion in terms of uh you know the different um search firms and and what your thoughts were uh with respect to um each of them would that be all right with everyone okay all right uh mr kalaki may we start with you um i um we're just

200sort of having a general discussion about yes yes um i do like that uh mcpherson and jacobson is fairly closely connected with csva um especially since we're doing the we've done the masters and governance training with him it seems like um many of the things that that we learned in that master's in governance training what i would i would anticipate would be closely aligned with the values that they would be looking for in candidates as well um uh leadership associates i i was impressed i was frankly i was impressed with all of them um but they are all very different it seemed as though the koski group although they are local um and much it appeared to me as though they were smaller i i had a question as to how broad of a a

201net will be cast for the candidates with that group um with rey and associates although they they did although most of that group appeared as though they were from out of state they they had worked with the culver city district i'm just looking back through my notes of course i i did like that some of them did specifically say that we would receive information on every single candidate and not just get a couple at the end i think that that's important so i mean i'd be interested to hear what everybody else has to say as well of course mr jane um first of all you know the i i've been here for a long time so uh so i i have an experience with the leadership associate the i think the three times yeah um

202i i think that if you review their kind list so look like the leadership associate and the coast guard group they probably did a more local school district so my interpretation means they they probably know the no more than other groups about the summoning culture my person and jacob jefferson you know the the endorsed by csba so i believe that they also have some credibility secondly um through my personal experience with the last couple superintendents we hire so i feel the if each group they offer some guarantee and also mentorship poverty also that's valuable so so we said that look like the coast guard group they they did and also um i'm not sure the leadership associated that they provide a mentorship on before that last time they did but this time i thought they

203talked about that executive leadership series that they have and they had a whole series i think for leadership associates yeah i think it might have been extra though that was part of it maybe not so anyway i'm in the event we hired a new superintendent for first time superintendent i think that's the valuable offer yeah from the search for income company yeah um i share a lot of the sentiments mr chang and mr clacki made um they all had very similar processes in terms of ensuring that there was a lot of stakeholder input and really focusing on the process of um making sure that we're getting what we want and what we think we want and trying to ensure that process um the success of tenure and retention and placement i thought was interesting because

204i don't know it's hard for me to gauge how applicable that number will be because it's changing so quickly um but to that one i thought that costco's emphasis on longevity was really um i think stood out for me uh in addition i think there i think one of the things they said was when you work with your community and everything is transparent the community then trusts your decisions that you make and i thought that was a very insightful um perspective given our community um that if they felt that they really are involved in that process they will be more likely to really um feel that the process led to the correct outcome or appropriate outcome um [Music] i am concerned my some of my concerns that uh that we that were brought up were

205the one-year guarantee from leadership associates um whereas everybody else had two years um with ray and associates i am concerned that they're not here geographically available um not necessarily because it would mean they wouldn't do a good job but covet itself has been so unpredictable and i am concerned that if anything happens it would limit our capacity to only doing things virtually and i feel that um having that ability to be able to do things in person with such a significant choice would be important so um i love that ray and associates has such a broad reach um but that for me was concerning um i i think mac and jake um as well i i like that csv already vetted them for us it gives them a lot of legitimacy for the work they

206do but i am concerned that we don't know who the other team members will be um without knowing the other team members not that mr johnson wouldn't put together a great team but i'm feeling just a little bit uncomfortable with committing without knowing who the other members are i think i think cost wise um costco is much lower but i think in the end it's i i don't know i don't know that that really makes a big difference for me honestly uh i think there's a 10 000 range somewhat between um the top and the low and i'm not sure how much we're supposed to say about the cost because i know some of it came up and then some of it didn't so that's all i'll say for myself um and uh i did

207i did like the idea and i hope that we incorporate this regardless of what group we go with was um i felt that raid associates really focused a lot on a data driven decision and i think that regardless of who we go with i want to make sure that that really stays at the forefront of our mind that in addition to ensuring the process itself is um comprehensive that we really do go with the data that's um provided through all of the work that's done otherwise sort of seems like what's the point that's it for now okay i'm sorry to interrupt can i just ask one clarification because of a point that um ms john brought up with the the price did um mcpherson and jacobson did i hear them correct that they would price

208match any other firm yes okay i just wanted to make sure thank you um this is ryan thank you mrs jack i had very similar takes from my fellow board members but if i had to kind of get down to the nitty-gritty of it all i like csba and the training they've provided us in the last year and a half however i have that same similar concern regarding the access to the superintendents i know that if you have superintendents in your group if you've been a superintendent you meet regularly weekly with all the other superintendents so you become very familiar with each other's district as well as challenges and strengths and you're able to kind of work with a large group that you're very familiar with and there's some added advantage to knowing who your

209candidates are and having the span of maybe a decade of knowing each other as superintendents that's an advantage an advantage i really like the casa group because they spoke to me as a small community recognizing our challenges understanding who we are i think if we ask the question you know do you do you understand you know the strengths and weaknesses of our community do you know the challenges they answered that question i felt the best because they're really closely aligned with us but that's not the only reason why we choose a firm and that is because um i feel that casting a larger net there are some advantages to that but we've you know those of us that have been on the board for a while understand that getting someone from new york or chicago

210may not necessarily be a benefit to us because they're not as familiar with california ed code and law uh the move is greater that coming out here for interviews is is more of a challenge and then in the end they may still not move even though they may be the best candidate so i don't think that's a disadvantage for the casa group because they really kind of know this area and as well they were good about saying we will go out and reach and get the people that you want so if you want somebody from northern california you want someone from another state they were able to do that same reservations about the ray and associates [Music] it is challenging to travel out here with all of the covet restrictions when you're asking a group

211to fly out here or you're asking candidates from arizona so that is a concern because as we open up or we surge forward we know that covet's going to be here covet 19 is going to be here in 2022 and then into the future so it is a consideration in terms of how they will be able to be successful at connecting with our community because some people do really well on zoom and others don't some people prefer to meet the group that we hire and do face-to-face go to an auditorium speak have coffee you know do the whole dinner thing whatever they're proposing so that is a concern but they do have i would imagine they they advertised and said that they have the largest cast in terms of a net gathering um prospective superintendents

212leadership i i'm hearing what mr chang is saying who we've used a number of times and while we have returned to them a couple of times and so we were probably moderately successful with them i also have the concern regarding the price the the various things and if they are giving us the full face and the full connection to the services that's great except as the situation changes i'm wondering if it is viable to to go back if we've not been as successful in the past with some of the um you know paths that we've chosen so that's that's my take thank you mrs jack okay all right and i'm gonna go in the order in which uh you know we interviewed them so um uh i thought all four of them did a great

213job right and and honestly there's not that much of a difference with any of them i think right um uh i think they understand the timeline i think they understand community engagement stakeholder engagement i think they understand you know board input and what we're looking for uh with leadership and associates what i liked about them was you know we know the team uh and we know their even their administrative assistants and if you've done this before right especially with the time frame that we're trying to do there's a lot of scheduling there's a lot of stuff that needs to go on so we really need people that are organized we need to know the team and we need to know that they are available to talk to us or come to a meeting you know

214almost at a um you know with little notice so uh so and i also like that in 2021 67 of their um uh finalists were women or candidates of color so i really did like that um the thing that i wasn't so happy about was the one versus the two-year guarantee and then they said it would be two years but there are a lot of preconditions so that was a little bit of a concern for me uh hopefully we don't have to deal with that issue but in any event so uh ray and associates i also like the fact that we knew the team i thought they were very articulate i thought they did a good job uh my concern is not in terms of the cost per se because i think the cost is

215you know there's not that much of a big difference from one end to the other um obviously we have to be mindful of it but i think not enough for it to be you know the decision maker as to why we choose a certain search firm but what i was concerned about with ray and associates was um you know there's a flat fee and yet there's all these different hidden costs well they weren't hidden but um uh you know the other ones you know we don't have to pay for advertising this one they're requesting that we pay for the advertisement um they're requesting the travel expenses and i understand that we can do a lot of this in zoom but to the extent that you know we can engage our community and stakeholders in person

216right it would be better so even if it was a hybrid that means more travel expenses not just in terms of the cost of the money but in terms of the cost of time logistics and time efficiency and expediency so that was my concern with them although i thought they did a vic a very good job uh mcpherson and jacobson i thought uh mr johnson did a great job i too am very um i like the fact that um they were vetted by csba i think that's you know very important um you know and um they have done a very good job right um uh 80 right for the past five years so i think that is a great statistic what i'm worried about uh in this instance is uh not knowing the team because

217you've got to know the players you've got to know who they're going to be you've got to know who their administrative assistants are going to be because again it goes so much back to scheduling and and uh making sure that we're all uh on the same page in a short amount of time um the costco group um uh what i liked i guess was that they only do one district uh so that was very um uh comforting to me uh and there are 95 um you know uh uh longevity rate of five years or more i thought that was really important and i guess the specializing in smaller districts is really important to me because it is i think a smaller school district like ours is very different from culver city or uh uh or

218a larger school district so that um so that was very nice the other thing that i appreciate was that they would provide us a um [Music] do a compensation study for us uh so it would help uh in that particular instance so anyway those are the end of our comments so uh with respect to what we think of each firm uh so uh is there a more discussion that people would like to have mr kalaki um i uh i'm not quite sure i mean i did i think the the two that i would if i had to narrow it from four to two i think it would be leadership associates and mcpherson and jacobson um and if i had to pick one i would say leadership associates okay i think that is actually a very

219nice way of doing it so thank you mr kalaki for being the first one out of the box i appreciate it and you're and you're at the end which is as you know why i'm going this way so but i appreciate it i think that's a very good way of doing it so thank you um mr chang do you have top two candidates out of the board i think each of you are already a choice for the strengths and weakness for each group so [Music] so my top two is a course car group and a leadership yeah do you have an order of one or no no okay so far no older all right um mrs chong um sorry i'm going to break break here i i can't i feel like i i can eliminate

220rain associates like the other three i think there's so many positives and negatives so i'm sorry i know that's making you harder on you yeah you can't eliminate two um let me find a note there's a particular note i'm looking for okay all right okay um maybe somebody remember i guess one thing i was thinking about um and maybe you you guys can help me remember um well actually before that i did have a question for those who had done the search before um how many candidates typically came forward when these searches occurred at that very first stage because a lot of these groups are saying oh we're going to bring you 20 30 40 50. and is that sort of just your typical number that typically happens i think it's for joseph you've been

221there it it's it it depends on the time in which we go out this is the prime time so you'll get the most candidate but depending on the board's desires sometimes we opened it up and said we're considering other states sometimes we went more kind of locally with what we know and oftentimes i think there was a sense of um a certain uh priority in terms of the qualities and characteristics of a candidate so for instance if you're looking for a candidate that is really familiar with our community then you would stay more local but if your desire is for someone who you know is big on finance or technology or other things then you might be you know you're targeting different things i don't think there's a set number like 20 30 or 40

222i think you just need quality of candidates i'm not necessarily because you can have 65 but that doesn't do anything for you you need to just um you know focus on what our desired uh you know so when they say you know we'll bring you 30 40 50. it's kind of like well that's kind of not really relevant necessarily right right okay well and if i could say you know there was one search where i think we had 50 even or even 60. but if you went through it there were applicants but only really 10 were even qualified i mean they were you know they were like principals right or assistant principals who had never been in a district administration so they're applying for the job but they've had no prior experience at all in

223district administration so it didn't matter whether we had 50 or 60 you know it really is not the number it's really the quality of the candidates we get and also i think in covert times i don't know we're going to see what we get right yeah the the quality candidate actually is the most important because sewer experience some you know the last minute they that we saw yeah or they say that they cannot make it yeah or they they're trying to take our bid and then much to others so so end up there not ready okay and then the question i can't remember in my notes um so i was thinking about something you were saying with in terms of the all of the work that goes into this um in coordinating all of that

224and what was cost did costco come with sort of like a we have our support and we're gonna uh i believe we're the only project that they're doing so uh so they have the uh the two of them and i believe they called it the home office or something yeah or whatever the hell is that i don't know i'm sorry i know to become burdensome on any of our board or staff members and so i just couldn't remember in the course of everything um so given given all of that i i think i'm hm i i also agree with mr chang regarding the follow-up post-search um capacities and i think leadership associates so i guess i'll knock leadership associates out for that reason that they aren't going to be providing some of that support which

225um everybody agreed was important and yet i think not including it with leadership associates little bit concerned about that so i guess my two choices then would be kaska and mac and jake okay [Music] the only thing is i do thought i thought she kept referring to the executive leadership development services continuing current and relevant professional development through right yeah part of the class so that is part of yeah it's part of their thing see it says continuing current it has nothing to do with it's not an additional problem but that's what they're saying that's what they do all right sure mrs chang this is ryan um the costco group oh okay sorry was there a top two or just yes just that group okay for me it would be um it would depend on

226what the leadership and associates uh if they provide the mentoring which i do think is very important um i thought that's what they said i think they do they can but i think it's an additional i don't know that it's included in sorry that that that will depend on what oh so it's phase nine f in the initial letter they sent page five we provide and review with the new superintendent between the input available we are available to provide additional follow-up services as desired services could include developing a transition plan workshop governance team to establish goals and the superintendent's evaluation process and then in i mean it says leadership studies will provide a review board with new superintendent and provide follow-up services as desired so i i guess i don't know the answer to that

227question i guess they will do it but i don't know inclusive so for me it would be uh kaska group and leadership and associates uh with the the fee includes on page eight i looked at that development posting about assisting the new superintendent through transition and community verification visit if conducted i mean that's something we can ask if they end up being you know if we choose to have food choose to go with them all right so um right now what we have is uh so we have one two so this is with everybody's multiple but so mr kalacki's leadership and associates number one mcpherson and jacobson number two uh mr chang is koska group and leadership and associates no order uh mrs chan uh this is john i'm so tired um is um i'm

228so sorry jane um is costco group and mcpherson in no order or an organ um no order no order and then um mrs ryan uh is costco group okay and then for me is costco group and leadership and associates so with that in mind would someone that's the first choice for you got no order no i have no idea uh would someone like to make a motion i'd like to make a motion that we retain leadership associates okay would someone like to say um uh i'll second so we can put it to a vote right uh roll call mr clackey aye mr tim hey mr chan um miss ryan no okay um i guess i'll move to i will move to um uh contract with costco group would someone like to second i'll second that

229all right uh mr kalacki hi mr chang hi mrs chun hi mrs ryan aye now i'm jack aye um board members may i say to each and every one of you uh this has been an amazing process uh and you guys have really thought been thoughtful and considerate and it has really been an inclusive and wonderful discussion so going forward what um i will do as a board president is i will call them tomorrow we will negotiate a contract and then i am assuming we want to move uh as quickly as possible would that be correct yes i actually had one concern about that because their timelines yes all the way to may yes and i know that they were willing to work with us yes so i guess that would be something i would

230like for us to discuss sure and that would be one of the first things that's a proposed timeline so we'll come and um make a decision so um all right um i thank you all and i apologize for being tired at the end and we will all see each other again next tuesday at our regularly scheduled board meeting um and thank you very much thank you president thank you thank you oh i'm sorry beating adjourned