001okay everyone we're live okay great uh it's 703 we have a quorum um i'm going to call this meeting to order this is the special meeting of the board of education uh the topic is the superintendent uh search process so uh a critical part of the superintendent search process is the community feedback really trying to understand uh from the community from the staff from the administration um you know their views on what they'd like to see in terms of the next superintendent so while the application process was open over the last several weeks dr herrardi has been spending a lot of time engaging with different stakeholders in the community the staff and the and the administration and the next step in the search process was community profile dr rarity's here tonight he's going to discuss
002uh he's going to present and then have a discussion on the profile these that he's compiled based on all of the engagement over the last several weeks so i'm going to turn it over to dr rorty to take us through this dr pesco thank you um let me start by by sharing that um for those who hadn't heard previously or attended any of the forums or the meetings i think this is 28 or 29 number of searches and i can count probably on less than a finger or two communities that have been more engaged in a positive way in western and that's a real tribute i think to your community people weighed in in large numbers they had positive voices and they had clear and consistent thoughts that they wanted to share with you with
003that being said um the advertisement for your next superintendent started on january 4 and ended on february 5. concurrent with that 1425 window we had a community survey which attracted 175 survey takers and i held as dr pesco mentioned a number of meetings to make sure that this evening's report included all of the stakeholders in weston therefore school staff certified non-certified central office multiple community forums and also meetings for those who request it for example i had a great conversation actually a couple of conversations with a a fairly new group uh in weston that represents equity diversity and inclusion and i'll talk through that within the report so i'm pleased that at least in summary um my intake was about 340 voices were heard and that's a great number for a community your size i'd
004like to just share highlights of the information in an executive summary for you and for the community and i'll work with june curiano tomorrow to post the document on your website so everyone can take a look at it in detail but pertaining to the community hope with the skill set of your next school leader what's interesting is that the the stakeholders spoke about the understanding or the belief that school boards look to hire an instructional leader or someone who has great management skills and my takeaway from the conversations that that that i listened to was your community is saying to you as a school board as a hiring committee find that perfect blend of someone who has high level instructional ability to push west and even to a a more special space yet that person
005has to understand fiscal political community in addition to to the depth of knowledge and instructional leadership and that operational piece um lots of conversation around distributive leadership the the that piece centered around we want this person to stay we don't want to burn out the superintendent we believe that we have extraordinary helping hands in weston and we want the new superintendent to be courageous enough to share distribute and not try to do everything on her own or his own but that was a very interesting piece it was heard over and over again a conversation around communication protocol making sure that when when you run through your candidates for for interviews that your takeaway is that your your new leader has the ability to be clear concise and succinct and honest all the time with communication
006um i wasn't quite sure how to word the next focus area so i called it pandemic patients before change listening to your your western faculty and staff they are no different than most faculty and staff across this country they're holding on they're doing extraordinary work but what you don't want to do is add anything to their plate in the immediate future so they're hoping that your new superintendent has the patience to watch to listen to learn to applaud and to celebrate before doing anything that's adding on to the plate of pandemic teaching and learning and then the last piece around that skill set is that they want your new school leader to go well beyond what is mandated by the state of connecticut and they don't want somebody who is going to be laser focused
007only on state results and state testing results they want somebody who recognizes the importance of discussion in classrooms and in professional development around equity diversity and inclusion that voice was heard numerous times in multiple meetings and in regards to character trait they want your new superintendent to be someone who finds somebody doing the right thing and recognizes the power of applause not trying to catch somebody doing the wrong thing all the time they want somebody who has an inner self-confidence to to stay with their personal credo and not to to be changing opinion from the last person who may have been in their office um time management and consistency they want your your next superintendent to recognize there's a balance between personal and professional and that you always get your work done professionally and you
008never go neglect family or personal they want your faculty and staff if that was very important um they want someone who's going to be positive they want somebody who is going to champion western public schools and they want somebody who has an uncompromising ethical and moral compass when asked around your greatest successes um voices beamed around what they believe is the student who leaves your district after a pre-k-12 study there is nobody that spoke who doesn't believe that that student has countless opportunities to be successful as a citizen and as a worker they're also incredibly proud that that that western public goes uh above and beyond to find individualized programming for every student not just for most but for every really proud although uh truly tempered in in today's teaching learning environment really proud of
009the after-school co-curricular piece uh particularly at the middle school in the high school performing arts fine arts athletics clubs and activities and we all know that i'm assuming much of that is either happening remotely or not happening at all in the present moment in the discussion around safety the community believes that the western board has taken significant steps to ensure optimal teaching and learning and a great environment in a safe environment challenges you know the challenges i don't have to speak to them you've been speaking to them for for months um how to teach in a pandemic how to get to every student in a multi-medium platform and how do you fund all of this going forward what i also did was after working through your 175 surveys and trying to put trying to aggregate
010the data i chunked out seven or eight additional uh areas that were shared in multiple ways um and i again it was hard for me to put into exact words but the belief if you were a resident in weston is that the community at times could be intimidating particularly to the superintendent and the voices that i heard was that they want your new superintendent not to be intimidated by the western community but to embrace the western community um the new superintendent with an outreach to faculty and staff for helping hands to to move forward once that person understands what takes place in pre-k-12 weston board of education relationships that was discussed often that that the new superintendent has the skill set to recognize that she or he is the invite at your table and that
011person works for the community and the community has elected seven members to have oversight for for that superintendent um the piece that i really like is that the the voices particularly the parent voice was that that they are hoping that your new superintendent doesn't see the the one-act play or the chris the holiday musical or the friday football game as just a check in the box if they really truly want to be there and then make a genuine commitment to be a vibrant part of the town of weston um somebody who can hold on to and inspire the present western workforce uh and this came from not necessarily the teacher's voice but from the community voice the parent voice believes that weston is chock full of a plus educators and administrators and they want to
012make sure that that whoever comes in recognizes that further inspires that group and finds a way to retain the the present teaching learning faculty um i want to pivot for one moment and i want to share with you um when all of these meetings were taking place what was happening on the application side when applications closed on february 5 there were 28 completed applications and we had talked earlier that's a strong number it's a very strong number 28 completed applications representing seven different states in our country with over 50 percent of those who applied uh currently sitting in the seat of the superintendent i believe that you have attracted a strong applicant pool i believe that that you attracted a strong african pool because of the research that that the candidates did they looked at
013the western board they looked at the community they looked at student outcomes that's the reason why i believe the pool is deep with talent and does include your next superintendent as i mentioned when i i started my remarks i will work with june to post this for public display on your website but at this point i'd love to answer any questions that you may have as a westin board were there any suggestions offered um dr rorty about um you know from the community or from team weston for example because i know i think you spoke with them um around this issue of diversity equity and inclusion and how we can sort of you know look through a lens of dei as we search yeah you definitely it's a great question and i'm pleased to share
014with you maybe i should have mentioned this perhaps it is that the um diversity equity and inclusion team western group um they actually provided for you to consider um eight or nine really probing questions that will i believe tease out the the understanding and the support that your applicant has for equity diversity and inclusion so i i think that you're in a good space with that i do okay thank you um i have a question um you know i think when the community looks at this and they go through this um i think they'll find this really valuable to to to go through but how how do you envision us as a board to use this as an important filter when we're evaluating candidates how are you going to hold us to um to looking
015at this and and really living by this as we go through all of our candidates to to make sure that um not only are the candidates meeting the needs of the board but also and and as we see it but also the needs of the community as reflected in in this document sure dr pesco thank you what what i shared with all of the voices that took the time to be a part of this community profile was that when the school board meets a non-meeting which will be forthcoming shortly to discuss candidates and ultimately to discuss first-run interviews this is the document that we need to keep going back to and this is the document that we should be calling our questions from for our candidates in full disclosure what does take place is when
016the school board selects their first round candidates i am the the conduit between your work and that candidate they will receive a copy of the community profile and i strongly encourage all of them to they won't get any questions but i strongly encourage all of them uh to take a moment to to read that document but dr pesco i think to be more exact with you um is that this becomes our working document to put our questions together that are most important to the western community and that's how their voices are heard in first round and in second round interviews thank you so dr orati you've done enough searches was there anything in your community profile work with weston that stood out as unique is there anything that you were surprised you didn't hear from
017the community profile um i don't know gina if it was just because of where our country is in the moment um but the diversity equity and inclusion passion appropriate passion was profound in many meetings that i helped um and i think that that the second part of your question it was there anything that i expected to hear that that didn't come across in conversation you know i i don't think so um there was always a a real pride particularly with the parent voice of how proud they are of their own child or children but most importantly why they're so proud of what's happening in the schools there's a there is i i my take away um and maybe this is unique to to weston because this is not the way that that many searches will
018will go but my takeaway is this community recognizes uh just how important western public is to western connecticut now that doesn't mean that every community member i spoke to has an open checkbook saying whatever you need here you go but what it does mean is that folks do recognize the high level and the efficiency and the effectiveness of what's happening with students thank you any further questions folks thank you so much dr casco thank you great um so i you know this is uh this is the the next step in the search process uh soon the search committee will meet and start evaluating the the candidates um so if there are no other questions for this evening can i have a motion to adjourn this meeting you have a second okay great meeting adjourned um
019thank you and thank you dr roddy