School Board Special Meeting: April 27 (Conducted Remotely)

001Welcome to the school board special meeting. Today this is Independent School District 271, Bloomington Public Schools. Today is Tuesday, April 27, 2021. It is 5 p.m. Due to COVID-19, the school board meeting will now be conducted in the Arlene Bush Boardroom at the Educational Services Center. And the meeting is conducted via Google Meet and live stream on BEC TV. Let's start here with our roll call. So board members who are present, please indicate you're here. Director Beebe? Here. Director Bennett? Here. Director Olson? Here. Director Sorum? Here. Director Steigauf? Here. Director Starks? Here. And Corman is here. So all board members are present. And next we have approval of the agenda. I'd like to move approval of the agenda. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. All those in favor of approving the agenda for tonight,

002please say aye. Director Beebe? Aye. Director Bennett? Aye. Director Olson? Aye. Director Sorum? Aye. Director Steiger? Aye. Director Starks? Aye. And Corman, aye. This agenda has been approved and today once again we have the topic for today is the superintendent search process and once again we have Ms. Barham Dorn from Minnesota School Board Association and she'll be here to go with us through the review stakeholder report, determine finalists. finalize interview questions and procedures and review the interview training. So Ms. Doran, welcome. Wonderful. Thank you so much. It's nice to see everyone again. I look forward to working with you tonight. We do have some very specific things to get through this evening. The first thing we will do is review the stakeholder report which was sent to you. I want to congratulate you first and

003foremost on the number of stakeholders who did take the time and spend the energy to fill out that. It was 1,077 people. That's a phenomenal response. So congratulations. We will go over that. I am going to not read it specifically word for word, but for the benefit of those listening in the audience, I do want to highlight the themes and the patterns that emerged from that report for your consideration when you make your decisions next week. Also tonight, we're going to do some finalization of interview preparation. We'll finalize the questions that you will be asking on the 5th. We'll also discuss the stakeholder involvement in those activities on the 4th. You will have a chance to finalize the schedule for the 5th, the interviews amongst the board. And then we'll also walk through some guidelines.

004I've provided you with some suggested scripts to use for the interviews as well as for the deliberations after your interviews. As you know, MSBA will not be there for your interviews on the 5th, so I wanted to ensure that you had an outline of how those activities could proceed and I could answer any and all of your questions on that today. The final activity for tonight will be for the board to hold your deliberations on the applications you received for the position of superintendent. I mentioned in my email that I will be online for that, but I will not be participating. I have not seen your applications. So I am going to be on the sideline if you have questions, but that'll be a conversation that the board has. And I'm confident with the interview

005training, or excuse me, the candidate selection training we've done regarding candidates ABC. You'll be able to have that dialogue and arrive at a slate of finalists just fine without me. But I will be here for that part of the meeting if you need anything. So that's what we're hoping to accomplish tonight. Is there anything anyone would like to ask before we dive right in with the stakeholder survey results? All right, seeing none, why don't we get started? You should all have a copy of the stakeholder engagement superintendent search survey in front of you. I want to also thank the staff within Bloomington Public Schools who helped get this information out to the stakeholders. Again, that response rate of 1,077 people is terrific, and it was only open for one week. It was open from April

00612th to April 19th. So a great deal of interest in the superintendent search. You'll notice on here that the majority of folks that did fill out the survey were parents. Just over 47% selected parent as their identifying lens they were using to take the survey. Close behind were staff members at just over 41% of the respondents were staff members. And that's typically what we see. The largest groups represented do tend to be parents and staff members with the rest distributed among community members, business owners, students, and some miscellaneous other categories. Keep in mind that people often check more than one box. They might be a parent and a staff member, so they select whatever category best fits the responses that they're providing. So parents and staff members in this case were the majority. In terms

007of quantitative data, we asked them to identify the top areas of expertise they felt that the superintendent needed to possess. And it's difficult to narrow them down because there are usually 15 to 20 choices and we asked them to pick their top six. It's as if we're giving them all kinds of very important background and expertise, but you need to really prioritize these. And without question, some things really bubbled up from the stakeholders. The first was they feel the person needs to be a collaborative leader. That was far and away the largest number of responses. Collaborative leadership, followed by diversity, equity, and inclusion, then budget and finance, strategic planning, curriculum development and evaluation, and community engagement. And so part of what I'm going to encourage the board to do is take a look back at

008this stakeholder input when you are this evening selecting your finalist to be interviewed next week, but also next week when you're heading into the interviews. Keep in mind the voice of your stakeholders in terms of what they were saying was important. And in this case in particular, the things that rose up with expertise is collaborative leadership, diversity, equity, inclusion. Specialized skills is another category that we ask folks to identify what is most important to you in terms of the specialized skills the new superintendent must possess. The number one identified was someone who's going to act with honesty and in an ethical manner in their deliberations and dealings with all stakeholders. Someone who develops trust and works collaboratively with stakeholders. There's collaboration again. They're looking for a visionary, strategic, creative thinker. Someone who develops and directs

009an effective leadership team. And also looking for a superintendent who is a people person with good human relations and communication skills and someone who is able to mediate and accommodate different perspectives and values teamwork. So those are also some really important yardsticks to keep in mind when you're looking at your applicants and your interviews next week. So those were the skills that were identified. Please interrupt me if you have questions as we go along. Otherwise, I'm just going to keep talking. As for previous experience, Tom, is your hand up? I can't tell here on my computer. Thank you, Director Bennett. Yeah, a question I have is when you talk about the results, and you said the top one was collaborative leader, and that was by far and away the biggest response. Do you know how

010the other ones are? I mean, was like diversity, equity, inclusion, like close behind? Was, you know, budget finance like a close third? Or is there like some big gaps? I do not have that, but I'd be able to pull that for you tomorrow from the survey tool. Would you like me to do that? Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, that'd be really helpful. percentages on all of the quantitative data. Do you want the percentages by each of those? Okay. Those categories of expertise and specialized skills? Yeah, that would be great. I will do that and send that data tomorrow to Deb to share with the board. Okay? Okay. Thank you. Anything else? Yeah, my question is along similar lines. It's interesting when I used to work for a company that did a lot of surveys and

011a lot of information gathering, and it was interesting to note that people would fill out one, two, or three times in different positions, whether they're a parent, staff member, community member, depending on how they could get hold of another computer or whatever. So it's always curious whenever we have something like this because there's an awful lot of staff members that aren't parents. And so, you know, with some of the duplications of coming up like that, it's worth requesting in order to kind of see this is the top six. And I imagine that you had just a ton of information coming in that you had to group them in to get the top six and how close they were together about their network. near six, seven, eight or nine, you know, that had to be dropped

012off because they weren't in the top six. So, you know, as comments indicated, you know, that would be good to get the percentages in each of those ranks. Absolutely. No, I'll have that to Deb tomorrow. And that's an interesting point, Director Sorum. Very often people will use a different email address and fill it out wearing a different hat, per se. And there's no way to cross-reference who may have filled that out more than once, depending upon what lens they were using. Chair Corman, did you have a point, too? No, just to remind you to turn your camera and your microphone up if you're not speaking because then we can speak back. Thank you. Every meeting you have to remind me of that. My apologies, but thank you for bringing it up early in the meeting.

013I appreciate that. Now one of the questions that was in the survey as well specifically asked if previous superintendent or cabinet level experience in a district the size of Bloomington or larger were important. And in this case it was interesting because about 55 percent of respondents said yes. and about 45 percent said no. That's not statistically insignificant, however it is not a resounding result in one direction or the other. 55 to 45 percent is fairly close. So what I say that tells the board is when you're looking at your applicants and you're looking at your finalists and interviewing them, keep in mind that the majority of stakeholders who took the survey did indicate that experience at the cabinet level or higher is important, but it is not the be all and end all of how

014you should make your decision because another 45% said no, that that was not important. So it does, I would say, express that the board should keep an open mind regarding previous experience in large districts. So that was interesting as well. And then for personal characteristics, we asked folks to identify the top six personal characteristics and all of these are important and all the ones they had to select from were important. I think that's the hardest part again is to narrow them down. In this case, the stakeholders identified someone who is honest and ethical, an effective communicator, a problem solver, collaborative, transparent, and approachable. And so those I don't think will be of any surprise to school board members as well because those are some of the things that you have shared are important to you

015as board members also. What was really great to see as far as the open-ended question, typically people will fill out those choose your top six fairly easily. Not everyone will take the time or make the effort to answer open-ended questions. And in this case of your 1,077 people, 705 offered additional comments, which is phenomenal. That's two-thirds almost of your survey respondents took the time to answer open-ended questions with their additional thoughts. So in that case, I wanted to highlight for you the themes that emerged from the comments, and we've broken them out into four primary themes that came from, again, the open-ended question and the additional comments areas. The first, with the most responses, was that the Bloomington community is highly diverse in many, many ways, including socioeconomics, cultures, races, political views. While Bloomington embraces

016its diversity, Stakeholders do feel that there are areas where the district can make more strides in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion. That theme was repeated over and over and over again. About 250 people pointed to equity, inclusion, and diversity as extremely important parts of the community of Bloomington and the school district and the student's body. Just a couple of supporting comments. I'm not going to go through all of them as well because I know you do have those. Pointing out that all students are different and that not one way fits all students. People requested someone coming in with a diverse equity-driven lens to the position. Others pointed to the vast socioeconomic difference within the stakeholders of the Bloomington School District. Looking for someone that can problem-solve on areas such as the achievement gap

017and equity. And it was mentioned many times, in fact, that there is some division within the cities and there is the east-west divide. That is just something which most folks that did bring it up say no matter how hard we try not to make it so that that does exist. And it can be a challenge for the leader of a district as diverse as Bloomington. And I thought one of the comments that seemed to summarize it up extremely well was very simply stated, we are very diverse in every way possible. And I would suspect that the board would agree with that, knowing the diversity of your district, student body, families, and community members. So that topic was the first one that definitely emerged in these open-ended comments. A second area stated that the stakeholders feel

018the school district needs to be more collaborative and communicate more with all stakeholders. The new superintendent should also be very visible in the schools and the community. that was something that folks also raised. I think when you hear the word collaborative over and over again in the quantitative results, it's not a surprise to see it also come up in terms of the qualitative results in the survey. Someone pointed out that we need a superintendent who is approachable, supportive, values staff input, valuing all perspectives was important to stakeholders, getting parent input. and involvement in district decisions is important. Communication skills and a lot of this is around leadership. I think the folks that commented on the collaboration and communication are identifying that a leader has a lot of hard skills of course but they also bring

019to it these soft skills of being able to communicate, to unify, to bring people together, to listen. All of those things in terms of communication are extremely, extremely important. Listening to the community was one that was brought up. bringing people together, looking at us as unique human beings and working together for solutions that are best for the district. So I think that was also a very interesting trend. That was the second trend that emerged. Director Sorum, yes, question. You're muted, sir. I'm sorry. Can't hear you. I'm sorry. Yeah, with open-ended questions, you don't know the category they're from, if they were from parent or... staff or whatever, do you? Did that follow along with who they were as far as their comments went? Or are the comments just general comments from anybody and everybody not

020identifying whether they were staff, community member, or parent? Great question. Thank you for asking. Yeah, the comments are collective comments provided at the end of the survey. We can identify individual responses. So if we know someone was a student, for example, I can look at their answers to the open-ended question, but that would be a one by one by one. Our survey tool doesn't have the horsepower to slice and dice comments by necessarily all those categories too. Any other questions? Okay, great. So that was the second area of observation from the open-ended comments about collaboration and communication. The third area which emerged in terms of open-ended comments was that the stakeholders want the new superintendent to be a superior leader that can unify the school district and build a positive culture for all stakeholders. The

021superintendent should value both staff, students, and prioritize their needs in the decision-making process. With a very large district, sometimes it can be a challenge for stakeholders to feel heard. very often due simply to the size and the complexity of a district the size of Bloomington. It can definitely be a challenge. And yet people express that they are hungry for that opportunity to have their voice be at the table as decisions are being made. And you know as the school board that ultimately as the governing body of the district it is up to you to make those decisions. And yet soliciting input through surveys such as this and the many other surveys that you do, I'm... very aware that you conduct a lot of surveys with your stakeholders. Doing that is important and people do appreciate

022it, not only in the superintendent search but all of those other surveys which you are listening to your stakeholders through. In terms of this, I think it's pretty easy to read through the comments and get a sense that they're looking for an innovative leader, someone who's unafraid of change in a system, leadership, strong advocate. Specifically, people are asking for an advocate in terms of racial equity. Someone who really, truly is well-versed in all of education and all the factors that go into inclusive instruction. Being unafraid to think outside of the box was mentioned more than once. And going back to the changes within the community and the diversity that is driving the stakeholders, finding someone who is comfortable in a community that is as different, as diverse, and changing as much as the Bloomington School

023District is. Valuing students and staff. Again, these things are those soft skills, more so than hard skills, but I think it's consistent in the pattern here. Building the culture for stakeholders will be an important role for the new superintendent. And finally, the fourth area, if you're looking for patterns that emerged, is that the Bloomington Public Schools have a great staff that's dedicated to providing each student with a quality education. Supporting and treating staff equitably will be extremely important. It's wonderful when you read through comments and people are singing the praises of staff, singing the praises of the students. It just makes you appreciate the quality of the people involved in your district. And there were a number of comments about students and staff. I thought this one was a lot of fun. We have wildly

024smart students and staff. I haven't seen wildly smart in a survey before and I thought that was a really beautiful way of capturing their thoughts about the staff and students in the Bloomington District. Mentioning all of the staff, clerks, paras, teachers, food service bus drivers, after school care, and how important the whole breadth and width of staff support is to students' success. Adjectives such as the staff are committed. They are hardworking. dedicated, tirelessly striving to meet the needs of all students. They are high achieving, hardworking again, and resilient, able to work with whatever life gives them. And again, this closing comment I thought was really great is BPS is an amazing district with awesome staff who care about kids and families in Bloomington. And that was the fourth area of trends that we noticed in

025the stakeholder open-ended comments. So tomorrow I will have the data pulled specifically, at least quantitatively, by the different categories and share that with Deb to pass along to the board. But in the meantime, I hope that overview was helpful. Very often we get asked, well, what should we do with this data? Because again, it is a lot of data. We provided you the summary and the overview, but I would encourage you, not only the first way I mentioned that you want to review this again in the context of your selections tonight of your finalists, but also before your May 5th interviews and your deliberations, particularly the ones that were quantifiable, the collaborative leadership, the communication skills, diversity, equity, inclusion. The stakeholders spoke loud and clear of the importance of those to them. So that is

026one of the things that you want to use to inform your decision making process throughout this week and next week in looking for your new superintendent. Keep in mind that next Wednesday when you have your school board interviews, you will also have the results from the representative stakeholder group summaries from their activities on the 4th. We'll pull all of that information together. Depending on how late we get done that night with stakeholders, we will do it perhaps Wednesday morning, but we'll get that in your hands again through Deb so you have that input from their interviews with the finalists to look at as well during your interview and deliberation processes. So with that, I'm going to stop talking and just see if you had any questions on the results of the stakeholder survey beyond what

027we already discussed. Director Soto? Yes, thank you. As I mentioned, in one of my other lives, I was involved in surveys and software programs where we did an awful lot of this analysis and gathering, and it was just... a fun experience having the team a team get together and go through and identify the themes as you've identified here within the fourth and sometimes we would wind up with eight themes and then we'd say no no we have to condense it just to get four themes that are understandable and try and use as many of the responses with the words like diversity inclusion involvement you know and that and and staff and community and all of those types of things as was done here. So I appreciate all of that information in the comments. I was

028to a big meeting the other night with some booster clubs from the hockey and talking to some of them. It was... not easy to distinguish what they wanted or how they felt about a new superintendent. You know, they were more interested in specific things. And so they really didn't offer much information to me. And I really wasn't interested in hearing about all that stuff from all those parents. I got enough emails from them anyhow over the course of the time. But just to be able to put all of this together in the meaningful way and in an outline form like this. is very helpful. So thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. It was a wonderful survey to work on. And I think I mentioned in our last meeting, it was already over a thousand at

029that point. That is the most responses we have seen in our searches thus far. So kudos again to your stakeholders that took the time and made the effort to do so. Director Starks? I think I'm the only one with my hand up. Yeah. So I just, I don't have a question. I just have a comment. I, what I was really thrilled when we received this and I was looking through it, as you mentioned, Barb, before, like, the feedback from the stakeholders matches what we've been saying as a school board. So I was thrilled that we're in alignment because what I was really worried about was that we were going to hear from our stakeholders and they were going to be in a different direction than we were. So it really just affirmed that we're on

030the right path. We're doing the right thing. You know, we're listening to our stakeholders and we're in alignment. So just for my fellow board members and for the community, that was my takeaway from the survey. Thank you. And that's wonderful news. When it confirms and aligns with what the board has been thinking and saying all along, that's exactly what you were hoping for and it is what you got. So that's wonderful. One thing I should mention as well, when there's over a thousand people that respond to a survey, we didn't obviously include absolutely every single person's opinion in here because it's just too big, but we wanted to look for those patterns. There is one pattern I want to let you know, since diversity, equity, inclusion was mentioned most often. in a very positive way,

031that we need more of that work, that we want to surround ourselves with people who are familiar with that work. We want leadership in that work. I do want to recognize that there are people who feel that with as hot a topic as equity is these days, that feel that it is not as important as other. aspects in the district. So I don't want people to think that 100% of the comments were positive in terms of diversity, equity, and opinion. It was just a lot of people. If you want to look at the numbers, though, we did have nearly 250 people. point out equity as a necessity, a positive thing that they want more of. And then conversely, we had just over 20 people that in an open-ended comment said there's too much emphasis on

032equity and diversity. So there was that flip side of the coin, but when you look at the patterns, you know, 20 versus 250, we included the vast majority of folks that saw it as a positive and a necessary part of the education in Bloomington. Any other comments, observations, or questions on the stakeholder survey? Director Beebe? Yeah, I was wondering about, you know, some of those that were on the other end, because some people might feel like, oh, my voice didn't get heard because the board didn't see the comments or didn't know the comments. Will we ever have access to all the responses just to see what people were saying? Yes, if you would like to, you certainly can. It is a lot of data. We certainly can do that. Keep in mind that anything we

033share with the board becomes subject to data requests as well, which is one reason why sometimes boards prefer to remain at the 30,000 foot level and see the summaries. But it's entirely up to the board and we can certainly share that at some point if you would like us to. If you will use it, if it's going to sit on a shelf and collect dust, I would suggest that you not. get all of the data all at once, but if it is something that would prove useful between now and the selection of your superintendent, absolutely. I would just need the direction from the board to do that. Director Bennett? Yeah, I agree with Director Beebe. It'd be nice to see all of those comments and I think it would be useful just so we can.

034You know, I really enjoyed reading these comments yesterday and I was going through them and then I got to the end and I'm like, what, that's it? I wanted to see the rest of them. So if it's not, you know, a huge burden on your staff to just send us an email or something with all of those comments, I think that would be great and it would help us make our decisions so we can make sure that we're hearing from all of the voices of our community that took part in the survey. Okay, great. How about if other board members are interested in seeing that, you just give me a show of hands so I know that it's a majority. I hear two already. Anyone else who'd like to see all of that? Great. I

035will include that in the information that I share with Deb tomorrow as well, is the breakout statistically of the quantitative data by group and then all of the comments in response to the open-ended question and the additional comments area. So I'd be happy to provide that. Thank you. Anything else? Okay, well, thank you. And again, in closing, I want to thank any stakeholders who are watching this now or later. Thank you for spending your energy and sharing your thoughts because this is very important information for a board to have as they proceed with a superintendent search, and it is truly deeply appreciated. So thank you to those stakeholders. Next, we're going to move on to the round one preparation, beginning with the interview questions and the schedule. And we are going to visit about stakeholder

036involvement again, particularly here when we get to the schedule regarding May 4th. But I want to start with the interview questions. I wanted to thank, let's see, Director Olson, you helped me with this, correct? And sent some suggested wordsmithing questions. I want to thank you for that very much. I took all of your notes and comments from the last meeting we had. I combined questions per your requests. I also mixed them up so we didn't have the same kinds of questions back to back in this case. And you had a total of 16 questions, which is a nice amount of questions. for a one hour interview. I also did change some of the language from what would you do to what have you done. And there are quite a few questions asking for specific examples

037and so on and so forth. Hopefully this will still allow you some time though to have Q&A with your candidates at the end where they can ask you questions and you as a board can respond. So other than showing you everything that you had listed, do you have any final edits, questions, comments, anything you want to delete? Did you see anything in here that's duplicative that we can get rid of? And again, we'll try to speak about the questions if there's conversation to be had in terms of questions one, two, three, et cetera. We will not read questions aloud. If they look okay to everybody, and I'm not assuming that they do, but if they look okay to everyone, we can certainly at some point say this is a list of questions. You don't need

038to formally approve them with a motion, but these are what I would then provide to Deb for you to use next week. Director Starks first. So I apologize if you've already said this. Is this the order that we would be doing them in the interview? It's a proposed order, yes. If you don't like the order they're in, you can certainly suggest something different. So it's not that I don't. like the order. I'm just, number 12, since it has a theme in a similar category as what we heard from our stakeholders, if we could move that up just in case we run out of time. I guess I'd rather have the ones at the end be ones that maybe don't address some of those themes, if that's possible. How about if we insert it, because there

039is a question around that topic, question three. And perhaps we can put this one in at question, right above question six, because there's another one about it in terms of question eight. This was a topic you did emphasize last week, which was great. You anticipated the stakeholders would feel this is a very important part of the leadership of the superintendent. So there are three or four questions around that topic, but I could move question 12 up. And I'm not married to that. It's just an option that I thought, you know, if my fellow board members feel like there's already enough questions prior to number 12, we can leave it where it's at. That's up to the board. Does anyone want to chime in with whether you'd like question 12 bumped up further in the question

040list? Director Bennett? Well. I agree with Director Stark that it's an important question. We want to make sure that's asked, but I have confidence that we would get to question 12 within an hour. If it were like a 15, we might want to move it earlier, but I think we'll get to question 12. Okay, thanks. Director Sorum? Yeah, the question I had is how much leeway instead of even though we have to ask the exact same questions during the interview to each candidate, sometimes. we might have a slightly different wording or something on the question. I guess we should really realize that we have to ask the same question in the same mannerism to each candidate. But like Director Starks had said, there's a couple of different ones with collaborative. in it, relationship with staff

041and other things like that, that collaboration with stakeholders inside and outside, you know, that are kind of like a... Be careful. Be careful with the comments about the questions. Okay, well, just, you know, some of them are somewhat, so a compound question could be, you know, together, use them together. That will be up to the board. You are sitting at 16. And so that's it's up to you. But I agree exactly with what you're saying, Director Sorm. It'll be very important. These questions are asked in the same manner of each candidate. Don't improvise and sort of extemporaneously share the question. You want to read them exactly as they are for each, just to be fair to everybody. And the other question I did have for the board. With electronic meetings, when we started doing all

042the interviews last spring like this, it seemed to be the biggest time saver to have the board chair read each question for continuity's sake so there weren't people muting and unmuting and all of that. This year we have, however, experimented with board members each reading one or two questions apiece and it still has gone very smoothly. So is your preference to have the chair read all the questions on your behalf or would you like to insert board names before each of these questions and you each would have a chance then to ask one, almost two questions? Yeah, each get to ask two questions in fact. Would you like names inserted so that you each know what your questions are that you're asking? I see everybody nodding. Okay, great. We'll divvy it up. May I simply

043go in order of officers and board members and just repeat that way? The opening and closing question will always be the chair, but I'll insert names before I send these then to Deb for you to use next week. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Is everyone good then? Oh, Director Olson, you have your hand up. Correct? But you are muted, Director Olson. I'm sorry. When Director Starks had mentioned that if we run out of time, she said if we run out of time and don't get to all the questions, would that be the case that we would have an ending time if we, I don't expect that to happen, but that we would not ask all the questions or would we go over time? You will not want to go overtime. Everyone will know in

044advance. This is a one-hour interview that you have 16 questions. Your last question will be giving them the opportunity to ask you questions. Someone in the district then, since I won't be there, will need to let you know when you are at the 30-minute mark so a candidate can gauge whether time's flying or whether they're doing way too much talking. And then it's also good if someone can notify you when there's five minutes left. in the interview as well, but I would not give anyone over 61 minutes just to be fair. At one hour, you could cut them off, but we tend to give them one more minute to wrap up their thoughts. But don't go over time. If they don't get through all of the questions, they don't go through all of the questions.

045You still then want to try and ask all of the questions perhaps of the next candidate so you don't penalize the following candidates because someone didn't get through them before them. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Director Starks, your hand is up again and then I believe Director Steighoff. I think that Director Steighoff was before me. Go ahead. Thank you. So on that note, if we're talking about not getting through all the questions, the second to the last question, number 15, when we talked before, I think you told us that that is one that very interesting things sometimes can come out and things that don't come out anywhere else in the interview. So I'm kind of concerned about having that at the end that we might miss if that, if that's

046one that you have had that experience with before. And so I don't know if other people want to move it. I have no idea where we would move it, but I just wanted to point that out and maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe we don't think we'll get, you know, that much information out of it, but just wanted to point it out from our conversation before. I think, yeah, there are about two or three questions that can get some unexpected answers from candidates. That is one of them. And another one would say question 10 has also provided some really interesting answers from candidates. And then there's one more that I remember saying that you'd be surprised at what people are willing to share. We rolled so many questions together that it's possible we've condensed them. Oh,

047question 12. Question 12 is also a very revealing question. So I think there's three of them where the answers and they're scattered throughout, you know, question 12, 10 and 15 are the ones that it's like, oh, that's an interesting question. I wouldn't put them too close to the front because people aren't quite warmed up yet and aren't as comfortable sharing with you some of those experiences. But we can certainly look at moving that one up if you'd like to. I'm okay with leaving it as long as everybody else. I just remember our conversation. So I'm fine with leaving it. We just have to try to make sure we get through all the questions on everyone. It'll make us stay on task because we want to get through them. Okay. Director Starks and then Chair Corman.

048So that Director Stagoff kind of led into my question is, is the chair then in charge of the pacing of the meeting or the, of the interviews? And so if we've got three left and only seven minutes. the chair then can interrupt and say, here's where we're at. Because if we've already, you know, if we have multiple candidates and we've gotten through all 16 with, you know, the first one, we have to get through the other 16. I guess I'm just trying to figure out how does this pace and who's in charge of the pacing if we're each asking questions. Yeah. Yep. Great question. Generally speaking, we've felt that the candidate should be in charge of the pacing because they're the ones choosing whether to be succinct or long-winded. However, it's only fair to let

049them know how many questions, how long the time frame they have, and to give them the heads up at 30 minutes and five minutes. Beyond that, I don't think the responsibility should fall on the chair to speed them along because you really want to see how well they manage their time. And so I would suggest that by telling them the number of questions, the timeframe, and then someone in the district saying 30 minutes, five minutes, someone ought to be able to get through all of these questions, no problem at all. I don't think you need to be the ones responsible for keeping them on track, but that's my opinion. Again, this is the board's interview. And if you choose to do it differently, that's totally okay. Chair Corwin, your hand was up. Oh, I'm sorry.

050Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, in relation to Director Steigaff's comment on that question number 15, I think that's a very, I think it's an important one. Definitely think that we would like to know that, right? And it seems like it kind of... kind of fits in the first group of questions here, perhaps around, you know, in between number three and or before number three, maybe that should be number three is kind of what I'm trying to say. Don't you think it's kind of similar or kind of tags along with the other two? I don't know. Anybody else? By a show of hands, how many would like question 15 moved up, maybe into the top six or so? Okay, let's move question 15 up. I won't tell you exactly where I'll place it. I don't want

051it to be too similar to the question right before or right after it, but I will move question 15 somewhere up into the first one-third of questions. Okay, question 15 will be moved up. All right, thank you. Director Bennett, your hand's been up a while. I apologize. Well, that's okay. A lot of people got things to say, which is good. So when I'm looking at the survey from the stakeholders, the top three were collaboration, then diversity, and then budget and financing. And I'm thinking that when I'm looking at all these questions, we did a good job at selecting questions that are in those top three, as most of these questions are. One that isn't in that top three is question number five. And I think that's a good question, but I don't know. if we

052want to move that lower, like, so replace 15 with five. And so, cause I do agree with Don and Nellie that 15 is probably more important than five. So we could just, you know, make it simple and just replace those two. I don't know if other people are down with that. I saw some nodding. Is it thumbs up to swap five and 15? All right. That's most of the board says yes, we'll do that. Thanks director Bennett for the suggestion. Director Sorum, your hand has been up for a while. Did we ever decide whether or not we're going to send the questions ahead of time to the candidates or five minutes ahead of time or whatever? My notes did say that five minutes before was agreed upon by the board last week. Five minutes before.

053So someone in the district, I'm not sure who it would be, but someone will be sending these questions to the candidate five minutes before their interview begins. Okay. Five minutes before the first one? No, five minutes before their own interview. So each person only has them for five minutes and then to refer to them while you're reading the question. Correct. Okay. Thanks for clarifying that. Let's see. Director Olson, your hand is up. I just wanted, I just wanted to make sure, was the board aware that I had changed number two so that they can make sure that they like any changes that I made to it? Chair Corman? No, I was just indicating that I was okay with it. Thank you, Director. Now you're muted, Barb. I'm trying to look at the little hand icons.

054Chair Corman, your hand icon is up then. I thought you had another question. Okay, Director Bennett took his down. All right, I'm not seeing any more icons. This is great. So what I will do then is swap question five and 15. I will also insert board member names, just your first names only, right in front of each question. So you will know what is your question to be asked. And I will then send this to Deb to be shared with you prior to your interviews next week. And then this will be the version that is sent to candidates before their own interviews five minutes ahead of time. So is everyone good with that then? These are great questions and I want to echo Director Bennett's observation that the questions you selected last week definitely align

055with what the stakeholders told you is important to them. So congratulations on anticipating those. That's wonderful news. Okay, done with the questions. If you look at the interview schedule, that's the next item in your packet. We're not going to be able to finalize this because we don't know how many finalists you're going to be interviewing. Okay, we don't know. I don't know how many applications you received. I don't know if the board has an intention to interview X number of people or not. Maybe you have already been through this on your own. each of you has identified one, two, three, four people you want to interview. That'll be the end of the meeting. So we'll circle back to this before we leave tonight. And then whatever number of folks you have selected, we will be

056sure to fill those in. And then I'll share this information with Deb. And then she will be the one to work with your HR department to slot in the names of the finalists and what times those have been scheduled for. So we'll come back to the schedule before the night is over. And I do want to talk then about the stakeholder involvement. Again, I want to thank Director Olson and Deb very much for their help in reaching out to the stakeholder groups which you identified. We do have a list of 30 stakeholder groups and email addresses for the individuals who have been selected by those stakeholder groups to participate on the 4th. So congratulations and very well done. This looks like a terrific cross-section of your stakeholder groups to observe. What I'm going to do

057is use this list of stakeholder emails. I'll send an email out probably tomorrow once we know how many finalists there are. That will help finalize the schedule for these folks on the 4th. And I know we've talked about we'll be doing them virtually. So I've already, Deb and I talked earlier this week about how we'll be collecting questions, proposed questions from those folks. We'll have a deadline of, I believe, Monday to submit questions for consideration. And then we'll have one list of final questions. And I'll be asking the final list of stakeholder questions on their behalf. So when I send the email out tomorrow, I'll try to align expectations for what next Tuesday is going to look like. I believe we'll be starting at 5 o'clock p.m. That was the note I got from Deb

058May 4th at 5 p.m. One hour with each finalist, whether it's one or three or... 12, I don't know. Hopefully it won't be 12. That's too many. But we will have clarification for them and I'll send them a practice link as well so they know how to fill out the input form on behalf of the group they're representing. So they'll have the whole weekend to practice with that form. It's quite simple, but some people simply want to be able to run through what it's like to provide input. Also after tonight you've selected your finalists that will help fill in my email tomorrow to these stakeholder groups. I will also copy Deb and Chair Corman on all of my communications to the stakeholder groups so they're aware of what has been sent regarding their participation. So

059any further questions on the stakeholders? Again we'll have that report to you hopefully Wednesday morning for you to be able to look at and refer to during your own interviews which begin at four o'clock I believe on the 5th. Am I wrong? Oh, 3 o'clock on the 5th. You'll have it in plenty of time to review stakeholder input in that regards. Yes, Director Bennett. Yes, I'm wondering if you could kind of go into more detail about what type of feedback are you going to be getting from the stakeholder group? Is it going to be kind of like how, you know, we did 917 where each question you have the meets, does not meet, exceeds and that, or is it something different? Is it going to be opportunity for them to give open-ended responses? Or I'm

060not beginning to speak to that a little bit. Yep. Thank you for asking. What the stakeholders are doing is called, they're filling out what's called an audience input form. And so in the audience input form, we ask them to select the name of the finalist, which we will have filled in by then because we'll know who you're going to be interviewing as a board. So they'll select the name of the candidate. We'll ask them to type in their own name. And then they're asked to submit up to three strengths of that candidate. and up to three areas of growth for that candidate. So it's all open-ended questions. There's no rating or ranking. It is simply what are the strengths and areas where they could potentially work on. So they'll submit that and the reason that

061we ask for their name is because we want to make sure they've watched all of the interviews. We can't have someone watch one interview and provide feedback and not watch any of the other ones. So we want to ensure that whoever's providing feedback commits to watching however many finalists there are. So we ask for their name for that purpose only, but all of the comments are anonymous. All right, we will not be sharing with the board in our report who said what. We will do something similar to what we provided today that is here are the themes that emerged. We could having you had asked me for the results, we could also provide you with all of the raw data and let you draw your conclusions from seeing all of the comments. And with 30

062people, that will be more manageable for you to read as a board than 1,077. So maybe you should let me know. Do you want us to categorize themes for all of the finalists, or do you want us to send you all of the comments, all the strengths for this person, all of their opportunities for growth? all of the strengths and all the, so it'll be broken up by candidate. But what would you prefer to receive Wednesday morning? How about that? Well, for me, I prefer all of it, but that's, that's me. I like all the information. Is it too much to ask for both? Like, are you able to, well, just because Director Bennett's laughing at me, but I know. I know my Wednesday right now and I'm kind of panicking about having to make

063sure that I get through 30 times six comments and making sense of that. So if you could do a like, here's the general feedback and then I can go into detail. Does that make sense? That would be really helpful for me. Yes, it does make sense and yes, I'll make a note to talk to the person on our staff that does that work for us Okay, if you were asking us to do that within that half hour break, you know if you were doing everything on that I'm like I don't think we could do that in a half hour but because we do have overnight to do it and first thing in the morning I think we should be able to do that with up to 30 people so audience input form A summary overview

064plus all the raw data. That sounds like people that have the time and inclination to read everything and want to see everything. Okay. We will do that. We will do both. Thank you. Absolutely. Anything else on stakeholder input next week? All right, seeing none, let's move on to the candidate interviews and board deliberations. These, again, are just guidelines, but I thought it might be helpful for you to, as a board, think through what these are going to look like. What's it going to look like next Wednesday when you have a candidate come in for an interview? And you're doing these all electronically, correct? It will be... Via Google Meet? Okay. So what will that look like? For example, with the interviews, the opening statement by the board chair, I would suggest you use the one

065you're already using for Bloomington Public Schools. So this is a guide. Don't read this word for word. So change out the opening statement for what you are already using for your electronic meetings. As for the interviews, it's pretty simple. The board chair will greet the candidate and thank them for joining you. I did cross out the things that are specific to when MSBA is helping with the interviews, so I didn't want to confuse folks by leaving those in there. But you'll be interviewing so many candidates. You'll be making a decision most likely that evening. This is not something you're going to be deliberating days later. As for the... interviews themselves, those are all being broadcast in a public forum. The May 4th, by the way, stakeholder interviews are not being broadcast. Board members are not

066attending that. You're not conducting board business, so it does not need to adhere to the open meeting law. And so on the 4th, the 30 stakeholders who are participating will be in a session online. And the candidate will be aware that those are the 30 stakeholders representing the different groups in the community, but it will not be something that is broadcast to the entire community. Open meeting law doesn't apply when board members are not involved. Does that make sense? If for any reason you want those broadcasts, that's an internal decision you can certainly make. But as far as open meeting law goes, since you're not involved, the stakeholders can hold those interviews on their own. Okay, so welcome them. You talk about when you'll be making your decision. So I would change obviously the second

067paragraph. Today I'll be asking the school board questions for you because you are each going to be asking different questions. So Chair Corman can find a way to say, we'll each be asking you several questions, taking notes. We talked about board notes last time. They should be professional and appropriate. jot down the things about these candidates that really stand out to you that you think are full boards and superintendents and principals. It's a pretty tight community. You may know the folks that you're interviewing. It would still be a great idea to introduce yourselves, not just for their sake, but also for the sake of the folks who are watching this on the broadcast, just to ensure that they know who's asking which questions. How you do that's up to you, but don't use much of

068the interview time, you know, waxing nostalgic about your time on the board. I would simply say your name. how long you've served and then you can move on. So whatever order or however perhaps Chair Corman wants to call on you to introduce yourselves, it takes about a minute to a minute and a half to let them know who you are as individuals. You then begin with your questions. You ask hopefully all 16 questions. How you are going to rank or rate these candidates is entirely up to you. I don't know if you have A rubric you're going to be used that perhaps HR has used with other candidates internally, but I'll tell you what MSBA-led searches usually use, and you can do something similar or you can simply go in another direction. What we'll do

069is ask every board member to rate the candidate, every single question, you would rate them as having exceeded your expectations, having met your expectations, or did not meet. In other words, if the answer is just not good, you would give them a D for did not meet. If a candidate exceeded it and did a great job, you'd give them an E. So that's what we use, at least, to get a general sense. The more E's a candidate has means the more they exceeded your expectations of their answers to each of those 16 questions. And then meets, that's a pretty average answer. The more D's that they have indicates they didn't answer questions very well. So it will point up to some trends. It should not be used as. the tool to make your decision upon,

070but we always say if you need something to indicate who the board as a collective felt was the strongest interviewee, that's one way you could do it, E, M, or D. There's other ways that you can certainly do it, or you could simply all keep your own notes and not have something that quantifies their performance at all, but you just have a general sense of, I really thought that interview was great. I'd love to see this candidate be offered the superintendency. So you don't have to. have a metric in place. It's up to the board. So I don't know if that's something you want to talk about now since you do have the questions in front of you or if you have an alternative in mind for how you might evaluate or rank or rate

071candidates. I'll stop talking for a minute and let you think a little bit about that and share with each other what you think. Director Bennett? Well, I think a lot depends on how many candidates we're interviewing. You know, if we're doing one or two or three, then we probably don't really necessarily need to have that metric in place. But if we're doing, you know, four or five, then we might. That's just my take. So I think maybe after we decide on how many candidates we're interviewing, then we can discuss if we want to do anything like that. It seems like everybody is, almost everybody is nodding to wait until Director Bibi. I just think it's good to have a standard that helps us to, like she said, just kind of gives us a standard so

072we can go back and easily look at it. And I think it's good to know with how many candidates that we have, how many we will be interviewing in order to streamline the process if necessary. Anyone else or should we just continue and then? talk about it once we decide how many finalists we have. Should we wait? Okay. And then perhaps by then we can ask maybe, not sure, Ms. Burrows is here tonight, not sure, but we could always check to see if there's any, even if it's not tonight, we can check tomorrow and see if there's any rubrics too that might be helpful, you know, that is already used. If that's what we decide to do. Okay. All right. Thank you, everyone. And then you'll conclude the interview again. Someone will let you know

073when there's five minutes left. And I would encourage you not to let anyone go on past about 61 minutes. It's just not fair to anyone else who doesn't get that extra time. You do have a 15 minute break in between each interview. So perhaps you choose to let everyone go. five minutes long or 10 minutes long you have some room in there we build in that 15 minutes so people can fill out their evaluation forms for us so again depending if you are or are not using any metrics you might want to use that 15 minutes to quantify these somehow or just to take a break get up stretch your legs prepare for the second or third interviews so any questions on how an interview unfolds. It's pretty simple. If you have questions, let me

074know, but if this is useful, great. You don't have to follow it to a tee. Do what's best for the Bloomington Public Schools, OK? All right, deliberations. I put in a similar script for you here. Again, the opening statement, electronic meetings, go ahead and use what you always use for Bloomington. And here it is more of a suggestion. For example, typically we would start the deliberations by sharing results of the EMD, and we're not going to be doing that because we won't be at the interviews. So if there is a metric used in any way, someone could perhaps give some general descriptions of what the results were from that. But again, you don't have to use that at all. you could then jump right to what becomes the bulk of your deliberations. And we talked

075about deliberating in public during the training session we did on hiring the right superintendent. We really encourage you to focus on strengths. Keeping these interviews positive is really important. So when you are discussing, you start with the first candidate, usually go in chronological order. Chair Corman will invite folks to share strengths on, we'll pick a name, Sally Johnson. Hopefully each of you would take a turn to say something you noticed in terms of her answers or her experience or background that you really felt was strong in her presentation to the board and in her background. Each person, I would say, offer one, one or two, and try to go in order so the same person isn't always going first and the other board member is always going last. Because if you do that, the last

076person is always saying, well, I agree. with everybody else, but they don't have the opportunity to identify any of the strengths themselves. So mix it up a little bit, share the strengths. The audience input forms you're not using, but you will have that report because you're not using them on that day. You do have that report. So if someone wants to share, for example, that highlighted, summarized version that Director Starks was suggesting, someone could also then do that after you've talked all about Sally Johnson's strengths. Someone on the board could say, and in looking at our stakeholder feedback from yesterday, the strengths that the stakeholders identified for Sally Johnson included boom, boom, and boom. So you could summarize for those who are listening and watching the board deliberations what the stakeholder input resulted in. So

077you may want to do that just so folks who participated, those 30 people, know that their comments not only were provided to you in writing. But you could share a couple of words summarizing what they felt the strengths were for the one candidate you're discussing at that time. All right. Then what you might want to do is discuss who you're leaning toward. So this is something that is an art and a science both. By the time you've said all the great things about the candidates you've interviewed, someone needs to take the plunge and say, I'm leaning toward offering this position to John Doe. And here's why. And then someone else can say, I feel the same way. But I was also really impressed with Sally Jones. So this is where, when it gets to deliberations,

078the board needs to start indicating who you would like to make an offer to for superintendency of Bloomington. And it may take you 10 minutes to arrive at a consensus where everybody's leaning toward the same candidate. Or you may have a split where some of you feel strongly about this candidate. and someone else feels strongly about that candidate. That's where you really need to talk it out and discuss why you feel that this is the best person for the district. It might take you a long time. It might not. It might take you not very long at all. You'll have to wait and see how Wednesday goes. But at the conclusion of those deliberations, it might become obvious that you have a candidate that's risen to the top. And when there's been enough discussion and

079you feel like everyone's had a chance to share who they're leaning toward, someone will simply need to make the motion that we offer the position of superintendent of Bloomington Public Schools to Jane Doe and, you know, contingent on. successful negotiations and a background check. The results should be acceptable to the school board. They always have to have that background check before they are employed by the district. So the motion should include being contingent on successful background check and successful negotiations. Sometimes negotiations do fall through. It's not always the case that when you've selected someone as your sole finalist that you're able to come to agreement on a contract. If you aren't, then the board can reconvene, discuss if there is a second candidate they would like to make an offer to, or if you would

080like to consider an interim then and go with a permanent search later this winter. So any questions on the deliberations? Keep in mind that someone will need to contact all the finalists. I don't know how that's been sorted out yet, but upon the conclusion of your deliberations and your selection of a finalist. Someone should pick up the phone and call, obviously, your sole finalist to say the board have good news. The board has discussed and reached the conclusion they'd like to offer you the superintendency. Yay! And everyone's very happy. And then you come back to the board and say, yes, they are interested. Let's start negotiations tomorrow. You also have to call the candidates that were not selected. It's professional courtesy that night to let them know that the board went in a different direction.

081So just ensure that someone is in charge of, and perhaps your HR department has this all figured out. Just following up to close the loop with everyone that took the time to interview with you is really important. And then you'll want to have a press release ready to go. I'm sure Rick's team will be ready with something like that that evening as well. That's all I wanted to share with you about deliberations. It is different for every board. You don't have to follow the outline we provided, but I wanted to at least give you the suggestions so that it goes as smoothly as possible without me next Wednesday. Any questions on this? Director Sorum. And you are still muted. My apologies. Can you unmute? Thank you. A lot of them would just as soon as

082I stay muted. But anyhow, do we, it's still an open board meeting for all of this going on. So even our deliberation, when we all of a sudden get to a point where we're saying we're leaning toward, might these other candidates be watching and knowing? They very well might be you don't know you don't know if they are or are not But they very well might be. And that's one of the reasons to keep your conversations very positive, because if for some reason negotiations with your chosen finalists do fall through, if you are in the position that you're also comfortable making an offer to perhaps the second person that the board felt was a good fit, if they have listened to your deliberations and felt treated with dignity and respect, there's a very good chance

083that they'll happily take that position, even if they weren't your number one choice. And they may already know who you chose. Trust me, people are... are texting the minute the board makes the motion and it passes people will find out but you still need to make the courtesy call to them yourselves or someone in the district so right and should we just keep calling them candidate a b c d e f during it or is there some point where we can actually use their name now you're muted thank you I was saying tonight in about an hour or two, you can use their names because tonight you'll be making the finalist list public. So obviously during interviews and deliberations, you're talking about Sally and John and so on and so forth. So yes, definitely. You're

084using their names after tonight's motion passes for your finalists. Okay. Thank you. I saw a hand up earlier and I'm sorry if I don't have the right order. Director Olson. I was just going to suggest that if Chair Corman was the one who wanted to make those phone calls, that would make the most sense to me if she wants to do that. I was actually wondering, you know, depending on how many people we end up interviewing, how appropriate it is if we go really late. But I guess... I'm trying to find the schedule. Okay. It looks as though if you interview three people, you'll be beginning your deliberations at 7 o'clock. And I don't foresee you having five hours of deliberations. So we have called candidates at 1130 at night before to let them know

085of the board's decision. They're waiting to hear from you, so I think it's okay. But I would say you only need to call, and thank you for pointing this out, Director Olson. The board chair typically would make it in lieu of a consultant making that call. You really only need to call at least immediately your chosen candidate because then you need to rejoin the board meeting and talk about next steps in negotiations. Once you've adjourned, I would then pick up the phone and call the other candidates and thank them for their time. Okay. Director Steigoth. Thank you. Yes, I was going to agree that it should be our chair making the phone calls. But I would also say, let's just say the chair can decide. It's just putting her hands. If something happens and she

086can't get one of the candidates called to say, you know, they were not chosen, then she could just tell one of us to do it and we'll just leave it up to her to decide. I think she can handle it, you know. But just in case the emergency happens, I don't want to have a meeting. To say somebody else has to do it as the emergency happens and she can't do it. That's all. That's a good point. All right. I'm not seeing any other icons up anyway. So you're comfortable with next Wednesday, how your interviews will proceed and then your deliberations immediately thereafter. Correct. Good. All right. Great. Well, with that, Dr. Starks, do you have your hand up? So sorry. So sorry. So sorry. Will it just be the seven of us or will

087we have like Mary Burroughs there or Mr. Holman there? That's your call. If you would like them there, typically we recommend that only the board participate in the deliberations, but sometimes you have a technical question that you may want legal counsel's opinion on or HR's thought. If they're there as a resource for you, it's totally up to the board. So when you were talking about the words that, you know, like contingent on successful background checks and successful negotiations, I'm like, usually we're asking Mr. Holman in a meeting saying, can you make sure your wordsmith is for us? So I was just curious if they would be either at the meeting available or the chair can call them or, you know, what resources we have beyond just the seven of us. I also have some samples

088of motions that I can send to Deb tomorrow to forward to the board. And so there's suggested motions for you to use to select the sole finalist with that verbiage. So I can send you that. But as to whether or not you want your legal counsel and HR and communications team there, the board can choose to do whatever you'd like to do. It's your search. Director Steigoff. Yeah, I expected we would have that motion ready to go already written before the meeting just without the name inserted in it. so that we didn't have to try to write it was what my thought was. All right. So I will send that. If you don't like the way that it's worded, then I would ask you to check with legal counsel how you would rather that it

089be worded. But you're right. Beforehand is easier than trying to make it up on the fly and being afraid you're leaving out a keyword or something. So. All right, great. Well, I think you're set to go for next week. I'm looking at all the different pictures and I don't see any more questions. So with that, that is all that I had for this evening's meeting. At this point, I don't know if anyone wants to take a five minute break or if you're ready to dive into your discussions of your applications that you have received. Again, the only caution is do not use names. Refer to them only by their alphabet identifiers. Try to avoid anything other identifying things such as gender pronouns, where they currently work, anything like that. But I know you've had over

090a week to take a look at the applications. So I'm going to mute my video and my microphone, but I will be listening in if you happen to have a procedural question for me. So with that, I'll turn it over to Chair Corman and best wishes in your discussion of who you'll be pulling in as finalists. Thank you, Ms. Dorn. Wow. It's so great to have you working with us. I mean, this is so helpful in all the information that you have gathered, the stakeholder results and everything else, and how organized you are. I just want to say thank you for, you know, and thank you to MSDA for doing this with us. Yeah, great guidance, definitely. Okay, so I personally would like at least a five minute or a couple minutes break. Is everybody

091okay with that? Okay, five minutes. So it's 6.13. Let's come back at 6.18. Okay, thanks. Going into a little recess. Thank you. Welcome back. We're getting some feedback. Okay, good. We're good to go. Welcome back everyone. We are now going into the next part of this meeting tonight, which is our board discussion and selection of finalists or finalists to interview and make fit. So this is the fun part. This is the interesting part. So and It's the first time we're doing this, at least most of us, so please bear with us. Okay, I'm just gonna open it for... Board members, whoever wishes to start this conversation, we had had a chance to review all applications during the past week. And I'm sure that just like me, you probably have reviewed more than once, right? Several

092times now. So, yeah, let's just keep in mind the recommendations of Barb stated before. names and refer to candidates with their alphabetical assigned letter and no gender pronouns. So yeah, whoever wishes to start first, let me know. Director Olson? I only wanted to say that I was really excited about these resumes and I felt that each candidate has qualities and expertise that would be beneficial to any school district including ours. I just wanted to start off with that. Director Bennett. I guess I can go ahead and take the leap. I guess I would start with kind of just kind of sharing what I'm thinking just for my fellow board members and community members my thought process. you know, starting with what I'm looking for in a superintendent. One thing you'll never hear me say is

093that the school district is like a business and our superintendent is a CEO. I know that's a popular opinion with some members of our community, but it's an idea that I don't really agree with. I think that the school district is a school district and she ran like a school district and the superintendent. I think is the, if it's a CEO, the superintendent is the chief educational officer. So at the core of the superintendent needs to be an educator because that's the only business that a school district should be engaged in is in the business of educating children. So the superintendent should be an educator and has a classroom experience and also program management experience, hopefully at preferably at the district level for a district this size. And also looking at a district this size,

094I think we can be in the position to be extremely picky and have high standards as we should. And when I'm looking for someone to be a superintendent of a district this size, I would want someone that has the highest level of educational attainment in the field of education, meaning that they have a doctorate degree in education. I think it's also important since we have several cabinet members and principals that have doctorate degrees that the superintendent should also have a doctorate degree. So those are kind of like my two basic requirements. And then going on to the qualities I'm looking for in a superintendent, it is a relationship leader and a collaborative leader. That's kind of the same thing, relationships and collaboration. as my top thing. And then the second one is the diversity, inclusion,

095and equity. So it's right in line with what our community survey was. So when we first started this process of doing a modified search, it was because we were starting the game so late. that didn't think that we would, if we did a full search, that we would find a high level of candidates that would be willing to come in and interview in May for a job that starts in July. And so it's kind of like, well, if we do a full search or a modified search, I was more in the preference of doing the modified to see if there are some people that would apply. But of our candidates, as we can see, none of them have superintendent experience. When we did this process, I was completely mindful of there might not be anybody

096that I feel is worth bringing back to interview, but let's see if there's anyone that might be. And when we first got these applications and my first read through, I was able to come up with about two or three candidates that I thought would be, I would like to interview. And that's also setting a very high standard. And I agree with Director Olson that these are high caliber candidates that would benefit our district or any district. But for the position of superintendent, I really only saw two or three. And then when seeing the stakeholder interview, not interview, on the survey from yesterday, then I went and looked at all of the applicants again and tried to match with what our community was looking. And that helped me narrow it down to really one or two

097candidates that I could see offering the job to. And I'm really only want to interview people that I could truly see me offering the position to. I know it's fun to interview and it'd be fun to interview all these people, but I really think for. to protect their careers. I think we should only be looking at people that we're really seriously considering because if it was for like a teaching job or even an administrative job, then yeah, let's interview everybody. But when we're looking at superintendent, I think that being as high profile and public it is, and you have candidates that are interviewing multiple times for superintendent positions and they aren't selected. then people start asking, well, what's with that candidate? Why weren't they selected? And so school boards in the future might not even

098want to interview that candidate just because they've been passed over two or three or four times. So that's why I'd really like to only interview people that we are seriously considering. And in no particular order, the two candidates that I'm considering would be candidate B as in book. and candidate E as an education. And that's it. Thank you, Director Bennett. Director Olson? I'm very happy to have your experience, Director Bennett, on here. Yes, and when I said that I see each candidate as having qualities and expertise that would benefit our district, not necessarily in superintendent role, but they all have something that made me really excited. Like, wow, I could see them doing this for our district or something. But when it came down to it, I actually thought to narrow it down to three,

099and I have candidate B, candidate. E and candidate F. Director Olson can you repeat those letters please? Candidate B, candidate E, I believe those were the two that Director Emmett also said and then candidate F. I'm taking notes here so that I keep track of the letters. Right, thank you Director Olson. Director Starks. So speaking of alignment from our previous conversations, I also had B and E as my top two. And then F was my third. My only hesitation with F, well, I think for me what puts B and E above F is their current experience is an equivalent experience to a size of a district of Bloomington. Whereas F's is a smaller situation. And so that would be my only hesitation for that candidate. But I certainly could move F forward as well. So

100I had B, E, and F. Thank you, Director Starks. Director Beebe. Director Beebe, you're muted. When I was looking at candidates, I was looking at a broad range of experience. so that they had breadth, but also depth in their experience and had a track record of accomplishing things within their district. And so the ones that I chose were B, C, and F. And I wonder, Director Bennett, I missed one of your choices. You said B and E and was there any other. Those were the, I said I had three before I read the stakeholder survey, but after reading that, I narrowed it down to two. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, director. Director also your hand is up. Did you have anything? Director Staiga. Well, when I looked at the candidates, I tried to look through

101like. I would go through and take notes in one particular area, and then I would go through and take notes in a different particular area, and then I would go through and take notes again in another particular area. And I realized that the areas I were looking for also lined up. I was, much like Director Starks, very happy to see that they also lined up with what our stakeholders came back and the areas that they were looking at. And so, you know, in addition to that, I was looking for even things like in their cover letter and in their reference letters about being a relationship person and collaborative. And, you know, to me, school is about relationships, whether it is a relationship between the teacher and the student, the teacher and the parent, the parent

102and the student. or the teachers and the other staff and their building admin, or if it's between all of them and the superintendent or between the superintendent and us. No matter how you look at it, school is about relationships. So that is what I tried to look for in the letters and in even what they wrote to us. I found their cover letters to be very different and made one particular candidate rise to the top. by what they wrote about in their cover letter. So I would say that my candidate choices came down to B as in boy and E as in, I don't know, whatever, elephant. Trying to keep up with your first letters as in. Okay. Thank you, Director Steiger. Just a moment. Okay. Director Sorum. I suppose you're waiting for me. Well,

103as you know, being the only... corporate slash business person on the board, I naturally have a tendency to think of our superintendent as in the past and as others as the CEO, if you want to call him chief executive officer or chief educational officer. He is he or she is the person that is going to lead the district and therefore needs all aspects of. education, management, finance, and everything else to be involved in leading the district ahead of time. I'll just say it this way. Sometimes the best teacher doesn't make the best principal, doesn't make the best assistant superintendent, doesn't make the best superintendent. Similarly in... business, the best engineer doesn't make the best manager, doesn't make the best VP, doesn't make the best president. So a lot of different things have to be considered

104when you select the executive of the organization. And we've talked about this before, at least I have and others have. It's not healthy when you have a six to one ratio of educators to former educators to business. So the community needs, and I've heard many times, the community needs to have good representation from all of the constituents. And so it's really important that we do it in a way, and more about that in deliberation, but my two choices are B and F. Okay. Thank you, Director Sorum. All right, well, I guess that leaves it to me now. I'll be the last one here. I as well took into consideration the results that we got from the feedback that we got from the stakeholders. I have to echo the same comment. It was really nice to

105see how well it matched what the board has expressed that we like to see in our next superintendent. And considering that and considering the experience and a variety of programs and... initiatives and different roles in that are similar to Bloomington schools. I decided that my choices would be candidate B and candidate E. So I'm just gonna say the letters now just to make sure just to confirm that I got them correctly of your your choices. Director Bennett, you said candidates B and E. And Director Olson, B, E, F, looks like. Director Starks, B, E, F. Director Beebe, B, C, F. Director Steiger, B, E. Director Sorum, B, F. and Corman B.E. So let me just do one more thing here. Okay. Okay. So, wow. Looking into this then, we have brought up letters or yeah,

106candidates or an interest in interviewing candidates B, C, E, So I'm just gonna go ahead and just remove a couple names here out of the list just for our next step. And where I see the most people inclined to, inclined for candidate B for an interview or to be a finalist, it's in candidate B. Got a good number of people there. And then the next one is candidate E. And then there are four people interested in interviewing candidate F. There is only one, I'm sorry. Yeah, director Saida. I just wanted to clarify that I think that you can say, unless I didn't hear somebody correctly, that B was unanimous. So we could just put that one aside and say we all agree for B. I think everybody said B. Thank you, Director Steiger. So yeah,

107you're correct. Everybody said B. So definitely B, I think we all agree, will be a finalist. So I'm going to write that down too. And then for candidate E, we have... Six people. No, five. I'm sorry. Five. Five people. So I guess, how do we do this? Do we go here with the majority? Director Bennett, you have recent experience in going through this process? We could. We could say, well, it's unanimous that everyone wants to hear from B and a majority want to hear from E. I wasn't sure about F because I think there were three and then like three and a half. Cause I think, um, I think Heather was kind of like maybe kind of, so I don't know if she wants to, you know, chime in on that. We got, we got

108four and she said. Right. So that was the candidate that doesn't have equivalent experience in a large district. And so that was my hesitation with that candidate was just B and E have the larger district experience, whereas F does not. So that was my hesitation with F. So you could put me down as a 0.5 for F if that's a thing. So I think it comes down to, for me, it comes down to do we want two candidates or three candidates? And how does that change the process? And so, you know. Chair Corman or Director Bennett and Director Sorum since he's been through this process before too. I don't know how much that changes the dynamics between two candidates and three candidates. Director Beebe. I was thinking that we would have three candidates only because

109it gives us more comparison. And as I looked at candidate E. There was something that in my investigation gave me a very significant concern. And I don't know if this is the time to share that or not. Probably not. Okay. And then also that the candidate F is actually from a large district, but not as large as some of the others. Okay. That has brought your experience. Did you say F? Okay. Because I have you here as interested in having candidate F for an interview. Yes. I don't see why we shouldn't. Okay. Okay. I just want to make sure that I got it right. So, Director Starks, you said you... You want to be part of this list? With you, it is four. So just want to make sure if this is what we want

110to do. If we're going for a majority, it definitely looks like for candidate E, there is a majority. We got five people. At the beginning, there was a quorum if Director Stark said F, in which she did. She said, maybe I'll be willing to or something like that. No, she didn't. She just mentioned, I wrote it down, that it was from a smaller district. Director Bennett. I mean, I think the, how many people we're interviewing, I think should match on who the candidates are. I don't think we should say, well, we should do three just to have comparison. I think if it's three, if. We believe that those three candidates are individuals that we would seriously entertain offering a position to. I don't think we should have a third one just to. to say, well,

111we have three candidates. Cause like I said earlier, if there wasn't good enough candidates in here, I would say none of them that were my honest answer. I wouldn't say let's just do three just to do three. I would say none of them are people that I see that would give a superintendent job to. So why would we interview them? So, so that candidate, the candidate F1, I would say if people. really see that, uh, that, that, that one being someone they want to offer the position to, then they should advocate interviewing that person. But if it's just, just to get to three, I don't think that's a good reason. So I don't know if Heather kind of wants to elaborate where she is on, on that candidate, if she is a fourth vote or

112if she's a three and a half vote. Director Sorum. Yeah, I kind of agreed. Also, it's rather, I don't want to use the word obvious, but it's apparent one of the candidates, B, has everybody's support. Interest? Pardon? Interest? Right, interest. And then candidate E has, you know, five out of seven. So that does represent a majority. And probably that would be the best thing, you know, rather than drag it out to, well, let's re-examine candidate F or let's do this. I think maybe we should just go with two. And that would provide, as Evan said before, by people speaking, you know, when we look at the... the number 10,000 or 1,000 people submitting their things and the candidates and going through all of their things like that, it would be easy enough just between the

113two candidates to find the person that would help our district grow and do all those wonderful things that we're supposed to do with a new superintendent. Thank you, Director Olson. So Tom had mentioned F was in his top three in the beginning. And I mean, I would like to see F, however, if Tom and perhaps Heather feel very strongly that being in the same size district or larger, is the top criteria, then it wouldn't be fair to have F come to be interviewed if that's how they're going to, you know, view this already in comparison. So I would like to know their thoughts on that. Director Saiga and then Director Beebe. I can wait for them to answer her question and we might lose the question there. Okay. um i can just to be clear

114um director olsen uh the reason why i moved away from that candidate after the stakeholder surveys wasn't because of the size district it was just what our community was telling us the top two things that they need i really feel that candidates uh b and e fulfilled those um i don't see demands those expectations Whereas I thought that candidate F fell a little short of what community was looking for. And again, that's just my opinion. But that's kind of how I arrived to my two. Director Stark, did you have any additional comments on that? No, I feel like I'm in a kind of a tough spot right now. So I'm pulling up the file again. So can you guys give me a little bit of time? Yeah. Thank you. Let's go with Director Steiger. I

115have, well, I have, I guess I'm of the opinion that I would prefer to not do three if we could, if we could reach an agreement. Just, I am definitely of the opinion that once, once this, once their names are become public, some of these people, it's hard because they, this is a process that that's why people don't like it because they, they're, you know. Let's just say that we know that some of these people have interviewed other places and also were not picked. And so I would prefer to keep the names private as much as we can, unless they're really, really somebody we are absolutely 100% considering offering a contract to, then I don't want to bring in. other people for interviews. So I hope that we could reach more of a consensus on

116who we interview rather than bringing in two people because we're split. I don't want to bring in two people because we're a 4-3 split, if that makes sense. I guess another suggestion I would do, if we're going to remain a 4-3 split on the second and third candidate, I would consider just interviewing one candidate then. And if that isn't successful, then we'll have to look at doing a full search next year. Director, I'm not sure if it was Director Olson or Director Sorum who was raising hand first. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, Director Sorum. I think Director Beebe was waiting. Sorry. That's okay. He can go ahead. Okay, go ahead then, Director Searn. Thank you. I'm sorry. Just trying to reflect back on the number of times that we've done this before. As I mentioned, this will

117be my fourth superintendent selection. We have gone with just two candidates in a similar situation where one was probably more a favorite than the other, but we just wanted to make sure that... The various committees had their input too, like we're going to do with our stakeholders, where they had an opinion, you know, on which of the two, rather than throw three or maybe four into the mix. We did do two candidates. I think of in the past time where, and David will have to check with me on that, where there was just one candidate that had had like unanimous support or consensus where we went with just the one candidate, but there have been times when there was two. And so this would not be a new situation. So, Director Sorma, I think I

118understand that you have said that you will go with two. Are you still talking? Director Sorma, I'm sorry. I think you're still. You're muted. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Just with the top two candidates for interviews. Okay. And then Director Beebe and then Director Olson. I just, I've just been back looking at things again, and I think I had gotten candidate E mixed up with somebody else. But yeah, I just know that candidate F actually came from a district or comes from a district similar in size to Bloomington. So, okay. Just to make sure here, are you changing? I'm not changing my mind, but I'm just, I'm just. You know? Oh, when you said that you had candidate E mixed up, you mean with C? When I saw, not so much in my decision, but when I

119saw everybody's decision for E, I was surprised because I thought that was somebody different. Oh, I understand. Yes. And so now I see, oh, that was a different person. Now I can understand why that is somebody who is also esteemed by the board Thank you directorals That that's important to know I was going to say that when looking at my notes. I I felt that did match our survey of desirable Qualities, but I can see where we really have strong a strong one and two so I will definitely agree to B and E. Okay so you're looking now into two instead of three. Okay and then Director Starks. Yeah I'm going to concur with Director Sorm and Director Olson. I went back and looked at the file for F and I would I think I'd

120like to stick to B and E. B and E. So it seems like we're all here reaching an agreement. We're going with two, two finalists. All right. So I want to see thumbs up if that's true. That's true for me. Okay. I see the majority of people, at least, yeah, five people going with two, six actually, because I got to count myself. But, and then those two would be candidates B and E or E and B. Are we all in agreement with that? Okay. Well, I'm going to go with the number of yeses that I see. Well, I'm not in agreement. That was the question. But I understand the quorum. Thank you, Director Beals. Okay. Where do we go from here, Ms. Dorn? Great. Well, congratulations. That was very well done. I like that gun.

121Very well done. What would happen now is someone would want to make the motion to extend offers of interviews to candidates. Fill in the blank with your motion. Someone would second it and there would be a roll call vote. Once that vote has passed. then Chair Corman could read the names only of the two candidates it sounds like that you will be interviewing. Once you've read those names aloud, I'll come back on and we'll wrap up loose ends then for next week regarding schedule. Well done. Thank you. One second, Director Bennett. Give me just a moment. I gotta have my names ready here. Okay, go ahead, Director Bennett. I was just going to say that I could make the motion if the chair pleases. Yes, please. Okay. So I move that we extend an offer

122to interview candidates B and candidate E. Is there a second? I second that motion. Director Olson. Director Olson. And okay, so we have a motion by Director Bennett and it was seconded by Director Olson. All those in favor of approving this motion, please say aye. Director Beebe? Aye. Director Bennett? Aye. Director Olson? Aye. Director Sorum? Aye. Director Steiger? Aye. Director Starks? Aye. And Corman, aye. Okay, thank you. Now what? So, Madam Chair, if I may. Yes, go ahead. So now it would be appropriate for you to read the names, but I would say mix up the order and don't identify which name is which letter. Correct. That makes sense. So they don't know who we're talking about. That makes sense. Exactly. Okay. I have to admit that I am nervous about reading the names. I

123keep looking at the list to make sure we're talking about the same people. I don't end up saying a different name. So it's kind of a big responsibility. So we said candidate B and candidate E. Okay, so I'll read the names. Director also, go ahead. I'm thinking because there's two, if she mixes them up, that will be obvious too. So I am wondering, is there any way that, that, how are you, I mean, is there any way that, like, for example, that David Holman could insert the names because he doesn't have any idea who we were talking about. If you could give them to him and he could insert the names and then you don't know what order they were in. I don't know if we need to give this responsibility to him. Okay, I'm

124just going to go for it. So we are going to extend an invitation to interview for the superintendent position of Bloomington Schools to Dr. Brian Zambrino and Dr. Eric Melby. Did I say it correctly? Hey, it's a big responsibility, you know, one day. Yeah. So, well, thank you to all of our candidates or applicants and who had sent the resumes, the letter of interest, all needed paperwork for this application. We appreciate your interest in our school district. So thank you so much and we wish you good luck with everything else in your professional life. Congratulations. And I will share with Chair Corman that you're not the only one who gets nervous reading those. Usually it falls on the shoulder of MSBA and we usually quadruple check to make sure we get it right. So well

125done. And again, you did a stellar job of discussing your applicants without giving away any private data. Very well done. So congratulations. So the loose ends we want to wrap up then means that next Tuesday, the 4th, with two finalists, I'll be sending an email to your stakeholder observers that on the 4th, there will be two candidates that we will be asking them to observe interviews, having submitted their questions in advance to us. And the first one will begin at 5 o'clock p.m. That will conclude at 6 and they'll have 15 minutes to supply or upload their information as far as feedback on strengths and opportunities for growth. The second interview would be at 6.15. And then at 7.15, they'll have another 15 minutes to upload their strengths and opportunities for growth for the second

126candidate. And at 7.30, they will be done. So the commitment from stakeholders on May 4th will run from 5 o'clock to 7.30. So just want to let everyone know that's what will occur on the 4th. After 7.30, MSBA will collect all of the information electronically from those 30 individuals and prepare the report for you. We'll have that to you, if not that night, then the night before, routed through Deb again. And we'll include both an overview of strengths and opportunities for growth, as well as all of the raw data from the folks that participated next Tuesday evening in those stakeholder interviews. For you as the board, what it means then, the final schedule on Wednesday, May 5th, will be... You'll call the meeting to order at 2.55 p.m. The first candidate will interview at 3

127o'clock. The second candidate will interview at 4.15. I would encourage you at 5.15 to take a half hour break to look back through your stakeholder input from the day before, as well as the stakeholder report from the survey and your own notes so that when the board begins deliberations, then at 5.45, you're prepared to make a decision that feels best for the district and that deliberation script you can use or modify in any way that fits the board. So those are the two things I needed to wrap up were what Wednesday and Tuesday are going to look like. Does anyone have questions on how that's going to unfold? Director Starks. My question is not about the interview day itself. It's about leading up to. Should I wait? So in the last meeting we had, we

128decided that Director Beebe and I would share calling references after finalists. So should we just take care of that offline on our own and figure out how we're going to work that out? Or do we need to decide anything in the public meeting right now? It's up to you. I can send, maybe I'll send the reference check questions we typically suggest to, you know, I can send it to Deb and ask her to route it to the two of you. You then can take it from there. and just choose again two to three questions to ask of references for both of those finalists and then prepare a very short report to share on each of them then on the fifth. So I'll send those suggested questions to Deb. Thank you for reminding me about that.

129And remind me once more, Director Starks and Director Beebe, was that right? Okay, got it. So yes, you can take it from there and do your due diligence and ask the same questions of the references that you are checking on. And then also I wanted to double check what decision was made regarding negotiations with your sole finalist. If next week you do choose one of the two finalists to make an offer to, how are you going to proceed as far as sharing contract information and conducting negotiations so that you as a board can then approve the final contract at an open meeting at some point? Did you talk about an individual on behalf of the board leading that, or did you want a subcommittee to lead conversations with your selected candidate? Director Steiger? I think

130we talked about this, but I would just say that I'm fine with that falling to the chair and Mr. Holman, or it could be the chair and one other person and Mr. Holman if you wanted two people. I'm fine with that, too. I don't know that we need a whole committee of like three or anything, but. Director Searle? Yeah, I will volunteer to be on that negotiation with Mr. Holman and the chair, only because I remember some things that Mr. Holman doesn't, and he remembers some things that I don't remember. So it would be good. And then to have the chair there, too. There's just a few fine points that sometimes get caught up and we need to discuss. If that's okay, if that's okay with the group. Director Bennett? Yeah, I think this is

131right in Jim's wheelhouse. So I think he would be great at doing this. I don't necessarily think we need two people. I would be fine just him doing it himself with Mr. Holman and perhaps with Mary. We have our HR director there. One question I had is that what type of, what are we going to use for a model contract? You know, are we going to look at the current superintendent's contract and just, you know, make some updates to that and just change the salary? Or, I mean, that's a 15-year-old contract. Or do we want to start with the MSBA model contract? Is there things that, I don't know if Mary's looked at the contract, the superintendent contract, things that she would like to update to make sure that... It's, you know, in line with

132other administrative contracts, because those are things we probably want to iron out before we get into the negotiation. So it's almost like it's would be wise to have a small little subcommittee meet with Mary before we even do the interviews to kind of get the contract ready to go. So when we're negotiating or Jim's negotiating, the contract's already ready. We just have to negotiate the salary. I don't know if that makes, I don't know, Mary, if you have anything to add to that. I have not looked at other superintendent contracts or MSBA's model. I know there is one, but I can certainly start pulling if you guys want those, that information. Well, in looking at our current superintendent's contract, do you think that we need to make updates to that to make it more in

133line with our other administrative contracts or should it be completely different? Just to point out Tom that our current superintendent's contract is based on the MSBA model. And he was one of the early ones that got rid of all of that, all the trinkets that you saw on real early superintendent contracts that were an attempt to skirt around the salary cap way back when. So I would suggest you're probably going to use the MSBA model. It's very good. There are some things that, besides salary, that you might have to negotiate. It's possible. One of your candidates has more vacation time than our current superintendent did, and they may not want to give it up. And there's a few other things that might crop up. But in general, I think the MSBA model is really good.

134I agree. So I think it's back to the question, should we have that contract ready to go before we identify a candidate? And then so it's just, okay, now let's just negotiate or do we want to wait until we have a candidate and then do the whole thing all at once? Actually have it ready to go. Except for whatever it is you're going to negotiate, like vacation time, sick leave, severance, salary, that kind of thing. Okay. Just trying to make a, you know, Jim's job easy. Too many things open and, and then they'd say, well, I don't know. I need to go back to the board to see what the board thinks about this. Yeah. Make it easier for them. Give them some type of parameters that are already pre-established. Well, you know, that's true.

135I mean, if somebody wants the 500,000 for salary, it might not work, but, um, I, I, I was working on it this week. Just, just an anticipation. That's great. Good. Yeah, I'm definitely good with director's forum. I think, you know, you got that experience and you got that type of talent perspective that makes you the right person to do this negotiation part. So I don't know, Ms. Dorn, what is it? Do you suggest that I be part of it along with the both of them or it's just not necessary? And can director's forum just do these by himself? It's not necessary. Sometimes when more than one board member is involved in something such as this, there are people who say the open meeting law would apply. So if there is one board member involved, then

136there's no requirements for the open meeting law to apply to the negotiations directly with the contract. It's a great idea to have your legal counsel and HR person there as well. So I wouldn't say it's certainly required, Chair Corman. You're welcome, of course. But if there is someone on the board who wants to take it on, is familiar with the contract, enjoys negotiating, very often it makes sense to have one person from the board given permission from the rest of the board to iron everything out, bring it back, of course, to the board's consideration in an open meeting to look at the entirety of the contract and approve it at that point. So certainly if that's something you want to do, I think that would work great. Yeah, that's great. Then Director Sorum, then you

137work with Mr. Holman and Ms. Burles. Ms. Burles. Yes. Great. That would be great. Is everybody good with that? Got to make sure that everybody's okay. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. I had a couple of quick closing comments, if it's all right. Is there anyone else that has comments, questions about the process for next week? Are we good? All right, terrific. Thank you so much. So officially, we punted on one of the questions with what kind of metrics we were going to use to evaluate the candidates. And we were like, we'll see how many we interview. So I don't know if we want to quickly revisit that being that we're only going to be interviewing two of them. I don't know if we really need to have any kind of rating scale, but it's

138fun to see what other board members think. Well, I think Mary wanted to say something first. Go ahead, Mary. I think if you have, if you guys decide on a metrics of exceeds, not met and didn't meet, you have to have a common understanding of what that means for each question that you're asking, because, you know, Jim's. exceeds might be someone else's mets. So you have to have a discussion on what would it be a met expectation, answer, response versus, hey, this person has a great answer. Because all of you will have different ideas of what that means. So if you have a matrix, you also have to take time to discuss what does that mean to you guys so that you're, or else it doesn't mean anything because you all have a different standard

139on what that is. So that's my only caution is when you think about matrix and responses. to have a common understanding of what an answer would be and where it falls on that scale. Well said. And we have used a plus, zero, and minus. You know, a plus for a good answer, minus for a negative answer, and then just a zero if it was just a plane. You know, that's worked before, too, so I don't know. That's just a suggestion. Director Steiger. Thank you, Mary Burroughs, because I totally agree with that, what you said. That was very well stated. That's been a frustration in other evaluations when there isn't a common, you know, agreed upon. So I would agree with Director Bennett that with two people, I think that I can write down notes on

140their answers. I don't need a matrix. I think I can figure out either, you know. This one or this one, pretty much. I don't think I need a matrix to do that. So I think we could just do the interviews. Director starts. Yeah, so I was just going to concur with that. I mean, we did this last process without any formality to it and got through it. So I think I'd like to just continue that same approach. And I agree with that. So we're good going without? It seemed like it. Director's turn. Yeah, perfect. Good. All right. Thank you. And thank you for raising that, Director Bennett. I agree. Depending upon the interpretations, it can be very subjective as to what succeeds and what doesn't. So the idea that you came to such a wonderful

141consensus without using that formality will probably hold very, very true for you next Wednesday as well. So technically, I won't see all of you again. This will be my last meeting with the school board. I will be very involved with the stakeholder interviews on Tuesday at which you will not be present. So I wanted to just take this opportunity to thank you for working with MSB on the search. Our work is not done yet. I'll be sending all kinds of follow-up information to you through Deb tomorrow. But then after next Tuesday evening's activities, Wednesday morning, I will again through Deb get you the stakeholder summary and the raw data for the stakeholder interviews. But then our role in this search will be done. So I wanted to say before I exited stage left how much

142I've enjoyed working with you and how much MSBA has appreciated the opportunity to assist in a modified role with the search for the Bloomington superintendent. If it's all right, the end of next week, I will send a very short survey. It's about a two-minute survey through Deb. There's a link where we simply ask. What did we do well? What could have gone better as far as the role MSBA played in your search? If anyone has thoughts on that, we'd love to collect feedback so we can continue to improve our services. So look for that survey. If you have about two minutes free the end of next week when you see it, please do fill it out. It's helpful for us and our members that we work with in the search services. We also want that

143survey, if we can, have it filled out by all of the board members, but also by the district's point of contact. So Deb, I would encourage you and thank you if you would take a moment to fill it out as well. And along those lines, I want to specifically thank Deb. for her work in facilitating the communication between MSBA and the board. It was a pleasure, truly. Sometimes that internal person that is the glue is the key to everything going smoothly. And I have to tell you, this has gone very smoothly. So shout out to Deb. I know you're watching wherever you are. And thank you for the opportunity to work with you on that. So even though you won't see me anymore as part of your search, unless for any reason you want to

144conduct a full search, at a later time we can talk. But otherwise, well done. You can call me anytime. Just because I won't be at your meetings doesn't mean you can't email me, pick up the phone, call with questions. We are MSBA. Our job is to serve our members. So whatever and whenever you need assistance with the superintendent search or anything else, please reach out. we are here for you if you need anything so that's all i've got a great job tonight it's been a lot of um interesting conversation and i have to congratulate you on a job very very well done so thank you thank you just one final question barb uh on behalf of our financial executive director when will you be sending the bill I never get asked that question. That's awesome.

145When I hear that you have selected a sole finalist, we will get a bill out to you and within 30 days if you could pay us, that would be awesome. So thank you for asking, Director Sorum. That was really a nice segue to sort of closing the loop on MSBA. Pass that along to our finance director. Director Olson. I just wanted to say that it was nice to meet you and work with you as well. And also, this just reminded me your conclusion to how it went. Reminded me of when I was on jury duty one time and the judge called us all back into his chambers to say that we all worked together so nicely and it went so smoothly and to thank us. And it kind of reminded me of that. So thank

146you for that. Director Beebe. I also wanted to say thank you, Bar, because you've been so informative and your organization has been priceless and just really appreciate all the details. And it's helped to alleviate the fears and apprehensions having never done this before. So thank you. Thank you. Dr. Bennett. Yeah, so Barb, I have the rare distinction of working with you in two searches in the past four months, and you are a master at what you do. So I can't thank you enough for helping us with this process and that one and the service that you provide for all of our school districts in Minnesota and helping them with this process. So I think the state is lucky to have you. Thank you so much for everything. Well, thank you so much. I have to

147say I was not trolling for compliments at all. I just wanted to thank you. You have been a pleasure to work with. You really, truly have. I also want to thank Mary and Rick for their parts of serving on the cabinet and for the work that they have done in supporting this. This was a new sort of a search for us to do pieces of it, but not all of it. So it went really well, and I want to congratulate you. I'm going to follow this and see how it goes then. Toward the end of next week, I'll be checking in. I wish you all the best. Enjoy next week. You're at a really... really exciting point in your search. You're on the cusp of finding new leadership for Bloomington and I'm excited for you.

148I hope you enjoy it very much. So thanks for the opportunity. Again, I have nothing else. So if the board has nothing else, I think at this point someone should make a motion to adjourn and you could be out of here by 7.20. That'd be awesome. So thank you very, very much, everyone. Thank you so much, Barb. We've learned a lot from you. Thank you. I move we adjourn. There are seconds. Second, Bibi. Okay, all those in favor of adjourning this meeting, please say aye. Director Beebe? Aye. Director Bennett? Aye. Director Olson? Aye. Director Sorum? Aye. Director Steiger? Aye. Director Starks? Aye. And Corman, aye. This meeting is adjourned. I didn't miss anyone, right?