February 24, 2021 Special School Board Meeting

001it got quiet huh you're trying to be professional all right we're all here okay wayne we're ready to go i'm sorry joey i said wayne wayne's doing the hockey game joey we're ready to go good evening the february 24 2021 special school board meeting clerk johnson could you please call the roll for us hello uh yes uh director anderson here director shaw here director chu yeah treasurer goggins here character here kirk johnson is here thank you uh we have no community members present and i've received no notice of community input so with that we can move right into our reports and non-action items which is the superintendent candidate interviews so we are we also have in attendance the representatives uh tony johns and ken draxeth from uh school exec connect who helped with the search

002who were observing um so dr lake welcome thank you uh as you know you're the first interviewee tonight and the way we'll do this is um we have 15 questions that we'll ask you will rotate through us as board members asking those questions it'll be the same set of questions asked to you and the other candidate asked by the same people we'll have about 75 minutes total an hour and 15 minutes total so on average about five minutes per question to answer if a question is asked by someone that appears to have been answered earlier then at that point the one of us will ask you if there's anything more you want to go into in terms of depth and detail about that question but we'll try to get through them all so just kind

003of time your responses accordingly um and uh then we'll go from there after the interviews are complete i think we'll be ready to to deliberate um and we'll see if we need additional questions we did um tentatively uh have a meeting on the schedule in case there are additional questions that we felt needed to be answered by both candidates that we didn't get through tonight uh but we'll only do that if we if we need to do that to go that route so with that any any questions for you i guess initially um about the process or pretty clear great thank you the president has given me some good practice throughout the day there you go wonderful wonderful yeah so with that i guess why don't we go ahead and begin and i think curtis

004you have the first question and i i don't necessarily feel the need to call out names as we go we all have the list i believe with the questions enumerated with us so after director johnson asks this question then we can just kind of proceed accordingly so curtis after you all right all right good evening dr lake good evening your first question within five minutes tell us who you are and how that impacts you as a leader for example what are your interests what motivates you personally professionally any key achievements positive or negative seminal moments in your life career etc thank you well i'll start by saying it's absolutely a privilege to be considered as a candidate for the superintendency of roseville area schools our school district has a very rich and proud history of

005excellent leadership and it's my honor to be considered for the position i'll start by saying my wife beth and i live in roseville area schools together for the past 10 years best three older children connor jacques and ginger have graduated from roseville area high school throughout the past eight years and we have a six-year-old daughter quincy who attends emmett d williams school as a kindergartner we're very proud parents in the district and champions of the district and again proud residents of roseville professionally i am an outstate farm girl moved to roseville in 1997 and taught physical education and health to primarily 10th grade at roz i taught for seven years and pursued my education and had a lot of wonderful mentors and had a fabulous opportunity to take the position of associate principal and activities

006director at blaine high school in the anoka hennepin district and that was a real opportunity for growth as there was that's a five high school district so we learned to replicate our practices that were moving well i also had opportunity to really transform that activities department it was a traditional athletics department and we really shined a light on the fine arts and student activities and programming then i had opportunity in 2004 to move back to roseville really attracted back to a first-rate suburban school thriving school district with a more diverse population and strong equity vision that just had been beginning at that point and again that was an area of weakness and i don't care had it been so that was an easy draw for me i worked in the same position and really had

007the same opportunity to turn that program from athletics to activities in roseville which was a great fit i worked in that role for three years and then i was named principal at roseville area high school in 2009 and served in that role for eight years um i think a lot of my experiences and highlights in that role will come to light most likely in the interview so i'll save some of those stories and then in 2017 i was named director of secondary education in roseville overseeing secondary schools along with numerous other initiatives and the next year i was able had a wonderful opportunity due to some personnel shifts to oversee k-12 so i was named assistant superintendent and had for the first chance in my career an opportunity to work with elementary schools and supporting

008our elementary principals along with secondary principles and that was again a wonderful growth opportunity it really aligned with quincy beginning elementary schools as well so taking an intimate view both as a parent and an educator and a leader in that regard and that's where i am today as as far as you had a beautiful question to outline the personal background i think what motivates me is um high job satisfaction and impacting positively students and families um really working hard towards eliminating racial oppression and systemic racism has been my passion personally i like to move i grew up outside on the farm i like to exercise and move every single day and of course my family is a passion of mine so thank you for the first question um frank i think you're next oh you're

009on mute all right i thought i was number three but uh that that's why the um embarrassing silence you know i've just misread something um here we go so uh welcome jenny thanks sorry about that what are the significant challenges and strengths that our district needs to consider as it plans for the next five years please describe how you might approach working to meet one or more of these challenges in the next year i appreciate the question i in reflection i would think the answer is the same ins in many regards our strengths are our challenges i think there's three issues that we need to spend significant time upon and that is all surrounding the pandemic and the experiences of families and healing the inequities that families are feeling at this time i think about

010what trauma has the pandemic has caused both economically and in regards to health in many families the disparities that have been exaggerated and have grown during this time of distance learning and hardships for families in terms of connecting to learning and helping their students i think about the racial trauma that has occurred after the murder of george floyd and the opportunity again to create that healing and how are we well along the third piece would be the political conflict in our nation at this time and all the healing that needs to occur i think about the phrase returning to better i've said that several times at the board table i think that's the challenge when working with our staff and families we need to retain what we've done differently because there are strengths to what

011we've done this current school year we've put together an entire distance learning plan blended learning plan we need to retain those initiatives such as our multi-tiered systems of support the way we engage families in different ways than we've ever done before the way that students have embraced technology the amount of knowledge that teachers have in terms of teaching differently through different channels and different platforms and then the challenge would be we return in the fall at some point to blended learning or full in-person learning depending on where we are with the pandemic and we have to institute all the things that we're working for so i think the strength is that we do several pieces of that well but how can we combine both efforts now into an improved return to better system with an

012eye constantly on racial equity i get the next question which is in a lot of ways kind of a follow-up to what you've just talked about how will our education system be transformed by our experience in the pandemic recognizing the toll it has taken on family students staff how will you help all to move forward please center your comments on student learning and overall well-being that is a springboard question or a connected question um i think about the return to better again in three buckets and the first bucket would be instruction and so how we have adopted new grading practices certainly at the secondary level again our practices around connection and communication with families and how we can come back stronger in that regard i think about the next bucket being operations think of how

013quickly we transformed our whole organization around transportation and food services and nutrition and instructional technology and getting technology in the hands of our families thousands of devices and wi-fi hotspots uh that was amazing i don't see that ending i think that needs to continue regardless of whether we're in person or not and then the third bucket i see as innovation what how is school how is instruction going to look differently because i believe we'll have to offer an option of distance learning even if we're full in person in the fall i think some students i know that some students have experienced a great deal of success and distance learning has served them and their families very very well and is also connected to alternative education and credit recovery at the high school level thank you

014um how will you build trusting relationships and inspire the board teachers support staff administration and the unions to collaboratively work together to achieve the district's vision and can you give us an example of a situation where you inspire the team to successfully achieve a common goal well that's an exciting question because that's exactly what will need to happen in order for us to pass renew our operating levy in november we must collaborate and work together and build consensus as to the superintendent profile i'm grounded in i don't think it's necessarily important that i have a background in athletics but i do make that relationship and that connection to being a head coach and to putting together a team and building consensus and building collaboration inspiring others i think uh chair it starts with leading by

015example and i would never expect something of someone else that i was unwilling to do for myself i think also in terms of building trusting relationships those are scaffold based on the relationships i currently have and the trust that i've currently built within the community as a taxpayer as a resident as a parent and again teacher building administrator and district administrator this is where my heart lies and i have a foundation of relationships that we can build upon as an organization and i look forward to that opportunity so um how do you stay aware and connected with what is happening on the ground with our students our families and staff please give examples uh of what has worked well and what has not been effective that's a great question and i think about relationships if

016i only had one word to answer that question i would say relationships the question started and i would see students stay connected to students hear their stories understand their families i've counted out how many avid mentees i've had over the last 14 years and there have been 21 students and to stay connected with the majority of those students after high school and hearing their story and getting to know their families and understanding the trauma that they experience to be better informed i think also staying connected to going back to the previous question how are teachers feeling i previously served in the last eight cycles of teacher negotiations how are all our different labor management situ groups feeling how are families feeling um and i think again that starts if you have the trust you can

017hear how they're feeling i'm not sure in education if traditionally we've done a good job of soliciting input and and creating that constant improvement cycle and that solicitation of critical feedback so that we can grow and learn and get better i think that also reminds me of white supremacy culture and how that needs to be dismantled around perfectionism and defensiveness and how we have to open critique and encourage mistakes as an organization in order to grow i really look forward to shifting the culture in that regard as well thank you hi jenny thanks for being here it's todd thank you um my question is similar to mike's it's about building trust in relationships but a bit more i'm targeted with with the community a broader public especially business leaders elected leaders give us an example

018of an initiative that has worked in building trust um and you know and maybe maybe one that was not as effective one that could have gone a little bit better but here's your thoughts sure i i again i'll maybe answer in the same way in 2018 i was approached by a community member who was very interested in volunteering in the schools and at the time i was working on college and career readiness in our schools and so we partnered on that initiative and i'll thank jenny allen publicly for that we canvassed the community canvassed uh the business councils had formed great relationships with the rotary created all of those partnerships and then of course worked closely with the teachers at roz because they're the experts they're creating and driving the student interest for those courses

019and then pairing the interest of students with the businesses and then we overall we created 10 career pathways and all generated towards living wage careers and so we also attached college credit articulation apprentice and internship opportunities so that's a significant qualitative data point and work that we got done that we believe adds to the quantitative piece of improving graduation rates and of course making significant gains for students of color taking college credit bearing courses um that was a wonderful time spent and the challenge i would connect to that is i think we can do even better i think we still have untapped potential in our community i believe we have a huge retail and industry base that we still can access more support and more partnerships i i don't unfortunately i don't think we can

020rely on the legislature to fully fund our schools and we need to create continue to be creative in the way we seek funding both other than our voters and the legislature all right thank you okay me again okay describe a situation where you had to make a decision uh where there were strong opposing views and tell us how you arrived at that decision how you worked through the situation and outcome and please share anything you learned from that experience yeah thank you if everybody could reflect back with me the summer of 2016 that was the summer that philando castile was killed within our school district and significant again racial trauma repetitive racial trauma happening with our students and we made a pledge that we were going to take a stand a larger stand for racial

021equity in supporting our students and our students we had black lives matter black lives matter activists come in and work with our students at roseville area high school and supporting their efforts and we partnered our staff with them we also made the significant decision as an administrative team to support a student walkout that occurred in late october of that fall if you remember we also partnered with the community and roseville area police we closed the roads we made it a safe opportunity for students to walk out and walk to mde and voice their concerns we supported in their language a demand list which was very powerful and brilliant students in terms of requests to change curriculum and have their voices and experiences emulated within that classroom environment both instructional pedagogy and simply the environment and

022the narrative expressed in courses and students were of course spot on as they always are and that really began the path towards the educational equity and instruction and curriculum compass and so that that was just a tragic but beautiful start to a transformation in that work in our schools the tough decision so the decision to support the students was not difficult but the difficult piece came on the back side of the conflict that was created within the community i think roz was a again beautiful brilliant school that's demographic changed more quickly than the community understood as a city so i spent weeks fielding calls from concerned community members that we would allow students to walk out right and every call included racially charged language i mean it was telling me as principal that roz wasn't

023what it once was right this isn't ramsay any longer and i was very proud of what we've become and so therein lies the conflict in those conversations and my opportunity to be an anti-racist leader and stand up as a white ally this follows on what you've just said jenny uh this question what is your approach to ensuring that the district recruits hires and retains high caliber personnel committed to the district's vision how would you approach increasing the hiring of staff of colors i appreciate that i think the district has done a good job of hiring support staff of color and recruiting entertaining and promoting administrators of color we have a huge gap that exists within our teachers of color within the classroom currently there are i learned from our human resources department earlier today there

024are 700 teachers of color licensed in the state of minnesota primarily working in saint paul minneapolis schools so we really need to unpack why not roosevelt because certainly we would hire if possible knowing the candidate pool is fairly low at the same point i think we have to take a broader view at where are we allocating our resources because i don't think we can remain passive in our pursuit for teachers of color i think we have to become more aggressive and strategic and allocate some resources in that regard i think we can put more energy into our grow your own program i'm proud to say we hired three candidates of color that were ras graduates as teachers in our own system and we need to put that program on boost we need to continue to

025invest in our non-licensed staff towards their tiered path towards licensure within our classrooms and finally i think we can be more strategic around recruiting other than folks who apply in roles while i believe we can become more aggressive in that regard it's absolutely essential to hire more teachers of color okay i get to have the next question how do you meet the educational needs of all students making sure that students who struggle and those who are most successful continue to grow academically give an example of how you have demonstrating being able to meet a wide breadth of student needs yeah thank you it's the word inclusion comes to my head to my mind as i take notes i think when we think of meeting the needs of students of color or meeting the needs of

026students in our special education program we think only of them and i think if the community if we as a system thought about all of our students in that same regard so if i'll use my own child as an example if quincy is in kindergarten and she is able to spend time working with students with disabilities that is to her advantage as a human as she moves through the system it doesn't only benefit a child with a disability it will certainly benefit quincy i think the same regard in for our equity work when our students of color are thriving and their voices heard and can be seen in the classroom and in the curriculum that is of quincy's benefit she needs to see leaders of color teachers of color uh her peers speaking up i'm

027thrilled it's it reminds me of senator wellstone when we all we all do well when we all do well and working together as a system it also reminds me of critical race theory i reflect upon the interest convergence if you follow me for historically civil rights gains are made when white folks are benefiting right we need to make sure that everyone understands that our allocation of resources dedicated to our equity journey is a benefit to our whole community right we will celebrate when we close all racial gaps in roseville so as you know eliminating predictability of outcomes by race continues to be a major factor for the school district can you please identify what you think our district is doing today that you believe we should continue doing what we should be doing more or

028less of and what we should start doing this i have to always write down the three-part questions so if i don't get to part two or three if you could remind me okay i'll i'll jump in okay great yeah and i think this question really connects to the previous question around inclusion and instructional practices because i think of our avid program and i think about in 2008 we offer two sections at the secondary level which is approximately 60 students and in 2016 my last year as principal we offered 14 sections so not only are we benefiting more of our elective students 350 or so students we turned that small college readiness program into school-wide national demonstration status for rams and ra's so that started as a a practice for students at risk under-represented students college

029readiness to school-wide instructional practice where all students are benefiting i just wanted to connect it to that last question so we have an instructional framework 7 through 12 and then to your question chair i would think i am very interested as superintendent in exploring an instructional framework k6 so that we can more ensure even experiences for our students and i'm certainly interested interested in avid in that regard as well so it can be a k-12 system because it's really our significant evidence proven practice in roseville area schools proven results time and time out and it also impacts graduation rates and rigorous courses and eliminating disproportionality in students of color taking rigorous courses we eliminated all of that with a full incorporation of schoolwide avid so then the the second part of that was is there

030anything that we should be less of that we're doing now that you think is not really yielding results that is the question i think that would come when looking i i i think look taking a look at a strategic plan would most likely occur after an operating levy and just hitting the reset button button and ensuring that our values are in place and that our budget reflects our values and i think that would be a time to look at it so when i talk about spending more money or changing where the pots of money go whether it be avid or more resources for human resources for teachers recruiting teachers of color that does have to come from somewhere but i don't know what this time i'm prepared to say who doesn't deserve that right because

031those are really difficult decisions that would take a lot of collaboration from a lot of folks yeah and i think there was a third part uh it was what we should start doing okay anything new that that we aren't doing at all yeah i think we took a big step forward two years ago when we implemented the elementary wind time on the the direction of jake mondelini and teaching and learning i think we need to get closer to having that common expectations across elementary schools and that could be through an instructional framework we also have a large variety in curriculum approaches at each elementary school and i know that takes a lot of time and a lot of work but i think it's something we should explore thanks hi it's uh me again um so

032how do you ensure that staff at all levels are educated and trained on advancing educational equity and excellence how do you hold folks accountable to authentic implementation centered on student learning and how do you measure success please share how you have succeeded and actually struggle in the area there's several parts of it you're testing my note-taking skills and just just the time you know we have a lot of time so we don't you know there's no new rash right yes so so when i stop with the incomplete answer please continue to ask questions i your question rose reminds me again of our educational equity compass and in roswell i believe we've done a wonderful job of living by our values and our equity vision and i believe we have buy-in from our entire school community

033in large part the vast majority and i believe we're ahead of school districts in that regard i think our professional development has been excellent we need to complete the implementation of a three-year equity plan and i feel we're about halfway through the the piece we need to get to is the full social justice aspect along with getting to the accountability measures as you had mentioned so there are rubrics for accountability but we haven't implemented them in a formal way so right now for the most part teachers use those rubrics as a reflective measure for their own practice i would love to see a plan put in place backwards mapping it would be implemented along with teacher development and evaluation and partnered with lmc and education minnesota roseville it could be used for teacher evaluation but

034then closer to the now i would love to see that be more holistic and organic from teachers and working with peer coaches and peer teachers and mentoring teachers and then even brought down to our student teachers in our grow your own program and then i think a final loop that's missing in that same regard is the feedback from students i think some teachers do a wonderful job of regularly seeking feedback and then using that information to impact their performance or instruction and i think there's other teachers who don't do that as regularly and that could be even universal to the goal would be to emulate uh eliminate the lottery write the education lottery depending on what teacher you get or what class you get we'd like to eliminate that when i talk with students and

035i talk with my avid mentees what's going well what about the teacher and so to unpack the why and if we can unpack the why and what's going well and have that practice emulated throughout our system think of how well we'd be doing and i think you asked another how would you if it was working yeah of course student achievement and student achievement would be unpacked in different ways too because i don't think we can look at achievement just through standardized assessments i think we also have to look at that qualitative piece the student voice the student leadership student opportunities even down to the personal learning community level so we can look at formative data and not just that standardized summative piece i get excited talking about this so if i please interrupt i think

036um may i i just want to make sure we answer all the questions there please so you so share so that the final things about share how you have succeeded and struggle in the area succeeded i think you can go back 10 years at ra's we began our equity journey through our plc's at that time and we put in place a structure with lead teachers and they would provide the coaching we required all teachers to set forth equity goals and have racial focus groups um that was the first time that the district had done that and i think that was a significant success i began we began to change the culture in plcs where we weren't having department meetings but we were talking about data and instructional practices that were impacting making a positive impact

037for students of color and i think that can be seen all the way through to now my work is around monitoring of progress and so looking at all schools and working closely with principals and every student right inclusive of el and special education and students of color we currently are working through dr khalifa's culturally responsive school leadership and using the relationship to our data analysis protocol so that every question we ask about data in instructional practice we view through the lens of race so i think those are two examples of concrete progress do you want to say anything where you have struggle i think it's always a struggle i think i i think it's a struggle because we care so much and we don't always see the progress that we need to see i think

038the struggle is back to that white supremacy culture of perfectionism and teachers really needing to be vulnerable in where they need help and and also the minnesota aspect of i'm doing really well and this is the practice i'm using in being able to be open about that in terms of replicating what is working within those plcs but i think that's a daily struggle for folks thank you especially at the secondary level when they're teaching in singleton courses and the plc looks much different than for example elementary school fourth grade plc two different experiences okay jenny i want to switch gears just a bit to um finances uh please outline your top three priorities for achieving financial stability and transparency for the school district and the key action you would take in the short term and

039long term to implement the priorities thank you uh we we talk about finance and i think about the levy coming up and i know the board hasn't taken action on that um but i think every single step after the new superintendent or even the new superintendent is named i think a priority needs to be closely partnering with superintendent sikoli throughout the spring and creating a plan leading up to next november and then really significantly working that plan you use the word being transparent and that's the approach i would take and that's the approach superintendent supoli has taken as well transparent leadership open and honest with our community and stakeholders um that is the priority and that is the healing that needs to be done with our community because they need to trust us that we

040will be back to better and we need to prove that to our community in order to get them right with uh to vote um our priorities need to stay focused on equity i'm very familiar with the board's goal of a three percent fund balance along the way and the school district's finances we had i forget the analogy about the tide that we had used right where the tide goes up and now the tide is going to draw back here this summer and back into a normal position there will be no additional funding we need to make that clear to our again our community members with the one-time funding from the state and federal government those funds were spent and are being spent on the additional needs of our families right around technology and operations and

041nutrition services and custodial costs and extra substitute teachers the list goes on and some of those costs i don't imagine going away and we have no guarantee of additional funding after july 1st i also spent time thinking about how this summer is going to look and talking about recovery services and special education and credit recovery and enrichment services for our students and families this summer we fear as district leaders a shortage in teachers potentially because of the exhaustion and trauma that everyone has experienced so how can we create programming and fund programming as a priority that is i think reasonable in scope for teachers and powerful and impactful yet for students and families so those are some of the priorities i reflect upon but it will be working the plan all the way up through

042november thank you okay um you you've already started um addressing this question but uh we'll we'll throw it out anyway um uh our current operating levy which is eight million dollars or roughly eight percent of our general fund budget is scheduled to expire if voters do not renew it this fall what are your strategies to make sure enough voters support passage of the offer operating levy referendum well my strategy would be we have absolutely no option but to pass that levy there's absolutely no option the cuts would be we've used the word draconian devastating i think the strategy would be again to be very honest and transparent with our community what would happen with eight million dollars in cuts to the school district student programming would be slashed staffing would be slashed really deep and

043hurtful cuts to the progress we've made especially in regards to wrapping our arms around extra support services i think at the same extent we have to make those guarantees come to life for the return to better and we can show what can be done with additional funding if the board chooses to pursue a second question for an increase on those dollars and to me i would prioritize again the supports and the healing the social and emotional learning that we need to provide for students and staff i believe we need additional support staff and i consider those folks psychologists school social workers school counselors student support um absolutely because our students need it we've learned that if we have those high quality relationships through a system of intervention students achieve right those are not separated you

044absolutely need the relationship before achievement can happen and that k-12 on the path to graduation not to mention i you're a big fan too as am i in all the enrichment experiences that students engage in outside of the classroom and some of it's within the classroom such as music but much of it is outside of the classroom fine arts and athletics and academic programs many students express that's a driving reason why they pursue school and a big a large part of what they're missing during this time of the pandemic as well thank you we will pass the levy no option jenny we now arrive at the uh the closing questions and so i ask you please tell us why you would like to be the next superintendent of roseville area schools the strengths you bring

045to the position and areas where you leverage the strengths of others and why ultimately we should hire you well i certainly didn't mean to go too fast so if anyone has more questions we can have added i'm happy to chat and i think i've drank a gallon of water this evening so i my voice is hanging in there i i really reflect upon frank the superintendent profile and i read through each of those and as i did my preparation for the interview took notes and really spent a lot of time reflecting upon that and i believe that profile absolutely defines my leadership style not only style but attributes and experiences it wasn't i think some people think that maybe it was an easy decision that i was going to apply for the superintendent role when

046dr sokoli retired and it did take some reflection because the i take the role so seriously it's such a large responsibility within the community that will impact my life and my family and we are ready for that move we believe that we can have a significant impact i think about my strengths and connection to how you'll leverage the strengths when you ask that i think about the relationships i think about the the conflict i think when you're an administrator for 14 years if you're not doing the work you may have no conflict but if you if everyone in the community had a vote if i were to become the next superintendent i understand that i would not have everyone's vote because if you're not on the side of inclusion and you're not on the side

047of racial equity i've had many difficult conversations with many folks and made many folks unhappy in that regard right we have to share our values i think the ability that i've had the opportunity to create teams that we've mentioned right teams as an activities director teams as high school principal when i started at raz we had zero administrators of color and when i left we had four administrators of color and we were better for it so much stronger in terms of our connections to students and families in our decision making with a diverse array of perspectives i think about the ability to work through conflict to work with our education minnesota roseville to have difficult conversations to partner with those leaders and performance teachers out again to be clears to be kind and i've been

048always a coach at heart and been able to give that feedback and work with students and families and staff i've had a history of partnering in the community i think of north northeast youth and family services i think about suburban ramsey family collaborative i think about again all the business councils that we've partnered with i think about the relationships i have with all the neighboring school districts you know folks in general and and i don't mean to sound arrogant in that way but they're calling me to see what roosevelt's doing and what we're doing what i'm doing as a leader right we were ahead of the game in terms of our rtr roadmap to return planning that was a huge collaborative effort in on taking this past spring if you remember i think we can

049agree that we all did our best teachers did our best but all schools and teachers were completely autonomous and independent in doing their best and having expectations getting through the spring with distance learning and then we came together with over 150 staff members who create a plan with over 30 different working groups to change our approach to instruction and grading practices and assessment and student support in sel and ntss we did that all over the course of about two and a half months i think our mistake was in visiting with dr sakuli not getting community input sooner in that process and the challenge for us was mde was always very i would call delayed in making their decisions and i'm sure rightfully so right they're processing through so many issues but we didn't want to

050come out to our community with a plan and then take it back so quickly and put out a different plan so we were always waiting waiting um and i think the plan has come to fruition very well i think we have great buy-in from our staff and our communities i think our families appreciate the expectations and know what they can expect from their classroom teachers i think they were making really well informed decisions around distance or blended learning um just i maybe digress a little bit but i think that's an example of my leadership in bringing folks together to build consensus and a huge collaborative effort in a time of great conflict um that's some of the reason you should hire me i may go on i could go on about the other uh the

051first two really stand out for me in the superintendent profile the you know being a champion for equity and student voice and inclusion i i've lived a career of that uh and then the second piece being invisible and active leader in the community i when i listened to the school board the recording of your meeting that must have only been three weeks ago or so i heard things like you want to hire the best candidate you were discussing internal external having a good discussion i heard the best candidate and then i heard at the same time someone who can hit the ground running and i really believe that's me in both regards i would have welcomed an external search i believe i am the best candidate committed to this community and i will absolutely hit

052the ground running without any pause in our momentum or initiatives and again build upon the work that's been done in the past thank you thank you i'm actually going to back up um because i asked you a question earlier and um it was before you asked us to mention if you didn't answer all the elements of it yes and so i'd like to go back to it please since there's time how do you meet the educational needs of all students making sure that students who struggle and those who are most successful continue to grow academically give an example of how you've demonstrated being able to meet the wide breadth of student needs thank you i thought of the second part to your question when mike asked his question and then i referenced avid so i

053apologize that that was disconnected but i do think avid is an example of meeting the needs of students who are underrepresented in a program and yet then transitioning to school-wide avid with again that instructional framework that elevates the performance of all so i do believe it's a program that hits our i don't even want to say necessarily our highest learners our learners at all different levels and it comes back to who is benefiting right it levels the playing field especially now when colleges and universities are in large part removing testing procedures such as act and sats i think this will really open the gate for greater student leadership opportunities and students will be able to shine as as they take on new challenges regardless of the school the other piece i think about when you

054ask a question kitty would be our summer recovery program what does that look like how are we able to offer summer programming that is both enriching and intervening at the same time in different content areas and different grade levels because i believe families will want in-person support for their students if we're able to provide it regardless of where their child is at in that school thank you so now i'm going to ask if you have time to ask us questions or if there's anything else you haven't had a chance to say now is your opportunity to put that in as well yeah thank you again absolutely my honor to be with you this evening um i think about again the high quality work i was hired when superintendent carol erickson was superintendent in roseville area

055schools and then of course dr tyne for a long time and now superintendent sikoli and i think about standing on their shoulders in terms of continuing that excellence in leadership what would you see as the next steps for the superintendent of roseville to build upon that vision of excellence anybody want to take a crack at that first i can add a few more parts to that question if you're more comfortable with the three-part question sure sure go ahead i would say that there's a couple of elements that i think i've heard the board talk about and others please build on this or take away from it or shift it but i think we really want to see the impact on all the equity work we've done really reflected in the outcomes for our students um

056we've done a lot of work and we're seeing reflection in certain areas like we see improvements in graduation rate like when you're at the high school we've seen um er you know seen in college credit classes we're seeing elements but how do we see it really reflected more broadly so that one cannot predict a student's outcome based on their race i think we also are looking for how do we meet the needs of all students those that are really doing well those that need more i mean how do we get that differentiation so that all students are challenged and achieve their full potential thank you for that your answer makes me also think about roseville area schools over the course of this year lost approximately 200 students in enrollment primarily at the elementary level so

057we really need to be focused that equates to about 2.5 million dollars how are we going to get our students back regain the trust of our families so that our students come back because of course we believe that roosevelt is the best place for them to learn and grow and i think we need to keep an eye on that we've also started it may sound a bit uh silly but operation return our students so we are reaching out to all of those families currently that have left and really not only because we want the students back but we want to know what we need to do differently as a system to improve and grow and make sure that we're the right spot for to meet the needs to your point of all families and all

058students does anyone want to build on my answer okay i'll toss something out there okay oh you got knew that i think you're muted curtis here we go we'll try this again um i like where you're going with that kitty i'm the the thing i would add um what we're looking for um to to build on the the excellence of previous superintendents um is someone who can help connect not just connect the community at large um as well with the uh community that's the internal roseville area schools and um uh josh collins is uh famous for we've had a number of conversations about telling our story and and that there are so many things that are um so many really good things that are going on and there are like 20 people that know about

059it and and and they're all inside roosevelt area schools and um you know our new superintendent needs to be someone that um can can tell our story um when it's good and and you know when it's when it's not excellent right i i appreciate that two of the best storytellers and champions every district of course that would be my responsibility if i were named superintendent but i think our students how do we how do we increase the voice of our students to tell our story because their experiences matter most i'd be very interested in increasing student voice and all decision making at least input greater levels of input along the way i also have a history of that every step of the way and i think about i really connect what you're saying curtis because

060i believe i am that person to tell that story i've been with the district i've been there to celebrate um and celebrate in good times and i've been there in challenging times i i think about even when some of the most difficult times have been intimate situations where we experience student deaths in the community there couldn't be anything more terrible and how we grieve together as a community and how we work with staff and families in that same regard so i think you are saying you're also just interested in someone who can really connect on every single level with our community and i believe i can do that well i'll chime in since we are doing this um i think um like you say you know you you are standing on the shoulder of um

061superintendents before you and i also would like to think that um as we move forward we don't want to sit on our arrest on our laurels either right like what does it mean to be innovative what does it mean to be forward uh forward thinking about the district as a superintendent because it's easy to say oh yeah we're doing all these things really well and just we'll just do the same versus really taking us to the next level that's something in order you know not just to do it because you do it but ultimately it's about our students right it's like what kiddie started to do and i remember asking this question i remember when i when i um ran for school board one of the things that i said was like how what what

062does it truly mean to realize the promise of the vision that we have right what does that really really mean right what does that really mean uh for every child every family and that you know our staff like teachers support staff at all levels feel like this this is the place this is this is where they belong this is what they want to do um so so that's what i think about i'm i like to think the future like a little bit like long term so um so i put that in as not a caveat but rather it's a both end right kind of doing what we do well now but also looking what what can we do better i i appreciate what resonates with me what you said is around excellence and that touch

063that competitive nature i believe roseville can be the very best and we should accelerate our progress right and incremental change is not enough for our students and certainly our students of color i also think in terms of increasing accountability i'm very interested in that and that comes with very high expectations and a high level of support and again that clear and kind and frequent communication and feedback loop i i think we again the sky is the limit for us here in roseville we have a beautiful student body brilliant and a very dedicated and incredible staff as well now i'll add something to it kind of builds on what kitty said um jenny i think in terms of the future um you know it does come down i think to results we've got a lot of

064processes in place and i think this that desire to have what she talked about what i'm adding on here leads to some of those questions about you know are there things we're doing now that really aren't working um that we should do lessons let's turn to stuff because i think it we want some we need somebody who has the courage to really look at stuff and say it's not about the process you have all the process you want but if the process isn't getting results then do we do we do something different or do something creative or innovative and so i think part of that is is a focus on results and then that comes down i think authenticity also and there's someone who who doesn't just talk to taco walks the walk it's not

065about modeling our values in the public square it's also modeling them behind closed doors and in the hallways and in the little moments that you work with folks you mentioned earlier all the success in bringing in administrators um you know of color or of different ethnicities whether it's asian or whatever you think of you know hr or just different roles right now and it's and it's when their phone rings and someone says you know does your superintendent really mean it they need to be able to say yes you know and so i think it's that too it's an authenticity both public and private to really inspire people to to do what it takes and being courageous to focus on things that that may have better results not just throwing more energy or money or time

066at something that that isn't getting us there i appreciate that and i think you're right some of the most difficult conversations do occur behind closed doors and that's where it's our obligation and responsibility as white leaders to be strong anti-racist leaders in the organization and have a zero tolerance approach at anything less than other questions for us i guess beyond what do we what are we looking for no i think that's what i'm interested in um i know that you have a difficult decision to make and i would look forward to getting to know you and getting to know our community the role of the superintendent is different than high school principal and assistant superintendent and i look forward to learning and learning from you and working with you and working for you and i

067think i've always modeled having that open door and really encouraging critique and i think my references would speak to that and it's not i know that i listed quite a few references but you really can and i know you know this could call anyone in the school district and you wouldn't have to look at my list of references and they would speak to my integrity and my openness and my collaboration and my dedication to the school my presence my visibility my commitment um and if anyone has any questions i'd really encourage you to visit with anyone including all the folks that i've had civil discourse with over the years and maybe the the last thing i end with too is uh i'm the student's first leader you know we're always making decisions in terms of

068what's best for students and families and i love spending time with students and hearing their perspective and hearing their story and that will be my job as you said earlier to amplify their voice and i know that they will help lead us to change and that's not on their shoulders and that is not their responsibility certainly our students and i know that they can help us along the way any other thoughts fellow board members on either general or specific things that we're looking for hoping for if if not jenny maybe a final you know we have we we're like 15 minutes still ahead of where we needed to be so any final comments final thoughts one last no like i said taking a look at the superintendent profile and really taking a look at my

069commitment to the community and my work my work as a leader and my role as a parent and champion for all of our schools and certainly for racial equity and i wish i could i i've been overwhelmed with support i think the urgency and the timing of the hire folks didn't learn until last night after the board meeting of the names of the candidates so then i've just really been um it's overjoyed with the amount of support i've gotten in the last 20 hours or so from here folks hearing that news that i'm applying so um especially from former students i think word travels really quickly and certainly former students of color who have reached out and believe that i'm the right person for the position many would say i don't know what the superintendent

070does or i have to do some research and i'll get back to you so very very sweet very sweet and endearing communications but thank you thank you for your time thank you for your servant leadership on behalf of the school district and all of our families as well it's an honor to be here sure well thank you and appreciate your time and interest in the position obviously um as i said earlier uh we'll be deliberating after we completed the interviews tonight and i think our intent had been to you know see if we can come to a conclusion and we'll go from there and if if we do believe that um we need to call both candidates back for additional questions and that's for the time we have set for that on friday so with

071that i guess we'll we'll let you go and we'll take a break till eight we'll stay on and everything fellow board members but um feel free to wander and just be back a little before eight for the second interview thanks dr lake thank okay great question rose so we so we have until late or yes yes dr favorite starts at eight o'clock so we had uh planned for up to an hour and 15 minutes and we're just at about an hour and so uh and then we had a 15-minute break planned in and so we have a half hour and i i think we would just stick to that eight o'clock start time uh since that's what was published and out there and if folks are interested in that second they really wouldn't want to

072disrupt the published start time so yeah i'm just going to go ahead and you know take down my picture and mute the mic and [Music] we'll see in about 20-25 minutes fair enough sounds good good evening like february hey good evening everyone good evening good evening dr faber good evening sir okay good evening um i i am not going to ask my questions exactly the same in that i'm not going to pause and not answer what i'm supposed to i mean and not ask what i'm supposed to ask okay so it's gonna it's gonna be seamless this time it should be a little different from last time thank you frank i'm not sure what i'm going to do with that but okay let's roll with it so i think we are uh back up and

073broadcasting uh but again we'll wait another minute or so for eight o'clock uh dr faber so we can start right on time as was published for the public to see so and then we'll have a couple i'll introduce you and we'll just go from there welcome dr feyer thank you thank you and hello and good evening good evening so it is eight o'clock so we'll proceed with our second evening what we have is uh 15 questions that we're going to rotate through the same questions that we asked all candidates and we've we have about a total of an hour and 15 minutes 75 minutes for the whole process so on average five minutes or so per question um if we get through them sooner great there may be more time at the end to chat

074about things if we go all the way to the end that's great um but we don't we will not go beyond the 75 minutes um and i we did share with the earlier candidate that if uh after we've met with both of the you all tonight that if we determine there are additional questions that we would like to ask both candidates then we do have time uh available on friday that we could invite both candidates back if we have additional questions so with that i think we'll just start in and again welcome and we do have with us uh for those who are just joining us uh tony johns and ken brexit from uh the firm that will expect connect as observers uh this evening so question one i think curtis we're starting out with

075you again so dive right in all right thank you and good evening dr faber good evening um within five minutes tell us who you are and how that impacts you as a leader for example what are your interests what motivates you professionally and personally any key achievements positive or negative seminal moments in your career or life etc ready um first of all thank you everyone for allowing me to be here today i am i'm excited about what's possible and the opportunity here in roseville who i am as a leader i'm originally from the south i grew up in athens georgia went to school in north minneapolis and went to college in fargo north dakota but my journey my journey kind of started in mental health and while working in mental health many years ago at

076st joseph's home for children i developed programming that had an impact on children's lives abusing neglected children to keep them out of residential treatment and while developing that programming and working with the county and working with young people and visiting with young people overwhelmingly many of our young people talked about the impact of school and the trauma in their lives so i figured let's go to the source what to the source meant for me i accepted a job by it was offered to me by lady by the name of carol johnson who at the time had went to san luis park and carol sent me back to school to become a licensed administrator and i taught social studies during the process and then later went on to become a prince i also taught at the

077college level metro state and i currently [Music] i've also taught at metro state and minnesota state mankato i currently coach administrators i currently coach superintendents and systems of how to do the work of racial equity while improving student achievement when you ask who i am i'm a collaborative leader i'm a person and kind of what's possible and how to establish a culture of of learning as well as being reflective on the journey i've made many a mistake and i've learned from those mistakes one of the mistakes i've made early on in my career was not being able to understand that this the difference between discipline and punishment when it comes to working with children and what i mean by that one of the mistakes i made is was my discipline teaching was that just suspending

078students and not teaching in the process so early on in my career i kind of changed that and that change has really led to areas of growth for students staff and again produce better outcomes i consider myself a reader i consider myself a learner lifelong learner and i'm reflective in my practice our practice i often spend times looking at systems and what is the question and asking reflective questions of people in the system so that we can get better results while again honoring people's humanity within the process i want to talk a little bit briefly about humanity um the george floyd incident had a significant impact on me i just need to say that every police officer i know every every police officer i know has either gone through public schools private schools or charter

079schools and it made me think about was i in some way complicit in george floyd's death and i say that because although as a leader speaking with people and as a leader teaching asking teachers to teach content that i forget about the importance of teaching humanity and making sure that we're modeling humanity for our young people you can teach the content and left people through through the work of racial equity because when we talk about the work of racial equity and gender equity we're really looking at the humanity behind the process and growing people's humanity as well as their knowledge thank all you mine is the next question what are the significant challenges and strengths that our district needs to consider as it plans for the next five years please describe how you might approach

080working to meet one or more of these challenges in the next year so it's a two-part question five years is the longer the longer range but then how would you start getting to work on this in the near future when i think about the challenges one of the things that this process has made me aware of is needing to spend more time listening to our staff our staff have a perspective our staff and the impact of long-term the repeated years of budget cuts have really had an impact on our staff and there's a lot of hurt feelings behind that part of that part of this process part of this challenge part of the 90-day plan i will put in place for me and working with this district is spending time listening to our staff because

081we need to not only we need to work towards the financial challenges we have in this district we have been good stewards of funds we have been but we still have some significant challenges and remaining competitive with our neighboring distance because of some of our funding concerns we have outstanding buildings now now we need to fund the the content the curriculum and set our students up for ready for the world and ready to compete within this process so part of that has to be how we bring our staff along because i think it's disingenuous and i think it's bad practice just to throw money at problems we need to address the root of the problem and and addressing the root of the problem with working with our staff so that we can show not just

082our students hope and we're working towards the future but what's possible what it's going to look like as we're funded appropriately so that we can maintain and be competitive so those are one of the some of the challenges that i see also academically we are focused on the work of racial equity i think that's wonderful and i think it's important and i don't want to minimize any of the work that has happened and the work that's being done i also believe we have to be intentional about the academic achievement of our students alongside the work of racial equity they go hand in hand that's establishing the culture that instructionally we are solid and structurally we have expectations of our students and our staff and we expect better outcomes than what we're getting now that's again

083part of the challenge what's going well is i've never met a group of people who are as committed not just within roseville area schools but outside roseville area schools in the community committed to young people committed to making making the experience better for young people and the committed work that people are doing people are going above and beyond to make sure that our students have the best possible experiences that they can have and that we can have that our community has the best possible experiences some of the collaborations with places like google roseville and other entities in this district the roseville foundation who are committed to uplifting people in this community as well as i want to acknowledge the hard work of our support staff who are making sure that food deliveries are being done

084doing some of the things in this community is a great foundation to build on that foundation i believe we can continue the great work of dr shakoli the work that he's done and should be acknowledged for and has later blueprint truly laid a blueprint for the next generation and the next superintendent thank you the question i have to ask dr faber is how will our education system be transformed by our experience in the pandemic recognizing the toll it has taken on students families and staff how would we help all to move forward please center your comments on student learning and their overall well-being i look at what has happened with this pandemic and i've discussed this before at a particular board meeting that we are seeing some outcomes academically from some of our students who

085are having success through distance learning what is it that is happening through this distance learning that many some of our students are having some ex uh having success and some growth so learning from that learning what is working what about distance learning worked for them and the impact that it has on our system the planning we need to be intentional i believe about the learning gaps that may have taken place because of the pandemic and programming and asking teachers asking teachers to focus on academic standards what are the standards that must be covered that students must know that will set them up for success and then what are the skills that we're going to ask students to have and build with students centered around those academic standards those academic standards have an impact horizontally so

086across grade level and vertically so from fourth grade to fifth grade fourth graders that are coming in this year how do we know what they know how do we know what they've learned and how and providing types of assessments so that we can understand areas that they currently know so they'll continue to accelerate and they have areas of support aligning our homework aligning our homework so it's not busy work to the academic standards that we want to measure and provide assessments on those are some of the things that post pandemic that academically and systemically we must do differently next up i want to say that continuing to offer some type of distance learning opportunity for some for for our families may be the wave of the future depending on what families want and our ability

087to financially physically fiscally be able to make that happen focusing on some families may not be ready to come back may be afraid to come back and how we're going to ensure that they have the best educational opportunity as well in our system at roseville thank you next one's from me mike so how will you build trusting relationships and inspire the board teachers support staff administration and the unions to all collaboratively work together to achieve the district's vision and can you give us an example of a situation where you inspired a team to successfully achieve a common goal i believe that part of my role and something i think i'm very good at is being that bridge being that bridge between between um as a principal between students and teachers being that bridge as an

088interim superintendent in monticello between being fiscally responsible and working collaboratively with the union while with the teacher union and paris and other unions as well while the engine while being while i was the interim superintendent in monticello we faced budget challenges and deficits what i did coming in as part of my 90-day plan is i met with every board member and clearly articulated not only what the challenges were the fund balances and the needs but also asked what are their priorities so that collectively together we can make sure we're unified in our priorities as we move forward while in monticello doing a forensic audit working with the budget i found that for years monticello hadn't applied for achievement and integration funds and because of that i sat down and wrote a grant because they were

089eligible and that led to 200 000 dollars being added to their budget as well as good practice and service for young people achievement and integration writing that plan putting that plan in place not only supported some of the staff and the staff needs but mostly some of the community and the community needs i consider that one of the more transformational things i've done as a leader while continuing to be reflective and maintaining and working collaboratively with teacher unions and and prairie youth in other unions so that we're meeting the needs of our of our students and again unions and superintendents and boards i think we all want the same thing and how to sometimes get ourselves out of the way so that we can all work towards the same thing and i believe that same

090thing is success for our students and our community thank you never mind hi hi how are you um hi uh so my question is so how do you stay aware and connected with what is happening on the ground with our students families and staff please give examples of what has worked well and what has not been effective one of the things that's worked really well again i'm gonna go back to being a superintendent an interim superintendent in monticello every morning i would start my day outside the high school i asked the principal if it was okay because i tell you i was missing kids it was beautiful watching the sun rise the kids come in and you get to know students and young people they get to know you and you ask them can i

091go to class with you can i see what you're doing in the classrooms so seeing what we are funding seeing for example the results of avid how avid is having an impact and going and seeing what it looks like in person and spending time asking our customer our students exactly how it's working for them and what could be better uh as a leader one of the things i did and at roberto cooper one of the things i did at minneapolis north is i instituted something called an instructional focus where every at the beginning of every class that teachers were asked to teach either something within their content for example math reading or writing and then evaluated in the process and aligned to not the mcas we aligned it to the acts we aligned the instructional

092focus to the acts because every student was going to be taking the acts and because of that it helped our students see the content and helped our teachers reflect because they used it as a formative assessment along with other things on what students needed to learn and know differently and it also allowed us to provide some feedback to students on areas of growth for them i believe in the power of feedback not just for students but for myself and for our system uh anything that you want to share where um it wasn't effective oh um although i put some things in place that work really well some things haven't worked as i have wished um i want to say one more thing that worked really well for us and i hoped that it found the

093opportunity to be the superintendent here we talked about what worked really well as service learning and service opportunities for students having that as a component of what we do and we're doing a little bit of that now so that works well but i want to really grow the opportunity for service some of the things that didn't work well [Music] programming here's an idea of programming that we put in place that although was well intended had a negative effect it was called the it was a ninth grade program for students who were behind in credit and what we did was we started capturing students who were behind in credits and focusing on their needs and listening to students again it was well intended and we kind of put everybody together and that didn't work well because

094as students matriculated through the system to 10th grade 11th grade 12th grade they never caught up so dismantling that was something even though it was well intended to be very specific to the needs of students students i believe never caught up and in my opinion didn't give the best instruction that we could have given them that's one of the areas that i pay attention to because again if you put students for us we put students like that together and it didn't work well because again they didn't they never caught up thank you hi dr faber i've got a similar question someone building on mike's about building trust in relationships mine is a bit more targeted towards businesses experience a building relationship with businesses elected leaders and the broader public give us an example of an

095initiative that has worked in building this trust and partnership and maybe one that was not as effective um i served one that wasn't very effective we started a partnership with a local a local firm and we used grant money to start the partnership and and one of the things that was around industry manufacturing and using that grant money when the grant money went away the partnership kind of went away so being again one of the things i learned it's about sustainable funds and if we start something like that in the partnership how can we sustain it more than three years so we can see the impact some of the things that have gone really well it's a partnership with um brad von bank can recall the name of his company right now but bradley bank

096what he did and what he does in collaboration we took students from north high school and what brad did is he trained students how to develop websites how to develop websites for people in the community and and what happened was and it's still happening now and now it's a part of minneapolis public schools but the original site was in minneapolis um it was in minneapolis was that minneapolis north what we did is we trained students how to build websites and they went out and started their own businesses these many businesses where they would build websites for neighborhoods neighborhood organizations and challenge the neighborhood organizations for that begins with the ventures adventures but it's a great opportunity for students it was a great collaboration and because of that he started bringing in programming through our business

097through a business class where students were beginning to operate and do their own own businesses and we started using our credit recovery so that credit recovery we aligned the curriculum with english we learned it with math so that credit recovery would happen while students were participating in in this program and their ability to not just earn money but set themselves up for internships with target deluxe checks and a bunch of other corporations so that was a place an opportunity where things were very successful thank you okay me again so excuse me directly um the name of the company is called rev academy and it's housed right now rev academy is housed in the old um 807 building northeast minneapolis rev academy and brad von banks i'm sorry director just kind of came to me that's

098all right rev like rev yep okay got it all right so um describe a situation uh where you had to make a decision where there were strong opposing views tell us how you arrived at that decision how you work through the situation and the outcome and then share what you learned from that experience one of the things i shared earlier this uh earlier today is while in roseville had a meeting with a group called isaiah it was a religious organization group and we had a disproportionate amount of kids of color being suspended and because of that you know we're educators and we're listening to these concerns around the pipeline the prison and how when we were doing suspensions we were doing suspensions uh we would hope that's teachable moments some of those kind of things

099while working in rooms we're working in robinsdale and to try to kind of take a step back and say you know they're right it was having an impact on achievement it was having an impact on the disproportionate number of students that were on their way to special ed services so we took a moment and really reflected on systemically what do we need to do with changing how we suspend and we did that in robbinsdale and i believe some of that work kind of followed dr sokola here what happened was convincing the teacher union and the community that schools were not going to be out of control and we're still going to support teachers we're still going to provide discipline for students using restorative practices at the time and making sure that the discipline was a

100teachable moment we reduced the suspensions in one year by 70 percent that's a significant amount so when we reduce the suspensions we also saw a rise in achievement especially for students of color who are being suspended okay and just to follow up on that so what what did you learn from that experience what i learned was that even as someone who knows a system knows education the importance of listening to the community and their perspective on it because other people with their ideas may also be ready so paying attention and listening to another perspective and being able to reflect on and being honest with ourselves we needed to look at our system and we were not we were not at our best for young people and we needed to do something and having a group

101like isaiah pastor paul pastor heron come in and asking us to look at this morally as well so we thought we were doing the right thing and i believe that we came to a better solution because we involve the community in the process and listen to the community all right thank you dr favor i have this to ask you now what is your approach to ensuring that the district recruits hires and retains high caliber personnel committed to the district's vision and how would you approach increasing the hiring of staff of color um leadership matters when staff of color especially i'ma start there leadership matters when you are a leader and you are reaching out not to just staff not just around what they need to do but people as human beings and seeing how make

102an impact on the school community because they're there and acknowledging that see when you're a staff of color especially in some of these first ring suburbs um you're always teaching you're teaching the young people that you're working with and you're teaching your colleagues how best to navigate race and tough situations and how to engage students it's part of that other duties as a sign that people don't talk about and as a leader acknowledging that teachers do this especially teachers of color who go above beyond above and beyond because this isn't a job it's a calling it's a mission and how does that calling admission set up for when we post a job when you post a job if you and a lot of people of color do this kind of read between the lines about

103specifically what they're looking for what people are looking for if you're looking for people to have a significant community impact on achievement that's focused on relationships and quality instruction you really have to put that in there because that really speaks to the mission and passion especially for a lot of people of color who don't do this work just for money just like other teachers don't do this just for money how you recruit and retain and how you post those positions is a significant strategy one of the things we're doing now is with equity alliance what we're doing with equity alliance is we're asking equity alliance to interview we're putting it together right now to interview our current our current probationary teaching staff of color and how did they get here what recruited them what were

104some of the things and why did you end up in roseville and what do we need to do to keep you then also we're in the same number recruiting some of our some of our non-probationary teachers this is what lisa terry and i are working on right now interviewing some of our non-um probationary teachers of color and asking again how did you get here what do we need to do to keep you and what are some things you're seeing in the system that we need to improve so that we can make adjustments in real time when people feel heard when people feel valued when people feel that they can be a part of something that's somewhat bigger than themselves they they kind of gravitate towards people gravitate towards what's possible and i think that's one

105of the components here in roseville because leadership matters when you have leaders that understand the work of racial equity that's important and you have leaders that that i must say this because i really think this is important director shaw leaders that understand the importance of intellectual discourse i don't want to hire people who think like me and just look like me and act like me i want to hire people that we can download to make the system better and intellectually we may disagree but once we set up once we set a direction once we set an agenda we move forward collectively as a team but people have an opportunity to be heard listen to and feel valued in the process that builds capacity and that builds trust that's what we should be doing with our

106teaching staff all of our teaching staff in particular the teaching staff of color who often have the solutions to some of our issues around recruitment and retention thank you for that answer i have the next question how do you meet the educational needs of all students making sure that students who struggle and those who are most successful continue to grow academically give an example of how you have demonstrated being able to meet a wide breadth of student need when i walk into a building as a principal or even as a assistant superintendent there's four key areas i look for number one standards our teachers teaching the standards the knowledge of the standards are we providing standard-based instructions and standard assessments so that's one of the key things i look for secondly i look for assessments

107part of that assessments are the plc process with the data protocols the data analysis protocols for summative and formative assessments and are they being done and after they're being done what are we doing to provide not just interventions but accelerate young people the next thing i look for and this is what i want us to do extremely well in roseville these four things is differentiating instruction we have to make that an expectation of the work as a principle it is expected that you differentiate teachers that you differentiate instruction and making that a clear expectation of our work now you can't differentiate instruction if you now if you don't have a clear understanding of the academic standards that you to teach so making sure teachers have that depth of knowledge in those academic standards the last

108thing i i want and i want us to do extremely well in this district in roseville is inclusion when i say inclusion inclusion of race and gender equity inclusion of special ed el and gifted programming so let's build and focus on these four key areas and do this better than anybody in the state that we teach make sure that we teach the standards and accelerate students above and beyond the standards and we provide homework and assessments everything centered around an intentionality around achievement and the standards the next things assessments how we use assessments in the plc process to grow our teachers to grow our students differentiation using people like our el staff who are psyop trained and our special ed staff who specifically some of the best at differentiating and working collaboratively together working as

109a collaborative team and the last one is inclusion this should be an expectation of inclusion in the work we do and holding people to that focusing on these four things i think we'll have a lot of success thank you sec eliminating predictability of outcomes by race continues to be a major challenge for our school district so could you please identify what our district is doing today that you believe we should continue doing what should we do more of what might we do less of and what should we start doing oh um director barbara chelsea if i miss a component of that please i'll remind you absolutely that's fair enough i'll several what we're doing really well i believe that some of the work we're doing that that's going extremely well it's a constant curriculum review

110cycle in the council curriculum review planning and the work around action narratives and using the compass as a guide the story circles that we're starting to do i think are going to pay dividend down the line because students are going to see themselves within the programming and see themselves within the model and when i say students i mean all students white students have a narrative of the story as well that we should make sure that we're as intentional about what student as with students of color the second part of that or the next one it was anything that we should uh do more of okay we have this is just my opinion in order to get our hand around the achievement gap we have to do more of some open and honest conversation we need

111to lean in to some deeper conversation and vulnerabilities for example i believe part of the reason and what gets in the way with student achievement and i've shared this earlier today is this idea of guilt and shame as a leader i've had and felt guilty about some of the data that i've produced that have been produced by my schools and because of that guilt i am shameful in asking for help teachers i believe are struggling with some of the components of guilt and shame when you look at your data you believe and you hold yourself to a higher expectation for all students but when all students aren't achieving at the level that you believe and you want them to how are you reaching out to work through that shame also the shame of staying silent

112i say this because there's a lot of silence and when we talk about some of this work around racial equity oftentimes people of color going back and forth sharing their pain is there silence there because of guilt is there silence there because of shame and how do we create these spaces where we can check in with each other be vulnerable with each other so that we know better and do better one of the things i say to people of color all the time in this system we can't treat people the way we've been treated we have to treat people better than we've been treated in these systems because we've had it rough in some of these systems so we have to treat people better than we've been treated that's where and how society grows that's

113what i love about john lewis um him as a person holding to a higher standard everyone and so that's that one what was the next component the next next really important one might be is there anything that we're doing now do you believe we should do lesson i believe that a large component of what we're doing with the work of racial equity and how we align our beliefs and behaviors being much more intentional about the academic progress of children all children and sometimes we look at this work and there's an analysis paralysis that happens centered around equity and race and we often leave that leave out the conversation around achievement and um helping people work through that again through the lens of guilt and shame i think opens up for a richer experience and opportunities

114for great success thank you yeah thank you for helping me go back and walk through that thank you oh yeah we're we're all willing to do that some of these questions they're pretty complicated and multi-layered so yeah rose you're on mute yup thank you so this is question 11. uh how do you ensure that staff at all levels are educated and trained on advancing educational equity and excellence how do you hold folks accountable to authentic implementation centered on student learning and how do you measure success please share how you have succeeded and struggle in this area um rose again you may have to help me with some practical questions pretty large so how do the first part so how do you ensure that staff at all levels are educated and trained on advancing educational equity

115and excellence one of the things i like about roseville is not just do we create opportunities we expect all staff to go through the work of racial equity training and um i would hope that our principals and peer-to-peer that were holding each other to a higher standard with not just the work but how it's being executed in the schools and what i mean by that is i've walked into many a school in this district and felt completely welcome even before people really knew who i was by some of the the clerical and the secretaries and some of the people at the front desk those welcoming environments to me are strong peace and part of racial equity because they're our first image of what we want our schools to be and how people are perceived welcome

116in our schools the next part of that question and how do you hold folks accountable to authentic implementation centered on student learning and then how do you measure success it's a great question right now i don't know if everyone knows it was part of my job is system accountability student success and the work of racial equity right now at the beginning of this school year we implemented school improvement plans that were already in place but we're going deeper with our school improvement plans over the next two weeks although we're coming back from a pandemic i am meeting with principals dr lake and i are meeting with principals not just me because as assistant superintendents we do this together we are meeting with principals and what we're asking is in math because that's what we ask

117people to put their intention how are students going to perform in third grade math sixth grade math and then secondary levels in math and what you inspect people will respect we have some data systems that are in place that people are expected to upload their data the common formative assessments and the assessments that are being done so that teams can build up those assessments in a continuous improvement model that's the plan do study act model and i ask principals to show me show me how and this is where our meetings are dr lake and i we're asking principals to show us how you're doing this and then what are you doing with the information that you receive not just the supports but accelerations we have a lot of students that should be and can be

118accelerated and i don't want to spend all of our time just talking about students as deficits deficit thinking our students are gifted our students are talented and we need to continue to grow all our students in that way so right now we have meetings set up where we will be monitoring instruction and this is something that's monitoring progress and we work with the regional centers of excellence with this and this is something that's somewhat new in this district with the intentionality that we're putting behind it show me what you're doing and is it working next piece of that yeah so um you have really talked a lot about where you're succeeding do you understanding about where you have struggle in the area of the training in educational equity and excellence and then holding people accountable

119i'm going to be honest with you totally honest with this community totally honest with the board i've struggled greatly because of turnover in this position there's been a lot of people who only believe i'll be here for a year so we'll wait mike out the turnover in this position and the trust that having to rebuild people are feeling somewhat hurtful so this is where i've struggled with just reminding people i'm not people of the past i'm who i am i'm pretty transparent and honest with you we have standards and expectations and please don't judge me based on things that have happened in the past so that's been somewhat of a struggle for me um forgive me uh chair bobaszewski um but we had indicated we would not go at over 45 uh do we go

120to 9 30 is that correct just process check we go we go to 9 15 9 15. thank you so you still have 25 minutes i just wanted to have a process check there thank you thank you for this response yeah thanks dr faber um we're going to shift a little bit over to um finances please outline your top three priorities for achieving financial stability and transparency for the school district and the key action you would take in the short term and long term to implement those priorities um i was started again as part of the 90 day plan i'm meeting with the superintendent meeting with the board and also directors specific directives i would ask the directors their knowledge of their budget how will they ask the directors are they maintaining and working within

121their budget and what they see as the priorities i would be with our budget director frequently probably twice at least at bare minimum every two months and look at the assumptions that are in place look at are we are we meeting the expectations based on the budget outlines and because we're a small enough district what do we need to do to pivot to making sure that we're meeting our budget assumptions again i would also meet with members of the school board and asking what are the priorities and what are the clear priorities not just within the budget but what is it specifically you want the superintendent to monitor and provide feedback on [Music] again i talked a little bit about district leadership and how they're monitoring their budgets their knowledge of their budgets and again

122what are their priorities and what are the goals they hope to accomplish based on the funding they've been allotted i would also look at our grants and how we're prioritizing our grants and our grants sustainable over time and the impact that our grants are having uh fiscally and what we're going to get accomplished those are some of the things i would do great thank you okay along the same lines our current operating levy which is eight million dollars or roughly eight percent of our general fund budget is scheduled to expire if voters do not renew it this fall what are your strategies to make sure enough voters support passage of the operating levy referendum one thing i know about our superintendent our current superintendent is he's very strategic and planning i will look at the

123plan that he has in place and then i would also start internally we need to start internally by providing information to our staff our teaching staff our support staff everyone affiliated with roseville because if i want to know something about schools i often go to a teacher because they'll tell you exactly what's happening in schools making sure people understand the knowledge and why the funding is necessary then i will continue to meet with community members setting up meetings setting up um information sessions where we can get out to community members going to ptos going to ptas getting out to community members town hall meetings getting out to any meetings that are happening in the community many of the meetings that are happening in the community in the roseville area community and in falcon heights and

124other communities so that people not only put a name with a phase and the budget and explaining our budget concerns and kind of the why behind it and the value the importance of remaining competitive for our students for world-class education so students are ready for the world ready to compete i would also rely heavily on this board this war knows this community has been through this process and i would lean in to this board for some very specific direction how best to accomplish this goal but also much like dr coley has done in the past go to every school and make sure we're doing presentations around the needs and answer the questions ask the whys and have presentations ready to we may not be able to sit in homes just yet but i would go

125if we needed to go to the mall and sit in the mall with some masks so when people are walking by sharing with people exactly what we're doing in roseville what's going well and what we need to maintain and why this is important i would have a specific reach out working with karen schaub and um and specific community i was in some meetings today and some of the retirees a person that was retired in the community wants to be a part of the roseville community but we have to invite people in invite people into these conversations and explaining why i would definitely reach out to her and others to help get our message out and the value of passing this levy um not just a value for our students for the impact and our homes

126and again making sure that we're competitive much like our neighboring communities thank you all right dr favor we've arrived at the at the less formal sort of uh capping off of the questions this is uh so this is this is where where um where where you're going to toot your own horn a little bit more uh please tell us why you would like to be the next superintendent of roseville area schools the strengths you bring to the position in the areas where you leverage the strengths of others and why ultimately we should hire you can you give me 30 seconds right so all right sorry about that yeah way too much water okay would you like that question repeated or yes yes please okay please tell us why you would like to be the next

127superintendent diversified schools the strengths you bring to the position and the areas where you leverage the strengths of others and why ultimately we should hire you i believe that i believe in what's possible for roseville roseville has an outstanding foundation an incredible reputation and a staff that's committed to young people second to none i believe that i would enhance that staff by being a bridge between not just helping people healed and move forward but again enhancing the the work of racial equity as well as student achievement i really believe that strengths i consider myself a collaborative leader ability to to really reach out and build relationships with people and problem solve i lean into problems and problem solve i believe in the importance of system accountability i believe in being accountable to our community and

128the work that we need to get done especially accountable to our young people and the work we need to get done to make sure students are successful and our staff are feeling the best around the importance of the work that they do um the other part of that question sir well i think you've answered the first two parts of it though the the final part of it is um um why we should hire you i believe with my experience as a superior superintendent i believe the visions and the collaborations and the relationship that i build i believe that it will enhance and grow roseville i really do i know that sounds pretty low-key but i really believe in the power of we i really do and i'm i'm proud to be uh a collaborative leader

129who focuses on relationships i'm proud to be a person who builds relationships and goes out and leans into the tough conversations and the why and i'm mostly proud of being transparent being transparent in the leadership that what we're going to do with the funding that we go out to achieve and what we and how we come together those are some of the reasons i believe i should be the next leader in roseville but mostly [Music] young people i'm committed to young people i put students first and i listen to students i use their voice to help guide our system i really do thank you very much the last question is uh what questions do you have of us collectively what are kind of the priorities for this board and how best do you work together

130as a team collectively to meet those priorities i'll go first uh we had a similar question so um what i answered last time in terms and others built off of it is that we are looking for seeing the work around actually and excellence translate to outcomes we are very much interested in seeing closure of in some of the predictability of various racial groups and outcomes we are interested in making sure that we have each student help each student to reach their full potential um how we work collectively um i find we have quite a few different of opinions and it really is valuable to hear the different perspectives because then we can jointly make a better collect collective decision we spend a lot of time discussing various issues in our study sessions in particular where

131we have a little more time allocated to individual topics and i have found that the input of my colleagues has often changed my position on issues or topics before the board so i know others built on that last time i'll let you do it again may i ask another question sure okay what is the criteria you use as a board to measure the effectiveness of a superintendent and the success of the system that we have in place yeah maybe i'll just i think it's very similar to the same answer that kitty just gave mike in that what we've been hoping well i'll answer it this way i think what we're hoping is to tie what we see is successful superintendency if that's a word with more of a shift and more of a focus on

132those outcomes um we have a lot of process in place we have a lot of programs in place um but that that doesn't necessarily get you across the finish line and so i think it's looking at possibly tying what we would see as the year to year to year overall success of the superintendent and pulling together all those elements leadership program plan as one by one will remove those things that might be getting in the way it allows us to keep focusing more and more i think on on those areas that could you know really add leverage to that success i think that's that's what we want to look at in terms of a superintendent and moving that forward i don't know kitty frank everybody agree or please add on please add color to that

133i would add on to that that one major challenge i think education broadly faces in the united states but certainly we face here is fiscal stability to able to achieve that work and how do we have that stability to allow um the focus and delivery on our our students our future i'd like to add on to that kitty i i was going to reference i didn't speak up and mention that last time around but one of my questions was achieving financial stability and one of those immediate challenges as we're all aware of and i know you are dr faber is this operating levy i mean it's uh huge hugely important um if this doesn't pass it's it's cuts it's it's it's real cuts to staff it's um you know we we you're aware that we

134have this goal of keeping a three percent you know unassigned fund bad you know budget and that's important to us um that whole idea of financial stability to allows us i mean we need that we need financial resources to achieve what we want to achieve so that's definitely a challenge thank you can i say something just in closing i'm thinking we're about to close up first and foremost i really want to thank people for this opportunity i believe my experience the things i've done in the past proven success with academic achievement and the work of racial equity and specific outcomes aligned to the mission division of this district and this board i'm excited about what's possible for roseville and we'll be excited to be a leader here and be a part of what's possible for

135roseville even with the challenges in place i lean into those challenges and work collaboratively so that we could figure it out together and um i just want to thank you for your time thank you thank you mike thank you dr faber so shall we shall we take three minutes okay let's do that let's take it through i got a thumbs up from curtis so michelle joey i don't know that you need to stop anything uh i'll just go i'm just gonna maybe we just go to our names and mute our mics and we'll come back in three to four minutes you everybody um okay looks like we're all back so maybe i have a question for ken and tony thoughts on any thoughts at all on uh processing right now first of all uh thank

136you it was a great uh great amount of great interviews and good discussion and uh you have i as a board you've been given a lot of materials a full packet of information with a lot of references and so on uh you got a lot of feedback today from all the focus groups that were engaged with the candidates and you had your own interviews tonight so the bottom line is is the decision of the board is do you have someone that you would want to enter into contract negotiations with uh to be your next superintendent now you can get at that in several ways and we've done this in with different districts one way obviously is for one member of the board to make a motion to enter into contract negotiations with whoever and someone

137second zap then you have a discussion about uh you know the motion on the floor and you just see whether you can pass that motion another way that some boards do is that we they simply do a straw vote and to see kind of where everybody is not by in other words you would simply text me your choice and i would say well we have four persons or two for so-and-so or six zero or five one or whatever that is not obviously binding because you need to do a public vote uh for whoever you decide to do or the third choice is simply to open up to discussion have your discussion about the two candidates and then again someone make a motion to enter the contract negotiations uh i would make one caution when that

138is that obviously both of these candidates are within the district and we always say to keep it on the positive side not to necessarily go in and say well the reason i don't want this person is because they don't do this or whatever i think that's uh uh it'll be very counterproductive for either one of them going forward in your district so uh those are kind of the three choices as i see mike and um you know like i said each boards do do it differently but um we can facilitate any one of those three options well rose go ahead yeah i have a question so explain more about the straw vote what is the purpose of that again well it is it is to do you have a consensus so then you could you

139could talk you could talk about your the person that you are going to enter into contract negotiations you don't get into a large discussion debate about the two candidates if you're if you're five one or six oh you know you can say nice things about both candidates but you do have uh uh you know a consensus anyway and you move forward and talk about the candidate that you everybody speaks then about the candidate that they want obviously we want everybody to speak out we're not uh but you it becomes more focused than on the candidate that you've chosen potentially chosen sorry and then you do the problem then you do the motion in public you have to do a public vote oh yes absolutely yeah now you okay motion you have to have a second

140and then you have a vote yeah right thank you um i just a few minutes ago talked about the process that the board uses in terms of sharing different perspectives and how valuable i find that um i would like to ask if we would be willing to do the third one to talk about what we see it as the strengths of each candidate that they bring and share some different perspectives around that before we go to a position because i think we have two very strong candidates but they do have some different strengths that they bring uh to the position anyone else wishing to add to or follow up on kitty's comment i will that i agree with that for a couple reasons one i think there's just transparency and i don't necessarily want us

141to feel have people feel like we're short-circuiting our our duty and our and our diligence to really discuss and talk out things and then plus even with a with a straw vote um something kitty said earlier uh struck me which is that in our discussions among ourselves i just as director goggins sometimes come into a board meeting thinking a certain direction and then the discussion lets me realize things that maybe i hadn't thought of or focused on and so i would actually value the opportunity to have some deliberation and sharing of our thoughts uh you know even if then we did initially do a straw poll at one point uh with ken's help to see where we are i'd want to do that only after we've had a chance to maybe discuss and and and

142chat as kitty said what we see is the strengths and the values so i guess with that any any enemy to want to start and jump in and maybe talk about that and maybe frame it that way just talking about both dr faber and and dr lake what anyone might see and and have noted down that whether it's based on the interview questions the packs that we got with the references and experiences the feedback from the focus groups today or anything earlier that we've had the benefit of receiving um any anybody want to jump in first frank got your hand up first [Applause] kenny did you want me yeah okay i you know i thought to myself i don't want to be first but then i thought you know i should just go ahead and

143be free thank you there it is here it is i want to speak so so we are we are as i understand this we we are going to um voice our i'm sorry frank but you fade in and out is there any way you can more directly talk to your mic which which mic is minus is it is it mike bogachevsky is he my mic just don't just don't drop the mic you know oh my god i i have to say i'm not sure where the mic is on this computer so am i am i okay here yes you're much better my tendency is to move around so i will look directly at the camera and speak to that all right so speaking then about uh dr favor uh what i've noticed what i have

144really noticed about him since since he arrived in uh uh in the district um and then it was confirmed to me by um [Music] the people in the in the focus groups and uh and the many positive comments that i got there is how he connects with people and uh i noticed especially how i connected with the students in the in the focus groups the students were um were very enthusiastic about him and excited about about his candidacy i think that's uh it's a real real strength and i think that uh he he will also uh connect with with the community you you you like him right away he listens to you uh he considers what you have to say and um and then he has his own ideas and so uh and i think

145he he uh he gets those across well and um effectively uh in the case so i i think he he's he's a people person and i think the community will would grow grow to love having him as a superintendent [Music] jenny lake dr lake has has been here for a long time i first was impressed with her when when uh my son came acrop her in her class your health class back in his sophomore year which would have been in the late 90s and how how well she handled that and uh kept his respect uh as well as as my respect i was impressed with her and then i was impressed with her during my first years on the board when she was athletic director uh and we were a bit at loggerheads about the

146um the turf going in but uh i've always been impressed with how how um she listens but she also uh is is very strong in how she keeps he she keeps focused on particular goals and gets them through to achieving them i have been extremely impressed at how that the respect that the teachers have teachers and administrators have for her uh in her work she has been the principal for all those years at roseville area middle school and during during that time she doesn't seem to have made any enemies at all she's she's really she's really reached out to everybody and i think that's a nearly impossible thing to do uh in a large diverse high school so there are my two things okay i'll go next okay um dr faber um you know uh

147frank you know um said a number of things i was gonna say but um i will say he uh he is very collaborative um i work with him um with the american inn parent group and so he does seek the the opinions of others and um he has um he has the benefit of having time inside the district and outside the um i saw the uh of the district um yeah and so so he's not you know there there's there's not a any concern about any uh about groupthink um there so there's so that that's good um uh and lots of work and um i'm sorry uh lots of uh experience in equity um did i go to dr lake um who also has experience in in in equity and um um has a hand

148in a number of the initiatives that um a number of the positive initiatives that have happened in school including avid which is uh for me a a personal um favorite i i've always been the let's let's have avid for everybody so um so that that's that that's very impressive and the um i think both of them uh both of them uh are are good are good communicators i i think um you know when it comes to um dr lake um um you one of the things that you know you gotta you gotta love is that um she is very invested in this um district not simply because she's been here this long as as long as she has but her kid is in the district you know so um it's you know that that's you

149know if you're talking about wanting someone that is going to be around a while that's that's a good uh that's a good hint there so i'll go next um [Music] dr favor um as frank and curtis have mentioned um a continuing theme of very student focused i i appreciate that i like that um he uses the word i'm intentional a lot very intentional when it comes with dealing with students um student outcomes um i like the fact that i i see a lot of vision and i see a lot of collaboration happening around dr favor a lot of strong pluses there uh when i read the packet about uh dr jenny lake um it it's hard not to notice at all the levels of the district that she's worked in um that that experience is

150is invaluable the long is invaluable it's long ties to the district liv living in the district um and as curtis alluded to a child in the district the vast roseville collaborative partnerships that i noticed in the packet is is huge and to leverage that in any type of operating levy campaign moving forward or speaking with the community and i also you know let's not forget that uh dr lake i think a positive um does have outside district experience i think that time that she was at blaine high school was valuable i mean we we all know about of her experience in this district she does have outside experience which i think is key and um alluding to something that frank said the strong relationships with staff and admin how many times has she been at

151the contract negotiation table and it's just like these positive relationships are ongoing they keep going and they keep going and they keep going um they're just are very impressive to me so that's what i have for now thanks um i saw a lot of really strong fulfillment of the attributes the community has deemed as important in both candidates um just sharing some of the things that struck me about both of them is they have impressive breadth and depth of experience and expertise they are both very strong and respectful listeners and really and relationship-based interaction with people they um have a personal commitment to lifelong learning which is clearly what we're asking of all of our staff but they model that in terms of what they've done they both have experience in multiple educational roles they

152have experience in the different elements around instructional experience budget experience creatively find it financing various projects a number of the different attributes that are really critical in leadership and content knowledge the thing that probably struck me as some of the areas of difference i thought that uh dr faber was very good in articulating his vision and communicating where he saw things needed to go um i thought that uh he um you know can bring some outside experience um versus dr lake um has uh really shown that um she had very strong and established partnerships in the community she um has been able to have card conversations uh while keeping relationships intact in the district i saw that in a number of people's comments and tremendous support within diff all different levels of the current district

153really facing reality and making the tough decisions and probably the thing that struck me is she knows how to train she's done a lot of transformational things in our district and i know we've uh you know avid came up but the whole college and career readiness and how to get the proportionality the whole going into the disciplinary practices redefining our policy changing our practices and our schools to be positive discipline i mean a lot of things she's combined her knowledge of the district and um the commitment to equity that they both share clearly as really strong in both of them but she's made translated that into making change in our district i mean they both bring such strong positives i'm um i'm feeling very fortunate that we have two such strong leaders before us so

154um i um i echo what kitty say is uh it's a great position to be in in a lot of ways to have both of these candidates who actually i was just writing this down and reading the profile they are you know i it's almost like i have no doubt right that this this both of them are student-centered they are relationship based they are equity leaders they have great leadership skills relationship is key and they lead with both their heart and their mind and they are doers they have done stuff right they actually make things happen um so i and so what i what i kind of like was struck by is that i'm not actually worried about any of that that these two are amazing leaders what i do want to think about is

155our current moment in the district where we are heading in terms you know where where are we right now in terms of a pandemic where we are with the referendum um and um how that plays into the decision um i mean what was what was striking is um with with uh dr lake the the fact that i mean she she knows so many people right here in the district already right there's some established foundation here that you you can you you can't um you can't replicate that right you have to you have to build on your own right whoever it is you have to build it on your own that's that's uh that's um that's kind of amazing that's amazing to have uh to have that kind of strong foot in the district already right

156in terms of um um this the the skin in the game that she has already in the district so it's it's tough it's a tough decision not because these are two like these are just two amazing people i i think they're just amazing people so it's it's i'm thinking a lot about the moment i'm thinking a lot of um kind of um where the district has been and where it could go uh the referendum so i'm i'm weighing all those things as thinking about um not so it's almost not so much about kind of uh whether they will be a great leader it's almost like they have proven to us they are they have a lot of great stuff going on that's it's not that's almost they have met i'm looking at the profile like

157yeah they they've talked about some of those things and i think they it's interesting for me from um from um maybe it's a teacher in me right whenever you are first and then you go second i could see ourselves changing our own process a little bit right because like i'm going that i did not ask that question the last time right i asked the question this time because i wanted to to make sure that that got answered so i think there's a little bit of um slight inequity just by virtue of you know the first person versus the second person i don't know that's how i felt because i know i was a little different the second time because i was paying attention to make sure that they answered everything i did not do that

158in the first time right i did not do that for the first time so i'm glad that towards the end that there was an opportunity kind of to freely talk and i thought some of those things came through a little bit more in the free free talk i'm glad for that but oh my god i i guess i should have asked that when i just felt bad because i'm like i should have asked that a lot closer because you know it didn't get answered and they don't have the question in front of them so it's whatever they heard right it's or whatever they heard so um yeah so those are my perspective um it's it's a it's a tough one but a good good good good tough to be in yeah so my perspective yeah

159so i i actually generally agree with everything everybody has said i think that you know i mean the classic way to say it would be you know either one could do the job and do it well and i think we'd be very successful working with either of these folks maybe a better way to say it would be there are some differences in in strengths it's a shame we can't blend them together you know one person that has each i i agree with some of what the folks have said earlier that you know i think dr faber is you know curly has a vision um where where he wants to take things um you know it's it's it's an extension i think of the vision that dr crowley brought to the to the district and has

160been working for the last you know five years six years to to implement and to and to put over the line um you know facing whatever had to be faced in those years um i think dr lake also has has believes in that in that same vision and some of the strengths that she's shown over the last few years is in getting it done and getting stuff implemented she's just had the time to uh build on those relationships she's made over the years and decades here to help get some stuff over the line so you know dr lake has been here and um knows those folks that's the strength um dr faber is still relatively new a couple years in the district is still somewhat of a change agent uh around that vision and and

161keep pushing it forward you know i was struck by the one thing he said about you know folks you know just helping me to maybe to wait mike out i know we had the same discussion in fact probably years ago did they just wait although out and do things the way they were and not have to do all this stuff you know and so mike's a continuation of that kind of changing nature that alderbrook and that that's a strength so they're both strengths they're just they're just very different um in in you know in what they would bring to the role so i agree it's it's it's very tough um you know we've gone around once i don't know do we want to go back again focus on differentiators do we want to at some

162point do the straw poll and just text something to ken based on what we've shared already are we ready that we want to discuss some more you know we've talked about the strengths of the candidates i guess is there a is is there is there is there anything that that we would apply that is that we've heard from the groups in in particular that maybe we didn't see ourselves but that was highlighted by them that was surprising or an aha moment to us in terms of the report outs that maybe some of those folks saw um kitty i tried to include some of that um i think you know from a board perspective we see kind of the the visionary side or where they're going and those kinds of elements and i found it incredibly

163helpful to hear from the community the various staff groups the student groups in terms of perspectives from their point of view in working with individuals and that was really valuable and i tried to highlight that when i was talking because we just we see one dimension uh of what um a candidate brings or even in a presentation like this um it's also it's typically that's the same dimension we see because as board members we hear presentations um but we don't see that on the day-to-day ongoing kind of interaction and experience that others have curtis okay um yeah okay uh i i i did go through as as many of the the um uh feedback that that that i could and it was coming through fast and furious so um uh thank you tony and ken

164for setting it up that was actually very cool to be able to get that information more or less real time again both both both candidates um did really well i mean so it's um whenever they uh you know when it when it came to uh you know you know dr lake had a ton of um uh of district staff saying very positive things and and and uh dr faber um had had some great student feedback i you know i think mike said it best you know that you know i either of them you know you know could do the job and do it well um so um you know i i think um you know for me personally i'm kind of gonna follow um rose and um you know when it comes decision time you

165know make my decision you know based on where we are and where we need to be going um so and i'll just leave that here for right now sure well i think that's really important i also think it's important to think about longer term um but i think we all feel comfortable because we're all saying they're both really strong yeah that's that's what i'm saying the this is right if i had a concern about about either of them longer term this would be easy this would be yeah done you know it's it's you know so it's yeah from a standpoint one thing we haven't talked about is from a standpoint of having a superintendent candidate that brings some diversity into position obviously we have a black male and that's certainly very exciting we also have

166a white female and there are also not a lot of um white females in leadership petitions and certainly not ones who are openly gay so i mean they both bring a diversity element um and to the situation some unique perspective that kind of doesn't make our decision any easier oh no you know kind of white male right so it's just exciting it's exciting it is very exciting so that that was one of the i think focus group points i remember in one of the cells that someone said i'm glad this isn't just a couple white males up there on the podium that's all our decision is um we have some real diversity um i i think i'm just gonna maybe start the process of i'll just maybe start the process of who i will be

167voting for but first do you want to do a struggle promotion or before you say anything um yeah uh i'm open to that or i'm i admit ken did mention out emotion and debate it and get to discussion point on that motion but i i i'm yeah but flexible either way my my suggestion might be prior to that we we could take advantage of the opportunity to do this drop goal um let me let me figure out something though before we do that which is um so it sounds like it's very clear that there are two priorities that we need to worry about one is the continued progress of the equity vision and making that even more real in terms of successful outcomes as we move into the future the other is the meet more

168immediate need to get the levy passed to get the referendum passed for the levy and there those are very different things um we've heard we heard both candidates talk about their approaches to both um i think some of their answers are very similar um frankly i don't know i wonder in my own mind are the strengths and weak or the strengths of each candidate being different stronger for one purpose or another i don't know that they are um you know regarding the equity vision piece um you know i'll come back to my thought on on the change agents and and continuing the work that dr coley kind of really emphasized when he was brought on board and you know is is that something that the strength of one would help better with than the other

169but then you have the local connections the history knowing the people and being able to build on those local relationships that dr lake has to make things happen um frankly in both the long-term equity vision achievement and then and in the passage of the of the referendum so i you know i've thought about those in my mind as being different but then as i think about it it's like well but even though those goals are different each one brings different strengths to them that could that could help achieve the need so it doesn't necessarily clarify anything it's just i'm just you know it's going through my mind straw ball yeah all right we we would do this by texting you yeah and number one i'll give you the number again all right so yeah that's

170something you are willing to say out loud as we're being youtubed and broadcast okay i would what i would do oh do you have my number there where where and i could put that in the chat um okay oh that'd be awesome can i ask a question why aren't we just using the chat is the chat or video is the chat visible michelle i think the chat might be visible to people uh chat oh okay i don't know um i don't believe so would on youtube right that would be a different chat we're going to just do the chat and to michelle if you want to do that that's fine well i i or could everyone i mean i think you'd better text frankly just because yeah textual text okay so text too can or

171okay the only people who can be text right now are are mike and michelle so you'd have to make ken a uh uh co-host i think if you have do you all have phones oh oh sorry sorry i thought we were using the chat sorry okay you just need a number i'll give you the number it's fine if someone wants to call me beyond tonight that's fine it's nine five two two one zero two seven nine zero so ken will just facts like the name yeah to you and then you'll see that remember in our time sorry i'll put that when i get all six so nine five two two one zero two seven nine zero that's correct okay and that's whole lot of notes and as you get these you'll obviously then share back

172with us if it was three to three four two five to one or six to zero that's correct um and you will forever forget who sent what necessarily right right i won't know he won't know yeah he would not know you'll have to vote on it publicly anyways 952-210-2790 that's correct okay thank you [Music] i've got five one more oh frank i go okay i'm useless at texting so we can be patient i'll go free frank no it keeps it keeps um it keeps auto correcting i'm missing okay there we go all right you have uh 5-1 for jenny okay yep okay so do we want to discuss some more or [Music] given that move to emotion i am move that i i move that we enter into negotiations with uh dr gene lake second

173okay and again um to whomever it was that might have been the one and not the five um one doesn't need to vote how they texted um being five to one i also believe there's there's value in uh you know consensus and and unity so um i'm just saying that anybody can put whatever they want but i'm just saying that so there we go okay uh so move moved and seconded so now it's on the table do we want to discuss further or just move immediately to a vote anybody that has anything to say as a poor discussion now that emotion has been moved and seconded feel free [Laughter] we were going to 11. come on this is this is great breakfast breakfast that brickette oh that's right we can do that friday morning right

174yeah sorry curtis sorry that's okay it's all right these are both two these are two very um uh very accomplished um uh candidates and it is is truly unfortunate that we we can't um have both um okay um but when it when it comes to the short term needs of the of of the of the district um and combined with the long-term means of the district i i do think that dr lake is uniquely uniquely situated to be successful in handling both so that's all i wanted to say i concur i i just want to elaborate on what curtis said we knew this was going to be a tough decision i think that was good it was a tough decision i want to acknowledge to everybody listening that they could both hit the ground running

175but what elevated dr jennifer lake in my mind is i think she would hit the ground running even faster i think there would be a more seamless transition uh transitioning is very important here when we're talking about the current pandemic we're talking about the upcoming operating levy um that's what kind of elevated a bit more in my mind are the relationships that are already here so thank you any other discussion oh go ahead rose well i just want to echo kind of the fact that both of both are incredible leaders we i just want to acknowledge that incredible leaders and um hopefully regardless that they can continue to to to be the great leader that they are uh for the district um and so um yeah i i wish we could like keep them both

176you know like like higher than both but superintendent so but we can't so unfortunately so yeah it's uh it's tough but i i really thought that they presented themselves really well just their passions showed through and through for the students and student voice was fake it's just just really impressive very impressive and very inspired by both the leaders yeah very inspired um i have to say that i'm glad we kept it to an internal search because i think uh we had such two incredibly strong candidates um and that allowed us to um meet the timing so that they would both be considered not looking at uh not be taken by some other position um and so um i'm glad we've gone through the process we did go through and gotten a significant community input and

177gotten all we would have gotten in a longer process but condensed okay i think that's it claire johnson could you take the vote please on the motion that's been seconded on the table to enter contract negotiations for dr jennifer lake to be our next superintendent um dr chu director anderson aye director shaw aye treasurer goggins aye chair johnson vote side oh all right great all right uh uh ken and tony you guys were amazing and i'd like to also thank rose and kitty for um you know working with you guys um this went um when when uh when when mike delivered the the timeline that um was being proposed i was like whoa really uh okay um we've had an amazing amount of community uh uh stakeholder input and i know that that was important

178to everyone on the board and i'm just so happy um with the the number of people who are able to participate in a very abbreviated search um and uh i i could not be more thrilled with how this was done um and um looking forward to uh uh doing salary negotiations with uh directors i was gonna say we're we're up next committee is up next you know uh just a little point of reference you might need to call her to see if she actually will accept oh yeah oh yeah typically the board chair would call her and uh tell us the board you know want to do that and you know i know she'll say yes but that's probably well i but technically i i won't ask for her acceptance i'll ask for her willingness

179to enter into that contract negotiation that's exactly right there you go any any superintendent to which we make an offer they could find the offer terms untenable so we do not formally know that so we would move forward with that i i just want to also say you know obviously thanks to dr lake um but also just a particular thanks to dr faber um mike um you know it's not easy to apply and put your heart and soul into the materials that you gather um there were some surprisingly stunning positive references that we all received for dr faber that reflect i think his high regard outside of our community absolutely and across the state at all levels of government foundations grants municipals we had ex-mayors we have attorney generals uh who are on board i

180think that um as the as we articulated as a board i think that um you know that that's that serves us well and he's more than a credit he is a driving force and continues and has continued to be that change agent uh that we've needed to keep pushing us forward and i i only do hope and expect that those changes will continue uh hopefully with his help you know assuming he'll be interested in in staying with the district he's done such good work particularly around you know taking over the things like the absent narratives and the circles and heading up you know some of the teacher of color initiatives that we have and some great ideas there that we don't want to lose um you know so we'll we'll see where that goes but

181uh so i just want to thank him for his sincere uh interest in in wanting to lead us leave the district absolutely um and then the other practicalities um so yes our um uh contract committee uh frank curtis and todd you know you have a bunch of material already i think that what we've talked about was that we would want to conclude the negotiations come to an agreement on the contract terms with uh the new superintendent by early march early to mid-march so that by our our our meeting in march we could have that in front of mrs board to approve the final terms so um i guess if you guys the three of you get together and think about do you have what you need to put together what that contract would be there's

182obviously msba stuff there's all the stuff we had with dr coley in the past come up with some thoughts involve kitty or rosemary as you want for ideas that go into it you know it's a pretty good template i think that we had with aldo and and i guess the question is do we want to discuss the recommended offer that todd curtis and frank would come up with at for example a study session and then discuss that and if there are certain things we think might want to be adjusted or give ideas that you know to them they could then finalize it then they would take that to dr like for that negotiation and bring it back for formal approval or what do you think those processes kitty i know you probably have some good

183isn't that a closed meeting contract negotiation that then becomes public after the contract is signed i think so well i when i when i talked to msba their advice was that even discussing the terms of the contract had to be in a session that was open that we wouldn't close it because they didn't necessarily interpret a superintendent contract as as like labor negotiations they saw that more as more traditional kind of union and interesting that that's the the verbal conversation i had with uh what's her name barbara is it or whatever.msba so you know um because the the contract is going to be public knowledge anyway ultimately then you know then i guess my thought would be not to have that done in a closed session but in a study session and if if but

184but then that's why we have the task force right so if frank todd and curtis can themselves get together um you know as as a task force and work back and forth on it should be this number or that number should the parking allowance be this or that should the travel allowance be this or that that kind of thing they can bring that to us and then we can just specifically you know adjust or recommend back if we think we have amendments to that so if that makes sense then our next our next study session is in two weeks march 16th right now because of spring break right i mean i would love to hear what i mean can does that sound i mean i you know i here's what probably 90 percent of the

185boards do that we work with they have a board personnel committee that is not a majority of the board so in your case probably two and the two people uh would meet with the candidate and negotiate a contract and then the contract comes back to the full board with full disclosure and full vote and that's what most of them do so there are six of us we had we had named that committee as being uh directors johnson anderson and shaw yes that's right uh so it's three i think so three and five okay that's three as possible because you can't right so if they negotiate with with the with uh dr lake and uh sure i'll bring it back to the board with your approval you know so so so then that's different from what

186i said in a in a big way which i'm totally comfortable and fine with which is that i don't feel the need to make curtis todd and frank bring us their their proposed terms first i believe they can collectively draft that and then present that to dr lake um for her to react to or iterate on yeah it seems to make the most sense okay so we could potentially have something by march 16th could have an approved contract right so that could be voted on on march 16 in the regular meeting yes typically the board chair is involved in the negotiation um do we not wish mike to be involved i don't know if that's a concern to mike or to anybody else but that's the norm is that the board chair is on the

187whatever the committee it is i have no problem with that um but would that make it doesn't matter someone has to know somebody would have to stop yeah yeah and i'm more than willing to go either way i understand um the borcher doing it if nothing else because there's continuity with the discussions i had directly with superintendent sikoli in this last round um and i'm the one that would be you know at least for the next year the rest of this term the main contact with the new superintendent so i'm totally fine with doing that i guess the question would be if any of the three of you are appalled and appallingly disappointed and potentially jumping off so that i could be part of the three-person group uh i'll say um that uh since i

188will not be on the board this time here um oh it's probably appropriate for me to drop off if one one person is going to trouble why are you not on the board next year hang on we're getting there we go the alarm well frank has um acknowledged even previously his current intent to not run for re-election this coming november okay i didn't know that and so that's so funny i missed that too so i did not know that yeah he frankie made a quip about it a few meetings ago that i picked up on and maybe everybody else didn't that oh it was something about how you guys are gonna have to live with this i'm not going to have to so uh oh wow i should miss that and of course anyone can

189change their mind up until 5 p.m on the last date of filing so uh we still could get frank to decide he wants to keep going but uh so we haven't filled in to can't get him to change his mind yeah all right well then if everyone else is okay with that then i will um take the spot uh working with todd and curtis and we can set up a call or something um a zoom or a voice call or something just kind of get going i'll i think we all have the same material and uh yeah yeah let's go from there yeah and the target will be yeah go ahead well i'm sorry and i did just want to highlight um uh an email from kitty um i think we've all maybe have had

190that i wasn't able to attend that leadership conference but i was able to go back in and look at the specific workshop regarding superintendent contracts i think we do have to keep in mind some of the suggestions they had around vacation days just some things that we can incorporate in i'm just saying i know you're prior to wearing that mic but i did watch it i was trying to prepare so yep yep i agree cool and then what we'll gear up to then is to iterate among ourselves on the task force as much as we need to and then get something the doctor like you know in the next 10 days um for her to potentially react to and and and and and agree to from her perspective and then potentially bring that to our

191march 16th meeting for formal approval okay yep all right uh we did have another agenda item which was do you want to call and offer her the opportunity yes i do i do so i don't know if i have i don't know if i even have her number i do but i don't want to give it to you publicly no no obviously actually like yeah it's in her material isn't it yeah it's inner materials yeah yeah all right okay all right and i have all that personnel phone numbers on the front page front page yep yep got it and and i'm i'm gonna call uh and then after that i'll call mike too typically we call the candidate that okay so we'll do that well i think tony the candidate i think would be good

192i think i said i think you could i i think because you know them so well there's some benefit mike when you're doing the calls okay all right yeah okay let's try that because this is not internal right it's my internal research so i'll do that even before i leave the district center here just the next few minutes when we're done so do we oh go ahead oh is is it is it is the item about the 26 we need to yes that's the last thing so um we we had already called it so uh i would entertain a motion to cancel the february 26 special school board meeting that we had tentatively on the books for friday i move that we no longer meet on friday february 26th second any discussion are you sure

193i think we should take a straw poll could you please take the vote on canceling the february 26th meeting yes uh director anderson aye hi hi clerk johnson vote sorry all right so um quarter said todd i'll look at my calendar maybe i'll i'll send you guys a note it might not be tonight it might be tomorrow so we can get on a conference call or resume i'm assuming zoom is okay we just do a zoom call or something yeah next week next week for sure yeah next week you know monday tuesday wednesday early next week monday tuesday yeah um and and i'll send you all the times that i'm open like it might even be in the evening you know whatever so get going on it sure all right well having concluded the business

194for which we had convened tonight's special school board meeting