001tonight's our work session for January 24th 2024 is called to order the agenda for this session is posted on the PPS website under the board and meetings tabs this meeting is being streamlined on PPS TV services website and on Channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check check the district website for replay times the purpose for tonight's meia is to interview three firms for the purpose of conducting a search for our next superintendent this began last month when we put out an informal RFP um for the superintendent search firm after receiving responses to the r irfp three board members and District staff work together with procurement um Team to evaluate and review the scoring Matrix before individ individually scoring each proposal after the final scores were tabulated we extended invitations
002to the following three research firms red Associates human capital Enterprises and Alma Advisory Group for interviews this evening so before we begin with our first interview I kind of want to review the format um for the interviews we will begin with introductions um for our board introduction our staff introductions everybody at PPS staff who's here um then we we invite The Firm this is where kind of go get kind of tricky so um originally I had them um well the firm will provide information on on their business including their superintendent search experience um introduction and introduce the team that will be the actual ones collaborating with us for our search um now this is where going to get kind of trick because the search firm I'm going ask to present a PowerPoint presentation covering questions
0031- nine um and so so I'm when they get on I ask if they're going to during the presentation is those questions going to be answered um if not then we will just ask each board member will ask their question um and get their answers the reason why I wanted it for it be a PowerPoint presentations in case um people forgot something we can get the PowerPoint and um board members can go over them later um to do their scoring if need be um we're only going to be asking follow up questions um for questions 1 through nine the other excuse me the other 10 through 15 questions is Just for information all purposes for us um and then if time permits we'll ask them we'll welcome them to ask questions um of us um
004at the board for of the board um if we have time if we are less than 10 minutes we're less than around 10 minutes before um we done followup questions we'll just have them just go directly to closing remarks or and then we'll move on to the next next firm um any questions before we get started all right well let's bring in the first uh red Associates good evening everyone good evening good evening um you can go ahead and you guys can go ahead and start um is it just a whole team here already I do see Steve I'm just waiting to make sure his camera is coming on there we go good evening good evening evening all right U so the kind of layout will be um and help me understand you guys' presentation
005your Power Point presentations did you guys answer the questions in those or were you guys expecting us to ask questions um we expect to be ask questions um our presentation is focused on our structure correct okay so what we do is we're gonna give a a introduction for board members um then you guys can go ahead and give your introduction about who you guys are go into your presentation and then right after the presentation we'll go into the questions um we ask that each question be around three minutes each um to answer um depending on what time we have left we'll um offer you guys options to ask us questions um and then right around 10 minutes till and we'll have either Cara or um Rosanne let you know where you're at um TimeWise and
006then after around 10 minutes we ask you for your closing remarks um and then we'll go on from there s good excellent awesome so I I'll start my name is Gary Hollands I am the board chair of Portland Public Schools and then I will throw it to Eddie yeah my name is Eddie W um board member just a board member um yeah was also a former teacher you do I have to throw it to someone I'll throw it to Pat okay I'm Patty Sullivan a board member just for the last six months and I was a former teacher as well who you passing it to I'll pass to Michelle good evening everyone Michelle depass a board member and proud graduate of Portland Public Schools who are you throwing it to I'm throwing it to Julia
007look like she's having some technical difficulties um so I introduce her for that I'm Julia brim Edwards um no Julia brim Edwards she's um board U member as well and was also on the selection committee for the um the superintendent selection committee as well and then I'm going throw it to Mr Andrew Scott hello uh Andrew Scott I'm also a PPS board member from Zone one and nice to meet you Steve and nice to see you Libra hey Gary can I go back sorry sorry about that technical problem so Julia H board member uh PPS parent for 18 years and a PPS grad good to see you Libra nice to meet you Steve good to meet you uh we have Miss Liz large here as well hi good evening I'm Liz large I'm the district's
008contracted General Council welcome and and has Frankie gone yet yes that's was calling on Miss Frankie hi I'm Frankie I pronoun and I'm the student rep awesome awesome uh Miss Brad sha you want to introduce yourself as well hi carot BW I'm the executive assistant in the board office hi carot all right I think uh director green is trying to get on so he'll just come on hopefully as you guys are going through your presentation and we will turn it to you guys excellent great to see all of you guys I am Libra Ford um I am a education Advocate and been that for over 25 years years I founded a school in Hawaii the first hybrid School uh in 2008 and been advocating in Oregon ever since I've arrived here and I also was
009on the North Clackamus School Board where I know many of you and currently I sit on the state um education board and I'll pass it to Steve well good evening it's a pleasure to be with you my name is Steve Chestnut and as Libra said uh we're both very excited to be here about having and to have this conversation with you about the possibility of assisting you in finding your next superintendent and our entire team cannot join us tonight but we'll introduce them in a moment but we're all very passionate about assisting boards to find great superintendents that are an excellent match uh for the district I was a superintendent for 21 years in the state of Washington after leaving Washington I was a superintendent for six years in Arizona and I retired from full
010time work uh four years ago as an executive director from the Scottsdale Unified School District um and I've been working with r Associates um for the last uh four years and uh that's really the way that I can give back to the profession I love and so it's it's fun for me to do this and uh greatly appreciate the the service that board members provide so uh we have a little PowerPoint here that we will uh go through and I'll continue to introduce members of the team who cannot be here uh Mr David FES is our manager in director and he retired as a superintendent uh from Carol Texas uh in 2020 he was a superintendent for a total of 18 years and Mr Ryan Sandberg he's co-chief executive officer of the center for E
011for Effective School operations and that's a sister organization that we work with they bring a lot of uh uh Human Resources experience and he's a member of our team as well thank you Steve um so we're going to begin our presentation and I first just want to ground Us in saying congratulations uh as you know I have been in this position or maybe you don't know I have been in this position with Ray Associates as a board member and now I'm on the other side with Ray and Associates and excited to um assist with board members in this very important process PPS um in its ju supposition between joy and vibrant environment building and disruption of inequities is Paramount to the state of Oregon um we recognize that there's a history here at PBS that's
012not just um from the past and the current and and and speaking to the future but also a history that has really led the education path of the state and we're excited about what's next for you guys so who are we we are a long-standing firm um the only firm that is women owned uh we have 40% bipac and women Associates from all over the state in particular I think it's important to name that you got one right here that has worked closely with you guys in the past uh we also have Cutting Edge tools that help you um reach into our pool which we have the largest candidacy pool out of all the firms that you can select and try to choose what's best for your future in addition to that um we recognize
013that this is important not just for today but for our future we are looking at this from a uh a partnership in your social justice disruption and we're super excited about what's yet to come for PPS I'll pass it to Steve yeah there you go in all of our searches we're very committed to candidate care and candidate Outreach and we work very hard at that uh Libra hinted that we have a expansive database of over 2,000 School administrators so once a uh a posting uh once a vacancy is posted that goes out immediately to them uh we also get an average of 28,000 unique monthly visitors to our R Associates website and superintendent central office people that are considering a superintendent position they know to check that website when I was a superintendent I was
014and I was in the market interested in making a move I would immediately check the rayan Associates website uh but we also know that two-thirds of our placements come from outside of the candidates we already have registered so we know that people are watching the advertisements that we send out they're U responding to uh the recruitment that we do so next slide please so I would like to describe to you our process our process um our process has five stages you can find another description of that process on page four of the proposal uh but stage one is board input and that's where we start um the board determines the timeline of the search uh the board has a uh the responsibility for finalizing the profile of an ideal candidate and I'll talk about that
015more in a moment uh the the board obviously conducts interviews we assist with that but that's obviously a major responsibility uh and then of course the board has to determine candidate compensation that's an important thing to determine so you can attract candidates and we determine uh we help you assist that you determine we we uh we assist but this is it's your search we take that very seriously that it's your search and not ours stage two is what we call District profile development so that is when we come up with the profile of the ideal candidate the candidate that matches uh Portland the best based on the data that we have and We Gather that data in a variety of ways one way is through a 31 qualities assessment which is an online survey it's
016based on the Professional Standards for educational leaders which is the Bible of school leadership educational leadership Nationwide and uh results uh from that survey are compiled over a period of about two to three weeks and then we compile that information and share it with the board as you help as you uh help to decide what that profile of the ideal candidate looks like uh we also uh hold in-person or virtual stakeholder meetings uh we can do both either or uh and in a district to your size we're used to doing 15 18 20 different stakeholder groups you decide which stakeholder groups you want us to reach out to and we work with you to make that happen and we know that Porton Public Schools is a community Centric district and we will honor that tradition
017and we will work hard to reach into the various communities that you identify the groups that you would like us to uh to work with to gather feedback from them on what that ideal candidate looks like uh we will also do individual board member interviews that's where we start the process uh and then that candidate profile is unique to your District it won't look like any of the others because there's uh uh just a lot of data to analyze to come up with that final profile and then we utilize that Prof profile throughout the entirety of the search in the recruitment efforts screening candidate evaluation final selection but also is a signal to uh candidates to know if they are a good match for what you are looking for and so that profile is featured
018prominently in all of our advertising materials and uh you know candidates can take a look at that stage three is Recruitment and we aggressively recruit top candidates we advertise on many fronts uh including social media and we utilize our Nationwide network of Associates um so uh we do a lot of Outreach to people that uh would be good fit for Parton Public Schools based on the on the profile that you develop stage four is uh can the candidate pool so well we've done taken all that done all that work to gather those applications we end up with a candidate pool and then our team screens those candidates uh based on the profile uh we also do uh background investigations internet checks social media checks uh to make sure that uh you know we're identifying any
019issues that are out there and um most Uh current superintendants and district office administrators uh have probably been involved in some controversies that's normal uh so but we will look for all those and make sure we're aware of what all of those are uh and if there are problems then we will uh identify those and that'll be part of our screening process and then for selected finalists in The Final Round We engage a Professional Organization to conduct a complete criminal civil litigation Social Security sex offender Motor Vehicle Record check and verification of educational degrees at no educ at no additional fee and uh so uh what we do then uh for the first round of interviews we bring 8 to 10 top candidates and all that extensive application information to the board the board also
020has access to all applications so if we bring the top 10 or 12 to you for consideration that first round of interviews and you say hey uh what about this person let's look at this application if you have a couple that you would like to bring forward then you know that is going to be up to you you're in the driver's seat this is the board search uh but our goal is to have no surprises as we bring you that candidate pool that brings us then to stage five which is board selection of candidates see if you go back one there we go um so we assist you along the way uh in that selection process um you will review those top candidate applications those 10 or 12 as you prepare for that first round
021of interviews we also do one-way video interviews which I'll talk about more in just a moment that's another important piece of information for you to get a good look at the candidates uh then when we are considering how many uh candidates to bring forward for that first round of interviews out of that 10 or 12 uh we have a consensus building scoring instrument that we use uh which will help facilitate the discussion but it's your discussion it's your deliberation uh to decide on candidate advancement uh for both the uh semi-final and final interviews and then along the way we will also finalize with you uh interview questions for each round of the interviews okay next slide uh the spark hire video I just mentioned uh that is another thing that we provide for those 10
022or 12 top candidates and I'm not going to play that for you but um this is actually one of our Associates Dr Karen Hall uh one of our Associates in St Louis and uh anyway uh you will see a question you'll get this as a as a video link there will be about three or four questions and you'll get an opportunity uh in each each uh each answer is timed usually about 90 seconds so you'll have the opportunity to see how these candidates perform in an impromptu manner uh it is a uh uh time situation so they cannot prepare for this once they open that link they have like five minutes to get it done and so you can see how superintendent candidates can speak in an impromptu manner which is an important part of
023the job and it gets getes you a little insight into their their personality and the way they approach uh public speaking uh next slide why choose the rayway Ray and Associates why choose us well we have good references couple of them are listed here top one is from Millard Public Schools in Omaha Nebraska uh District of 24,000 bottom one is from Broward County schools in Florida 260,000 we do District small and large and uh we're proud of the work we do in uh Across the Nation next slide is similar more um more recommend ations and references the top one is from alhamra elementary school district in Phoenix Arizona 12,000 students in that District I was the one of the uh team members on that search and uh we chose Dr Cecilia ores and she's uh
024she's wonderful um and we took a lot of pride in that the bottom one is from Beckler City schools in Ohio so we are proud of those references and uh that's uh it's important for you to know that we do a lot of VAR SE and uh we do them successfully and uh most recently uh some of the recent large searches we've done have included witch do Public Schools uh Anchorage School District I was on that particular team St Louis Public Schools Fairbanks North Star so a lot of uh larger districts uh urban districts and so that's something we're proud of as well okay next slide have to end uh start to wind up the presentation not end it head towards the finish line here with a a summary uh we have unique size and
025scope uh we believe in engagement with the community very important part of our process we work hard at Outreach to U outstanding candidates we provide in candidate information we rely on the board's leadership throughout the process and we provide selection assistance so that uh you get that candidate signed as your new superintendent so labra I'll turn it back to you thank you Steve um to wrap this up I think it's important that we acknowledge that this is a moment um for the community um but it's also a moment that will be recognized beyond all of our existence the work of this District now and in the future makes an impact on people that we don't even know yet and it must be student centered we must continue your disruption with the Joy the Jos of
026that is important and we are honored to be here and talk to you about how we can walk that path with you with of course you leading that process so that we continue to build something that we're proud of for today tomorrow and Beyond so with that I'll stop sharing and um we can prepare for your questions all right thank you for the presentation um so we everybody knows what question they have so we'll just start with Andrew with question number one great thank you thanks for the presentation uh let me bring it up here and you know you you touched on some of this a little bit um in your presentation but um could you talk just a little bit about how familiar you are with our school district school district its culture our
027challenges and our overall goals yeah um I particularly want to answer this question because in full transparency I've been working with PPS for several years since I've come to Portland I feel very comfortable with the culture but I think it's important that all that are listening know that we recognize that this is over 44,000 students that is being um that will be impacted 81 schools and there's several um community- based organizations involved families and communities and the disruption of racial inequities must include all those in individuals and groups and this district is really profoundly known for that work and that is the culture that is a big Rich part of the history in addition to that I think it's important that we recognize some of the challenges have been the state infrastructure that has actually
028displaced individuals and created things like gentrification and white flight that have damaged the way the work can and cannot be done and so those things are important to recognize as this search goes on and and people um choose to be a part of this District they must know the history of of the harm and how we must move forward to correct some of those things um there's also a continuous weight the PPS carries in terms of being the largest school district in the state and creating Pathways for education for the state and even though that is a heavy weight to carry it's also an opportunity to change the way that the state sees education for all students um and making sure that all students are rep represented at all times the historical bonds levies and
029laws that this district has helped pass are profound and must recognize those things the historical relationships with businesses and communities and and and the leading of Community Based organization also has changed education rates graduation rates and so many other things to move this this state forward in education and of course there's 32,000 graduates that have come through PPS including some of your board members their parents and their parents there are education Advocates that not only currently exist in the district but have been a part of this district for generations and those individuals should be recognized and understood and the contributions in building this District up um and last but not least I think it's important to understand that large districts will always have um challenges uh in adverse adversity but the grit and the passion
030of this board um has been something that has really led the state towards uh Solutions and so anyone that you guys choose to be a part of this and to lead this with you should know all of those things but also know that they're part of a culture that is Rich and profound for the state of Oregon thank you all right we next we have uh Michelle thank you um thanks for your presentation um and you also covered on question two and which is how will you go about learning what the key strengths of our next leader are but it's really what how will you go about learning what the key strengths of our next leader should be can you share the methods that you'd use to interview senior staff and education experts to identify
031candidate profiles who match the district's academic and operational needs and I know that you'd mentioned that you do um you have a survey that you send out are there additional methods you use to get that information um to build candidate profile sure yeah I'll go ahead and answer that I I think I did touch on that quite a bit but maybe to amplify a little bit more um we believe that our application process will identify the key strengths of applicants that's really one of the main goals of the entire process so as we aggressively recruit top diverse candidates uh we know that the strengths identified in the district profile uh we're trying to match with those people that we're talking to the application submitted will contain a cover letter letters of reference and we do
032a phone interview with top applicants with questions specifically about the district which will help to identify their strengths we try to get to know them at the beginning of the process so we have a personal relationship with them so that we can uh answer the questions that they have so we can learn more about them and get specifics about their strengths uh we do a phone reference check with all references we also contact people who are not on the candidates reference list to identify their strengths we research online as I mentioned of the top candidates which also helps to identify strengths uh and possible weaknesses problems or controversies um each of the top candidates will complete that one-way impromptu video interview that we talked about and that's available to the board obviously that's another way
033to determine some strengths uh we assist the board in developing those interview questions which will allow you to ask about specific areas strengths that kind of thing and uh public forums also have a place it's up to the district if you're going to include public forums as part of the final interview process that's another wonderful way to uh engage finalists with the community and you can observe their strengths in real time uh in that setting as well so the result of that process I believe is um quite a few data points that will help you determine the strengths of each candidate thank you and I have I know we're limited on time but I have that is about how you would work with the senior staff and um and education experts here to learn about
034to help um build that candidate profile to learn about the key strengths that our district needs rather than candidate side how will you work with the district side and the senior leaders um here operations people to learn what the skills are that are needed um In This Moment sure the stakehold I was just going to say the stakeholder meetings that we conduct uh internal staff is a very important part of that Union leadership teachers classified staff parent groups but yes senior staff is a very important part of that process We Gather that information from them as well yeah and if I can add I think um as a person that experiences as a board member a good analogy that you could think through is the data point collection is is a heavy lift right and
035so there's a lot of data points that need to be collected which you will have access to all of them right and so that you can make good decisions informed decisions but it's also all coming from all of the different areas um so the expectation of understanding who what when and how of a candidate is where we take that heavy lift from from you but then we give you the results of that so then you can see all of those data points and and there's nothing that won't be shown to you um but that heavy lift is done by us and I think too um uh director pass is uh the next question if I could go ahead and go into that because that's really what you were asking is really um the internal candidates
036um that are something that you want to Bubble Up we ask you those things and we ask of the board we ask of um Administration and we also ask of the community like who do you see as a potential leader now we do expect those individuals to go through the process because due diligence is important in this entire time but we do make sure that we acknowledge that some leaders exist already right and we want to make sure that they're seen and heard and we take that information and move through and we do that through the 15 to 20 Community um uh and stakeholder meetings and also through one-onone meetings with the board and one-on-one meetings with the admin staff and it makes a real difference in not just getting that like online search folks
037but the folks that you know that see every day who you know could be that next leader thank you all right so that actually goes into question number three go ahead Patty which was just answered very well thank you and um also but along with that we've gotten some email or at least I have one email from someone who suggested someone they knew um they could even be in your database who knows but that's just someone we been pass on to you I take it and yeah absolutely um we would take that information but we also are very intentional about making sure we're asking for that information from community and giving them a clear way of giving that to us because sometimes people don't even know that they have input right and it's important that
038people know that they have input and we're clear about that so yes we would take that information but I also want to Zone in that due diligence is important so every recommendation still would have to go through the process because we have a a best practice process that we know we'll make sure we don't miss anything in the way okay thank you yeah I just want to just add on to a little bit to that I mean I'm want to add on to that um what actually strategies do you implore um that will look at um local or internal candidates as well yeah so we conduct 15 to 20 Community meetings and that is up to the board so you guys lead how many you want to do and with who and um and what
039questions you want to be seen in those meetings those meetings can be online or in person or both um and they're and they're recorded so people have access to that and that becomes a data point for the board to review so you can see what those are in addition to that we meet with each board member we meet with designated admin and Senior staff to also identify those individuals and last but not least the community it's very important that Community has access and so those are three kind of ways that we gather that but the stakehold of community meetings is key um because you all know that if Community feels like their voice is being heard that is the way that you move the needle um so those are going to be really important and
040the number of those and who will be led by you okay thanks um director green I don't know if you was here earlier but you get to ask question number four oh I'll ask it since I didn't even get to ask three done okay so four is um how do you go about ensuring a diverse and inclusive pool of candidates who might match our candidate profile sure I'll answer that uh in addition to aggressively recruiting top diverse candidates we also adverti widely and the board makes the final decision on Advertising but the publications of organizations that we recommend include the American Association of school administrators that's the national superintendent Association of course the association of Latino administrators and superintendents the National Association of black school Educators National Association of school superintendents Etc so we try
041to advertise widely to get the word out uh in addition we recommend that the board lean into the community outreach process to help make an informed decision so we kind of just talked about that in the last question as well every one of those 15 to 20 uh Community stakeholder meetings we we have a question do you have candidates that you would like to recommend give us the name give us a contact information and we follow up on every one of those and we say something like uh your name surfaced uh in our process uh here is how you apply for the job we would encourage you to look at the profile if you feel you're a good match for this position then you should apply so that's a very important part of of what
042we do thank you and if I also I also want to add a remind you guys that we have that tool with the interview questions um so you're getting to see candidates that are in your entire pool um at all times in addition to that I I personally am making a commitment to make sure that this is a diverse pool for you to select from I have done this before with ra Associates and I don't want you guys to see anything less than everyone and everybody um because that is exactly what students deserve thank you uh question five is could you please provide information on the criteria and Method utilized for evaluating superintendent um superintendent candidates and what steps can be taken to guarantee a th a thoral evaluation well we certainly touched on this
043but uh just to uh reemphasize in in stage four of our process as you know we bring you the top 10 or 12 candidates that match the uh the ideal profile and uh we bring them to you for your consideration but you are really the final quality check on that process uh you have access to all the applications as I mentioned uh if the board agrees that one or more of the candidates not in that 10 or 12 should be brought uh and move forward in the process that's fine it's your search um but that's that's the basic process that we use should I go to the next question yeah okay thanks for the presentation uh and sharing sort of your backgrounds and how you approach things uh I'm going to focus in on that
044part of the U recruitment when you're at the at the process where you've got a final group of candidates or you're presenting the candidates and like for you to talk about how you face challenges um come up say for example that finding a pool of candidates um it's not as robust or you know frankly you don't have a good selection of candidates who match our position description candidates drop out how do you work with the board or how and how do you approach that as a firm well we know that unforeseen thing unforeseen unforeseen things do happen we know that so we can expect that uh so for example if there's an inadequate pool of candidates we will just be very transparent with you about that situation and bring you decisions to make concerning that
045are you going to extend the application deadline are you going to appoint an internal interim or you going to hire an outside interim superintendent you know those are the kinds of options you'd have in that kind of a situation uh if for example one candidate dropped out in the first round of interviews let's say you had four people uh lined up for that first round of interviews one of them drops out well then you have options we'll be very transparent about that we'll communicate with the board you'll have to make the decision on that do you interview one less candidate do you add a candidate what do you do there uh if there's two finalists and one drops out you have similar decisions to make in all those situations those scenarios we would just be
046very transparent with you bring that information to you uh we always emphasize excellent communication through the process so that there's no surprises and so that uh you're informed and can make a good decision because it's not our search it's yours but and we will uh work with you to uh you know tackle those unforeseen situations what are which are certain to come up I've had it happen in other searches where finalists have dropped out and uh you know you get on the phone and you'll figure out a solution great thank you also I I just want to add Julia if I could that um it's important to also know that we're aware of many other searches that are happening so part of that transparency is not just like the candidate pool if it's inadequate or
047not it's also if that candidate possibly is in you know a top ranking in another search so you're well aware of that in the Forefront of this and there's no um surprises from that angle because this is a world that we're in Beyond Portland right and so a lot of these candidat do show up in other places so that's part of the transparency so you guys are well informed perfect thank you both all right next we have director Wong yeah thank you um yeah I like this question because it it sort of hinting are asking a little bit for specifics um so the question is what are the two to three most important things for the board to do to ensure successful Recruitment and hiring of a superintendent who matches our candidate profile and position
048description I might if I could add a little bit maybe if you are so inclined you could add maybe what not to do because I always love uh examples of when people shoot themselves in the foot and uh learn from their mistakes so yeah yeah um so I I know that we've talked a lot about these 15 to 20 stakeholder Community meetings but I want to talk from personal experience on what to do and what not to do because I think that's a great addition of question and so it's important that you have them right but it's also important that you watch them because a lot of times board members won't be able to attend um read the data points make sure you go through and look at what the um Community is saying and
049what your stakeholders are saying because it really will form a successful Recruitment and hiring process and if you if you can find that time um something that I did that was very helpful was just I designated a time every week an hour just to review the data point so I really was like keeping up with the pace and making sure that I understood what was being said and what information was being passed on a second thing is that the board um needs to know that the expectation is that that um once you guys identify a profile that every candidate matches that profile um that and if there's anything that you want to change that we change that in the expectations for all not just a few and so again what not to do is to
050have like a a um many different profiles for a one job search we need to stick to what the profile is understand what that is and making sure it's informed by all but not letting that um vary um just because there might be some inadequacies in in a search um and last but not least I think it's important that you also are all on the same page um and in the same book right and so any discussions that you need to have if we need to help facilitate those and be honest and um transparent with each other um I think that's important to do what not to do is to not use your voice each one of you are voting member and so what it it is absolutely criminal to not speak up and say
051your part because you represent an area and it's very important that you use your voice all right thank you um we have Frankie question number eight how can technology and data be effectively utilized in the search process specifically for candidate assessments and market analysis yes well I talked about the 31 qualities assessment survey uh so that's an online survey electronic based and we make that available to all board members all staff all community members and we keep that survey survey open for about one month and that survey allows for open-ended comments as well and we tabulate all the results and make that summ available uh in an email to board members as they develop the profile of the ideal candidates so there's a ton of electronic communication obviously that uh is Technology based that we
052rely on Zoom is another good example uh as Libra mentioned those 15 to 20 stakeholder meetings uh you may choose you want all of them in uh in a zoom format or you may want half of them in person or all of them in person but in any case Zoom is a a very important tool that we use uh as well uh those are probably the the main examples and I think other tools that are important to mention are making sure that there's no language barriers and whatever approach we use for the community outreach as well as accessibility um barriers we want to make sure that all of that uh we use any tool available to us to make sure that those things don't become a barrier for folks to be included awesome awesome all
053right Frank you want to do number nine sure all right what makes your firm stand out from other superintendent search firms and why should our district choose your services well we love this question it's always good to have a student on the panel too so appreciate Frankie being here uh we have a track record of success we have completed over 1600 searches in the last 49 years the 10 year of the superintendent we place averages 6.5 years it was a little higher before the covid era but 6.5 years currently we have a price match guarantee if the new superintendent departs for any reason in the first year we'll another search for a z base fee uh travel advertising and material expenses only if in the second year a majority of the board is still in
054place and the departure is due to dissatisfaction uh we will do another search uh just as I just described uh but just to reiterate that price match guarantee we will match any other firm with comparable Services uh most importantly as former School District leaders uh uh educational leaders we are passionate about Assisting School boards finding a new superintendent who is well matched to the district and set up for great success and the last thing I'd say is we take a lot of Pride and having outstanding communication throughout the process and we recommend weekly phone call or Zoom uh between uh Libra myself and a representative from the board so that there are absolutely no surprises throughout the process and sometimes that has to be two or three calls during the week but we try to
055keep it manageable we try to uh keep the load off of the board we work with your key staff members we try not to overburden them as well and we just try to make sure we have a well- communicated process that that moves along uh on our timeline that we've agreed to to a successful conclusion thank you thank you all right so the next part is we got about 15 minutes left so we're going to do about five minutes um of questions I mean some follow-up questions if anyone have um if you can raise your uh your hand um if you have some follow-up questions and we do about five minutes of that and in the last say 10 minutes you guys can I give your closing [Music] statements all right we have uh director
056BM Ator then we have director w I think this is an easy one I'm just wondering um two parts of this question uh can you share your most recent um superintendent recruitments in the Pacific Northwest and then maybe uh just a career highlight of the superintendent Recruitment and placement that you're most proud of sure um two years ago I led the search for Educational Service District uh 123 in Pasco Washington uh very unique search because it's an educational Service Agency serves about 70,000 students about 25 school districts and so that was a lot of fun to to find the perfect match for that particular district and uh the superintendent is still there and being being very successful uh just this week we learned that we'll be working with a North thirston School District um in
057Lacy Washington and doing their search their superintendent has just retired recently uh so our firm is proud that we'll be able to to do that search um I uh I think the the the search that I'm most proud of was Fairbanks Northstar um that's a very unique and diverse community and uh that was the uh search uh last year uh we ended up hiring the internal candidate uh after a uh the entire process and uh I know he's uh continuing to be very successful so I'm very proud of that search it was a very unique experience and for me personally I'm going to be completely biased the best search was North CL School District which Ray and Associates helped us do and we were able to hire the uh first African-American woman superintendent for the
058state um and I'm excited I'm not going to um spoil anything but the numbers that um that superintendent is leading for North Clackamus are just amazing and um she continues to do great work even though the in and that was also a process done during the pandemic so we had a double whammy um and so super proud of that search and I feel as a board member that's what I'm excited to bring to you guys is the experience as a board member versus um just the experiences a a search frame all right yeah um yeah I'm just kind of curious about your uh like what processes you do for kind of a self assessment like in terms of um followup or or you know how do you know that you the the superintendent searches were
059success or placements were successful you know what kind of what kind of process do you have internally to figure out like how do you improve next time right sure you know the the main uh indicator is this is the superintendent still on the job after a year or two and we do check back on that of course and we track the the tenure length of tenure for each of our placements that's very important uh we also do follow care with board members uh to take uh we provide surveys so that they can uh give us feedback on really the state of their District uh and their needs uh so that there's a baseline of data based on the recent search uh and then we do that six months later so that uh you can get
060some um dialogue going with your new superintendent on on how things are going but then we also ask specifically for feedback uh referen reference checks uh from uh the districts that we do the searches with asking for of course ideally we want glowing recommendations but we also want to know areas that could be improved and that also happens throughout the process it's not just at the end um there's definitely m stes in the Middle where you get to have that complete transparent feedback and adjustments will be made all right we have director Sullivan and then director salivan and then director depass yes one thing that's really important in our district and we have real trouble if it doesn't work right is is communication and um just how do you help us with the communication as
061we go through this process sure I I'll take sters I'll start with that one yeah I I I mentioned that before we we uh recommend that there's a weekly uh telephone call or Zoom call between myself Le ra uh and a representative of the board and then we do a similar process with a key stakeholder I'm sorry key staff members in your District uh I'm not sure who you will appoint could be uh uh somebody in HR somebody executive assistant but we work with key people Communications office or whomever you appoint uh for us to have good communication with we touch base with them weekly as well and then they can get it out to the regular everybody else in the district correct parents yeah I also want to just um also recognize that in
062this particular search we have the opportunity of partnering with ciso which is a large National communication firm um that has dealt with very large districts in terms of communicating effectively and efficiently and so that is one of the tools that we'll be bringing in to make sure that we're all um doing a good job in that that area right director theath yeah I'm curious if you screen your candidate pool based on key performance indicators for instance one of the things that um it's persistent not just in this District we know it's in other districts around the country is closing that achievement gap between uh White students and students of color is there any you know is there any look back at the at the performance indicators or performance metrics for people in your candidate pool
063and then addition to tenure are there other things that you're looking for in other words how would you describe success beyond the the persons in the role for a year right well the ability to improve student achievement and and close achievement gaps is a huge area that we do look at uh that's always the important part of of a successful superintendent profile so that's the kind of thing that we're very interested in um but obviously um experience in superintendent position is important uh doesn't mean that you have to have been a superintendent to uh you could could very well come from an assistant superintendent position in another District but that type of senior leadership of course is something that we're very much interested in and looking for I think in addition to it's important to
064know that you're you're going to have a pool of questions that you get to access and decide what questions you want to have a candidate answer and in that pool even though there're suggest questions it's important to know that you can design questions right and so if there's a specific way or a specific part of performance that you're looking for you can design that question and I'm not just speaking from a theoretical level we did that in North Clackamus we took four questions that made sense and then made it make sense for what we were looking for in terms of outcomes and in particular what I hear your question saying is when you guys are looking at disrupting in inequalities you know how how is that how is that showing up in the work that
065they've done you can develop a question around that and in terms of the followup that we're doing on your behalf and those questions that we're asking you're in charge of that also so that could be the followup also to make sure that we are watching that metric over time and how you want to see that come about all right look like director BM ever have another one you um so it sounds like you've had a very long successful tenure of recruiting candidates um which is great to have track record that means you've got people in a lot of places um I am wondering my recollection is that you have a do not recruit on people that you've recruited before and I'm wondering like uh whether you have that and whether that um since you you
066have a long track record of placing superintendent whether that limits the the pool do you feel of C of of candidates you have access to or how does how does it impact your your recruitment well that's that's an important question we do not recruit anyone uh until they've been on the job for five years if they've been there for five years um then we we will reach out to them if they're doing excellent work but not for five years um also as I mentioned early on uh two-thirds of our placements have come from outside of our database so these are candidates that aren't necessarily registered with us um they are just choosing not to do that and they are applying though for jobs that are interesting to them and so I don't think there's any
067limitation on the pool in that process um and you know on the other hand it's it's uh there's a lot of vacancies right now and that that's a reality and so um I think that's the main factor that that your search would be up against is that there's a a large number of searches going on Nationwide right now uh look like uh student director Silverstein Frankie have a question yeah so um for performance indicators that are maybe a little harder to track as like data points like you know um their involvement within the community and the general sense of like how the community feels about them um how do you go about looking at that well we make a point to talk to people that are not on their reference list uh and ask them
068and uh get feedback on their perception and uh that goes a long way um our research also gives us an indicator uh you know the uh the web has a lot of information and uh if a superintendent has been in the news or a district administrator assistant superintendent has been in the news I mean that is going to be uh available online and we will research that so we get a we get a feel for the success of of that leader in his or her previous position yeah and I think as a previous board member another tool that's important is looking at past board meetings um and sometimes in board meetings you can identify things that may have been a problem that won't necessarily bubble up to Media but also um give you a really
069good indicator of what's going on um so that is something that I think just from My Lens as a board member I would definitely want to offer to you guys as another way of looking at them outside of the typical um data points thank you all right all right look like we're coming up to our last 10 minutes so we ask for you guys closing remarks and hey Gary just really quick before the closing I just want to do a time check just so I understand I I thought we had an hour with each firm and I know we started late with this one but I just I just wanted to throw that out there so we make sure we're we're staying consistent through all of them tonight yeah so that's why we're going to
0708:15 on this one okay yeah uh Steve you want to start and then I'll close out sure uh yeah I think uh Mr Holland I think you asked if we had any questions I don't have any questions at this time uh once we're hired for this job then of course we'll have a lot of questions and we'll be asking you directly uh looking forward to that but uh we're very excited about the possibility of working with you uh Portland Public Schools as a premier District in the Northwest as a educator in the state of Washington for 35 years I'm very well aware of the reputation of Portland Public Schools so we'd be proud and pleased to work with you and uh we' work very hard to make sure you get an outstanding superintendent uh definitely
071did all of that and I just want to again ground Us in this moment um you've arrived here and I appreciate the work that you have done to get to this point I know you all are volunteers and this is definitely a heavy lift um but I also want to recognize that this is a lift that's important for Community important for our future important for what leadership could look like for all of us so that we all can feel like we actually are excited and proud of what is going on in this district and so with that being said it is an honor to have presented to you guys tonight I enjoy working with all of you guys in many capacities but would be honored to join Ray and associ in supporting you guys in
072this process awesome thank you once again um for your guys' time and effort that you guys have put into this um and you guys should be hearing from us shortly thank you so much you guys have a great night thank you good night all right so that's number one down so the next one is supposed to start at 8:15 great take a a few minute break yeah yes I was just gonna say same you got you got seven minutes Capital Enterprises yes thank you thank my all right all right I see one more person who's named The Scholar first is that part of your group as well yes yes that I'll bring them over now too thank you so much okay um want to thank you guys for coming um spending the time you know
073with the r irfp and you know being here at this hour um just wanted that know that is as we just really appreciate you guys being here and um presenting for us tonight um we kind of go over um kind of the way it'll go we'll just do some brief introductions of everybody who's online here um on the PPS side um after that you guys can go ahead and tell us a little bit about who you guys are or and go into your presentation after the presentation we ask our questions after the questions are asked we'll ask follow-up questions and we have time allotment afterwards um we will ask if you guys have questions for us um if if we have time we do that if we don't we'll just go into um the conclusion
074of um of your guys's uh presentation here today we you try to give about 10 minutes before uh the the hour um if we can get things done that we'll just go right into um your closing closing remarks all right so I'll start off with me uh my name is Gary Hollands I am board chair of Portland Public Schools I'm Oregon resident uh PPS grad um and I'll move it to Eddie our director W either one works um uh Eddie Wong um board member uh was also former teacher in PPS I'll pass it on to Patty I'm uh Patty Sullivan board member also a former teacher and I'll pass it to Michelle hi everyone um I'm board director Michelle dep pass um a PPS parent and a PPS grad and um I will pass it
075on to Andrew hi good evening I'm Andrew Scott I see him pronouns I'm a board member and also a PPS parent and I will pass it on to Julia Julia sorry I didn't hear you Andrew hello everybody I'm Julia brim Edwards I've been on the Portland school board for 10 years and um I am a PPS grad and had three kids and was a PPS parent for 18 years and I'll pass is Frankie still on yes hi um I'm Frankie Silverstein youi the student um I think director green good evening everyone my name is Herman green I am the um Vice chair of the board I am a um PPS parent well all my kids are grown but they all went through PPS I myself gradu graduated um um out of Buffalo New York um
076and I've been here for quite some time now and I'm excited to be I'm a part of this process with all of you so thank you for being here you right here you go past it to we got Liz you got Cara you got Ros okay I will pass it to um my legal um who always keeps me right and make sure that I don't go astray Miss Liz lar thank than you director green good evening I'm Liz large I'm the district's contracted general counsel welcome and we go pass it to miss Bradshaw yes sorry hi Cara Bradshaw executive assistant for the board office and you're gonna pass it to miss pal hello Roseanne Powell board manager we should also give a big thank you to Terry Proctor who is behind the PPS logo all
077right uh so that's just who we are so now we'll just hand it over to you guys to you know tell us about who you are the team that's going to be working with us go through your presentation and after said after that we ask our questions follow-up questions and then you can uh wrap up your closing remarks at the end all right we turn it over to you guys great thank thank you Portland Public School schols thank you board uh it is truly an honor to be with you uh tonight in this uh very important moment of transition in your organization uh my name is Hank Harris uh I lead human capital Enterprises and I have uh some amazing partners with me tonight who I am truly honored truly honored to work alongside uh
078I'm gonna ask them to just say hi right now and then when when we get to the presentation uh you're going to learn a little bit more about them as we move into the presentation uh Tammy Campbell good evening everybody my name is Tammy Campbell former superintendent in Federal Way Public Schools the most diverse District in the state of Washington currently the CEO of the scholar first where I do mentoring and coaching of superintendent strategic planning um and all things to do with improving districts thank you taming so good having you here tonight Steve well good even good evening uh chair Hollands members of the board U my name is Steve Webb in addition to serving as an executive Search associate with human capital Enterprises I also served as a senior consultant and Mentor with
079Asa the national school superintendent Association providing Executive coaching uh and strategic planning support to superintendent and districts across uh the country um I retired in 2021 from Vancouver Public School as superintendent of schools after a 36y year career in public education 15 as superintendent of schools on a personal note uh I'm the father of a blended adopted multi-racial family with three teenagers and one young adult a junior at the University of Portland in our Vancouver home and I'm uh thrilled to have the opportunity to talk about how we can serve you with this important critically important transition and Leadership thank you thank you Steve Hector hello everyone my name is Hector Garcia I'm saying hello to you from the windy city where it's gray and cold like you would expect it at this time I
080have been an educator for over 30 years starting off as teacher principal District administrator and superintendent that's what I have been doing for the last 12 years and I have vast experience in nationally recognized schools as well as bilingual settings I'm thrilled to be with you tonight thank you thank you Hector Christie good evening chair all and members of the board it's great to see you tonight chrisy Perry former and retired superintendent from Salem Kaiser Public Schools I have um 18 years as an Oregon superintendent and um recently retired in my retirement I'm doing some Executive coaching and dipping my toe in the search World a little bit and I think uh one of the things that um I bring to our team is my work in Salem Kaiser you know we serve such a
081diverse Community the greatest number of El's the um so many kids in poverty great diversity and assets and um language 84 languages spoken in public Salem P KES are public schools which most people don't think about in Salem Oregon and um a real heart for um both the student voice so I'm thrilled that you have a student um adviser to your board but then the community voice in the decision making um of an important decision like this but in school uh District decision- making so we did lots of work around engagement in my time in Salem Kaiser so it's great to be here tonight thank you team um and thank you Bor and I I can't help but smile when my colleagues are introducing themselves because I I feel so lucky to have them alongside
082with me and I care so deeply about each one of them and when we start the presentation I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself and that's not to fill time I think that as you're thinking about this decision the folks who are going to do this work with you alongside you whether it's us or whether it's somebody else are going to be bring their human selves to you and work very hard arm in-arm with you over the next few months in a very very important undertaking and so I don't want to give short shrift to who we are and what we bring to the table both in terms of what we bring technically but also just who we are as human beings and so um I'd like to start the presentation and
083I think chrisy do you have sharing right let's put that um first slide up and and just briefly but then move to let's put our cover sheet up and then um and that's us and let's let's and I'm going to ask you Bor um to do two things that I'm going to speak to you about uh my story briefly and I'm going to just ask you to read the bullet points here I'm not really going to speak to these bullet points in this slide in the next one I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself I grew up on the east coast and I knew I always wanted to be a northwesterner and I got really lucky and found a job in the metro area in the early 90s um and fell in
084love with Portland and didn't think I would ever leave and I got a teaching gig it wasn't in Portland Public Schools but it was nearby but I lived right there on Southeast Belmont Street and uh I don't know if it's sort of the nerd in me or uh or what it says about me but I know you haven't heard this very much about the building that you inhabit but I thought the building you inhabit was really cool and I thought it was like the center of gravity for Portland some people think of the pink building I think of your pig building and I remember as a young guy in my 20s going to Portland Public Schools school board meetings thinking that one day I would want to contribute to this organization uh I remember Jack
085beerworth was a superintendent back in those days uh I don't remember too many of the board members but I remember L Frederick was sitting on the board and that was my introduct I mean that was you know during the day I was a teacher in a neighboring District but I thought one day one day I'm going to make some kind of contribution to uh to PPS I've been really fortunate that I've had actually a couple of opportunities to do that so after a career where I taught and I was a school administrator and then I became an HR Director uh down in cambi um all the time living in Portland and I think I lived in all five five of our quadrants maybe just four of them actually four of the five quadrants I lived
086in um and I would I had jobs typically in outside of PPS uh I became an employee of PPS in 2009 let's switch to that next slides chrisy if we can um as the uh Executive Director of Human Resources and I got to serve in that capacity um for two two and a half years um that is as you all know not the easiest job in the world uh but it was incredibly uh I felt incredibly honored that I that I got to play that role and that was uh that might have been uh been enough to satiate me as my contributions to PBS but I was I was given another opportunity which is um and if you read my proposal I spoke if you read our team's proposal you might have seen this and
087you might not have had the opportunity so I'll just tell you that um uh the last time PPS engaged in a superintendent search um uh you might remember it's not so long ago 20 17 um there there was an initial um there was an initial search that didn't go terribly well at that point in time in my career I was running human capital Enterprises uh and we were largely doing HR Consulting but also we were doing um cabinet level support for school districts cabinet level not superintendent level searches for superintendent level searches I had an agreement with a national firm uh you might remember hya or Hazard younga where for superintendent searches I would be one of their Associates for cabinet level searches my human capital Enterprises team would leave that work um when that
088first search in 2016 2017 didn't materialize didn't work out well it was the spring of 2017 and uh and one of your board members uh board member brim Edwards I remember giving hya a call and saying we need somebody else we need somebody who knows Portland it's April we need to have a superintendent by the time school starts my proudest moment in my career was that I I got to play that role that small role in the history of Portland Public Schools worked very closely with that board worked very closely with director brim Edwards and of course when she says we're going to do it we know we're going to do it um I had I I had full confidence that we could make it happen and maybe a little bit of nervousness that it
089wouldn't happen in time for the start of school but I was all in and the fact that that led to the hiring of superintendent Guerrero who has been there for a considerably longer time than most Urban superintendant um is something that I I I feel personally very very fortunate to have played that little role in the city that I love in a school district that I love and so I'm uh I'm honored to be here again tonight and excited to talk to you about uh what we might be able to do and we're we're six and seven years older and I mean by that I mean our firm is we now do superintendent under searches under our own banner and um we thank thank you for this opportunity to talk to you a little bit
090about how we do our work and why I think we're successful at what we do uh chrisy let's switch to the next to the next page I think it's the next I think we're gonna go one more page Christie thank you um and this and and this is our week Care Page and maybe it's already evident um I've spoken largely about myself I haven't really spoken about our team but our team as you'll get to know them are largely northwesterners um deeply waed to the success of Oregon students uh also Washington State students but we really have a heart here in Oregon and so the success of this superintendent search is not just about from The Firm perspective being done with it it's about a long-term relationship that has already started many years ago and
091continues we care really deeply about how happens in Oregon schools and we're really invested in leadership in school district leadership in the state of Oregon and we want to we are right there as partners with you for the Long Haul in terms of wanting to make sure that this is a very successful hire next slide uh one of the things that I think we do well is we sell Portland we sell we fall in love with our districts we sell our districts and I don't like the commodity sort of concept of selling but when you are recruiting you are getting the word out and enticing people to consider this opportunity you're looking at a blast we've we've done searches for PPS over the years this was for your uh for the CFO search uh we
092were asked to engage with your CFO search when noberto was hired this is an example of the kind of um you're only seeing the top half but this is the example of the kind of marketing material we put out there we have a subscriber list of 40,000 who get our emails now I know a lot of a lot of entities can boast about the number of people that get their emails I'm going to boast about the people that actually open our emails so we get about the last we we did one last week for another superintendency in Oregon and we got a 50% open rate that's 20,000 people who elect you and I we all get spammed with emails all the time and we're very selective right about which ones we open 20,000 people opened
093that email last weekend about a superintendency and I think one of the reasons if I can say is that when we put out words people want to read them these are these are these are words that are true and they're really enticing Portland Oregon the greenest most eclectic and perhaps most Forward Thinking City in our country is proud of the rise of its schools and we got a great CFO out of that out of that search thank you next slide I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Christy Perry who uh many of you know or know of her great work in Salem Kaiser and I'm I'm just Jazz she's on our team chrisy yeah so um I think it's really important for you to know um first and foremost about our local reach
094as a firm we um of course um human capital um did the superintendent search in Salem Kaiser last year I got to follow that I got to be up close and kind of personally um observing very intimately the work I was fortunate enough at the time to have a board that um trusted me enough as their superintendent to to help you know be along the way as a close close Observer so I got to see up close um when things would start to get a little rocky how Hank and uh his colleagues were able to help the board in those moments um and when um they needed to didn't quite get the community outreach they wanted they were quick to pick it and go right back in to get more because that happens in every
095search you just cannot predict so but first and formost our commitment locally um you can see that in the people that are on our team and in the searches that um human capital has done both large and small districts and um if there's anyone um that's invested in Oregon schools and the success of Oregon schools um is I I might be like leader of the pack in those and I've always said said when Portland succeeds when Salem Kaiser succeeds the state succeeds and so for me as an Oregonian it's critically important the next leader so I put my whole um heart into that um selection process with you if human capital gets the job um but also uh Belleview Seattle Beaverton and if you um look at the next um slide these are some of
096the other um local um districts that human capital has worked with both Community College esds and school districts and it makes for a very broad um reach both in the Outreach and in the type of candidates um that some might be more non-traditional that you can recruit because of the breadth of experience of um human capital all right I'm going to pass it off to my uh colleague Hector thank you and I'm going to talk about our national reach we're very proud that our Consultants have experienced in searches on both coast and the Midwest ring from large school districts like Houston ISD to smaller rural districts our reach allows us to attract candidates from throughout the country most recently our Beaverton and Belleview semifinalists came from Texas Alabama Massachusetts and Mississippi to name just a
097few we seek talented major conferences like the annual aasa um National Conference as well as staying in touch with talented leaders from throughout the us next slide please designing the right search for you is critical we know that every school district is different therefore we want to design a process that is tailored to what works for you we're going to achieve this by really listening to you you and key staff members let me give you a quick example of this sort of collaboration from what we did at Forest Grove School District recently where they the school district asked us to really engaged the Spanish-speaking Latino Community we heard that and designed a process where after speaking to to the parents they really felt like the school district had put a little bit extra effort in
098getting their voice to be heard that that was really meaningful and I'm sure that the residents there felt it was very powerful for the board to take that extra step to make them feel heard and welcome to the process we essentially want to build a process that has some flexibility but it's keenly focused in on finding the right candidate for your school district let me pass it on to our next colleague thanks seor um as you know from our proposal our search process has five phases they include planning public engagement recruitment selection and transition phases as Dr Garcia mentioned our process has tailored to the unique needs of each board and Community we serve so selected we'd map out that process together at the planning meeting tentatively identified on our proposed timeline in early February
099this evening we'd like to highlight the following phases Community engagement Recruitment and selection extensive Community engagement is achieved through 40 virtual focus groups a full day consultant Le inperson focus group sessions one-on-one interviews with the board and key stakeholders a CommunityWide online survey in multiple languages and targeted Outreach to underrepresented voices that are often not heard we work closely with District's staff to ensure that historically marginalized voices get elevated in our searches Broad and deep engagement informs The Firm on District's strengths and challenges and to identify the leadership qualities attributes and experiences desired in your next superintendent of schools the next superintendent criteria is the culmination of all of our community and public engagement work it's presented to the board in a public session with an opportunity for additional public input and refinement in a
100follow-up board work session I think it's important to note that it is critically important to this process to Overlay a communication plan that provides regular updates to the community at Key Mile poost in the process including how to participate recruitment uh as Hank mentioned we do traditional advertising of postings but unlike many Regional and National firms we maintain that National list serve with over 40,000 subscribers from all across the country and international subscribers most subscribers are not actively pursuing their next opportunity we have br Regional and National networks and affiliations including the confederation of Oregon school administrators the Washington Association of school administrators the association of Latino administrators and superintendents the National Alliance of black school Educators and ASA that we active our personal relationships and connections with the leadership of each of those Association
101matters we know we'll have applicants who are in fact pursuing their next leadership opportunity however we also find that candidates who may fit your next superintendent ideal profile often aren't considering a career move that's why we activate these networks and we ask a pretty simple question do you know of anyone in your network who might fit this next superintendent ideal profile and we go one step further we also ask them to ask colleagues in their networks if they know anyone who fits that ideal profile it's this activation and cascading recruitment efforts through these networks and affiliations that builds strong diverse and deep pools of Highly qualified applicants for our district clients selection we recommend a rigorous vetting process process which includes four rounds I repeat four rounds of interviews this is inclusive of three confidential
102Community interviews of finalists extensive referencing conducted by the firm and by the board and a comprehensive background check throughout each vetting and evaluation step we adhere to a rigorous process that anchors the evaluation of an applicant against the board adopted next superintendent criteria we coach we train we facilitate to ensure adherence to the process for fairness and Equitable evaluation of applicants next slide please so again how do we find the right people well again we activate these networks to enlist a codr of recruiters our Prospect list is large it grows and we continue to curate that list to meet the needs of District clients so our commitment to you and to this community is we're going to get this right together we're going to deliver an unparalleled search experience that places an extraordinary educational leader
103to serve as your next superintendent of schools one who possesses the right skill set and Leadership disposition to navigate the current context to build upon the district's success and strategic Foundation established by this board and superintendent Guerrero and one who has staying power for the long run next slide I'm going to hand this off to my colleague Dr Tammy Campell actually I'm gonna jump in and then Dr Campbell's gonna take the next slide um I wanna and I want to before I talk about the slide I want to maybe just reiterate a couple of things that Steve uh spoke about so we we think about the community engagement phase which is really deep uh and Steve went through rather quickly but I hope you saw it in our proposal proposal uh a significant number of
104focus groups and engagements that we would like to have uh across the community with affinity groups with individuals who care deeply about Portland Public Schools and and maybe folks who are disenfranchised or disenchanted um we also want to make sure we're meeting with students uh deeply and really hearing their voices uh so we talk about the community engagement as a very key critical phase and we and we know Bo we hear you talking about that in your board meetings as well we then uh end with or or conclude that portion with the with as Steve was describing the next superintendent criteria and we move into recruitment um I do want to say and I've learned this being an HR guy recruitment is actually a technical skill um it actually takes hard work and what Steve
105talks about the networks of networks it really is about calling from within our networks to go beyond our Network we're going to be asking you board members and other stakeholders in Portland who do you know that we should call you might not know the person is going to be the next superintendent but you know people who know people and we're going to pick your brains and your rolodexes and reach out to folks because that's how you really find your your great pool people ask us I'm now going to move on to this slide people ask us how do you get no go go back the one I didn't talk about yet that thank you thank you um people will say look how do you get especially in this era when we all know there is
106not as much incredible talent in leadership uh and I've pulled four of them into my team right so they're not available to be your next superintendent um people say how do you get how do you go out and get great leaders in this era and how do you get a diverse pool of really highly talented individuals well I want to tell you about our three most recent large searches uh I'm not going to name names here but in our proposal you've asked us about our three most like Portland proposals um and I want you to just look at these numbers so um District the first district I'll speak of and I'll just call it district one five semi-finalists of whom three were bipod three female two bilingual that board was really impressed with uh the
107caliber of the individuals uh who sat for the semi-finals I'm going to say the same thing about the other two districts as well just spoiler alert um we bring really talented people to the table District Two semi seven semi-finalists five bipo three female three bilinguals District three six semi-finalists five bipac three female four bilingual there happened to actually been in each of those searches uh individual who self-identified as a sexual minority as well so how do we do that well we do it and we do it and I'll say it again through reaching out we don't have a Cadre of people that were we're plotting to put into certain District leadership roles we are out there looking with at your criteria and at your community and we are going out to people we know and
108saying who do you know fits this criteria who should we talk to and we get there and that's why when you see the districts where we have done searches and you see the folks who are sitting in leadership roles you're seeing incredibly gifted people who have assumed those roles thank you next slide please and I'm going to turn it over to Dr Campbell good evening members of the board I want to say the first thing I think about as a former superintendent the team itself is going to sell who's going to be interested to apply I know when I looked to be a superintendent I looked at the board team itself and as I watched you as I joined the zoom today to see that connectedness and camaraderie that's a huge part of this successful
109process of of the team so deeply attending to the process and working as a team because again future prospective candidates will be looking to see the cohesiveness of the governance team making sure that once we make agreements not working outside the process uh so that we have that coherent clear consistent uh work all the way through if you have questions about the process raise them early so that we can make those adjustments and then moving forward with those agreed upon channels and then be a high functioning be high functioning in all your public interactions candidates will be interviewing you as well as you will be interviewing them and so it's so important to uh to sort of let folks know the great work that's happening in in Portland Public Schools I know when I was
110in Federal Way Public Schools we often look to Portland because of your reputation around the work that you were doing specifically in the instructional core specifically the work you were doing around inclusion specifically the work you were doing around closing gaps and so that word of mouth gets out there and these are other components that you can use to certainly uh to attract that the very best candidates thank you Dr Campbell as we move toward the end of our slide uh presentation um I I want to clarify that so you've asked us to address nine questions in your in our presentation and I believe we have although we have not answered them in the sequence necessarily that you've asked them so I'm actually going to give you a 1520 second break board um and just
111look over those questions and uh just think about whether we have we've got a couple more slides that are going to hit a couple more pieces um we don't want to leave anything out and we know you've uh asked some deliberate and thoughtful questions so take a look through your questions make sure you've heard most or all of them already uh and and to the extent that maybe you haven't or if you feel like you haven't then when we're finished with the presentation we certainly want to respond to any questions that you didn't feel like we got to but I think you're going to hear or see that the nine questions that you've asked we are attending to so your 20 second starts right now okay uh B I want to talk about a couple
112of a couple of things um uh one is about um you asked some questions about kind of what happens if we need to Pivot or what happens if there's challenges and uh I think my colleagues earlier spoke about every search has some has some interesting and unexpected pieces that show up and it's about how we respond in the moment to keep things on track and move them forward um in my first slide and I didn't speak to it directly but in my first slide I I mentioned that our team brings both superintendent and Human Resources leadership experience and those are two different skill sets and they come really in handy really in handy when you have a challenging moment in your search and sometimes you do so we are a team of five that bring
113variety of skill sets you are wise as a board um but we think that we can help you um because as that second bullet point says things happen along the way and our firm has the experience and Acumen to intervene in a couple minutes I'm going to read you a quote from a from a district that actually had an unusual thing happen it was nobody's fault and uh spoke to how we managed that I also want to talk a little bit about technology one of the one of the things that I've experienced both sitting in the seat of as an HR director and in my early years as a recruiting consultant is that the the software that's used collect applications particularly in educ in K12 education is often somewhat Antiquated and I think that we
114have actually one of the uh one of the slickest and I use that word in a very positive sense uh um softwares that are userfriendly not only from the candidate perspective but from the board perspective and so um you'll find it super easy to log in to see applications to communicate with us um as your Consultants uh sometimes you know we we absolutely have to be committed of course to open records um and we also want to maintain confidentiality of candidates and those things those things can both live in the same world but sometimes if you don't have a really strong software program things can get slippery or people start sending text messages with candidates names which is not something we want to do so we have we have a system that I think manages
115that really well and we're we're excited to introduce that to you at the at the right time uh in addition um every district has strengths within technology some districts have some great communication tools that get the word out to folks and parents and students and staff and we will be delighted to work with anything that you have um and certainly anything that you think will add value to the search uh we want to hear about it and learn from that but we want to work with you and your systems to make sure that we are um that we are capitalizing on on all that the district has in order to to do this work uh let's go to the next let's go to the next slide um I love this I love this quote because
116we had a board member in Beaverton that insisted and was determined that we were going to bring a group of outstanding racially diverse highly talented leaders and I was and we did and I was so honored when uh she sent me a note that said exactly that um I was grateful for that and also very proud that we had actually done that work uh next one um uh from Christie's District uh I think I'll just let you read that I don't need to read it out loud to you and let's go to the next slide hce which is our acronym for human capital Enterprises hc's commitment to the goals set by the board and Community could not have been more exceptional and this was not your typical search the time energy and expertise to work
117through the search was exceptional there were at least two issues that were not just tricky but had the potential to derail the entire process and damage the outcome Mr Harris could provide detail but suffice to say his leadership and experience serves the district exceptionally well I watched him exercise amazing flexibility that made the difference between success and failure it's very kind of her to put my name in there Steve was my was my terrific partner on that search um we as I said in that love slide way back then we do this work because we love this work we love the impact this work has and when we get comments like this it's truly heartwarming it truly warms the heart because this is what we're all about and this is what we care about and
118we know how to execute and we love the result of the execution because it is it pays dividends for an entire community and the children of the community and that's what you're all here for and so um I think that's the last slide Christie is there another slide that's the last slide so uh I want to thank you on behalf of my whole team um I know you have additional questions or conversations you want to engage in uh thank you for allowing us uh to share with you bit about who we are awesome awesome thank you for the presentation um so what we'll do is I don't we won't have time to go through all of our questions um so I think what we do is we ask I ask our any board members if
119they have any followup questions um that they have and we have roughly um five 10 minutes um but we have five minutes to do followup questions and then we'll leave the last 10 minutes U for you guys to do your closing remarks all right so Bor anybody have any follow-up questions I have a quick question and that's whether you when you're screening your pool of applicants if you take into consideration how they've performed in previous districts it specifically how they've um closed the achievement Gap or or or or gotten it closer together the difference between the achievement of white kids and kids of color um is that part of your screening criteria uh yes does anybody want to grab that or do you christe do you want to grab that no you want me to
120grab that Christie uh you know there there's a couple places within the uh I don't want to give too much away for candidates who might be watching this but there are a couple different places in the process where we ask folks to specifically speak to successes in achievement uh and the work around equity in really specific ways for candidates and I must say that that is a very telling that is a very telling thing uh it's half of the answer your question director to pass it's not the entirety because somebody can say something that maybe isn't accurate but let's start with somebody's ability to um to distinctly State How achievement has improved under your leadership and let's talk about how what is your greatest accomplishment with respect to equity and there's an awful lot of
121people that struggle to answer those questions so that's one of places that we go and you'll see those in the interview questions uh from really from the early part of the selection process the other thing which is maybe tangential but maybe not is the the reference call portion of the selection when you get to your finalist is really critical and we've learned over the years how to do it well as opposed to how to do it less well so I want to describe to you real briefly what that looks like um if if Hector is one of your three finalists I'm going to say to Hector Hector here are the 12 people I want to talk to in both your district and some in your previous District I am not inviting Hector to give me
12212 names of people he wants me to talk to I'm going to Hector and I'm saying I want to talk talk to this kind of principle secondary principle Elementary principal a special ed director a CFO a combination between uh your most recent and past depending on how long ago you were in that past um and I want to ask those specific questions about skill set and actually uh board members are engaged in that process too and so that's also getting at some of those issues that sometimes you know another candidate might just sort of softly pass over yeah I did this or yeah I did that uh we really want to get the details and the data of what somebody has accomplished in their time and for a position like superintendent of Portland Public Schools
123that data should be should be robust and accessible thank you so much thank you all right any other board questions director brim Edwards director BM Oh go ahead I'm sorry I'm sorry that wasn't my place to call that's okay director brim Edwards uh thanks so I'd like you talk a little bit about the um what is the output of the 40 stakeholder interviews and how that informs the proess so obviously 40 groups people feel good about like they've been engaged they've been listened to but how does it actually inform the process and how do you filter out useful information um and information that maybe should be filtered out yeah it's a it's a great question and it's uh yeah I'll I'll start and then I might ask if any of my team teamates want to
124uh join me so um I love that question because it's real right so you're you're in a group of six or seven individuals who have their stories to tell and they want to talk and they want to share with you what they would like to see happen our our key questions uh drive at what is what is going great in Port I'm going to distill these in for the sake of time but what's going great in Portland Public Schools what are the challenges and complexities in Portland Public Schools and what are your dreams and aspirations uh if you citizen staff person if you were sitting on the school board what would be uh what would you be looking for in terms of uh characteristics and qualities um as you can imagine um folks will sometimes
125answer those questions in in either more succinct ways or there's stories to hear right and that those are important to hear also so our job as consultants and listeners and maybe even ethnographers is to hear the stories and to pull out the key pieces that really speak to those individual things because we we need to know what's great in PPS we need to know what are the complexities and challenges that the new soup are going to face and we need to bring to you ultimately that criteria document that speaks to board here's what the community says if they were sitting in your shoes they would look at um so those focus groups sort of take a whole lot of input just as you're describing director brim Edwards and we do our best to sort of
126um to be good listeners so that we learn the story of PPS and at the same time distill it down to the sort of the manable chunks that can be uh that can Source the next uh the next superintendent criteria document we do similar things with survey servers are a little bit different because you don't have quite the same sort of context as you do in a focus group but that's that's how we do it and there's really two objectives um and maybe your question started with what are the objectives there's really two objectives one is to be able to build that next superintendent criteria to come to you six weeks two months from now and say Board of all the hundreds of voices and maybe thousands of voices we've heard here are your 12
127or 14 critical items that people want you to look for that's really hard to do when you're hearing thousands of voices to get it down to 14 but if we brought you 50 it would be kind of useless so it really does need to be a manageable junk amount so one of our objectives is to be able to craft that document and the other objective is for us as your recruiting team to learn your District so well that we can go out and speak to candidates and speak intelligently about here's what this job is and here are the rewards of this job and here are the things you need to be prepared to handle and here uh yeah I mean that's we want people walking in with their eyes wide open right like this is
128we don't want to be hiding uh hiding the truth we want people to walk into this job ready to be smashingly successful as your next superintendent of schools could I just add one real example from the Salem Kaiser search out of all that listening they do the thing one thing that came out that I was thrilled that came out but was surprising because it came out from these all these groups was that Salem Kaiser valued student voice and allowed students to make help in the decision-making process so this comes out out of all these groups and I watch the school board all of a sudden wrestle with well what does that mean in this moment about our search and so they even from that feedback pivoted their search process ever so slightly to add more
129student voice to the election so that's a how the input affected the process um and it made it to one of the um qual you know the the profiles um statements so um it can really be powerful and then I watch the board and human capital point that out in to the community in those public meetings and I think then people could see that their voices mattered and Hank if I could add just one additional thing it is more art than science I've spent the last two days sorting through 651 font pages of data input for uh search that we're working in uh uh the greater Portland metro area uh it's critically important to achieve those two outcomes because it is about placement of a superint within the context of the challenges and the strengths
130uh in a way that enables that person to hit the ground running and as I mentioned in my remarks having staining power for the long run so it's um it's complex work but it's exciting work sometimes it's exhausting make sense out of all of that but I think uh what's really unique about the way in which we triangulate the data in the input we have a specific style and voice that is uncommon in this space um and I think that will resonate with your broader Community thank you uh director Sullivan yes I was wondering you you probably mentioned it in all this but to be um more specific about how you communicate with the greater public about what's going on with the search know what can you share what don't you because our community really
131likes to know what's happening I'm gonna start that out and then turn it over to Steve who is really quite expert in this area the one thing I I want to just practice by saying uh there's two options that we can go one is you you do have a Communications team of course in PPS uh I'm gonna ask Steve to talk about how we work with uh Communications teams and we do all the time um but we also heard in an earlier board uh meeting that there might be interest in us bringing in communication support which we are absolutely prepared to do that we've done in other districts we're doing the one right now that's also a bit exceptional so it's it's up to you however you want to do that but Steve will you
132talk about what it looks like when we work on Communications with the communications team as I mentioned in my comments we overlay a communication plan with our uh timeline for the search and typically we have uh somewhere between five and six uh superintendent search updates there are lots of other messages that are being sent out uh relative to engagement opportunities but we work really closely with whoever is assigned as the district communication lead someone from uh our search team will be assigned as the lion with the district communication uh so we work together on planning uh the sequence of a communication updates to the public uh and then we backwards map that in a manner that allows us to uh be timely uh and ensuring that the template messages that we might provide as a
133starting point that Communications person assigned uh as the district lead has plenty of opportunity to tailor that given uh the context of the district and Community as Hank mentioned uh sometimes uh districts will say uh our Communications team uh needs some support with this additional layer of uh of work and uh we'll uh assign uh a communications consultant that will uh provide that kind of support uh but there will still need to be some uh uh integration with that communication lead so that uh we're working together in terms of distribution and terms of media uh and in terms of follow through on execution that uh the execution of that communication uh timeline thank you awesome thank you thank you so much U for your presentation um we have about eight more minutes so you guys
134want to go ahead and do your closing remarks that would be great super thank you so much uh let me see if uh any of my associates would like to um begin a close I'll say we would be thrilled uh to support you um we know uh we know Portland Public and we know um the promise that you bring to students in your district and across Oregon and it would be our greatest uh pleasure um to serve and we think we could really serve you well um you've got lots to offer and you can recruit um an outstanding candidate um to this position and Christie thank you I would add uh the following we each personally and professionally have a deep commitment to diversity equity and inclusion uh we live that uh it's our lived
135experience uh we've worked in diverse uh suburban and urban systems supporting children uh of uh uh uh a very diverse uh communities and uh we we would be honored to support you uh in this superintendent selection process I will add it's an inspiration to be in a space where you hear board of directors talking about results talking about closing gaps uh as a superintendent in a district where we had almost eight out of 10 of our Scholars who were uh attending advanced placement courses and moving the needle and we couldn't do that unless our board of directors really sponsored that work and were right there and there's something pretty exciting about joining a team who so clear about this and because of the work that I do nationally being a part of networks where we
136where I can participate and collaborate with this group to bring the kind of talent right in front of you excites me uh and so I've just work so closely and watch the work of Portland Public Schools and you are a desired place to be so just very nice to meet you and I look forward to the potential and the possibilities I know it's getting close to the end so I just want to add just my two cents from what Dr Campbell talked about and that is we are looking forward not only to do the kind of work that uh will attract people in your area but we're looking forward to that National search we know that Portland schools can draw interest from people out in the Midwest and east coast and throughout the country so
137we're excited to get those networks going and to bring extremely well-qualified people to you to the table I don't know if I can add anything to what my my great colleagues just said um so I will say Bor um Bor and uh Liz and Roseanne and I don't know if I still see Cara uh and director Silverstein um thank you so much um for having us here tonight and uh we wish you the best uh whichever direction you go uh we are rooting for Portland all the way oh good thank you once again uh for being here um we um speak for everyone I think we really eny enjoy the presentation um and we just thank you guys once again for your passion for Portland um the time that you guys taken to know put
138this together and meet with us um so we want to just give you our thanks for for that as well um we guys be hearing from us shortly um and we hope you guys have a a great evening thank you thank you so much thank you thanks we got till 9:30 for the next one so you got about to break 17 minutes what time is it in their time zone do you know oh I don't know it's late yeah okay so the next one starts at 9:30 and it goes to how long 10:30 I think the other search fir is in the hello hello good evening good evening thank you guys for uh coming today uh we really appreciate especially the late time it is for you guys um just kind of want to kind
139of give a brief rundown of How It's kind of go tonight um we just give a brief introduction of who we are on the PPS side um then you guys can go ahead and uh introduce yourselves um go over your presentation then after that if we have time for questions um we will do that um we will look ask we have additional time we will ask you guys if you guys have questions of us if time permits um if time doesn't permit we just go ahead and just ask you guys to give your closing remarks um and then that'll be it um so we want to make sure I'm respectful your time I'll go ahead and start name is Gary Hollands I'm the chair of Portland Public School Board um born and raised here in
140Porton Oregon kid of PPS um so that's who I am I will pass it over to director Wong hi my name is uh Eddie Wong I'm also a board member also a former teacher in PPS and a current parent as well thank you I'll pass it to Patty hi my name is Patty Sullivan I'm a board member um also a former teacher I did have a couple of children in P public Portland Public Schools ages ago but they're all grown up now and I'm going to pass it to Michelle hi everyone uh Michelle the pass I'm a board member as well and a PPS parent and the and granddaughter of PPS teachers and a graduate of the system as well thanks I'll pass it to Julia good evening everyone nice to meet you I'm Julia
141brm Edwards I've been on the board for 10 years uh I was a PPS parent uh for 18 years and a PPS grad as well and I'm G to pass it to uh my board colleague from North Portland director green uh good evening everyone uh my name is um Herman green I am the uh Vice chair of the board I am a uh PPS parent I did not graduate from PPS I came out of Buffalo New York um and came here where it rains as much as it snows there um and I will pass it over to um let's see who has my guy Andrew thanks Herman uh hi Andrew Scott you see him pronouns I'm a Schoolboard member also a parent and also a graduate and uh welcome I'll pass it over to our
142student director uh Frankie hi I'm Frankie Silverstein I use she they pronouns um I'm currently a junior at Franklin um and I will pass it to Roseanne hello good evening my name is Rosanne palel and I'm the board manager and I will pass it to Cara hi Cara brra executive assistant in the board office and since we're talking about it I'm also a PPS graduate and have one kid that graduated another one that's about to and you're GNA pass it to Le hi good evening I'm Liz large the district's contracted general counsel and the parents of the parent of two uh PPS graduates and I think we are acknowledging our hero Terry who makes all of this technology work in the background all right way to go Terry all right so we're going to hand
143it over to you guys and we will sit and listen all right well thank you so much for making the time to meet with us tonight do I have the ability to share screen okay well good evening everyone my name is Sylvia flowers and I am the managing director of our executive Search and talent acquisition uh practice here at Alma Advisory Group I want to allow my colleagues to introduce themselves and then we will get started I'll turn it to Eliana good evening everyone my name is Elana Pera and I use um a she and her pronounce I am en joining you by way of Georgia but originally from New York City um and I have to say when we moved to Georgia I didn't realize the amount of precipitation we get here so I
144am failing you uh on that piece uh I am a social worker by trade and I've also had the opportunity to serve in uh New York City public schools and um in a school district here in Georgia before joining the incredible Alma team and very excited to uh share a little bit more about our practice and meeting you all this evening and I will turn it over to my colleague Nita good evening nice to meet you all my name is Nita lasa pun Unkle joining you from Dallas Texas um although also originally from New York um but moved to Dallas by way of Reno Nevada so not the most uh direct route um I support the Elma team in uh primarily on the data side when it comes to community engagement data um survey data
145as well as uh later on we can talk a little bit more about our some of our practices but um also final interview data um and here to help support in any way I can nice to meet you all great well thank you so much um again my name is Sylvia flowers I am based in Nashville Tennessee uh but born in Chicago and have lived in a lot of states in between um and I bring you greetings from our founder and CEO Monica Santana Rosen uh she is out of the office this week uh with her son who is a junior figure skater and is potentially going to be on the Olympic men's team uh in a few years so they are in a competition right now now um but she does uh bring you
146greetings and thanks you for the opportunity um a little bit about Alma Advisory Group um Monica is the daughter of immigrant parents also born in New York City um and she founded uh Alma Advisory Group in 2016 so we'll be celebrating our 8-year anniversary um and really our mission is to cultivate the conditions where people and organizations can do their best work on behalf of the students they serve and the word Alma means to Foster and for us it is really about fostering um uh great relationships with our clients as well as building that capacity to do this work I want to share with you uh the group of people who would be dedicated to the search um you've met El I'm syvia again we also have Naja Thompson uh who is our recruiter does
147a lot of our recruiting work and sourcing work to find outstanding candidates you've met Nita tonight we also have Josette Tucker who is a 25-year educator um served as a teacher principal central office administrator and then uh head of HR in uh District in Delaware and then Venus VES who also supports the team uh she is based in New York City um she does a lot of our business operations work as well as leading searches um and uh supporting on community engagement um I would say I haven't tallied up the numbers but uh many of us here have worked in dist in urban school districts across the country um in various capacities I'm sure if I added the numbers up it would be well over 150 years of experience there in terms of our superintendent
148search experience um we started uh our work really focused on board member Hollands did you have a question yes I'm sorry I can't see a screen I don't know you cannot see my screen I just have a black screen I can see the presentation and I can see so can I it's just it's just me I guess it's just it's just you Gary and I like how everybody and I like how everybody just called me out I can see it and I can see it I just re-shared can you see it now I cannot but go ahead on too many windows open no worries all right let me try one more time okay um a lot of our work started in the human capital and talent space and we started working with school districts on
149how to redesign and reimagine human resources and human capital and uh focused on building strategies to recruit and retain teachers and leaders from that work uh our district clients began to ask us could you help us find the next cabinet level member um chief of this chief of that and then that led to our first superintendent search which was Denver public schools um currently in this school year we're working on three superintendent searches we're working with Madison metropolitan school district we are about to enter the finalist stage for that search we're working with Dayton public schools in Dayton Ohio we're about to uh enter into the finalist stage for that search and then we're working with Lawrence Public Schools in Lawrence Massachusetts which is a district in state receivership um and we are about to
150launch the job profile for that search right now I wanted to share a few of our uh searches and success stories um Cincinnati public schools was uh one of our early superintendent searches um we do we took a lot of time upfront in this search to engage the community and really get to know what's most important um to them and all stakeholders and we were balancing during this search a board that was going to have a turnover of three board members potentially three to four board members with an election happening in the middle of the search and so we did a really um we a really strong effort to make sure that the incoming board members were brought into the process almost immediately after the election in November and that they were um uh thoughtful
151Partners up until the swearing end and we had um both the outgoing and the incoming board members as part of the team up through the finalist and selection round um Ohio is a state that has very generous Sunshine laws and so balancing and active recruiting um profile um while also making sure that candidates were aware that their names would be released upon application is something that we we deal with in Ohio as well as in Florida ultimately um that search resulted in three finalists One internal candidate and two external candidates and uh we're pleased to announce that irona Wright was announced as the superintendent with a unanimous vote both of the incoming and outgoing uh board members Evanson Township High School which is north of Chicago um this was a unique search in that uh
152they believed that they had an internal successor for the role and we entered this uh relationship really talking through how we would approach managing a potential external candidate um what we did in this case is we really engaged the community to design the job profile um and once we align the job profile we then uh worked with the internal candidate and the board to design a process that allowed the internal candidate to really demonstrate to the to the board and to the community uh his Readiness for the role and as you can see in this uh the picture the board then unanimously selected the internal candidate uh as the sole finalist and upon his appointment uh they all wore t-shirts that said team of eight just to show that the seven board members were really
153aligned with his internal promotion to the role and lastly I'll point out Cleveland metropolitan school district um Cleveland is a district that is um in under the Cleveland plan has mayoral control and so it's a unique situation where the mayor appoints the board members and in that case Cas again Ohio where you uh there are very generous Sunshine laws um we work very closely with the board the mayor's office and the mayor's chief of Education to design a process that really aligned to the community's needs and that was grounded in the continuation of the work that had been started under the Cleveland plan um the outgoing CEO Eric Gordon had been in place for 11 years had spent a a a long amount of uh a tremendous amount of time in Cleveland and was really
154committed to supporting the process and ensuring that his successor um had a successful transition um we introduced Dr Warren Morgan to The District in April uh Dr Morgan had worked in Cleveland metropolitan school district as a principal and then a network leader and then left the district to pursue other things and and came back and and received unanimous support for the board in that CA from the board and the mayor's office in that case and then lastly Denver public schools which was our first superintendent search um this one again the district was dealing with a lot of um very Community centered issues and so we we again prioritize the various needs of the community and the different regions of across the district um we developed a nomination process where anyone in the community could nominate
155themselves or others to be a part of the finalist interview rounds we designed case studies and small panel interviews including a student-led interview panel um we uh were able to find three uh amazing finalists to introduce to the candidate introduce to the community and in that case Dr Alex morero was named as a superintendent in Denver public schools and where he continues to serve to this day so why Portland Public Schools well we've worked with the other Portland Public Schools in Portland Maine so we want to work with the the Portland on the west coast um we know that this is the largest District in Oregon we've also worked in Eugene Oregon a couple of years ago we have deep appreciation for your current uh strategic plan that prioritizes issues that are very important to
156us specifically racial Equity um inclusion and excellence and then we've seen the uh numerous support from the community on um your facilities work and um the needs of uh re revitalizing and improving the schools um and we just believe that uh this is a community that uh we would we would love to get to know a little bit better one of the questions that you asked was in uh number two how will you go about learning what the key strengths are of our next leader and can you share methods you use to interview senior staff and education experts and we wanted to share a little bit about our our profile and what we do at the beginning which is we want to start with A needs assessment we want to get to know the district
157um this starts with a community engagement and for us it's uh coming on site to Portland making time for focus groups interviews with all stakeholders um doing our research digging into any background materials um digging deeper into the Strategic plan and using that information to craft the job profile we don't have a cookie cutter superintendent job description we really want to hear from the community and from the board before we draft the commu before we draft the job description and that job description and alignment on the key competencies really sets the foundation for um the entire search process from there and I just jumped right into the questions is that okay okay your next question was um what strategies do you use to explore candidates that are already in already connected to the district to
158ensure quality that quality local candidates are not overlooked I shared the example of Evanston Township High school where there was an internal candidate identified um I will tell you we do use um a an applicant tracking system that helps us track all candidates um and we do have a dedicated recruiter Naja Thompson um who is um specifically focused on identifying candidates uh for the position that are aligned to the needs of the district we recruit people who who are actively looking but also not looking so we are looking for people with connections to this community um who may have moved away we are prioritizing uh the diversity of the candidate pool and of course we take recommendations and we will call and track down anyone whose name is is presented to us um for internal
159candidates specifically one we know that it can be a very um sensitive and delicate situation to deal uh to to deal with internal candidates and we believe that internal candidates should be treated you know with the utmost respect and clear I think we pride ourselves on um hight touch candidate communication so we are going to communicate with candidates at every step of the way for an internal candidate we want to make sure um that the board feels comfortable with either us having conversations with internal candidates or if people in on the board have close relationships with those folks we want to make sure that that any internal candidate feels like they've been given a fair shot that they've been held to the highest standards but also that their their contributions and their working and commitment
160to the district are recognized and valued we will evaluate all candidates against the competencies and and uh you know our process really is uh designed to mitigate bias um and that could be for folks who are known to the district as well as not known to the district I'll pause to see if my colleagues want to add anything there because I do think that's an area where we take great pride all right I think that sorry oh go ahead um I was just going to add that um the just the amount of time upfront that we take to to really understand the the competencies is something we take very seriously and uh I know we'll touch on it in a bit in a few slides but just to highlight the um the the care and
161the Nuance that I think our te our team is able to uh um to pull out given all of the um research all of the meetings all of the communications that we do in the beginning of the process allows us just to have a much deeper understanding of the needs of the community which is why our job descriptions or our job profiles are so tailored to each of the engagements that we're a part of um so I'm excited for for you to better understand our process um and also happy to answer any questions that you have with regards to that your next question was how do you go about ensuring a diverse and inclusive pool of candidates who match our candidate profile as I mentioned um our process goes back to the competencies um we
162want to design a process that mitigates bias we ensure that everyone who is a part of an interview goes through our anti-bias training found is when we stay grounded in the CA in the competencies candidates of color and women tend to make it through the selection rounds at much higher rates than they otherwise would and you can see from uh the data on our um searches that um the majority of finalists presented in presented by Alma have been people of color and uh and women and in terms of the final candid the final selected candidate you will see that uh the majority of our final candidates who've been hired have been uh people of color and we're slightly below 50% in terms of women candidates you will see we're as you saw from our beginning
163uh uh slide we are a diverse organization many of the people on our team share the lived experiences of the students uh that you serve and the students in many urban districts across the country and so we are um especially attuned also through our own networks to attracting and finding candidates um who um who help us uh identify additional diverse candidates your next question was provide information on the criteria and methods utilized for evaluating superintendent candidates and what steps can be guaranteed what steps can be taken to guarantee a thorough evaluation so for us it it it comes back to a process that mitigates bias and that starts with Clarity of the competencies when the board is aligned around what they're looking for then we everything that follows goes back to that so we design
164a competency and evidence-based process we use examples and scenarios that are that are revealed to US during that initial uh community engagement we have a very structured interview process um typically two uh three to four rounds of interviews we want to see multiple interview interviewers engaging in uh conversations with potential candidates so that we're getting diversity of opinions diversity of thought um and then we want to create a safe space for our interviewers where we can um name our biases openly but then also have a culture of questioning one another for evidence um acknowledging we may have a bias in this area and also stating and this is what I heard that ties back to the competencies and then uh we want to facilitate your uh debrief conversations at every interview round so that we're
165really eliciting what strengths you heard what questions you still have what would you still want what would you what else you would want to know if a candidate was to move forward and so that facilitated debrief really helps to lead really leads to I think a thoughtful and inclusive process and it it guarantees that uh all voices are heard um in that conversation question six when faced with challenges that may come up during the search process like unforeseen issues or leading can candidates dropping out of the process or an inadequate pool of qualified candidates how do you handle them well we want to we take several steps to mitigate any possible challenges first we're going to create a detailed project plan I would say on average uh a search for the team takes anywhere from
16612 to 16 weeks um but we don't have any artificial deadlines in terms of our application pool so um one of my models is always be sourcing um so we're always sourcing candidates from the beginning of the process until you all sign the contract on the dotted line we don't have a deadline for accepting applications because we know in the spring there's active recruiting happening for a number of positions across the country so we are looking for candidates at all times and we are selling this opportunity to people up until someone signs on the dotted line um because we know these things can happen we also want to have a clear communication strategy so as I mentioned we have very hight touch communication with potential candidates so we're keeping them informed on where we are
167in the process we're also wanting them to keep us informed if they're involved in any other processes so that we can let the board know this these are the potential um areas where we might need to go fast we can go slow we have a little more time so we're trying to we are managing all of that and then I think another uh challenge that um uh that we try to plan for is having that District level support to help with Communications to help with keeping um the media engaged uh sharing information with the district on where the search is providing updates through your board meetings on where the search is going um so that the community is also um uh informed question seven what are the two to three most important things for the
168board to do to ensure a successful Recruitment and hiring of a superintendent profile and position description again alignment on those key key requirements of the other thing that helps us um uh helps us to uh ensure a successful uh search is that communication and Outreach we want to make sure that the community feels well informed that they feel like this is a transparent parent search that they can get information on the process and then I think you can underestimate truly the time commitment that is involved with uh leading a superintendent search and this is from the board's perspective we want to um proactively try to manage your calendar and the obligations for participating in interviews and evaluating candidates um the time commitment particularly as we get deeper into the selection process is is probably the
169one of the major things that uh the board can do is really dedicate the time it takes so that you feel confident when it's time to present finalists to to the community that you um know as much about these candidates as you possibly can um before you introduce them to the to the community question eight was how can dat technology and data be effectively utilized in the search process specifically for candidate assessments and market analysis so targeted sourcing and networking we use a variety of avenues to I find and identify candidates um some of this is is you know Old School telephone some of this is through Linkedin and other methods meod um but our targeted sourcing and networking is the first step I think secondly we do have a robust applicant tracking system um
170when we post a job on our applicant tracking system it automatically posts to about 17 or 18 other job boards and then we'll also have um a more targeted list of um job boards and opportunity pages that will present to you in terms of casting a wide net uh for the position of course in this day and age we're meeting over Zoom I think we got leverage technology in terms of doing virtual interviews simultaneous interviews and there's a lot of functionality within our applicant tracking system to do some pre-screening questions as well as video interviews if that is um of interest and then lastly will begin to do some initial background screening um making sure that we are um checking the backgrounds any media Google searching uh any social media screens we'll want to have
171that information as well before we get to the finalist stage on any candidate that you would consider and then your last question was what makes your firm stand out from other superintendent search firms and why should our district choose your services you've seen our results in terms of attracting a diverse pool and we really think that that comes down to these four key areas authentic Community voice and transparency is first and foremost we want to spend the first four to four weeks of this engagement getting to know the community getting to know you as individual board members and any other important stakeholders getting to know staff teachers students um parents in the community that's the foundation that would include a community survey as well as um one-on-one interviews and focus groups and that all comes
172together in a um a report out that informs those key competencies and responsibilities for the role secondly our focus on designing an anti-racist hiring process that mitigates bias um this is core to our work um we are grounded in having those difficult conversations um we want to be able to create the spa safe space so that we can talk about these topics together with you as a board and challenge one another when um when difficult uh difficult issues come up that is part of our screening process and all of that is uh leads leads into our performance-based inter interviews so scenarios um behavioral based questions where people are demonstrating to you the work that they've done that aligns to the competencies that you seek and then lastly that strong facilitation of your decision making again
173um coming back to the competencies challenging one another when the conversations get difficult but also inviting everyone to participate and share what they're thinking and feeling all right so I want to pause I'll ask my colleagues if I missed anything that they want to chime in on and I'll turn it back over to you board chair Hollands thank you so much um I got off the screen I was in the other room where I could actually see the presentation so I was able to to view it so um thank you for the presentation um I'm G turn it over to my board colleagues um you have any follow-up questions please raise your hand and I can get you called on uh we going start with uh director the pass and then we go to director
174Sullivan uh thank you uh first of all I want to thank you for your presentation and appreciate the time difference uh that you're dealing with on this um important interview I wanted to ask a question about um your screening process you talked about uh the targeted kind of targeted research and Recruitment and the Competency Based screening but are you screening People based on things such as their demonstrated ability to close the achievement gap between our white students and our students of color which is really great in Portland yes so um so we will spend some time one with you designing screening activities that align to your needs um so we'll be asking questions such as tell me about a time when or describe how you have done XYZ in your previous experience and we'll be
175listening for the evidence of successful outcomes on behalf of students so that's first and foremost um that is I think at some point in student centered leadership or some in instructional alignment to your goals will be a competency if I had to predict and that would be one of the first things that we would be screening for director civan did you have a question actually it was the same question just in case Michelle didn't ask it okay any other questions uh director bur Edwards thanks for the presentation and like Michelle um appreciate the late hour um I'm I'm an owl but I realize not everybody is this is like my Prime hour um and so I'm curious about your um when you're listening to the community and engaging with them one um how do you
176go about selecting who to listen to um as we know the lot of voices aren't always the ones that um are zooing in on um what we really need to key in on so how do how do you select them and then um how do you go about integrating that into so of the job description and how do you how do you pressure test like you know because you're not going to hear everybody and you're gonna hear some voices some softer voices and how how do you know um how you found really that um the ones that are going to key in on those attributes and competencies that we need in order to like get after our goals and what we want to do as a as a board and a district yeah that's a
177great question you know we will want to design our site visit around uh with your input so we'll start by collecting the names and organizations that are key partners that are key thought leaders um we'll want to collect a long list of potential people to meet with um we'll also want to have some public opportunities for people to attend either in person or virtually depending on um you know your your preferences um and then I think we want to leverage some of those other organizations to help spread the word um to to come out to these events yeah I'm thinking back to Portland Maine uh where we had um the head of the family and Community engagement team as kind of a key thought partner in our project design so that uh that point person
178really help bring out the voices of um uh of the community particularly multilingual families in Portland Maine Portland Maine is a refugee city um so it was just amazing we had these community events and we had you know two tables of latinx parents we had a table of Somali parents we had a table of Frenching um uh families we had a table of um uh who else was represented it was just beautiful um part of what brought people out is the family and engagement team provided food we had halal food we had Thai food we had um Indian food there was Child Care available so we want to leverage the resources and the networks that you all have in your community um to bring people out to events and if it's virt if virtual works
179best we will do as many virtual sessions as possible if there are um uh partner organizations who draw a great crowd then we need to leverage those partners and maybe we have something at a partner organization's location as opposed to a school so we want to thoughtfully design what that Community engagement looks like and really invite um some of the voices in the community he may not always have a seat at the table but know how to get people to the table um to be a part of that anything you would add Elana I think it's just really about tailoring that approach it looks different in in different communities and with different districts um but really tapping into those networks is really important so sometimes I've just even what I've noticed is you know we'll
180start with initial list of Partners and then those Partners create other connections uh to other part you know pockets of the community and so that's another Channel and we're really open to continuing to create those spaces um whether they be virtual or or in person um so we'll extend and expand that reach depending on what we get I think that the one of the other pieces to integrate into this is really looking at your student demographics if our community engagement groups aren't really reflective of that then we've got some work to do to ensure that we're getting the the the the right voices in in the space that we're getting the diversity of the voices that we need to hear from in the space uh and that's something that's really to us so we're always
181looking at that um the last piece I'll add is just the integration of student voice into that those who have the most at stake are our kids who are in the classrooms every single day so creating um virtual sessions inperson sessions um where they really have input and voice in that process is something that we really pride ourselves in um and I'll just share as a an example of that in uh one of our most recent engagements the the number of student uh student participants was uh with actually quite ey both in person and through the survey and so we created a separate summary just of the feedback we heard from students as a way to test you know what did we hear from the general Community What specifically did we hear from students and
182then provided that back to our students it was really greatly appreciated but also served as another t for us if you will um as to the competencies and the criteria that we prioritize through that process and I will say uh you know just this evening we had another virtual session with the Lawrence Community it was this evening as well um and both Monica and Eliana are uh speak Spanish and so we have some monolingual Spanish breakout rooms um and Lawrence Massachusetts is predominantly latinx um and so many of the parents uh and students prefer to speak in Spanish although they speak English and so we are able to provide monolingual Spanish uh sessions as well that was Frank you have your hand up yes we have student director Frankie hi thank you all so much
183for speaking with us um I was wondering like on average about how many of those Community engagement sessions you host so we um our site visit is usually our in-person site visit is usually two to three days um we would schedule evening events but during the day we are also trying to meet with as many people as possible almost every hour of the day up until those Community gatherings in the the evening so our days are filled from 8:00 a.m. to about 900 p.m. with in-person meetings and focus groups with staff students uh parents Community Partners um and uh and others um and so we're trying to fit everybody in in the three days and then we're also doing uh virtual sessions before we get on site either one-on-one interviews and um uh any virtual
184uh makeup sessions so to speak after we visit um in Lawrence we were uh trying to plan around potential inclement weather in Massachusetts so having virtual options in case the weather didn't permit allowed us to make sure that we were able to to meet with as many people as possible Nita I don't know if you have the numbers on a similar size District in terms of the number of people we've met in person or the number number of sessions we've had in person as well as the survey data we do track our survey data relative to the size of the system and so we do have some targets that we're wanting to hit so we're going to be working with you to say hey these numbers look low we don't have any representation from this
185school can we reach out to this principal can we get the principal in the high school to um give time during advisory for the students to complete the survey so that our student participation goes up we want to cast uh we want to make sure that people have a chance to participate if they don't get to meet us in person they can also share their feedback via survey um I do happen to have the um the survey numbers and I apologize my cat uh my foster cat here really wants to be on camera um but roughly you know for a district of about 40,000 students um we I would say on average have been getting around 4,200 survey responses so and that's about what we we try to aim for is like that um about
18610 to one ratio um and that the number and we do go back through because one of the questions we often get asked is like do you have essentially ballot stuffing like are there folks that will turn in a survey 78 times to try to boost the numbers or swing that that way and we do filter for that as well um just to ensure that that is not happening um because we do allow um the same IP address to submit multiple times because we recognize that there may be Folks at a public library or a school computer or something that you know a lot of folks whether it's staff or students are going through and using um in order to complete the survey all right any other questions thoughts comments okay all right you um
187we have nine more minutes if you guys want to go ahead and do your closing remarks we would love to hear and is there any time for questions that we might have well it would it'll be in within that nine minutes so if you want to ask you can absolutely I'm C I'm curious if you all have thought about the structure for your search if you've thought about having a separate committee or if the board is committing to do this work on their own that's a discussion we still have to have got it and are are there any internal candidates that you know of or do you believe there to be any internal candidates that you're considering uh director civan um as far as I know we don't have internal candidate but we have gotten
188some emails from people saying hey I know somebody in the community so got it that tied up there's some interests from the community director to pass I would second that that there have been um some not not just emails but phone calls as well about people that may be um positioned or interested um I haven't followed up with the candidates themselves but I've heard that there are there may be internal or local candidates great and uh and when do you intend to make a decision as soon as we get a good candidate a good search firm when do you intend to make a decision on the search firm oh [Laughter] gotcha uh the go to have a decision made by um next Tuesday well um in closing we want to thank you for the time
189to learn more about Alma Advisory Group I think you will find if you have a chance to talk to any of our references that we provide um a very customized uh service it is it is um it is targeted it is handson um we are going to be here from you here for you from start to finish um we will work closely with um the board or your designes and we hope your District leadership um to ensure a successful and transparent search process um and again we just thank you for the time and we hope that we have the opportunity to work with Portland Oregon [Laughter] yes yes so thank you once again um for you guys' time um and taking the time out at this hour as well we appreciate um your presentation um
190and like I said you you should be able to hear from us at the latest um by probably like Monday Tuesday morning at the latest um or before so I just wanted to thank you again for your time um and we hope you guys have a great evening all right thank you so much good evening you thank you okay oh we got through that we have five minutes left so sorry I'm I'm eating these nerds um I sent out what I was going to use on um Cara added into the to the um paper that she sent out to everybody to kind of score um so what I did is the stuff that I broke out was based on the experience which we get 50 50 points for and then the past um the pre
191past work which is 50% that can go off of the actual proposal that they sent because a lot of these a lot of questions around their past performances were in the questions um on that as well so if you go back and look at their proposals you can get a lot of that information from their past experiences um to make out your 50% your 50 points for that um each they get 50 50 points for each one to come up to 100 00 um one of the only things that and you also look at the price because there's a definitely a price difference in the three um and so we want to have to take that consideration you know as you're making your decisions um I don't know if we can talk about the actual
192price yet Liz or I actually don't know Gary so let's not and I'm sorry I don't know the answer to that on the spot okay and I just also want to mention um I think Julia jumped off the call oh did she yeah so one of us may want to um relay the information to her whatever we're talking about now um I want to just mention something um and that's that we only had two areas that we were evaluating on and they were each equally weighted one was past performance and then I think was the other one capacity on that yeah experience and capacity yeah so we didn't include cost in our evaluation because it wasn't one of the criteria and um so I I would like on I mean there was quite a spread
193yeah well was it's not in the interview section but was it's it's in the proposal it was in The Proposal one but it was not in the interview one if I'm correct oh okay the scoring rubric that you sent us that had 50% weighted each equally when was it yeah that was for from my understanding that was just for the interview section am I right Liz all we have to talk yes yeah I think what I would recommend is that let me make sure I confer with Emily on the prior advice she has given and that we send out something uh first thing in the morning to make sure we're giving consistent advice across the uh it's important to get so thank you yeah just my my past experience is you if you're evaluating the
194the um proposal and the interview you have a rubric and then cost is usually part of it um but sometimes you can add in other um values based um decision criteria I I didn't we only had those two things to evaluate on so I appreciate some clarity yes so why don't we do that before anyone completes their full evaluation let's get that to you first thing in the morning okay yeah I don't think I have an evaluation sheet by the way so car Cara should have sent it out to you maybe check your email or oh just yeah it was in the email earlier it's it's also uploaded in boardbook and in boardbook there's a link to your individual sheets you each have your own okay great thanks I just those individual sheets are just
195scoring on the questions so Liz whatever it sounded like there was a bigger scoring sheet maybe that I also haven't seen so Liz whatever direction we send out tomorrow if we could just be really clear on what you need from each board member back because I have the individual sheet with the questions but I'm not sure I have the other thing it sounds like Gary was referencing yeah there should be there there there are two both in our um inboxes and I believe Gary you sent out one a couple days ago that was that evaluated on the two they were they were each 50 points to add up to 100 and then um I think you also sent out the questions with the what to look for kind of a little bit more detailed yeah
196I think the document that um was shared with us the or emailed to us has what the Gary's questions incorporate into it as well as the scoring so it's all in one so what clarify it by email tomorrow and if you have any other questions after that be sure you ask you want to make sure you all have a common understanding in the right form and I um I'm sorry that Emily's not here to weigh in I really need to make sure she and I are aligned on that and so um just give us still first thing in the morning and then we'll clarify that all right we'll wait we'll wait for you thank you sorry I'm just I'm just saying if y'all not hearing her legal response she said the same thing like three
197different times she said it fast one time she slowed it up I mean coming from an expert order direct degree and I'll take that as a compliment all right director Silverstein got your hand up um so when are our evaluations due what the goal is to have them do by Friday but we're gonna wait for Liz to give us dire but if we can have them done by Friday Monday at the latest would be great okay thank you directed to pass um I was also going to ask about when they were due and then gosh started I had another question are we going to have an opportunity we're going to rate them as individuals will we have an opportunity to discuss as a group I think that would be valuable I think it'd be valuable
198to I'm thinking about to like other processes I've been through to sort of weigh and discuss rather than just look at the numerical score and there's an obvious winner I think the challenge is we'd have to do it at a public meeting like this one was oh yeah I've actually never seen a seven member elected board go through a process like this so I'm kind of interested to see how this how this plays out all about doing it different different yeah we can always do something different so we doing it different it's up to you guys you guys want to talk about it on Tuesday we have we have it scheduled a special set scheduled anyway I I'm not not sure I see much value I mean I I I hear what you're saying Michelle
199I think the traditional process does involve that discussion I we are an elected body and and currently meeting in public session that's being broadcast to probably three people who are watching I think it's really challenging I think it's really challenging to have an open conversation about firms weaknesses and strengths um strengths are pretty easy but I don't really feel comfortable publicly talking about weaknesses that I saw I just I think that that doesn't that doesn't I don't think that reflects well on us as a district um if we start going down that road in a public meeting yeah I I can appreciate that I think that we want to make sure we follow um whatever the OS you know 279 or whatever is and I don't know for informal contracts what those rules are so
200but we'll sounds like we'll get clarity tomorrow sounds good all right any other questions Frank I just jumped off huh I was just say we're waiting till tomorrow um Liz is going to get back to us to let us know um what document What official document we should be using for scoring and what we can actually what we can actually score um in the rankings and everything is due by um Friday Monday at the latest and Frank these hand is up um I don't know like any of the rules about this but like if it wouldn't be in our best interest to like discuss it as a whole group um would be possible for like us to share our evaluation sheets with each other so we could look over them and see other people's perspectives
201I think that's kind some of the clarity that we're gonna get from Liz tomorrow I will that tomorrow yeah yeah I think we need to wait a legal thing I hear I like where you coming from though Frankie I got you I got you yeah yeah okay so we're going to wait tomorrow to get a direction from um um liaz and then we'll go from there if you have any questions you can either email me or Liz it probably be Liz because I'm not GNA probably know all the answers either um and then we'll just wait for that and then we'll figured out by Friday or Monday all right it's 10:34 question it's too late for questions oh raise my hand go ahead hey whatever whatever came about of the question about their fee offer
202did are do we have visibility to that so jul you were that's one of the questions about fees and how that's weighs in or doesen on the scoring that I need to confer with Emily about based on the prior structure of this procurement so I'm going to address that along with the other questions first thing in the morning yeah but the but the hold on but the question that we asked did get answered and that should be in the information we sent out to every board member around the proposal so we sent all we sent every board member the proposals for these three firms the question we asked about their fee structure the additional question is in that same proposal that they just added it into it so everybody should have visibility of the free
203structure and the additional question we asked about their fee structure I have a um comment about that or question and that's that are we considering so on some contracts public contracts you have to take the lowest bidder this not a low B this is an informal procurement informal right so so cost is it's important to know because there's a spread but it's not where are I'd like if it are are we using cost as a decisionmaking criteria or not like how important is it we're gonna wait till tomorrow when Liz comes back with Clarity that she said the same thing and so we're not going to get a different answer from her because this is what lawyers do I've I've sat in I've sat in the room with them enough time I've tried to fangle
204the question and they theyve spent it the same way the same words she's going to get back to tomorrow with Clarity um and we'll be able to go from there no matter how we spend it if we talk about money she's going to say I'm gonna get back to you tomorrow all right we can ask her more questions tomorrow right we can yes take all the questions tomorrow you got okay all right any other questions anyone has anybody who haven't spoke Eddie we a you good okay well Julia are you trying to say something say it Julia y'all I'm going to bed all right good one bye thank you yeah another question no more questions you had a question Julie did you have a question I did one of the things we asked this is
205just like a process question we ask people for references were we were we gonna call them or do we care I don't have a point of view I'm just wondering if that was part of the process we did ask for people for to give us references also Herman and I have a um informal we there was a question put out to Schoolboard Partners about search firms and two of the ones that we interviewed tonight came up and the third did not um the two that came up that people weighed in on were Ray and Associates and then allma advisers I don't think we can talk about that look at Liz's face yeah sorry it's late my filters are fading um I I really and I apologize that I that this was not set out more
206clearly in advance and I need to confer with Emily to make sure I know what information you should be relying on or not in this informal procurement and so I've got the references the scoring form Co contract cost and I want to make sure we get clear advice because you have invested a lot of time and these uh search firms have invested a lot of time in this process and we want to make sure um we get it right so I'm I regret that I don't have a clear answer for you tonight but I promise you I'm going to get one first thing in the morning and her face tills the whole story all right so thanks everybody for your time and efforts um we get more information tomorrow all right you guys have a
207good night good night everybody good night everybody good night night Frankie