001i think that's pretty good it a dollar to keep it six all right go ahead and call the meeting to order thanks for everybody for being here for a special meeting i'll start with the approval of the agenda um by rogers second by tamra paul february passes and more discussion uh superintendent discussion with garrison chris thank you very much uh i'd like to go over the survey i got good news you had 181 respondents to your survey so for the quick turnaround that you have i'd say that was fantastic so congratulations to your communities on that pass those out and jane i think there's enough for you so with that said i'd like to review the uh respondent or the responses from the uh if you have it in your hands you can see that
002of the 181 almost 30 percent of them identify as a community member 27 percent as a parent or a guardian of a student which obviously means they're community members but a little bit more specific an employee with the district almost 20 percent an employee would be not a teacher because you can see teacher has a different a separate category so an employee would be your classified staff members teachers you had 18 percent uh it was nice to see you had nine students that took the time to respond to this and one of your administrators within the district responded the second question or the second page which is on the back uh this is simply how long you've been associated with the school district and or your community as you can see 49 percent have been
003in your community or your district 20 plus years i've done dozens upon dozens of these surveys that's always the number one response the so those that are in your community i'm just this is kind of conjecture but have the most interest so they obviously want to make sure their voices are heard with four to ten years you can see almost 23 11 to 20 19 percent one two three seven and less than a year that makes sense that they're uh probably not vested in your community quite as much when they're less so you can see we have less responses so getting into the brass tacks if you look at question three and you can see that is happens to be on page three of 11. these are the personal qualities that you would like to
004see in your new superintendent if i was doing face-to-face focus groups they're more open-ended it's a little more difficult to do that on online surveys so we provided eight responses that are pretty common and we asked those respondents to prioritize those one through eight so as you can see if you look on the far right is what we will call a power score i will tell you that very seldom do i see a power score of six or higher so you have two responses on this one that are above six so that is personal strength to do what's right regardless of circumstances and of now i want you to notice 181 people responded but only 125 answered this question so 41 percent that responded to this had that as their number one priority so do
005you see how that's working so far and then number two is kids first personality now although that is a very high power score it's still number two and interestingly only 22 percent had that as their first priority now you might see that the second highest power score might have a higher percent as having that as your number one priority so you might be checking those percents now the others are still important because obviously people prioritize these but there's quite a bit of jump between 6.03 and a 5.03 so it still could be important to you but i just noted the top two because they kind of stood out so as a board i would really appreciate do these responses surprise you is there something in here you go no that's exactly what i would have
006thought if i was doing it or is there something you want me to know about these responses because ultimately you folks are the ones that get to really do the prioritization any comments or questions about that particular question do you feel comfortable i guess for uh no nothing surprises her it's all common sense okay question number four these are the leadership qualities and once again there's eight that they prioritize from uh you did again once again had a power score over six there there sometimes i do this and there's no power scores over six on any of these questions and you've got three of them just within the first two questions so an efficient manager of resources and budget so you can see that's your top but the 6.23 almost 35 percent of your respondents
007had that as their number one priority a proactive forward thinker was number two with a pretty high power score but only 17 percent had it as their number one priority and then third is community oriented and involved in the community and you can see their power scores similarly similar to number two and pretty similar on the number one if you look at how many had that as number one so once again i'd sure appreciate any comments that you might have that you you as a board feel comfortable with what you're seeing there or i wish something was higher i think the efficient manager of resources and budget aligns with the results of the discussions we've had in the committee yeah i i i would fully expect to see that one really high here uh you
008know as i said i've done dozens and dozens of these that one's usually fairly high but it's never that high so that probably is a telling uh indicator for you folks so you're right on track i would say question five is the identified experiences that you would like your new superintendent to have and once again you can see i think these two are very similar which this is experience with business and the operations of a school district so it wasn't over six but six is really high so 5.3 is pretty uh pretty high and then number two is previous superintendent experience five four nine and then a pretty good split between number two and three so i just highlighted the first one and the second one that doesn't mean that those are not the others
009are not important to you but that would be once again something i'd want you to tell me so number one and number two i see is fairly similar that obviously if you have previous superintendent experience you're going to have experience with the business operations of the school and i do also think that that ties in with your number one priority on the previous question any comments from the board that would like to add anything to that one now everybody is waiting for question six because this is the open ended questions this is where everybody has their opportunity to take a shot because they don't have to say their name but i will absolutely say this when and i don't always get to say this to boards a lot of times i will come to you
010and redact some statements because there's been individual names i did not have to redact one comment in here now there might be something that you guess who they're talking about but there's not one name in here i will tell you after reading through here most of it is uh the discussion on the the split between your district the fracture set it in different words between north and south i don't think that would surprise you but i would guess 75 of the comments in here had something to do with that type of thing i don't plan on going through all of these with you but i do think it would be important for you as individuals to read those at some point i'll let you prove that just a little bit before we go on just
011so you know that i'm not kidding you when i redact statements i usually give the board the unredacted so you'll know what because it's your information but if the public wants to see it you have the redacted version that you can hand to them so and mr mark it's okay i will continue and you guys can peruse that if you want to keep looking or look at it your own time question seven which is the last question what would be the singer single quality or characteristic that would separate one candidate from other candidates so it had to be one and i will tell you that your number one response has never not been the number one response so it's what we all want as employers is an honest uh trustworthy and somebody with strong integrity
012that we figure can become really good employees but number two is a little bit unusual but it does absolutely match some of your other responses which is the fiscal operations management expertise so that's not typically that high but it didn't shock me here just simply knowing what the responses of your other questions were so before we go to something new i guess any comments to say gary if you are fortunate enough to get some quality candidates uh do these characteristics seem to be what you would want me to be screening for or are there things in there that you would also want me to be looking for you do not have a number seven this one's share my may i continue sure all right like to go over the super senate salary comparison so that
013you'll have an opportunity we do not get into the negotiations of this but we do want you as a board to have good information so that you're comfortable when you offer a package to a superintendent candidate so i'd like to review this with you and understand so that you have a good understanding of what your you are looking at the columns are important some of them are very obvious they don't need any explanation but i'm going to anyway a of course is the usd number b is the name c is the reported enrollment d is the year we have that information so 2122 means current information so obviously diane has done a good job there but you may see a couple of uh years that are not up to date so if they were all
014up to date it might change the information so just be aware of that column e is the base salary so that has been queried and filtered from lowest to highest using column e because that's a known number the next column is their yearly fringe benefit and the reason i don't want and then the next column of course is the total of those two columns i don't filter using that because we never know for sure what their fringe benefit is you can almost guarantee it's health insurance but there could be car expenses in there there could be professional dues whatever some superintendents may have in their contracts so i do want you to know it's filtered using base salary h column uh h is the following that's your collection classification i is if they are an
015interim superintendent so if you would happen to see a yes anywhere on here that means that particular person is an interim jay is if they are capers retired or otherwise double dipping so if you happen to see a yes they are a capers retired superintendent k means that they're also performing principal duties so you may or may not see a yes in there at times l is the number of years they have been a superintendent in that district the next column is the number of total years they've been a superintendent so if i was a superintendent in your district for six years and six years in another district there would be a 12 on that that column and the very last column is the number of days in their contract so if you look at
016the very top one kiowa county has a 240 day contract obviously you don't work saturday and sunday's theoretically even no administrators do on occasion uh holidays those types of things if you happen to see a 365-day contract that's probably interpreted because they didn't have another way it's a 12-month contract and then they just get designated holidays and vacations so if you look at the very first graph there central plains is right in the middle by design so of your current salary you can see in column e there's 15 salaries or districts that are directly lower salaries are the ones that are physically above your number the 15 salaries that are directly higher are below that on the paper so you've got 31 districts that are most closely clustered with your salary may or may not
017be good information but if you look at enrollment acacia classification those types of things you'll see hey there's some 1a's in here there's some 3a's that sort of thing of course the central prairie your activities league most boards really like that information because you identify with those districts maybe more than others i also know that you only have one high school that happens to be in that so you can see where you stand in that particular district and then the northern plains i am not sure why i know wilson is in that but it was wilson's not listed in our databases in that so i went ahead and provided the northern plains league for you and obviously your salary's not in there but you could see where it would stand up those are obviously a
018little bit smaller school districts so may or may not be good information for you because it's hard to classify your district because you have two high schools i've done two different queries for you i've done all of the school districts that have enrollments between 301 and 600. you have 440 so kind of in the middle so that you can see that then the very last one is all the 2a because your enrollment would match a 2a school district typically so every 2a school in the whole state is also listed there on the very last page and obviously you don't have you're not in there because you don't have a classification in that but but it's easy for you to reference any questions or comments about this [Music] i'm going to continue before we go too
019much further uh because of the position i'm in i am i get to i get a lot of information from other districts and i am also doing two other superintendent searches and i uh republic county is a week ahead of you and originally that was by design because you were a week behind when your superintendent search came up because you may be getting similar candidates i would suggest to this board that you allow me to make your deadline for application go from june 23rd to the 16th which is the exact same day that date's not important to you really but if you would do that there there's some rationale behind that is now i have the next time i would meet with you would be june 28th which means some other districts have already heard
020from me a week in advance and you may have similar candidates so i'm recommending that i would meet with you on june 20 as opposed to june 28th and if we can't make the 20th work i'm sorry because that's the only date i'm available to come visit with you which then means if you are fortunate to have candidates for interviews you would probably want to interview them that same week that another district is which would be the 21st through whatever i hope you understand my rationale i i think it's to your advantage if you're able to do that that makes sense to me so it would be the 20th that i would be able to that i would see you next okay now i guess the worst case scenario would be you don't have any
021candidates i would probably call mr shear meyer and say you don't have any candidates there's no reason for me to come unless you want me to say what do we need to do now or i might say you had two and i honestly can't recommend any of you so it'd be a waste of your time to interview them but i'll be happy to come and talk to you about them but it's always your decision whether i recommend them or not but i'll plan on being here the 20th unless there's no candidates and you say i still want you to come because we need to get together and talk about next course of action i would recommend to you that you still uh have your conversations with potential interim candidates uh we've talked about that before
022so that you have a backup plan if uh we fortuna unfortunately would not get a suitable candidate to interview that you have a backup plan i will this evening or first thing tomorrow change the posting on our website from june 23rd to june 16th as the deadline and uh there's not been anybody reach out to me at this particular point if there would have been i would reach out to them just to make sure they knew that we were changing the deadline okay thank you for that i appreciate that the next thing we need to talk about and these are if we would have interview candidates is how you wish to go about that there are interview questions that you need identified there's usually a process that i would have you go through but it
023takes a little bit of time and not just tonight it would take you maybe uh three to five days to look through them and then send them to the point of view but diane probably and she would collate them i took the liberty of bringing we always recommend 21 questions so that would be three questions from each board member so it's pretty even it's a two to two and a half hour interview i have requested two districts that have already gone through this process earlier in the year to send me the 21 questions their board chose that doesn't mean you'll like them you might want to look at the 90 that are in the back of your manual and choose the 21. if we were going to go through the process what i would also
024i'm going to use use an example you'd look through those 90 questions choose the 21 you would hope to ask or if you were the only board member this would be the 21 i would ask you would do the same thing send your 21 questions to diane i've got them in electronic format so you don't have to write them you can simply say question two six nine and then she goes through seven board members one question two four and five they're in there but that means you're going to have to look at those probably take three or four days send them to diane and then she's got to compile them very happy to do that if you do that that's the process you need to do if you would prefer just to look at a
025an example of what some other boards did with their 21 i have a copy here and i'll just give it to you and let you decide how you or the board to decide how you choose to do that they may be completely opposite of what you're looking for but i wanted to give you an option of uh because of the time schedule of what you need to do so mr chairman if you'd like to talk to your board i'll just step back and do sidewalk if they want to go through the process of looking through the total or one quick question yes ma'am do you feel like their superintendent characteristics lined up with kind of wherever i would say that those two weren't as nearly as much on the financial end okay for sure but
026everybody wants an experienced superintendent which very rarely happens anymore but everybody's looking for that which you were which kind of indicates somebody that knows how to run score the two the two i chose is public i i asked lincoln to send me there and hillsboro has to send their questions so that and i don't know how many questions are in the manual for i think there's like budget questions there's one listed in this 21. and if you don't feel the budget and finances highlighted enough you could get rid of two questions and make sure they get in there too i mean i could i mean for me i could go either way but i just i feel like it's probably a good idea if we spend the time to go through our questions i just
027we wouldn't be able to spend a week to do it but i mean and some of these questions i mean obviously are going to be on there anyway why are you interested in the position as you look at the position what do you consider to be your greatest strengths challenges how does the superintendent ensure that the curriculum and structure instruction happening within the school district this means i mean i think i think the majority of them are going to be probably what we choose yeah we don't have the time to really take a lot of time and pull it over but i think it would be wide for each of us highlights what we feel is dying on vacation mrs oshner informed me that diane just couldn't be here tonight but she's not on vacation
028so she would be available this next week if you hadn't toured by a certain time to get them collated how soon do you need them i don't okay it goes what what i would recommend that you would send them to your your clerk you're 21 she'd go through all of them tally them and then she would put that together for you is the way it works she's just not here to hear that explanation so i would try to contact her tomorrow so usually if the clerks here i say when do you need them you know tell the board when you need them so that um get it done in time for your next meeting i mean if we did is it unreasonable to ask the board by monday to have the questions is everybody okay
029with that okay so we'll just do that okay just didn't so get them to die in before the board meeting so those questions are in the back of the manual yes sir and i will send an electronic version to diane first thing tomorrow morning that way she can forward you the electronics so if you want that there it's easier for you for some of you it may be easier just to do it that way i just think three 21 questions for each board member yeah and then you can file them and then when the 21 then usually we let the board clerk and if you okay with this because we think every board member should ask questions not just the board president everybody okay with that then i'll ask diane just to assign names that
030way when you see the questions you know the three that you're responsible for before you get there so you're not looking at that before the first and being surprised at the questions or if there's a hard word i'm thinking i'm lying a little bit you know but you can prepare yourself do we need to come up with follow-up questions for those questions i i wouldn't too much unless you ask the same follow-up of every candidate now i do know that some questions will require follow-up because you want clarification but if you have too many follow-up questions you don't get to your all 21 and then you ended up not having the same comparison of each candidate so try to be as consistent but i also understand that things can take you offline a little bit
031okay so we know how to do the question so the next uh thing is we would recommend that if you have an interview that you obviously have a formal interview in the evening and that you would have a dinner with them they can tell you more when they are breaking bread with you than they might be able to during the interview that's the informal well it's going to be pretty formal to them because they're nervous as heck but that might be at 5 30 if you choose to do that so the interview days the board only has to be there in the evening now if you have three interviews i hope you do it's it's a hard week on you but it's only evening so you're not missing work hopefully unless you have night shift
032or something if typically we would have you do the following but without school it's going to be a little different whether you have school or not we think there should be a tour of your communities and of your buildings and because you're quite a ways away that tour may be longer than a typical tour your buildings won't have the soul that they normally have because they are not going to see the life of the kids in here but i think it's important for them to see your buildings so they need to go into all of your communities now all of them when i say all of them the board needs to make a decision do they go into bush and lorraine i mean that's a decision is it something that you need to show them
033or you definitely need to have them go to claflin and wilson because that's where your two buildings are but that's a decision you as a board need to decide what's the tour going to look like when you drive around claflin and wilson i'm going to make an assumption those two for sure it's just not a willy-nilly tour you're just not driving around like i do on saturday nights with an ice cream cone through town you're driving to make sure they see your any recreation areas parks swimming pools you know anything that because if they happen to have children they want to know about those things you might drive by the churches now i'm not saying what church you want me to drive by and you're not even telling me you're driving by the churches you
034know but you're driving by the churches because they might ask hey is there a presbyterian church oh absolutely let me drive you there or no there's not but there's one five miles down the road or something you know whatever so whoever is going to give that to her and that's another board decision and we would recommend it not be a board member it could be a clerk could be an outgoing superintendent could be a principal uh you know whoever you wish it to be the buildings are usually the principles are usually the tour guide of the buildings but it doesn't have to be it's whatever you choose it to be the reason we ask it not or recommend not a board member is because then that board member now has a favorite because they got
035to spend two extra hours than everybody else did so you want everything to be as consistent as you possibly can one thing that we would recommend if it was during the school day or year is a meet and greet with the staff and that's just a meet and greet it's a 30 minute deal where they get to stand up and say i'm gary seacrest this is my wife barb i'm the superintendent at whatever here's my dreams and aspirations for your district and it's pretty much done with school not in session that's a very a decision you're going to have to make because if you have three people show up that may not be a real good look so that's something you have to consider so i say the tour and the dinner and the are
036for sures you might wish and and we would suggest on a normal interview date that you would give them an opportunity to meet with the principals and the central office staff so diane your treasurer jane toby and i know you don't have a principal at wilson but if you would so usually meet together so that four or five thirty minute once again it's a meet and greet just talk and get to know each other get a general feel so if the dinner starts at 5 30 that's the time we can say we know is on the schedule and then you have to decide what you want to do before that so the tours for sure meeting with the principals and office staff you need to decide if you want the teachers to do that but
037then count back from 5 30 since that's when you know it's going to be if i come on the 20th and i hope i get to come that you have candidates then we'll talk about what the phone calls would look like that night and then you would offer a motel or a hotel lodging of some sort because if they're coming in from 200 miles and the interview concludes at night it's a nice to offer them a hotel so i'll leave it up to this board whether what kind of lodging you may have in one of your communities the smaller communities that don't have hotels unfortunately they sometimes look at adjoining communities depending on what direction they're coming from honestly if they're coming from the east you know an hour to slide you know at least
038it's on their way home but uh airbnbs uh hunting lodges a lot of times are are very good and i don't know your communities like you do but there might something you need to think about in advance so i don't need to be here while you're talking about what you're going to do i've given your suggestions and i'll i'll call dying we assume she'll be back on duty tomorrow i'll talk to her you guys will might have to let her know that hey we want you to get a remote get a motel room reserved so she can get that reserved for potential you know i cancel it without at least you'll know on the 20th whether you need it or not and then if you're going to have a meal catered is a school district
039going to do it usually the interviews not i don't want to say usually it's becoming more common that it's a catered meal and they do it exact location of where the interview is going to be so the meal comes in you're done 15 minute recess everybody cleans up everybody restroom clean up come back in in the same location so you don't have to travel between the meal and the dinner but once again if you wish to it's your choice it's no right or wrong it's just more convenient to do it in the same room and the next visit i will guide you i won't tell you how much you should offer that would be something that you want to consider if you get a full-time superintendent i would recommend probably sometime tonight that you decide
040on a salary range so you know what you're currently paying and i'm going to throw a range but it's not in fact i'm going to make the range so strange you know i'm faking it because i don't want you to think i'm giving you a suggestion that we're willing to pay anywhere from 50 000 to 58. i know you are but it's not gonna get so you got eight thousand dollar range right what i reason i'm asking to come up with that now if you have three interviews and you have a hot candidate that last interview and you haven't talked about that that can lead to you saying let's offer 65. and then next morning go what the heck we offered 65 what were we thinking more realistic it could be 140 you know what
041i'm saying but have that range but when we make the phone calls we'll talk about it that mr shearer meyer has a little bit of wiggle room so when he offers 56 five because that's within your range and they say man i i can't come for that i'm already making 54. if you can make that 60 i'm your man or woman and he has the autonomy say yeah that's it because he says oh i got to get back with the board guess what you just lost them especially at this time of the year so you might want to think about a range i don't know if that'd take you too long you know what you're currently paying so think about a range before you get too far into this the shermar that's all i had
042i'm hoping i get to see you on the 20th hopefully you'll uh talk to an interim i know there's somebody right behind me and uh just have a nice conversation and see if the both of you like each other and what kind of terms that you think is appropriate for an interim superintendent and that way if you get a hot candidate it makes you feel a little better and if unfortunately you don't you have a backup plan that's good realistic also you know i've got two other searches so i know what's going on with those um but you just never know you just never know and usually it's going to be an out-of-state person which a little bit scares me why are you coming up here from out of state but that's why i call
043and i bet for you thank you for your time your best you bet and obviously please call if you have any questions i don't know if you want to leave a note to diane that i'll call her tomorrow make sure she understands what's going on good luck to you i hope to see you on the 20th you better mr president i move that the board go into executive session pursuant to the campus open meetings act to discuss confidential personnel matters related to non-elected personnel as they relate to the superintendent's position and that we return to open session in this room at eight o'clock eight o'clock with john sherman and bill wowery to be in attendance marshall table uh all right we are back in open session uh we'll continue our discussion on the uh superintendent
044position i would like to make a motion that the board enter into agreements and negotiations with mr lowry to act as internal superintendent negotiations with the the library to act as income super first llc consulting second by allison is there any further discussion you're done all in favor raise your hand can i ask a question just for clarification purposes that this guy will do a search for you for an intern uh no we would go into negotiations with him to be okay so we'll move into a board discussion on the principal position at wilson so we had discussed before about what we wanted to do with that position if we wanted to fill it or if we wanted to have an interim or if we wanted to have shared responsibilities between superintendent and teachers with
045the changes with mr clark putting his resignation and us to having either a new superintendent or an interim superintendent i think that probably should pursue filling that position at least that's my opinion i would agree with that mr president i move that the forward go into executive session pursuant to the kansas open meetings act to discuss confidential personnel matters related to non-elected personnel as they relate to the principles position at wilson and that we return to open session in this room at it's best we are back in open session any further discussion for the principal position hearing none uh i think we covered everything on here yes okay well then i will entertain a motion to adjourn spoken thanks everybody good questions you