February 22, 2025, Board Study Session

001come on in join in we good is this what we expect straight engaged ready welcome back thank you all for choosing to be back on time as we had agreed would who would like to share why you chose to be back on time like we agreed who will share there's a microphone over there I chose to be here on time because as a governing board president I believe in parallel processing and when I'm in classrooms I always feel that this expectation is um given out to our students of being engage fully present even a slant that I hear throughout the district so if we're already putting that kind of expectations on our students whose frontal loes haven't fully developed yet why can't we model that same behavior um so that's why I decided to be

002present and ready by the time I said I was going to be got it thank you who else why did you choose to be back on time like we agreed I had made a commitment to be in my seat and on time and I wanted to honor my integrity and it's important that we honor our integrity because when we let our integrity lapse with small things sorry when I let my Integrity lapse with small things it allows that behavior to take hold which then puts me in a position to allow myself to let my Integrity slip with larger things it just seems the polite thing to do and it seems a polite thing to do you got it yes thank you all for choosing to be back on time like you agreed uh everything that

003you've described and in addition to that I'll add one of my newest favorite books the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership uh in that the very first law is the law of the lid and so I'm only able to lead in a manner where my lid has been raised and my capacity has been raised as we've done mindset work your law of your lid is moving up higher in your level of vulnerability but also your level of presence as to how you're becoming more and more present to your choices your behaviors so the law of the lid pretty important the other one what we're doing as well there's another one that's called The Law of process we're working on setting systems and processes in place you're embedding them into the system um and yeah powerful work

004the last one is I share this with every board the last one is the law of Legacy I won't spoil it for you but it's not what I thought it would be I've always interpreted Legacy as what am I leaving behind what what does that look like and um I won't share with you right here right now but I'll encourage you to read it even if you just go to that part of the book because it's pretty powerful of of how that book is described and all the other 20 laws lead to that 21st law so what I can share with you is that you are creating new processes systems you are leading in a very radically different way in comparison to most school districts around the country and for that we want to continue

005to lean in I want to offer an opportunity for us to just revisit briefly inputs outputs and outcomes because I call those the ABCs of governance because that's the language that we get to use a common language for everyone in the room here to understand how we're doing business it's also one that you you and kraton have already begun to do as AJ and I were able to visit with your campus leaders instructional leaders we shared the language with them as well the more of this language is spreading I understand that um you as a team also presented to students recently um and then there's another phase that's coming that I want to talk to you about before we leave is to engage your community stakeholders leaders Union reps everyone to bring them and invite

006them into a space to do mindset to do inputs outputs and outcomes and finally in that part is for you as a team and this I'm talking to the board mainly that you can share with all of these Community leaders why you're doing what you're doing and what you're gaining from it what is the benefit to you what is what is the cost of students if we deviate from this kind of work and then what are the pretending that you have been shedding uh as a process as as a part of this process that's another level of parallel processing that goes beyond this room um so students and and all of these factors are going to get you to 100 points but even like I said we don't want you looking good on the outside

007we want you being good we want you to be effective so we'll be able to unpack some of those today too inputs take them take a moment to visit with your neighbor and see what you remember about inputs you might want you might ref you might feel compelled to reference the analogy we've always used which is around the Athletics of let's pretend you're the owner of a Major League football team but what do you remember about inputs share with your neighbors EX okay what do you remember about inputs who who will share yes there's a mic right there trying to test my knowledge I feel like the inputs is that I believe that's the game there's going to be a game it's a basketball game we have things like players and people with expertise like

008coaches and supplies like balls and people to keep us accountable like referees that's what I believe inputs are yeah so then inputs as you'll see will you read what's on the screen for us about what is an input what's the definition then before the game even starts what do I need to win to win the game and inputs are resources and activities invested in a particular program process or strategy usually knowable at the beginning of a cycle yeah so thank you to have equipment players coaches all of those are inputs those are all um resources and activities that we know at the beginning of the cycle so right now again your your leadership team has been you've been hard at work at identifying what your resources are going to look like for this next coming

009school year that conversation probably happens throughout the year so that's the reason why you as a board it was important for you to identify priorities by goals in guard rails so that you can give direction to your leadership team as to how to begin to allocate funds to take care of those priorities those are your inputs so what are examples of inputs in a school system who will share teachers teachers bus route schools everything that's Noble before even school starts like how many teachers we're going to have what curriculum we're going to have yes all those beautiful things that board members like to put their two cents on wait hold on no don't go comment pretending on me where's the eye statement with that one that I like to put my two cents in okay

010fair enough thank you for modeling yeah so inputs are Noble at the beginning all of those examples now let me go back quick second inputs is also what the community tends to come to you to talk to you about I don't like this teacher I want this different principal I don't like this coach I don't like this the I don't like the color the uniform that the kids are wearing on on the field I don't like the color on the walls um they typically come to talk to board members about inputs and that's what they know you are the elected officials closest to them with probably the most valuable resource in human beings in your community and you in charge of them so yeah you as a board you're the owners of the system let

011me reiterate that you're the owners of the system all right so then what do we know at halftime um visit with your neighbor about what outputs are for a couple of minutes you love okay what do you remember about outputs what do you remember about outputs yes outputs happen outputs happen at the mid cycle to check in to see the how the inputs are affecting the outputs and the outputs should be able to predict the outcome and um there's adult outputs and student outputs that we can monitor I give examples if you want but that would be great Okay so for instance if we're trying to improve instruction as one of our inputs um an adult output we could check is our learning walk um improving from like a one or two to a three

012so then we would come up with inputs to improve that learning walk um that we do every quarter and some inputs would be coaching or professional development with our teachers to see if the learning walks are improving that's an adult output a student one would be looking at the Benchmark assessment to see if the Improvement in the professional development and coaching and what we're measuring for this adult output is affecting the student output which is better on the Benchmark assessment which should predict how they do on the ultimate outcome which is the state assessment oh that's money ding ding ding there's like no other points I can add to that well done thank you so yeah in essence outputs then um I Heard it over here I think I heard it over here that they're

013they're telling you how you're doing along the the year right along the game is that is that what I heard somewhere over here right yeah yeah it's like what you said no just um yeah like if you're in the middle of the game knowing like how well you've played up to that point and um where you're at and I think putting it in like a educational context I don't know if this would fit but would like maybe attendance or like behavioral issues could that be considered like a an output mid year yeah absolutely sure could I think one of the biggest ahas moments that I had from the last mini cohort conference that we had in Fresno is that outputs are not predictive of your inputs they should actually be predictive of your outcome and

014based off of your outputs is how your inputs get you know strategized and a lot of times and I myself speaking for myself I I was trying to connect an output with an input which I there was some kind of lag and until I really understood that these outputs need to be directly of how the outcome is going to affect it versus how this output is going to benefit the input it's almost like we should be working output outcome input did I say that right I felt the same way when I you know when we process through this this particular work and so I you know agree it's the chicken in the egg again because those inputs are so important but I think the big thing with the with the outputs is measurability right so

015it's not just that you think and I am bringing forth this great plan of action because I'm some expert it is because I have data or the ability to get data that is measurable three or four times a year and I could even put a smart goal to it right so that output I think the necessary component is that you have some measurable way to to gauge it because if it's not doing you want it to do you need to be able to Pivot and go okay it's not doing what I need it to do I need to pull more data and if I can if I can kind of reflect back on what I've seen in your board meeting from your leadership team your leadership team has been vulnerable a number of times to

016tell you we thought we had we thought we had an idea here with these inputs and outputs and they are being in this Brave space where they're telling you we got to revisit this now let me connect some Dots here Bor had you not been laser focused not sure that you would have created the space or forced the space on the system to self-reflect and become present to what inputs and outputs are working and not working but be that's the power that you have as a board when you ask these questions and we're going to we're going to delve into the types of questions after lunch you have a lot of influence over how the rest of the system goes I love what we discussed earlier as well that when we as a board choose

017to not put student achievement and student outcomes and student all of these topics on the back burner then time is not going to be wasted because we're going to be very intentional about what we're doing how we're doing it when you ask questions boor you are parallel processing you are nudging the the superintendent and leadership team to go back to the drawing board in some cases to fine-tune their inputs and to make sure they've got the best possible outputs to measure that so question in the game right the analogy in the game is at halftime you're winning the game as as as you're what are your expectations if you're winning the game at Halftime you're going to win but like you know so like what are the inputs what what input should the coach be

018looking at if you're winning the game like should they look at changing any should what what what do you think I was just gonna say they should they should look at what's working like would be a major thing so that way you're doing more of that and just because you're winning doesn't mean your strategy is perfect so you should also be looking at what things are creating problems so um when when Tristan and I were working he had a an input that I had never thought of before which was um like he talked about like you know player injury um like we thought about things like fouls and so a lot of times what for in my experience one of the things that I've noticed and one of the things I'm picking up today is

019you're going to have outcomes outputs and inputs no matter what so everybody has them you don't even have to engage in student outcome Focus governance work everybody has them just like every basketball game is going to have a final score scores throughout the first second third quarter and there's going to be inputs that are affecting them the difference with what we're trying to do is we're kind of to go to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People we're starting with the end in mind so we're backwards engineering off the outcome to determine what our output should be and we're putting in place inputs that should be affecting those outputs in order to get the outcome and so um so at that at that mid cycle as a coach and for us and one of the things

020I'm seeing start to happen is we need to we need to be in the space of questioning is this working or not and when the board asks good questions sometimes they notice things from their 15,000 foot perspective that that we don't see from our 10,000 foot perspective and so um it really drives deeper thought processes deeper conversation and a more powerful fine-tuning of the inputs throughout the year and so then to go back to my observation from my prior experiences I think what is most common that happens is people think about the outcome they know what their outputs are going to be they put inputs in place and then they just press go and then see like how that all worked out at the end of the cycle right yeah so and then they go

021well how come our outputs didn't really tell us this you know maybe you didn't pay enough attention to them so and that and I feel like for us as a district that is very much how we were prior to engaging in this work and you're not alone because most school systems do operate that way I and here I go being critical of our myself and my colleagues but as much as I want to say we're lasal focused I think there's a big part of this that was serendipitous in that we had the right people in the right positions at the time that we started this and I think that this framework could really expose people who are not competent at their job and don't have the skills they need to actually Implement these types of

022things but I think what it's shown for us is that we have some like very talented people um and I'm talking about you all sitting here um working here and so I it's it's just it blows me away all the time so some of that stuff is I don't even know if I'd call it vulnerabilities it's just you all are doing what you feel like is the right thing to do as a part of your job when you're talking to us and it just feels natural I but you could tell me if it feels different but um and then I think part of that with the laser focus is going in there and and then coming and building this understanding with the questions that we're having that aren't you know no one's taking things personally

023and we're all kind of trying to have these collaborative conversations but I think the confidence part is huge because we know that there are people out there in this world in the education world that are faking it till they make it and I'm glad that's not happening here so I appreciate it uh so one of the things I was thinking of in in our conversation was that there's another team that's on the field right and so at halftime we also know what the inputs are that they're bringing to us uh and we don't know what's going to happen in the next uh in the next two quarters that's right right quarters okay um so then trying to work that into an analogy uh back to what the work that we do is that there are

024inputs that we now have at halftime if we're kind of extending that analogy that we don't know the impact of the work that's happening around immigration right we can we can predict what some of the possibilities are uh and we've done that work and and I've been in conversations around that work regarding Staffing and potential uh enrollment hits and things like that but those are outside of our control just like a second team on the field we don't know what their conversation is in the locker room during halftime so question on on that um if I don't know what the inputs are that are coming into into into our space uh much like in a game that you don't know what the inputs and that's part of the that's part of the deal right that

025you're monitoring and you're you know what the score is at halftime um that's part of the reason why you don't want to get comfortable because the I am to Genesis mindset is we are I am going to do everything that I possibly can to try to get a grasp on what those inputs are that I that I can't control because I still need to be somehow some way responsive to what's happening out there the common pretending of school systems can be we can't control as variables so we're just going to leave them out there and whatever shows up shows up that's not what I'm experiencing and listening to when I watch your board meetings either right so there's also that part of the things that I cannot control as a good officient head coach which

026is your analogy and the owners of the team you still want to be responsive and you still want to try to get in front of what those potential barriers may be I I just wanted to say that um with that and like you talked about it being a delicate situation and and balance I think that's where we come back to and rely on developing measurable inputs when we because it's change we are the Genesis of change and I am the Genesis of change and so as I'm navigating through change it's difficult and a lot of adult convenience behaviors are thrown at me so how do I navigate in the best way forward knowing that the decisions that I'm being a you know a part of um are going to ultimately affect student outcomes so you

027have to have something measurable it has to be there so if I say um I believe these dollars are going to help in this area I need to be able to have something that measures did it help yeah and I think that's when you become accountable yes and the reason why we have the Integrity in in embedded in the work and in a smart format that if what I'm going to tell the community to expect from us in AC achievement or the guardrails student well-being social emotion whatever those topics are it's the reason why all of your interims are in smart format excellent point so one more let's let's let's do real life application board any idea of how you're doing I mean you've passed the halfway point of the school year so in this

028analogy my question and you don't have to answer I just want you to start thinking this is what we're this is what we're going to unpack today my first question to you as a board is do you know what the current status of your score is halfway through the year particularly around your goals and your guard rils and so that would mean that that i' I'd hope you could give me a percentage of where you think you are at or you know you're at so in other words if any Community member were to come up say hey you got these smart goals they look cool what's the progress for this year are we going to win the game or are we going to lose the game and if you don't know the answer to that

029that's okay you're not alone but that's what we're going to unpack today because you'll notice that it towards the end of the mastering student oon Focus it's asking you to memorize your goals your guardrails and it's asking you to also always be mindful of just like a good owner of a system you want to know are we on track to win the game or lose the game I'm we're funding all of these things I'm approving all of these consent and action items it's not just for for approving it's really along this framework tell me how these inputs and outputs are working out for us are we winning the game or losing the game so if you don't know we're going to learn today why that's so VI critically important to know and that's what makes

030these board meetings even more um engaging for board members is when you put on that hat and that lens like this isn't just for me to look at data on a screen that staff have worked really hard at putting together and have everyone else around the system is working really hard to try to change the direction of some of these data points when you as a board ask questions and you know where you're at this whole thing is starting to look a lot different the last one what do you talk to your neighbor about what do you remember about outcomes what do you remember about outcomes for okay what do you remember about outcomes in this analogy what are outcomes the you said the end game what does that mean it's what we we know

031at the end of the cycle yep it's it game over so you're already getting ready to enter the third quarter of your school year testing is not too far away your guard rails too to understand where you're adding your progress towards those yeah but at the end of the school year that's it game over there's no more time to make adjustments so the question that I'd be asking you as a board is what adjustments has your Administration been making during this school year not next school year this one and and if you don't know those are great questions for you to begin to consider to ask the idea of progress monitoring is not to put on a show that you know how to ask good questions the idea of progress monitoring is to really understand

032how did we get here and you'll see in the document that I'm going to share with you later boards that spend three quarters of their time asking questions what happened how did this happen what inputs worked what inputs aren't working what outputs are you are you keeping which outputs are you considering getting rid of because they're the ones that are constantly making the sauce so they know exactly or they're figuring out exactly what's working and what's not working that helps you be more efficient with your dollars and your monies too by the way Bard because as your team is figuring out well maybe this has we've had this for two or three years and it just isn't panning out maybe we need to have a deeper conversation internally and then we're going to take it

033to the board or we have this input and maybe this output that we just implemented and we're using we need a little bit more time board we have faith in it and we're tracking it aggressively and we we have a pretty good idea it may not be showing up right now but give us give us a little bit more time if that's how you enter your progress monitoring conversations and you walk out of there any given time someone asks you what's the progress towards the goals and the guardrails when you can answer those kinds of questions you've internalize the work if right now you can't do those it's because that's what we're going to focus on today to internalize the work well question starts wondering push back do you have on inputs outputs and outcomes

034our ABCs they're going to be important for us for the work we're going to do quick question we've done this before I just want to make sure we're stay on the same page who between the board and superintendent is primarily responsible for puts our employee which is the superintendent got it but what's the board's role then you're not you're not free of anything from this so what what's your world Board of inputs teachers curriculum budget approving approving or not voting for something voting up or voting down superintendant J man I hear these inputs I agree with them I'm convinced I'm going to vote up I'm not convinced I'm going to vote down but hopefully before you vote down you've had a conversation with them question thought or wonder I was going to say I'm just

035making sure that um the inputs are like in alignment also with like the vision and values and goalss all that yeah I love that you said that 100% And when we talk about theory of action this afternoon we're going to add another layer because it's like the ultimate guard ril wonderfully stated yeah and so who's primary responsible for outputs gauging the impact of inputs benchmarks formative assessments superintendent or the board why the superintendent because he's the one that is the expert that we hired to execute that yep for board members as as Sophia just modeled she's still grasping what an output really is that is completely normal especially if you haven't been in education if you've been in education you likely understand outputs better than non-educators outputs like this idea of what a benchmark is

036and a formative assessment there's diagnostic assessments there's all kinds but people that are not in education it may take a little bit and that's okay but the more that you work at this the more you're going to realize that those progress monitoring reports that they're bringing to you they're bringing them to you with outputs and so as you're gauging the effectiveness of outputs that's where the sauce is being made and when you as a board member can really wrap your your mind around that yeah you'll understand why it's important that the superintendent be the one that's constantly assessing because that's not your role now your role is though don't rubber stamp outputs that you don't understand make the time with the superintendent to be like superintendent man help connected dots because this makes no sense

037to me this is a whole another foreign language that is completely appropriate and awesome for you to do as a board member and I think you'll enjoy that Journey because then when they're bringing you the data it will make even more sense for you and the last one border superintendent who's primarily responsible for outcomes border suit why the board sorry the board because they're the they set the goal based on our community our student outcome needs vision and values vision and values yes goals and guard RS board this is super important for moving forward today you are absolutely the primary holder and responsibility for outcomes questions I would ask if you don't win the game at the end of this year questions I would ask you as a board member what have you been approving

038all year and are you are you conscious and aware of what you've been approving all year he's asking you for curriculum and teachers and or he's cutting back on certain things are you as a board member clear why he's asking you to do that and if you are you're voting up and so when you're voting up you're just as responsible for what's going to what's going to play out for the rest of the school year and as he's bringing you the monitoring reports if you're not picking up the gaps in inputs and outputs and you keep voting up and you don't win the game at the end of the year I would submit to you that you as aboard allowed it to happen you are the owners of the system you are not the head

039coach you are not the teacher you're not the players you are the owners of the system that's your biggest role and that can be a challenging role for someone who's used to being in the weeds of things that's not your role your role is to be the owner in other words I've told you before and I hate saying it out loud because you know it's my favorite team Your Role is not to be Jerry Jones all in the mix of the handpicking of players plays giving giving opposing information to head coach I mean assistant coaches than what the head coach gave going into the players locker room to give them different instructions than what the head coach has given them can you see the problem with that as a football team right so the same

040as for a board if you as a board operate in the weeds and you're operating like a mini superintendent you're meddling in the inputs I would say if you don't win the game I hop that you would stand in front of the community and say I caused this too I was part of it or I forced an input on a superintendent and that's not my role you can avoid some dangerous situations by not forcing inputs asking questions I hope is what's going to come out of today's Workshop asking questions is a very very powerful tool just put myself out there like I always do but um um I definitely went into this and I think the analogy there with the owner situation is definitely went into this I'm 100% invested in this and open to

041the possibility of losing the game and reassessing and trying again tell me more God it's powerful because I know I'm not going to give up if that happens and so there's plenty to learn and I guess I'm I guess I'm approaching that idea of like talking to community about that in a different way I think then not saying that I'm like expecting to lose I wouldn't want to say it like that but just open to the fact that that's a reality or possibility and how you're going to adjust from there because otherwise you're just going to get caught up in things so I'm completely open to the possibility that we may not win the game and I'm als also aware that I'm going to learn from this process think of how many years it's gone

042with no clear Direction in this room go back and look at old meetings my wondering would be did the board have a unified Vision in in what direction they wanted to move in was there Clarity from the superintendent and the leadership team what the board's expectations were and if the answers are no then everybody was just kind of hoping that things would go okay or even worse blindly trusting that things were being done and as the owner of a team that's not what you do as the owner of the team you gotta you got to ensure that things are being done yes so my understanding with the sofg framework that there is a there shortterm outcomes by the end of the school year and then there's the long-term outcome of say the fiveyear goal is

043that correct that's correct okay so and then it was mentioned earlier in the earlier session that uh there are these school districts that are operating with the sog framework yep and they're just coasting because their inputs are they only focused on the long-term goal or maybe that's their primary focus and they're not paying attention to the the yearly outcomes the annual outcomes good question no I would say here you've got two other districts nearby who who are just a little bit ahead of you and they have learned what she just described what Katie just described they learn in some cases they lost the game but they learned why they lost the game and the board member self-reflected like oh I didn't know I could have asked this question or I should have asked that question

044in the meantime the superintendent and the leadership team also realized oh we thought these puts and outputs were working better than the what they really are the first year is a lot of learning curve and so to focus on the annual Target Keeps Us focus on the here and the now because this one annual Target right now should impact the overall fiveyear goal so the idea is to do both focus on the annual Target and also if this moves up then you know that you're moving towards your fiveyear goal okay does that make sense yes so yeah you want to you want to think short term but you also want to make the con nection to what long-term so what can happen is when there are school districts who realize and they lost the game

045last year the most powerful boards for us that we witness is that they don't throw the administration under the bus to say you caused this to Happ what did y'all do that's common pretending that's oh y'all have the power and I'm completely free I didn't I'm new I didn't know what I was doing uhuh like that's common pretending so the idea for a solid board with parallel processing and great leadership says I am going to own what happened here I'm also going to own that what I'm going to do moving forward is I'm going to ask better questions I'm going to submit one two three questions ahead of time that's going to probe and prompt them to think differently if needed or to reassess your your ability to ask questions about those short-term and long-term

046goals I love what what superintendent man said earlier you it you may not know it they probably go back and regroup after that and say this board member asked that question we got to get on this we didn't think about it your ability to ask questions is super powerful but that's not commonly known what do most people enter boardrooms thinking that is their most powerful weapon to tell them what to do that is not it at all yes one thing I want to I just kind of want to point out that we've experienced is that having those questions in advance of the meeting like is a force multiplier for how valuable they are because what we found is the team um Dr dup and Dr pombo and the whole curriculum team are so deeply engaged

047that when we push those questions to them they like start to come back to us with well here's something we didn't think of or you know this question made us think about this and then the beauty of it is that conversation then gets to happen in public at the board meeting and so the board gets to be part of not just the questions that are being asked but the posed possible ways that we can make improvements which then allows them to kind of share into that part of the conversation which sort of broadens you know that the saying I really like none of us is as smart as all of us and so Bri the board into that conversation puts more Minds on the problem and Minds with a different perspective and so it becomes

048like honestly it's an order of magnitude more powerful when we have the questions in advance of the meeting rather than trying to scrambled to answer and then doing the postmortem after the meeting to try to figure out how we're going to make adjustments Bard I hope I hope you heard that board this is a very very common theme across any board superintendent team think about it right if I have if my if in my day job I am constantly in gotcha scenarios where my boss is constantly catching me off guard and expecting me to answer things right right off the bat I'm going to tell you that is a very unfair and unrealistic expectation of superintendant contrary to what you might think they have a million things on their plate leadership team have a million

049things on your plate I think we pick up that theme of when we do mindset so to to minimize and to to get away from that assumption is to have this Clarity superintendent man is telling you what every superintendent says throughout this process in this work please get me questions ahead of time so we can be overprepared I don't want to understand what you're asking me I want to overstand what you're asking me so giving them that time what does that mean for you as a board means you got to read your packet it means you got to take time to to digest what you're looking at and yeah like you're being asked to do that amongst all the other responsibilities and duties you have probably in the spaces where you are getting paid to

050make a Liv in versus where you're volunteering to do work that's actually what's expected and what what's needed questions thoughts or wanderings I was just I grabbed the microphone oh the same time that you did um no no no because I had the same exact thoughts of echo what you're saying because what happens when we get the questions ahead of time it gives us a chance for a collaborative conversation and to address it and I I think that like the last few questions I was thinking if I was asked that up on the podium it would not be as thoughtful and collaborative as an answer or a way to solve that problem or the question if it was given to me that evening and so or us this that evening helps us um research and

051figure out the answer I'm GNA bring the mindset back just for a quick sec if if I as a board member have picked up a pattern that I do not reach read my packet do not submit questions ahead of time use the prompts what's the benefit to me in that moment when I don't do that what's the cost of students and what am I pretending and see if that doesn't help nudge you into at least cracking open that book and the material that they send you let me this is what I'm going to sound like I'm on the leadership side and I really am on this one when I say that they spend a ton hours on preparing those packets for you they spend a ton of hours they invest a lot of time and

052so when a board I'm not g to say here I'm just goingon to say when a board just F flies through a packet especially around student achievement material that is taking hours and hours and hours to put together think about how you might feel if your bosses don't take the time to take a look at it or much less ask you any questions about about it because if your response as a board is like well I understand everything that's in there awesome great let's go to the community and let's let you as a board I'm going to ask you to update them on the progress towards your goals and your guard RS that that's what that's supposed to mean that if I really understand what's in that packet I can then turn around and articulate

053to the community these are the inputs that are working these are the outputs that are working these are the ones that are not here's our progress we're past the halftime this is where we're at we're actually on track to win the game or we're not on track to win the game and then you can explain why because that's a big role for you as a board that's again the purpose of progress monitoring so if you don't understand what's going on highly encourag and I'm going to work with you to try to zero in a little bit more on that fair enough I want to do this quick activity before lunch um I'm going to make an assumption that everyone read the materials that I sent you if you did not it's okay we're going to

054work through it together um and maybe it'll prompt you to want to read it afterwards if you didn't read it prior to our time um eight characteristics of effective school boards you read this what is the first characteristic or what is one of the main characteristics see that you remember I'm really looking for the first one because it's going to jump start us to what we're going to do yes what is the first one commitment to a vision and clear goals oh sorry sorry I'm gonna write it down commitment to a clear what was it again Vision I said commitment to a vision and clear goals question as you reflect at kraton and as you've read this piece about this first characteristic what evidence would I have if I moving here and I'm making a

055choice to send my child to Crate School District what evidence would I have that this district has a vision and clear goals they're right there yay okay yeah so you so you do have them and you have them here and you have them on the website the next phase remember is that you commit these to memory that's that's that's one that I'm leaving you for homework if not already what's the second one do you mind Shar what is Nicole policy and accountability driven and I wanted to just real quick to to add to number one um because part of it is also a Clear Vision about the capabilities of our students and staff so like having um you know just that belief that they are capable of of a lot that they they can meet

056high expectations oh I I split those up because for number two I had strong shared beliefs and values let me put them up for everyone so yeah so the second one oh no this is going to be the shared beliefs and shared values this is like a summary of the we're going to get to the accountability one for sure though question for kraton does kraton have um a strong shared belief in values about what is possible for students yes what do we call those in SG guard guardos okay we're going to take a deeper dive don't worry what's the third one what's the third characteristic of effective school boards well I think it was what Nicole said the accountability driven what what evidence do I have that in Craton your accountability driven come on now

057yall are good yes how also going to say that we again are asking questions and not you know making directives yeah to the I would add to the progress monitoring the fact that we have a progress monitoring calendar that establishes a long-term commitment to the cycles of monitoring is huge for both staff preparedness and Comm Community scaffolding so they can know what to expect as time progresses and then another thing that ties into one of our other readings is the board self eval yeah I love that yes the board self eval there so there's multiple accountability um points that you've put in here in kraton progress monitoring progress monitoring calendars board self evaluation wonderful what about the fourth what is the fourth characteristic an effective board this one's one of my favorites because if I

058remember correctly it's the collaborative relationship with with leadership and staff what evidence do we have in kraton that this is happening we're here yeah and there's and I already that in two-way communication when we do our community council meetings but you you mentioned sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you mentioned we the concept of the questions came up in accountability but I think the concept of questions also relates very tightly to the collaborative relationship because questions are the alternative to gotta governance particularly when as I mentioned earlier when those questions come in advance and so the to me the opposite of the collaborative relationship is the gotta governance relationship and so that's really powerful because it all ties back again to the concept of the parallel processing and trying to create a system where we

059can have these conversations and have them be effective I think another thing um we don't have to be best friends but I think it is important for boards to understand who everyone is as a person maybe a little bit about people's professional and personal backgrounds just to a certain point because there that's really the only way you're going to get to have these relationships where you can have that collaboration and so um like I said we don't have to be BFFs but at the same time I think there is a lot of that in terms of like actually being interested in people as human beings and and not just being here to go through the motions and be professional all the time wow absolutely thank you another thing with this one is that um what

060stood out to me was that um engaging not just like communicating with like the stakeholders within Community but actually bringing them in with to be in alignment with these vision and goals and um you know to to make sure that yeah that we're all in alignment with that and it's not just like the board telling you what it's going to be nicoo that that's that's the two-way communication that's right around the corner where you as a board are going to lead um engagement where you could invite people into kraton spaces and also where you can go to them and Outreach and educate so it could be 15 minutes at a rotary club meeting it could be 30 minutes at a PTA PTO meeting my questions are going to be right here related to this one

061uh what is your Cadence for how often you plan on going out to the community to update them on the progress of your goals and your guardrails what you're also going to notice is they're going to come to you with more inputs and those will be opportunities for you to educate your community to say thank you so much for bringing that to our attention that's the reason why we have superintendent man and the team here or whatever that looks like but that is actually a role that is what we call an input the more you do that the more your community will learn oh we can't keep going to the board for all of these inputs there's actually a process um be a good opportunity here in a little bit to go over customer service

062versus owner Service as well if we haven't done that one ni yeah the word that just popped out to me what you said is the process and I think like having come from like a a parent perspective um sometimes and and I see it too now like dealing with behavior issues with my daughter and and some other parents is that's a lot of times these parents don't know that process so instead of like going to the teacher first or the admin they're going to they're they're complaining to me or they're they're voicing these concerns but I think just really making sure that there is a good well-known process for the community and for parents and students to address whatever it is their concerns to make sure it's getting handled at the level where it needs

063to be handled so it doesn't end up becoming a huge thing then all of a sudden it's it's it's blowing up at a board meeting yeah yeah and there's a lot of there's a lot of potential landmine situations around th those conversations just real briefly right like one of them um if I'm hearing your concern or your grievance I want you as a parent or or educator in our school system to understand that if I continue to listen to this conversation and it goes through a grievance process I will have to recuse myself from the room that's usually a good oh well maybe and then they could decide right yeah okay I still want you to hear me out but then there are other ways that I we can help you get out of those

064scenarios because there there could also be some legal R ramifications you don't want to end up in some legal situations just because you had a good heart and you wanted to hear them out but if you're if you're pretending to be like a superintendent in that role you're in dangerous territory so to protect you is the reason why the the the laws and the ethical situation is put in place to keep you from ending up and being in some really bad scenarios that you may have a hard time getting out of so educating your community is a big process of it so that they do understand so I completely agree with you and there there's ways that we can do that and we we'll be able to share with you especially when I do customer

065service versus owner service because you're going to notice on yourself eval it asks you if you understand a difference between customer service and owner service after today my hope is that you'll be able to check yes to that yeah and just one of the biggest AOS moments I guess for me personally when we were talking about this was that when we do get into those conversations with our community we're only laser focusing on their child and just because they have a relationship with us doesn't mean it even cuts out access to anybody else that I may not have a relationship with as the board member with anybody else and everybody has issues right so when we start getting into the weeds we're also parallel processing to our I'm parallel processing to my community that as

066long as they have an issue that they can come to me and then because I'm on the board it will get fixed and in reality we have more than five or like 4,000 students and if every parent came to me with that issue that's why customer versus owner is so important and it's been able to let me be more effective in my leadership when I really understood on what accountability versus R responsibility was as well you probably also not as may not be as present to when I hear staff and Leadership teams around the country describe that there's always two sides to a story and so it makes it tougher for them and their staff when they're developing and engaging and and with with with their staff and it's very demoralizing for them if a

067board member brings a concern but it's so one-sided that it's almost it's made it really difficult on the staff member to even make their own point or make a case for why something happened when you do have a process in place you allow for both sides to be heard and for it to be discerned but you're you're not the one that's doing it your role really ideally is to ensure that the whole system improves not just for that one child and so sometimes there's an inadvertent um impact I'm going to listen to this really loud person this parent who's really in my ear that and it could be very legitimate but let me not be the one to handle it let me let the superintendent and the team handle that or better yet we're going

068to talk about an owner service customer service let's let the person closest to the challenge try to address it versus going all the way straight to the top you briefly um alluded to this doctor almost but with the legal aspect of it as well there are times like one of the biggest frustrations that I often hear from parents is I want to know what happened with the other child like if there's an altercation between two children and there are things that we are restricted from sharing the same thing is true you know when we're dealing with staff situations and so sometimes um having someone who's not in the process involved in the process creates more awkwardness because it creates the sense sense of entitlement to information that may not be information that can be shared

069thank you number five what's that characteristic of effective School data Savvy hold on now so what evidence do I have that kraton is a data Savvy team we can actually ask questions when we're looking at the data not just sitting there staring at [Laughter] it if you if you watch one of those board meetings that's about four hours long oh man it was rough it was rough what data savviness did that team display I don't even know I I had to fast forward through some of it I couldn't I get like secondhand awkwardness got it how many awards they give the public Ines so that District shall go unnamed for the purposes of PD right but you know who I'm talking about I think also another thing is how little data they're are looking at

070during the meeting right obviously there we go and what can happen historically is that when the board isn't narrow narrowing their focus you then allow the leadership team to throw data at you how they want but it usually looks like it's it's a big data packet and we call them data dumps and you may have a couple of hundred pages I already know you're not reading five pages so how are you going to read a 100 Pages yeah watching that was very reminiscent of the district we feed into here with their previous superintendent and so I was like oh I've seen this a million times I already know what's happening here okay what what what what's happening the superintendent's putting on a show to try to keep these people and everybody else is just running

071around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to also please the superintendent in that meeting and the the superintendent's running the meeting I mean like it was just a lot there's quite literally people scurrying around and the door to the bathroom's right I mean there's just a lot going on and I picked one at random by the way okay I was like wow if if if you watch a random board meeting even just around the state or just you can find them on Facebook you can find them on YouTube if you have this in front of you remember peer Superior peer inferior my friends you're probably going to realize that you're more on the peer Superior side than you are on the peer inferior side there are a lot of folks who are going

072to be wondering let me let me reframe this some of these meetings that you're likely to just randomly find there are staff and parents and groups who pop their popcorn get their soda ready because they're ready for a show yeah dinner and a show dinner and a show yeah it's called and a show thank you the these characteristics do not encourage dinner in a show let's be clear right cool so yeah what's the sixth one thank you heather I'm taking that one with me dinner and the show alignment I feel unfort there's multiple in this metro area that provide dinner in a show the I am to Genesis is we're not going to be part of that right that's the I'm the Gen We're not gonna be part of that so what evidence do we

073have that the budget is aligning towards the goals well I would for me as board member I would see that through our inputs what new inputs thank you sorry I forget about this for me as the governing board member I would see that directly affected in our inputs and how our superintendent is coming to us and letting us know that that this isn't working this new one is because it's better aligned to the goal versus having 600 inputs and none of us knowing how that's directly impacting a student outcome or an output to give us that student outcome got it I think one of the things that I took the most from this section was the PDS um being being an educator but then also being able to see um the value that um PDS

074bring for us um and then looking at um one of the board meetings um I actually looked at their previous um agendas that they had and they actually like within the the two months that it was posted that I looked at they had three times where they actually met for PD so I think looking um at our PDS but also looking at like what PDS are the teachers getting because I know that has been an issue um and I think that's an issue in a lot of districts is like just the randomness of PDs but then aligning it to like what goals we have and making it more streamlined wonderful yeah the PDS that you're doing I understand that currently up until right now your state does not require professional development is that true correct

075correct okay and so coming from a state where we we where we we did require and we do require I'll give you another heads up in Texas we the state mandates three goals to be monitored that doesn't mean it's happening across the board it means that there's a lot of boards who don't even participate or know they may have it on their website but they're not monitoring it and in Texas it's early literacy early mathematics and college career military Readiness those are the three that every district has to have but outside of Texas when PD isn't required ired then it's completely up to you to choose and decide what you want to do and and what you want that to look like so again when I say thank you and gratitude to you it's because

076I'm also very conscious and aware that you are very different from most boards around the state you don't have to do any of this and yet you choose to engage you don't have to monitor anything and yet you choose to do that and in essence what's happening is I think from what you're describing it you can see this system and you can see another system you can probably tell a lot of the major gaps a lot more effectively now than maybe in the past because a random board meeting can look good on the outside but again I'll say I'm going to look at your data and if there's no Focus From the board of what we're seeing so far then you're really just pretending and you're leaving it up to chance and that's not what

077we're trying to do here so we got six what's the seventh one unified the Bo and the uh leadership team and superintendent work as a unified team what evidence do I have as a potential parent in kraton that I that that's happening here we're all here together we're all here today I think the way we interact with Jay on the Das off of it I think it's pretty evident yeah yeah iing I really agree and even just watching board meetings when you don't have that constant bomb throwing or worldwinds at the superintendent and going back and forth or attacking other board members or superintendent is very different and that shows that we are in and unified doesn't mean that those conversations aren't happening behind closed doors but when we're coming up front we've already walked

078through it talked to it this is why we have all these progress monitorings and looking at this data because our meeting is to be stuck to what is working and what's not for our students and what I need to change to make that better not consistently going back and forth and for the past year and a half it's it's been a lot of that collaborative conversations all of these end up going to what the number one thing in the lature describes of rolled confusion when a board gives up you you're going to notice other boards they they've given up their power to the superintendent they let the superintendent do everything and so then what happens when when something goes wrong it's easy H it's their fault get them out of here it's the reason why

079the average is about three years for a superintendent in the country because boards that are disengaged and give up that power and authority they're in common pretending go ahead superintendent but when you fail because you will then you're going to be out of here World confusion boards that micromanage and abuse their superintendants or squeeze them so hard that they get their inputs and their agendas done that's overstepping roles and that's a dangerous scenario as well so for a board and a superintendent team that is finding a balance of how to build that relationship and have genuine conversations and not be in artificial Harmony that's how I know that we've got a number seven and what's the eighth one ongoing development and training what evidence do I have that kraton believes in ongoing professional development for

080their board we're here we're here that's gonna be that's gonna be the line with Nicole we're here yeah I mean look next question well actually before I a question I want to give you some time to to debrief a little bit you now see that and and I couldn't have done this when we first met it wouldn't have felt too good we already had aort self evil right at this point we're we're at one one um really big milstone from from from the way I see it today we are now at a point where we could check boxes to say that you have what is evidenced to Be an Effective Schoolboard and superintendent team what I will kind of deflate you a little bit is to say we still got room to grow and so

081this is what I'm getting at boards that's like oh we checked all the boxes we can go around the country and do presentations look ding ding ding we're we're highly effective that isn't evident just yet because we just set the foundation now it's time to start walking into that next space of it I want to give you a couple of minutes to to debrief with um a shoulder partner what's come up for you during this activity with looking at the a characterist istics and as we look to internalize how that how that's relevant here in kraton go and take some minutes to visit with a colleague is as so it's e tell your that's [Music] that's think okay it's almost child time what what's what's come up for you as we visited the eight characteristics

082of Highly Effective school boards yes so just one thing I wanted to comment on as an educator and a board member I feel like these close align to what like Educators like good Educators um in the system like already know about education um and so it does closely align and it's bringing I think the board more into perspective of where we should be in that line with what we know is is good for our kids um and so I saw a lot of these traits to to be equally aligned um with that and I I think that's where we need to be because we should all be in alignment and and like I said I've started to see that even having conversations with like some of our teachers who are so like grateful also that

083we're doing this because it shows that we're all in the same place and we're not functioning as a separate the board's not functioning as a separate piece away from the rest of um what's going on in education and the best practices that that we already know thank you excellent observation vertical alignment connecting all the dots that the board is is now mirroring what's happening what you expect to happen in the classrooms excellent observation I made a lot of comments about other boards obviously but this board itself has come a long way I mean even in the time that I've been on this board obviously but just it's very obvious the shift is what I'll say from coming and watching meeting and then being on the board and then adopting these things it's just very very

084Stark and I've heard you in your board meetings and it's it's also right around the corner the policy diet and updating your board operating procedures manual because when I hear you say that that is none of this is going to matter as you've said from the dice none of this is going to matter if we don't put it in writing yeah that's what scares me every time we are talking about this I'm like well we're all going to die and then this is going to die too yeah and and because of because because you do understand that so well uh and from the beginning what I can tell you now it's we're at we're at this new point like I said we're at this new level this new stage where the internalization is going to

085be key um and because it's being internalized and it's going to be modeled and it's going to be backed up by policy and you make it harder for someone who just wants to to come in here and throw worldwinds left and right you as a team are going to make it harder for any potential people that just want to disrupt what is productive for children because you're going to have evidence of what and why you've been doing it you'll be able to explain to people what and why you're doing it and you're going to be backed up by policy as to you're going to be asked to look at your policies at what are what are encouraging micromanagement behaviors from boards believe it or not you probably have policies in your policy manual that give

086you power and authority to micromanage because we know better we're just going to invite you to remove those and hand them all over to him that way you don't get Road confusion and you don't go meddling in his business and make his life more difficult and their lives more difficult and in essence parallel processing all the way to your teachers now can you always ask questions absolutely you can ask questions and I would argue you should be asking questions what other observations you have thoughts wonderings from this reflection I'm going to be just a little bit um overachiever on this going back from the past meetings that we've had I've been I'm going on my fifth year and noticing how we were like you said before this work started I don't believe we would have

087been able to check any of these off we didn't even have goals or a vision we just had words out in the air saying love every child as your own and create collaborative thinkers well what does that mean the fact that within a year and a half of this work we've been able to set like you said the foundation of these eight different ones really shows me is the more people get involved and the more we are supported the quicker and the faster we are able to reach our attainment or our end goal I mean we're seeing it at the top National level right now what one individual can do as long as people are along what the power that they has so if we were able to go from zero and we had zero

088to at least getting the eight characteristics in having goals having progress monitoring in such a short span of Time how much more effective and how much more powerful that's going to be when more individuals in the system know and understand because I'm not going to use the word bought in because there's nothing to buy in we're here for students success and that's the bottom line and it's not that's just the bottom line but the more people that have a clear understanding of how this works and what this really is we can more quickly move to that end goal uh and to follow what Sophia just said that um as a parent in the district and uh now a board member uh I just think number four and number seven uh reading you know this uh

089the characteristics that these you know education professionals I think uh what you guys did last year or in implementing this uh it's very evident in kraton uh because as a board candidate I was well welcome and invited to everything and then Jay reminded me while we were talking about it that even if I wasn't going to win the election that's time invested in a parent in the district and a Community member so and also to the leadership team um attending the board meetings when Eric gives presentations I told the principal at Papo this that it's like watching a mini Ted talk like you just you you walk you come out smarter in the end so yeah I think looking at these characteristics it as a parent who's actually interested and showing interest in what the

090board does I'd say you know kraton's kind of knocking out of the park as of right now and that's I did nothing like I'm coming into this and you guys built this over the last two years so kudos to you yes thank you TR um just a third party observation here as a community partner and even Tristan reflecting on what you just said I did nothing I came into this but that's not entirely true you did do something you embraced it and that is doing something because you also had a choice to like everyone else to derail this and you didn't you bought into the good work and so kudos to you for doing that and to you um and to this entire board and leadership team at a time when PD is being frowned

091upon but budgets are being stripped um and egos are driving decisions instead of um shared collaborative accountability you know actions that lead to suit and outcomes this is amazing so I know you guys are kind of hard on yourselves but it's okay to Pat yourself on the back and say wow look how far we've come look how far we've come and where we're going to go this is exciting work so you should be reinvigorated and hopefully this is a reminder to show all the meetings throughout the year all the board meetings it's not for nothing it adds up to something and you're seeing it yeah when I was brushing my teeth this morning I was thinking to myself I was very excited to get these two in the fold and get going and moving and

092I just I haven't had any questions or thoughts in my mind there's nothing that you two have done that leads me to believe that you're going to not want to jump right into this so I knew we were going to be fine yes sir uh I had a a moment to reflect regarding our journey as leaders in the district having been a site leader for many years and then now into the role that I currently have and how that relationship with the board as a site leader has evolved uh and gone from the dog and pony show where we had I don't think I can swear but the sandwich with the bad part in the middle right those those presentations where we would as a principal stand up and present wonderful things and bring a

093cute kid and have some wonderful leaders from our campus that would share some great things that were happening and then in the middle oh here's our data and then here's some other great things or so it was it it definitely the dog and pony show mentality and for for that was what we were doing in the moment um but the collaborative conversations now and thinking moving forward about how how do we now engage our teacher leadership group right so bring CA into these conversations and have them be meaningful conversations in that interest based negotiation process um that will also be a critical piece of moving forward with that collaboration from from another from from the facilitator perspective let me also share this with you because you have been the pretending phases out of this team

094is the reason why you're able to engage in these really powerful exchange of information and conversations the ownership each of you is displaying for your role within the system and this team is huge and cannot be understated as well so what you're witnessing and what we're witnessing right now I agree Devin there should be a patent back of where how how far you've chosen to come along thank you for iterating that point that that it it would only take one of you to want to disrupt this and throw this off and it would it would cause a lot of energy from everyone in the room probably to try to help you come back along to do the work because each of you has is an active participant in the process this is becoming more and

095more of a reality and if you want evidence now is when I can really tell you I encourage you to just like you watch two board meetings I can encourage all of you to go back and watch a kraton board meeting from two years ago see what you can stomach gotta watch at least out here in the audience and to think I was watching those things and was like well I'm still gonna do this and run this school board and I thought these presentations are horrible and these poor people have spent so much time putting these PowerPoints together and they seem terrified that one they're presenting them and so for that reason too is why I'm glad you're all elevating the importance of one your narrowed Focus allows them to narrow their focus what happens

096and what you'll notice on a lot of other board meetings across the the the state and the country leadership is having to guess what the board members want to see so they throw everything at you so that you don't catch them off guard that unknown Wast a lot of time from them that unknown allows more pretending at a board meeting to throw shade at each other none of that is productive so the hope is that the leadership team is feeling relief with the focus of the board giving them more time to actually go get done what you want them to get done and then by you engaging in your progress monitoring and asking questions about your consent agenda items your action items having and building that relationship with J man doesn't happen by accident it

097happens because you're doing the work Jay yeah I was just going to share I think what's particular ular L powerful about it um I remember going through a professional development that was intended for superintendence and there was a speaker that had a really profound impact on me because he said there are two types of superintendents in the world there are superintendents who do the job to keep the job and there superintendents who do the job to do the job and while I agree that that is true some of whether a superintendent can choose to be a superintendent to do the job job really depends on the culture and the culture starts with the board so it is it has always been my intention to be a superintendent to do the job but the way that

098the board has embraced this work has made that easy and de facto and it has allowed it to trickle through the system so that way everyone on the team can be in that mindset of when I come to a board meeting I'm there to do the work with the board not entertain the them and make sure that they don't get upset and then we're all you know getting our Walking Papers and moving on so I would appreciate a publish jism book though because you just like whip these things out every time and I'm like what how do you remember this exact phrase you know there's one thing that I do always come back to and I'm like what and it's a new one every time and I love okay I'm gonna be quiet now my

099friends it's it's it's lunchtime how long do we want for lunch 1530 45 minutes 40 30 30 30 raise your hand if you want 30 30 um because would that give us a potential of wrapping up earlier today if we probably because this was supposed to be after lunch so you know you did well with mindset right good point everybody agree who are we agreeing to 30 minutes so we'll be back at 12:40 ready to go enjoy lunch y y'all know this really well yes it's e e e so we are going to discuss customer service versus owner service and any of you that may know about it this is an opportunity for you to go ahead and tell us what you remember about customer service versus owner service I remember the restaurant analogy yeah

100that's the one tell us tell us about the restaurant analogy so if I go into a restaurant go to the counter order a hamburger sit down at a table eat the hamburger and then leave am I an owner or a customer am I close customer yeah I'm a customer because I came in and I I had a transactional relationship with the restaurant so I do this several times these burgers are amazing they're blowing my mind and I decide that I need to have an ownership stake in this restaurant so I I actually don't act have a tax broker or not or a what do you call them um no a a um to get shares of stock I don't have a stock broker but for the example we'll pretend that I do so I call

101my stock broker and I say buy me 50 shares of this restaurant right so now I I I get get to vote in the elections for the for the board and I have this ownership stake and then the next day I'm like all proud I'm an owner and I walk into the restaurant and I buy another hamburger and I sit down and I eat the hamburger now am I an owner or a customer I heard both and I heard I'm a customer yeah I'm a customer because that's not my role as an owner it's still the transactional relationship I'm coming in to the restaurant to eat the burger well so well so the next one is um it comes time there's going to be a vote there's going to be a new chairman of the

102board elected and um I fill out my ballot and I send it in to elect the chairman of the board am I an owner or am I a customer customer y That's owner and so somebody I heard I think Vanessa say behavior and it's the behavior that drives whether you're an owner or a customer even if you're eating a hamburger while you fill out your ballot that might be the rare time where you're both at the same time I don't know I have to Def I have to defer to our coach on that so for board members the challenge can be when you're a parent and a board member you're feeling that tension between owner service and customer service yeah so let me let me break it down a little bit more yeah so if

103if I if I order that cheeseburger and it and and and I wanted no onions on it and they put onions in it who should I take my my issue to should I take it who should I take it to but if I'm if if I'm at a any well let's say in the analogy of I'm in a restaurant I ordered a cheeseburger at the counter I want to know onions they give it to me and it has onions the waiter or the person at the counter excellent why would I not take it to the franchise owner of the restaurant what are they going to do about it excellent question you imagine if we convert this back to governance they're you're the owner of the school system and yet they're bringing you these issues I

104got onions in my burger I don't want any onions if you can use this analogy to kind of help remind you as to the the the reason why this gets complicated one why would I take it back to the counter to the waiter she's Clos or he or they the individual is closest to the problem got it and so that's the reason why it probably be best for me to get my cheeseburger addressed yes with the person who's closest to the problem that could be the quickest solution and so then why not the owner then I don't want onions on my burger why why would I not want to go to them instead because the owner wasn't there and there's nothing that they can fix to get you the onions oh okay and daring comes

105some problem they stop giving everyone onions and then other people are mad about it oh see this thing can get real complex real fast what is what is the value of the situation though I want my burger addressed right right now and the person who's closest to it is ideally the person to help me handle it first now what happens if they come back and say well I did talk to the teacher I spoke to the assistant principal I spoke to the principal and they're still not being responsive in the analogy of the restaurant I spoke to the the person waiting on me I spoke to the person at the counter they're not addressing it then what I want to talk to the manager please there we go I want to talk to the manager

106I want to talk to who's in charge who's overseeing the because when we go through a protocol like that you're also coaching and educating your community that I'm the I'm an owner of the service which means that if I get in the in the details of these situations there are a lot of other things that they don't see coming and you may not see them right now either but we want to make sure we Elevate that perspective for you you want to avoid potential pitfalls and scenarios that you don't want to catch yourself in I get it you have a great heart I want I'm not saying don't hear them out in in a lot of these situ situations what I'm saying is be be quick to discern when you're entering some dangerous territory that

107might get into he said she said type of stuff and your role as an owner is you want to be respectful the best way you can be respectful of your leadership team is is to have them go through the process Andor if it's grave enough to say hey you know what um I can tell you this I'm GNA talk to the superintendent and I'm gonna let him handle it and then you can check in with Jay to see what the progress has been but you also want to be mindful you don't want to hit them with a bunch of those worldwinds each one of those you want to distinguish between what's a legitimate worldwind and what's not and and and experience and time is going to help you with that you know what's the best

108way to for you to figure out as a board member ask Jay Jay I'm bringing this scenario to you like is this a a legitimate worldwin is this a manufactured one like what do you think Jay see that relationship piece we put earlier that's how you can help Elevate that one as well so customer service versus owner service it's a good way for you to be able to discern what is my role and or what's things that need to live in Jay's world because I can tell you this too if you get if people put the tag on you that you are the board member that will handle all of their inputs for them you are going to enter into into a bottomless pit of requests you're going to catch yourself where everybody's going to

109be calling you and get ready for the pretending you're the best board member you listen to me and you go get my my my situations fixed it could feel good so then I would ask you right if you catch yourself in that behavior what's the benefit to you in that moment well I feel good that I'm helping people they elected me to do that got it what's the cost of students though when you distract Jay and take every single issue to him what's the cost of students and then the last one would be what are you pretending what are you pretending where you're super board member and you're trying to say yeah I'm the one that cares the most they don't care as much as I do those are dangerous behaviors they can be pretty

110destructive to the team it was interesting too because I recall another example which may not be as intuitive is um the waiter discovers that their paycheck was short and so you know who do they go to do they go to the owner or do they go to their manager and the question is is that way a customer or are they an owner are they a customer or are they an owner sorry yes not choking at your hands I just I just happen to breathe my own saliva in at that moment so but I mean that's a tough because the other thing that happens in school systems is we think about our teachers and whether they're customers or owners and their customers because they're employees within the system and same thing with our cafeteria staff our

111bus drivers and the thing that really did that for me was because if there would be no paycheck there would be no teacher or no staff and that's why they're customers because it's a transaction that they're there based off of the income that they're getting but also if you're a teacher who happens to live in the district with a student in the district then you're both oh yeah wow yep yep yep and so quick question for you board members how do you think Community sees you do you think they see as a parent first or as a board member first in my personal experience they always me as a board member first not a parent and while I may may or may not want to embrace that idea just kind of maybe ask some folks

112right like are you talking to me the parent are you talking to me the board member they'll probably tell you I'm talking to you the board member again right you are the closest elected officials to the public and the community probably the easiest to access so they're just doing what they've been conditioned and taught to do someone told them hey you know you ought to call the board member uh well this board member never responds this board member never calls me back this board member that's the board member you need to call word sprads pretty fast right and so yeah just being mindful that this hat that I may identify as a parent let me Model A I statement when I was on the board I always my I always thought my first couple of

113years that I'm a parent first and I learned pretty quickly when I'm at a football game watching my kid playing and staff and parents and students are coming up to talk to me never was it about CTO how are you doing oh man it's awesome to see your son out there playing right now it was always hey I got a problem I need your help and over time this was my early years when I heard every concern and not in a constructive manner I'm going to share with you how you can do this um what I did is I caught myself being yanked from work because I was getting calls from principles to come do career days they didn't really want me there for career day after the career Day presentation they wanted to say

114hey will you watch with me real quick over here you see that leak right there it's been leaking for years and no one has come over to do anything about it can you do something about that what's what happened I'm angry I'm like that's not cool like look at what side of town I'm in this is this is inequity and so what would I do I'd go to my superintendent and say hey what's wrong with y'all why isn't that roof fixed over there they have a request that they've put in you know and and that wasn't healthy for anybody but I learned pretty quick that it's a bottomless pit so having to take all this PTO from work because I'm going to go meet with folks I do know of board members across the country

115who have caught themselves in some pickles so let me give you an example there's a board member who shared with me that they got a call from a parent and that the parent was in distress and said need you to come to my house right now something bad has really happened well this board member was in a similar Behavior pattern of where I was that I'm going to superhero board member this board member does go to that family member's house visits with the parent and something really bad did happen to their child next thing you know that board member is in the middle of the whole legal matter got caught up in a major major Whirlwind and if that board member had not gone in with that mindset and just called the superintendent said hey

116or told the parent hey if it's that grave I want you let me get you in touch with the superintendent's office CU I can hear the distress in your voice but that's not my role because the second you enter that space and you hear what happened you're involved and that took a heck of a lot of time of that board member that they didn't really have from work Andor from their professional career that board member learned a hard lesson to stop doing what they had been doing for a long time so sparing you the details but that's how this this how quickly it could happen sounds like someone who knows to not just walk into a scenario not every board member right again this board member who done the work said I was in full-blown

117pretending phase that I was Ultimate Super board member and I was going to go save the day because they've done it many of times before the benefit to them they were clear I get to feel like I'm being very purposeful because being on the board di doesn't always feel that way so I want to get I want to roll up my sleeves and and and get into stuff but you got into it and it's a hard lesson to learn from a board member so there's a lot of other scenarios right just kind of wanted to make sure we elevated the customer service versus owner service good sweet all right we're going to flip it on the agenda real quick we're going to do theory of action first I want to make sure we get this

118one covered um I'm assuming again that you read your materials and if you did not this is what I'm going to do also I'm going to encourage a board member to team up with at least one leader leadership team member um and I want you to go to one of the one of the screens in the room first thing is I want to ask you which one of these five do you think speaks more towards where kraton currently is so theory of action up on a screen which one of these five that's up on the screen do you think speaks most to where you're currently at right now just be this yeah you first provided to the this to us like a year ago when we first started doing this okay yep I just make

119it sure and what's different now is you have vision and values you've been doing progress monitoring and I think I remember what you said last time but I just want to make sure especially with new colleagues in the room want to make sure we give everybody a chance to look at this from from zero but again I want you to do this with the leadership team member because they're likely to have perspective that you're really going to need to unpack this so if you would go ahead and stand up team up with an administrator go to that part read them with that team with that with that other person and see which one you think you're currently most at and we'll go from there e e e over on over on that one okay next

120phase I want you to join a table a work table station so actually if this team would join this team over here um want you to to reflect with each other what you noticed what you what you learned what you're wondering that's phase one everyone just kind of share what what did you get out of this theory of action activity and then right after that I want you to start writing down the possible if statements see if there's any um overlap and if there is then just what I'm looking for the values and I forgot to mention one key thing that was in the reading this should totally be connected to your board goals and your superintendent guard RS so have that convo at your table if you need to but go ahead share with

121each other what you what you noticed what you learned what wondering you have and then move to identifying three to five if statements which your value statements around this topic e e e give everyone a couple of more minutes remember all we're looking for is some ifs What I Call Value statements and then superintendent man and I are going to go to work on these for you for you by your next board meeting good job team look at that I like that thank you e sounds like both teams are are ready we can grab a seat and this is how we're gonna I'm going to ask each team to have a representative to explain how they got to where they're at and then we're going to take a break after this so this team over

122here that was at this table this is what they came up with who from that team would like to share the process of how you got to your ifs to your value statements process or like what came up for you as you work through this whole thing I mean we've been at it for about an hour well we kind of looked oh sorry I forgot I think what we were doing was first we were trying to get I was trying to get us out of rewriting what was already in the other levels um and make it more personalized but that's what our basis was was trying to figure out what are some things we like in the next couple of steps that we can then see our areas that we maybe need to change or

123grow in and then figure out what works for us in terms of personalizing it to our district and and what we need so excuse me we talked uh Miss Dr pombo told told us about how there are currently educator incentives and like the folks that get these the teachers that are able to get increases in outcomes between 30 and 80% end up with like the same type of Merit pay and so that's a big difference 50% in those changes and so like should the person that's getting an 80% uh be getting the same as the 30% and how can we stratify that maybe a little bit more how would we do that well just figuring out how how we can align those educator incentives after having looking at the budget efficiencies to be able to

124like get those aligned with student outcomes um the next one and the last one are related so this this next one is if we prioritize our content support and coaching models um and then this the last one was if we standardize our instructional material and methods so I think we're trying to get at you know creating more standardization and Equity uh uh in curriculum across across the district and even within schools and making sure that you know kids are getting the same like getting the same level of instruction and the same type of instruction no matter where they are in the district basically and then the second to the last one there um in terms of trying to figure out how to we were trying to keep this like a a family one that was

125also still tied to student outcomes so yeah we said if we can build systems that help assess what our families need to support their students learning because um Dr pomos talked about before um really getting our families into a place where they can un try to at least start to understand their particular students data and and what that means even and um that can go a long way in helping on the other end outside of school in terms of even giving them let's say they can't help with certain things but they can make sure they know that they need to give them a certain space or a dedicated place or other things that they can tools that they can use in the home you go ahead and add because you're much more eloquent than I

126am there well just to end on the family one I just gave the example of our um seci nights our families are there and we're we have a lot of parents that come um even on crazy nights that we don't think we're going to have a lot of people and um I was at one this week where the parents were sharing the things that they' tried at home from the last um SE night and that they're there they really want to help their child understand how to help them acquire the English language and I know that parents want to do that in every subject and so we talked about how do we involve our parents to understand where their child is academically so they could support that at home and like we would just share

127it could be something simple like having a space to read every night or whatever it is that we're we're talking about the strategy at home um and the other ones that we talked about just to add is right now when we go into classrooms and Dr dup and I can say we have math being taught all different ways in the classrooms or reading is being taught different ways and they're not necessarily re research-based strategies it's just teachers trying their best um and doing what they experience themselves but we with content expertise and um we know how reading should be taught we know how with the science of reading we know how we sh building math classrooms thinking classrooms and so we want that to all our kids have that experience and it doesn't matter if

128you what teacher you're in that you're going to get great math instruction language acquisition reading and writing and so trying to build a consistent what does a math classroom look like reading classroom math classroom all line to our full four goals great work team I like this Jay opportunity for you to reflect on what you see here I know it's on the spot just initial thoughts reactions from what you heard I was just gonna say thank you so much for doing that because I love seeing how I tied in thank you all sounds it all sounds very aligned um what I one of the things I was noticing and the reason I was in stun silence was the alignment with the theory of action that this group produced with the conversations we were having in

129the other group and it just it feels very much kind of moving in the same direction and conceptually um articulating the same sets of challenges so I think it's I think it'll let me grab it yeah yeah you're good they did we did not write anything down um Sophia's gonna recite from memory if each person bows down before Sophia no I I did want to add one more thing about the the coaching while why that's on there I I we I wanted to add why we prioritize content support and coaching because in order to have those Equitable classrooms where everyone's getting quality instruction we have to have um content expertise and content support with coaching and professional development and supporting our teachers with how to teach the different content areas awesome thank you who from

130our group would like to present you the do may I present the dlet tones of Dr Joel Laura all right so uh to read this out loud so systemic autonomy if instructional materials and methods are directed by the district office what we are tight on and HR and operational services are provided by the district office as Guided by the board to ensure that students experience consistency and quality of instructional delivery across a system of campuses and if the district office supports schools in the use of datawise to inform local instructional practices and aligns educator incentives with student outcomes and if the district office allows schools to have instructional autonomy in areas not clearly prescribed what we are loose on and Le School leadership teams exhibit strong instructional leadership and commitment to achieving the board goals

131is evident in every school and informed by their use of datawise and if schools in the community outreach team engage families in their students learning and if students needs are prioritized over adult convenience then responsibility for accomplishing the board's goals while operating within the board and superintendent's guard rails will be shared between the district office and school leaders based on areas of responsibility and student outcomes so there are a couple things that we really wanted to emphasize that you see played through one was really making sure we were Vivid about prioritizing student needs as the number one guide for decision making an action the second was the integration of the effective use of data wise because you know internally we've been doing a lot of work to try to align we we know that there's

132a clear alignment between the data wise process and the intention of student outcomes focused governance so we're really working to click to make sure that that alignment is really clear and really Vivid um because the datawise process allows action at the school level at the classroom level to achieve the goals and then finally we really wanted to emphasize the work of developing instructional leadership especially at the principal assistant principal level and you know this year the last 18 months we've gone on this journey to completely re reorient our coaching team and the way it's sported there is great to prioritize the content support through coaching what we have learned as a result is that there is a need for enhancing instructional leadership among our team of Administrators as well because the instructional leadership cannot be

133if this in order to achieve our goals the instructional leadership cannot be the sole responsibility of the coaching team it has to be at that building administrator level we've got new administrators who've come in recently um you know we have you know just for a variety of reasons there's the opportunity to to develop and cultivate that so that's a that's an important piece to emphasize is the role of the principal assistant principal in creating that strong instructional leadership yeah I first of all thank you Dr Lauren and and Dr dup and that was amazing um but the other sidebar conversation we had which doesn't directly align the theory of action but I noticed the concept of budgetary efficiencies in the other groups theory of action which I really like part of our conversation was as

134we move towards student outcomes focused governance based budgeting some of our old practices so like if you look at this coaching team which has become critical to Our Success and our ability to achieve the student goals in the under our old model we'd say Well they're funded through federal funds well we know currently depending on how things play out it's looking like our federal funds are going to be cut by at least 25% if not more for next year so if we were to say okay well this is federally funded and so therefore it needs to go away then we would basically break our entire system that we had built and we would take ourselves off track from a achieving our goals so as we're moving into budget season right now one of the things

135we really need to plug into the conversation is that we don't budget based on funding source anymore we budget based on student outcomes and that the students are the priority so if a necessary factor to achieving our goals is maintaining the coaching team then if those funds get cut we are going to have to figure out what isn't having has direct of an impact on student outcomes that can be cut so those efficiencies can be created so we can have the funding to make sure those critical components are in place well well and I just you know to follow up on budget I think also the work of efficiencies is where we're talking about we are given a multitude of of different funding buckets right we've talked about this in in some of our budget

136um study sessions where each bucket of money has its own rules and regulations and I think when we talk about efficiencies like our theory of action there there are dollars that are only allowed to be spent on those types of expenses and so maximizing those dollars that are very restricted into the right areas that they uh fulfill you know we fulfill Our obligation uh all the regulatory guidance and the things that in compliance right being very eff efficient in that process then opens up maybe the dollars that are a little have more leeway to be directed into the areas of need and prioritized so I think it is not just prioritizing the budget but managing the budget with a a an umbrella of efficiency you you all have made excellent connections to why and how

137a theory of action can be super helpful for a system you're going to notice that one of your neighboring districts has also implemented theory of action for uh the campus goals and the guard rails so that the superintendent has identified backwards mapped if this is the guard rail then this is the theory of action that we need in order to get there and I'll be happy to share that with the leadership team an example what it looks like in a progress monitoring report but also the conversation that's elevated at the board meeting this that the board and the superintendent are doing is then being modeled throughout the rest of the system so Bor I don't know if you really like heard that one I just want to be super clear what I just heard about

138money and budget y'all hear that right that's legit like for them for you all leading to work in collaboration with your superintendent getting to this place that where this conversation's taking place that is radically different than most other school systems around you what a big aha moment for you all as a team so next phase is again uh I will support Jay in taking the values of what's been described both I think we see overlap is that true we see some overlap which is an awesome thing so thank you for investing the time and the energy and um the attention to being able to unpack what a theory of action is and the role that I can play we're going to take a break but before that I just want to make sure you don't

139have any major outstanding questions and if you do and you want to visit during the break like we can also do that but anything major that you want to put out there before we go into a break I can't stress it enough for all districts who are trying to implement this is to to bring your budget people in as as quickly as possible and I think that's not the norm based on what I've been seeing uh and where I've been participating in in the development and the training and so I think I just wanted to appreciate our superintendent who very quickly uh brought me on board kept me on board from the very get-go uh as we have been developing this and I've been able to participate and be at the beginning as opposed to

140trying to catch up you know which sometimes with budget people that's kind of where we sit and then we don't understand and then it's inefficient and then we're not doing the best job we can do so I I just really appreciate you thank you so much say yeah and just to add to that it's a straight reflection of what you're willing to do for our students in our district so cadus to you for taking on that out- on step it's a 9-month coher it's a lot of work you already are handling all these things and I just appreciate and appreciate everybody in this team because with all the worldwinds that are going on locally federally we're sticking to the price and that's making sure that our students have what they need to be their best

141selves in this world that we're basically creating for them so thank you you all are doing things that a lot of lot of folks aren't you are also the first ones to have engaged your students in a conversation and again like I said there's a piece that's coming where I'm we're going to encourage you to visit with the leaders in your community that could be again every all the adults um that you think should be exposed to the work so you're setting a great great example for other districts around you Kudos Kudos Kudos break how long do we want 5 10 15 minutes just progress monitoring it's up to you on how quickly we move through it we'll know because if you watch the videos then we'll move through pretty quickly if you didn't we'll

142get you caught [Laughter] up 15's good we're we're way ahead of schedule so yeah so 15 so I've got let's just go with 210 let's say um 225 see you back e e e I will turn it over to trusty McNary thank you madam chair um B we are going to evaluate ourself on the Texas framework and in the um in the realm of item on the agenda we will move to um our go progress monitoring thank you Dr Rogers for the overview of the um data for our G this time we'll transition to our discussion and um when the team comes uh forward view of the um um kind of elevate comp questions that will give us an Insight or an explanation as to the status of the data um so in particular there

143are five specific I guess you could say criteria criteria that we use when framing a question so the first um criteria is is the question strategic Focus um any comp 1.1 before we e e e I want to enter progress monitoring section with some visual example now I did ask you to watch the S board meeting and another one got a story that I want to tell you relat to before I split I do want to ask and see what you notice about the unnamed District what did you notice about that that board superintendent work the questions that I asked you in the email consider do they have a narrow Focus can you tell that all all all items are moving in a certain direction meaning do they have go um was was the board

144meeting effective and now that you look at their characteristics it can help you even more so you just kind of want to open up for Reflections on unnamed board meeting that you observe what did you see asking about this one not this one the other one the other one the one that's in state well so I could for some reason I couldn't open that video like I tried multiple times and it wasn't working on um but I did notice some things um because I did look I did look through their board agenda I don't write it down U so like the first question was what is the board's Focus for like the board agenda and I just noticed that it's all it all compliance pieces like it reminded me of like before we started this

145work like it was just all comp pieces and recognizing people but like mostly compliance like there was no real talk about like the like student go I think going off that um there consent agenda was so short everything was Happ talked about oh my God just I looked at the agenda before I watched the meeting and I was like oh great this is beever and it was and they're big District so they also have a lot of public comments so add that in price you're there all night you noticed from the agenda immediately that there's likely going to be a long meeting yeah because everything was being put on for yeah and at first I thought I must be mistaken but I looked at it again like no they're going to be talking about all

146of these things for why I don't know and I was like nothing seems that crazy here why are they taking it out of the consent agenda it was a lot um so just some things that I noticed so sorry there we go thank you um so from the first board meeting that we watched there was no student outcome data or progress tracking was presented no structured monitoring process was in place to evaluate student growth and no account no accountability discussions on whether District strategies are improving achievement um from seeing that board meeting it's what I see you know overall um in different districts and the fact that they were so focused on inputs and everything that could have just been consent agenda item and bringing in Student Success was at the bottom of it and

147our whole main goal as an institution is to make sure that we're overseeing you know student academic progress and success so I didn't see any of those in the first board meeting and that's why I believe it was in an effective one because we should be monitoring and asking questions to see what we can do better for Student Success there was a lot of talk about window film or film for Windows I was like I didn't know we could get to this level of discussion about window film that is a common observation of people that watch this meeting absolutely that one comes up I was like are we talking about what I thought I I don't even know that there was like a market out there for this it was informative I guess can queue

148up an item on window film if you want you'll also notice that an evaluation took place in that meeting I had thoughts on that evaluation too um there was literally no conversations on the accountability piece right what measurable evidence shows the district leadership decisions are improving student performs what groups of students are improving which are not I mean there was just so much to to go off of that and it was based on what it seemed to me is how likable that superintendent was at that time versus what you were hired to do and to fulfill your job wow that was rough that's it and and what you're what you look at is I'm going to keep sending you more research what you're going to notice is that the boards that focus on do I

149like my superintendent and not as much on is my superintendent being effective and working towards being effective two very different approaches and so board you run parallel processing by you're narrowing your focus and your attention to the details of things that you've got printed out you then now can begin you can reflect I think and reflect and look back how you have already changed the culture here in kraton what you're telling the superintendent J Man to do and to focus on takes very takes a lot of intentionality versus what you're going to notice in in other board meetings it's five seven and in Texas even nine board members that many different directions that many different individual goals you're stretching the superintendent out it's making you're making it dang near impossible for them to be effective

150when it comes to the shared beliefs and values oh my gosh when that dude uh remain namess yeah talked about how he didn't think it was appropriate to have like a high school student on the bond committee cuz like why should we have someone under 18 talking about this I was like sir what are you okay I to re I was eing my dinner and I to rewind and I was like he's not saying what I think he is is he and then my husband was even listening he's like what I couldn't I was just like okay you should know what you can't even let your own like you can't you don't even think your own students are capable of doing that what are okay it didn't make any sense made us look kind of

151foolish that when we the last two schools we built we had like fifth and sixth graders working on well good stuff so like um I I I think I've shared with you I used to be a juvenile probation officer and we would wake the young people up in the morning and we would always try to give them some positive words of inspiration a lot of them were looking to go to court didn't know if they were going to go home or not and so one of the things that we used to tell them is like just be mindful of what you've gone through here it's unfortunate that you've had to go through this um be mindful that a bad example is a good example of what not to do and so in your case um

152you get to be models and examples of what good governance can look like I'm hoping that today after we connected the dots to some of the research that you can continue to articulate that message and why it's so important um and to have a meeting where if somebody says oh I turned off the kraton board meeting because all they're doing is talking about data got it right that we have a journey ahead of us which is to educate your Greater Community that that is a good effective board meeting versus the ones that they've gotten used to is how much drama does your board have let me get my my dinner what you call it Heather Dinner Show dinner and the show let me get my dinner and the show ready this should never be about

153a dinner and a show um this should absolutely be about narrow Focus working together the characteristics that's how you get to improved uh metrics for student outcomes and for the overall well-being of of the student in your staff other questions ref I was gonna say I think there's still and we show that there's still room for recognition or celebrations and things obviously there's ways to do that without putting on a show yeah I think the key is as we progress in our student outcomes focused governance work to align those those when we bring those celebrations and recognitions forward to align it to the work we're doing with student outcomes Focus governance and perhaps also to tie it into the work we do with our Craton kids Congress yeah and with the conversations especially what that

154I'm having I just never wanted to be perceived that I do not value those awards that I do not value those but there's a time and place for everything one of my biggest AOS moments in this is that I only have two meetings a month and eventually one m month one meeting a month where I'm able going to be able to actually get information figure out what's working and make educated decisions at at the board level and that's I considered that my Miss by business operation meeting everything else lives in community at the schools at the principles with parents at their citos and PTO um but our business meeting is our business meeting and we really need to get down to why our students are not reading why do I have 3% third grade literacy

155rate districtwide those are the questions that we really to be working on and fixing versus focusing on everything else and yes they can coexist but there's a time and place for everything and it's really us educating and resetting that structure and culture of what we as governance experts do in a in an institution like this and that made me realize too there may be strategy in rather than having those celebrations take place at a board meeting to have them take place at say when we're having um parent teacher night or when we're having other types of events where we're trying to engage families and we struggle for participation yeah exactly Community Council would be a great example so I know I had you watch a different I had you watch the December meeting because you

156watch that December one from the board in Texas I want to give you quick small glimpses of what happened the next month after the holidays yeah no this this is the January one now let me tell you let me give you some context this is also the night of the evaluation of the superintendent along this framework and so I'll show you um the super superintendent is in the green Dr USA Rogers so you notice how I've got these time stamps so they began they did student recognitions and if you watch theirs theirs are along the lines of what superintendent J man just said their recognitions are along the lines of the students who are improving in literacy mathematics and they're also recognizing the Educators and the principles for saying great job for moving the needle

157for children and they recognize them so that recognition took about 10 minutes and then they started doing progress monitor at the 40th minute they then stopped progress monitoring at two hours and 17 minutes later so how long did that progress monitoring session take a little bit over an hour and a half so if you watch the January one you'll see that there's a progression and a difference from December what I can tell you about my friends in doto they were really great at checking boxes and from the outside they had a really high 90 plus points on their evaluation but as we Oh I thought they were being too nice to themselves on the evaluation I'm glad you watched their see self eval you'll also notice that their self evals take about no more than

158eight minutes now because they've been doing it for so long you'll also notice that different board members take on different responsibilities at the board meeting so one board member will read out the public comment statements one board member will review policy different board members take turns because there's also very intentional effort of developing each board member up here but here I wanted I wanted you to be mindful that they did this progress Mar and I want you to see how president mckisset grounds the room after she's gone over the goals and the guard RS she's about to explain to everyone in the audience because they've got a full house she's going to explain to them why they're doing what they're about to do with this progress monitoring and then I'm going to go and show

159you something else engage in our progress monitoring discussion um for the larger Community I do want to um kind of elevate components of our lanar governance part of the framework is for the trustees to receive this information in advance and ask the administration um any follow-up questions that will give us an Insight or an explanation as to the status of the data um so in particular there are five specific I guess you could say criter criteria that we use when framing a question so the first um criteria is is the question strategic Focus um is a question about a strategic issue rather than a technical or tactical issue the second criteria is the question measure focused does the question reference specific data or metrics that is in the monitoring report the third criteria is ask

160oriented is the question open-ended rather than a yes or no or multiple choice question the fourth criteria is results Focus does the question focus on understanding the data report rather than sharing opinions and then the fifth criteria is time bound does the question focus on past or present actions performance rather than the future actions so as we um engage in presenting questions to the admin are going to after today I'm going to get you a document that talks about what highly effective progress monitoring looks like the SoDo with President mckisic she was like I want to get on this now which started about last summer there was push back from the board because what I remember last time I was here I suggest ask questions have fun just asking whatever comes to mind that's phase

161one we're in phase two now phase two now is getting to a point where you ask smart questions and so I'll send you this video and you can see examples of how the board members submit them ahead of time part of what also happened is Dr Rogers recognized that there was a board member or two who maybe had a harder time processing or understanding some of the data reports she now has made time to meet with that board member individually to walk them through and Coach them and then questions that come up she writes them down so that they can talk about it at the board meeting so there's a lot of ways we can do this what I want to do is I want to skip ahead to what happens at the end of

162the night when Community has been trained in the stto they do two-way communication quarterly so they've been engaging uh their community and educating them they've been engaging them Watch What Happens I want you to imagine here in kraton you've already start started doing work with students and when you add your stakeholders my hopes is that it's going to look like here what it looked like that night here in January just last month here we go Watch What Happens because they've done over an hour and a half of progress monitoring superintendent is up for is she going to get extended or not nobody knew but the community was in the room also notice that whole time that they spent they didn't take public comment until they after made they made everybody sit through and watch what

163is the priority here in kraton type of thing right so now here comes public comment I'm gonna fast forward to one gentleman because I think he encompasses what was said that night here we go I noticed that each speaker prior to me left three minutes on the clock so their three plus my five equals 11 that's how we do in church amen guys first of all let me congratulate you all uh for tonight and what you all have done I serve on the board at Dallas Baptist University and our board means a nothing like this we just listen to our President we talk about money money is right we say keep doing a good job but you guys are really really really doing a great job and I appreciate it you show your interest not

164only in sitting in a seat but to help be sure that our children are educated one thing I know about a great leader is when you have one you do what you can to hold on to them but you let leaders lead a leader cannot have constraints and a leader cannot be dictated to if they are leaders you have to let a leader lead I don't have a clue how to lead a college but I'm on the board but I tell Dr Wright lead and wherever you need help leading that that's why we're here to support your leadership to support your vision because the proof is in the pudding I have not personally and I've been around some years seen the excitement of Education since Alton Frey and with Alton Frey things turned around in

165SoDo after Mr Fry we've taken a Southward trip however I'm so excited to see how things are starting to bounce back and I want to attribute that to two entities this board and this superintendent you doing a marvelous job president mckenic Dr Rogers you're doing a magnificent job this is what it's going to look like real soon the folks who have no idea what a good board member's behavior is supposed to look like what an effective board meeting is supposed to look like that's right around the corner when they see you and they compare you to others that they have clarity as to how you're focused and why you're doing what you're doing this is evidence of what this looks like when it's everybody connected working together parents students all of you and the culture

166that you've created again I just kind of want to take it as a moment to say this is a milestone for you and you can go back and reflect I really do hope you go back and look at a boarding from two plus years ago not to throw shade at them mainly for a learning opportunity and maybe even for a validation opportunity that what you're doing is that radically different and where you're heading towards is going to look like this people that are out there living their lives dayto day trying to make ends meet do what they do to them be able to come in and say what did I just witness you heard in doto they almost got taken over by the state and in this group from December January even the board meeting

167this past uh Monday was at another level they've been doing this work five years what I'll share with you bluntly and honestly from my friends in doto they got really good at checking boxes it wasn't until the president and the board said we're going to actually start reading the material we're going to start studying other they have watched your board meetings president mckisic has watched your board meetings she's watched the Phoenix L meetings and something cool is happening right now they're all learning from everybody's learning from each other everyone's learning from each other so president mckisic the way she grounds the room learned it by watching this board meeting me learned it by watching Roosevelt learned it by watching Phoenix L Washington's almost there and Phoenix Union is now on the journey Phoenix Union is

168watching your meetings right this is what leadership to us looks like when people remember remember the story you're not even supposed to have access to this your your state organizations don't have access to it you're not part of the Council of great City schools and yet you're not only being lent to the material you're also now attending cohorts and you can even attend a conference now because you have been the Genesis for this community a lot of people watching you I don't know if you know that I need to tell you that and it's a good thing because a lot of people are learning from what you're doing the the the the the little gaps that you have here and there those are all natural that's part of the journey and part of the growing

169even I'll say this even that we we chose to to forego this meeting not frowning on you at all because what your reflection are probably you may not do that again after after some reflection on it because you know what's going to happen when you add your numbers and your percentages on what time you spent on student achievement your numbers are going to be lower this quarter lesson learned though and better that it's done as a team the best part of it nobody's throwing anybody into the bus I'm part of the team part of that decision- making I could have spoke up I could have said something now I'm becoming president I'm becoming aware how powerful for me to witness You Learn and Grow together as a team and how powerful for the other groups

170that are watching saying everybody's fallible this is not the pursuit of perfectionism this is though the pursuit of continuous Improvement because as I get better I create the space for everyone else around me to get better let me take a moment to pause before I go into some of the questions that I want to introduce you to and some of the work because I want to help you elevate your progress monitoring because that's how you're really going to push your leadership team to another level when you get there what questions thoughts Reflections or push back do you have on what you just witnessed with watching these board meetings in particular watching my friends in doodo I don't think it's gonna happen oh I I would love to see that sort of feedback during one of

171our board meetings but I I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon anytime soon maybe right right I maybe five years no yeah I mean go ahead excellent excellent point thank you what are you thinking um there's just a lot um but at the end of the day that's what I think this whole work is for is that I feel um historically we always leave the most important voices out and those are students they're the ones that in this Society do not have a word in anything that happens to them they can't go to the legislature and talk they can't go to Federal I mean I guess they can come here because we've opened that uh acknowledgement and that relationship with students but at the end of the day the it's just another reinforcer that

172the more of the people that get this type of training the more understanding there is and it's it's um it's not okay for me to think that people just don't want to get onto it because they don't want to it's because there's a lack of understanding and until we started embedding it out there to our parents to our community to our teachers is when the support will start coming they can't just come off the bat and say like yes I'm behind you guys and some of them did this is a perfect example of how people just said Yep this sounds like a good idea we're all going to go do it together so it's just beautiful to see that the stto after five years you know is having this kind of conversations and that they

173have community members in support of because at the end of the day he said it himself he sits at a board of a university and he had no idea what it felt to be an actual good governance board member in an education system system so the fact that a local public school is setting that standard to other entities around is just beautiful in itself and it has a more of a common goal of like we all believe together that kids can learn will learn and they will be this best selves dependent on how we act they're also using what I will share with you after today's Workshop another set of criteria of what you heard president mcki describe in that in that that next level it's going to require that every board member submit at

174least one question ahead of time here in doto you'll see it in the meeting I'm not telling you thing that you're not going to see there six of the seven chose to submit questions one is still sitting out there saying I don't want to do this well so actually no yeah and that's what I'm saying the superintendent found a pathway yeah that's what I'm getting at right like the team effort it's I love how team is operating here's the other thing when I when when when I first got a chance to start working with that team last year the staff were doing so much of the work the community engagement the preparations the self eval the board were leading everything now the board is leading all of that on their own they're owning it this

175the same thing that I want to do with you all I want you to continue to own all the board work so the two-way communication the student engagement 100% within your role in what you should be doing minimal effort should be coming from the staff we should not be trying to take more time from them now does do you want to invite Jay in a team yeah absolutely things are going to come up let them be there if they can but if they can't you as a board be prepared to lead the conversations but my friends in doto have grown tremendously in the last year that again even just a meeting this last Monday my goodness I was so hyped and there's this energy that's in the stto because even when six out of seven

176are submitting questions they're still asking that seven one what can we do to support you what does this look like and even if it's I just don't want to do this I don't want to do this at all I'm tired of this you know whatever reason that is the other six are still like and yet we're still here for you because I'm the Genesis so because they know that they cannot get highly effective until all seven engage so they're going to try to find a pathway anything else before we go to progress monitoring okay so you all I've heard you at your board meeting especially I heard Sophia reading from this document the effective gold monitoring just as a reminder and it's also in your SG manual remember that you have three three columns and

177these are for you to figure out how are you how did you get here this is about current how do we get here why does our reading scores look the way they are what is our math and then you'll also notice that it tells you that the last quarter is what you should be focusing on towards the end of your progress monitoring that's your future performance now I think it's easier if I give it to you from this standpoint we talk about technical versus tactical versus strategic and you don't have this printed out yet because I wanted to share this with you today what you heard president mckiss talk about she is nudging her board to go more more towards strategic but I want you to have an understanding of what technical tactical strategic means

178would somebody please read what technical is described at just that first line up there technical trying to understand how something is measured and what is tactical tactical trying to understand how something is done and then what is strategic strategic trying to understand how something aligns to the priorities so what you're going to notice in the January and February board meeting is the sto has shifted towards trying to get to more strategic let me say this too though Technical and tactical questions are not bad questions that's actually more of how you're going to find out how did you get there you definitely want to get to incorporating strategic ones but let's make sure we understand what that means somebody please read that first paragraph under focus and timing technical questions focus on understanding the details surrounding

179the assessment and goal details themselves tactical questions focus on understanding the details surrounding the implementation of the assessment and goals strategic questions focus on understanding relative to that goal what we learned about system performance and what lessons we've learned from the performance no questions during an effective monitoring conversation are focused on providing advice to the superintendent board member opinions about the uh system performance or efforts to uh to project man project manage s was going project project manage the school system so I might read the second paragraph and then let's process this second one right yep okay technical and tactical questions are often essential to having a full understanding of current system performance there's nothing wrong with board members asking Technical and tactical questions timing matters however the superintendent is expected to be the Strategic

180leader over the School Systems Operations during a monitoring conversation with the superintendent it is unreasonable to expect them to also have a Mastery of every technical or tactical detail so if Schoolboard members want answers to those questions to be part of the monitoring conversation they need to ask the questions at least 5 to seven days in advance of the monitoring session if that hasn't happened board members are welcome to still ask new Technical and tactical questions during the monitoring session but the board chair Andor superintendent should advise them that the answer will go out in the next update from the superintendent to the board what are those two paragraphs telling you as a board member what did you get from those two paragraphs just wanted to yes just wanted to make sure nobody else wanted

181to speak I'm just giving time to think um for me this was really important because a lot of my questions were embedded in giving advice and this whole really understanding the technical versus tactical and strategy really help me ask questions more of not asking a question on thinking of how I knew the answer versus actually understanding what is happening in the system and what recommendations do our experts that we have hired um have to say in order to change outcomes for students so this portion of it is I think one of the most complexes things that it took for me to understand especially when it comes to the asking questions but I I know and I feel that it's one of the most essential ones because out of those questions is where we get those

182aha moments or what we are doing that's working or not okay so let's finish out past versus future that way then we can practice and then that'll be our final phase for today who will read the remaining part of past versus future regardless of whether or not a question is a technical tactical or strategic in Focus they can just as easily focus on past actions what have our strategies been and what uh have been the impacts on performance as on future actions what strategies will we deploy given what our performance currently shows boards that are are monitoring effectively will invest the majority of their time preferably upwards of 3/4s of the monitoring session focused on understanding the past where are we how do we get here what worked what didn't work what did we learn

183only once a board is fully conversent and knowledgeable of what has happened it can it meaningfully engage in future focused dialogue ineffective boards succumb to the temptation of mostly focusing on technical tactical their opinions and statements or what will happen next these are weaknesses of discipline and vision and should be corrected you can hear a saying there so we keep reiterating this idea that three quarters of your time would ideally be spent on past how do we get here what worked what didn't work and then the last quarter once you understand how you got there then you're ready to ask the Strategic question about what's the plan what are we going to do I think it's usually easier for me in my experience that we look at somebody else's data uh not necessarily just yours

184today so I'm going to show a progress monitoring report of one of your neighbors here I just took it off of their website it's on their board books um so I'm going to ask you to team up with a um an administrator so that you can then oh let me look it over here so then that you can um try to come up with some technical tactical strategic questions and see where that that's the one I'm looking for uh want to see what questions you come up with on theirs let me find it in the meantime if you would find someone and um you can get up you can same thing you'll be able to go to one of the uh one of the screens and here it is yep here is there's here we

185go this is one of your neighbors this is from February 18th how long ago was that couple days right so first I'm going to go I'm only going to do like the first three pages but team board team up with an administrator go over and see what you notice what kind of technical tactical or strategic question might you consider asking if this was your data at your board meeting go ahead e e e okay I'm going to go to the next page I'm going to go to the next page and see see see what question you come up with we're going to go to the interims next here's interim go 3.1 see what question you may have and then try to identify is your question a technical tactical or strategic question e e e I'm

186going to go to the last one there's more pages but I'm only going to do one more again see what question you would want to ask at the board meeting and is that question a technical tactical or strategic e e e that's they we'll grab a seat I have like can reflecting onip so hopefully you able to discern between what is a technical tactical strategic if you have not been able to grasp that and again I will have the the sheet sent to you I'm also going to have the smart format sheet sent to you um those two are going to take you to that next level of progress monitoring designing your questions ahead of time some reflection technical tactical strategic on looking at another District's data what are some Reflections that you have do

187questions or wonderings about that about this activity we just did I really enjoyed this activity um just because it also brings a lot of stuff in perspective and well it's sometimes I feel like it's easier for you to get questions or get questions out of the way when it's not your own board right because you're so into it you're you're hearing all the same information but when you're looking at a whole bunch of different data that you're not consistently listening to it's hard it's easier at least for me to create these questions because I really don't know what's going on I don't understand their jargon I don't know what's happening so it just gave me perspective on what to really what questions to focus on regardless of what information's being given does that I don't

188know if that makes sense I got it I was going to say from like an Outsiders perspective I appreciate that when you all put together our progress monitoring reports if I were somebody that um wasn't normally attending our meetings I feel like okay yeah if you maybe scroll down a little bit I'm sorry actually I was going to bring this up uh keep going sorry yeah keep going next page and then actually the next page sorry good this one uh yeah or maybe I'm thinking of the last page I'm so sorry okay the analysis stuff like I feel like there are certain places where they were just kind of putting these sentences down and this just looking at it as like an outsider I couldn't tell you what any of that means and so I

189think for the most part we try to do a good job of explaining some things on here and not just putting some vague statements um or try to do some analysis I guess I should say because looking at it there was a lot of question marks that I feel like I could answer if I had been going to their meetings maybe but maybe not I don't know so yeah yeah all the way at the bottom yeah that's right I was like I know it's somewhere keep going yeah sorry yes this is what's very helpful because I feel like it's what wraps it all up and kind of explains everything after you've looked at all of that because on theirs just having those I kept telling Dr pombo just having these bullet points they need their

190own slide like you can't just be throwing these in the corner of the slide and having people think okay well that's that's cool and all but what do you actually mean by that it's not specific enough and we appreciate that feedback because we we and I I'm one of the things I value about our reports is I feel like we collaboratively develop the format and we'll continue to evolve the format I we all sat in here and you kind of gave us told us what you want how you like to see your data but the what that resulted in is us making a strategic decision to put more like I mean our stuff is like I could we could pack all this in two slides but it would not feel useful to us or the

191board and so we've opted for a more um you know just a broader layout with more detail in certain spots well I think also if we're putting this on our website and we're expecting our community to be engaging with this you can't do that if they don't if there's no explanation of anything it's a little confusing well I was going to say that what um with Dr dup and I were when we put this together we like we probably categorize this because we just list this it's like these are all different inputs in different areas of different stakeholders of who we're working with to help achieve that goal so that was we were just trying to figure out how to make it easy to understand and what we're learning as a result of the monitoring

192is that these categories are really types of inputs that overlay all four goals there's a but the specific activities and the the aspect of smartness that goes in each one who's involved what's involved to what degree of frequency that's what ends up becoming now we're figuring out a little bit how to get those more differentiated for each of the goals and I think you'll notice that um if we look at those four categories that we ended up with and you go back to our two examples of theory of action they're actually a lot of the components of theory I mean we didn't set out to do this but sometimes the work goes the direction it's supposed to go probably um you know because of the benefit of the framework so you'll notice we discussed very

193heavily professional learning our coaching model in the impact like how are instructional materials defined who's driving that and how are they integrated into the classroom and then we both had um Family engagement as a key to to um our ability to be successful in achieving these goals and you can see those inputs are are already built into our system well I think some of the takeaway too when we were looking at the other document there was a lot of um what's working with no meat or as we were saying how we've broken out um specific data that kind of measures and backs up why we say what's working whereas here there's just language that says what's working well as a board member I'd want to say well why what measure did you use to determine

194that and here we kind of lay the groundwork in our progress monitoring with that page right before this one so then we were able to really flow right into what is working because we just gave you data on the on the page previous to that like actual data measurable so what what the opportunity you have as a board for the next progress monitoring session is that the second you get your progress monitoring report to to do um your homework and then come up with at least one if not two or three questions to submit the homework for you is to is to read the material to be able to differentiate is this a technical is this a tactical is this a strategic question as you build your muscle around those three types of questions then

195the next time we convene we're going to go over for the smart and rating because we're even going to get to a point to where your questions are going to either meet or not meet a threshold to be considered effective but we're on phase two of really what's in the three phases phase one just ask questions anything that came to mind I've watched you and I've watched the questions that you've asked I've even logged them into a spreadsheet stage two now is to try to differentiate am I asking a technical tactical or strategic question and then the next time around we're going to go into that highest level of more questions I am yeah and Dr R you know we we all um lamented at the beginning of the day the negative outcomes from a

196choice that we made together um that I I will take ownership of but um the positive implication of it is that each of you currently has two goals and a guardrail all the progress monitoring reports for it and that progress monitor ing will take place on March 4th and now that you've freshly been updated on how to effectively ask questions it is the fervent hope of your leadership team that we will be receiving those questions forth with so that way we are able to not only have incredibly solid answers for you but also Dr dup and Dr pombo and the team have created a space in our slide deck for us to place your questions so that way when we come back to present you get full credit for the questions that you've asked having

197been put in first we are not putting names unless we are told to do so for right now we are just including the questions and to further assist you in the development of your questions I brought I did bring hard copies of the progress monitoring reports if you would like hard copies to take you can have those today for your Sunday homework so if I'm if I'm just watching this board meeting on YouTube right now I think I just heard the leadership team say please ask us questions so that we can come in overprepared for the board meeting is that that that connection clear yeah I mean the ultimate sign of respect for a board for the leadership team that take is I I've I've seen this time and time again this kind of high

198quality progress maritor report takes a good amount of time because of the consistency of your monitoring calendar you're allowing them to get a Cadence as to how to prepare and get the data I think a question that Devon asked was like you know how you know what was the question about the data Devon well it was something along the lines of like um the staff have to do this all the time right the the the plus of a of a monitoring calendar is that you all as a team have agreed as to what how when quarterly is the data going to come to you they get to then just prepare to fill in the data not have to do a data dump and do all these data points that you're likely not even going to

199take a look at let's not waste any of that time let's just stay focused on what we're doing here yep we're creating any Pony shows let's get straight to business yep my friends that is in essence the the the the what I wanted to cover with you today one uh see if there's any outstanding questions or wonderings that you have before we get ready to close up I don't have a question but I just wanted to share a reflection all of the work that's been done over the last two years to get to this point I think has created um a sense of unity and this goes back to the opening question which is just what do you notice and my big noticing is around the unity that has evolved among this team and the

200result of that Unity is a sense of flexibility we feel as a team we feel flexible to bring recommendations to change things because this has become an area where we can brainstorm where we can think out loud and we can offer up Notions of things that might not be working the way that we had hoped so that wouldn't be possible without the unity and I just so appreciate that I also really appreciate the lens that Vanessa has brought you know so eagerly and it was already discussed a bit but just so eagerly diving into student outcomes focused governance and being open to a range of budgetary practices that would allow us to really further these goals and then you know the partnership from everybody on the leadership team working to to own these goals to

201to to visualize them in in practice and in action is uh significant so unity and flexibility are my themes my takeaways the last uh bit of work so Dr dupin has started us off let's finish up with what Reflections do you have from our time together today what are you taking with you yeah I think I mentioned this to to Devon earlier when we were talking about the eight characteristics um just going through that I see you know I was like you know we can like you said check the boxes on all of those and I know we're still kind of in our infancy and we've got a long ways to go but I'm like if we're here now like I can't imagine how great this can be once we're we've carried this all forward

202and continued to grow because you know I feel we really are in a good place and um you know being on the same board and having such a great group of people all pushing in the same direction that's only going to you know spell for better outcomes for our kids thank you thank you for sharing just a reflection that I've I've had is a a change in in mindset that I have from okay here's the next thing and let me absorb and learn and this is the next thing and we're going to do it um to actual wow and excitement and I think that generates from this room and that lens and the focus and so if we can just if we can get this much excitement out of this room think about how much

203excitement we're getting as we keep growing this the knowledge the information and how we affect that change um outside of this room so I'm just I'm I'm very excited about it I'm very excited about it uh was just going to say that it was uh today was an overwhelmingly positive experience as a newer board member to exercise collaboratively with the other people on the board and the leadership team yeah I just I think it uh I think our Outlook is is good um and yeah like what Nicole said if this is an indicator of the future then I think uh again there's a there are things we need to work on but and these exercises are perfect for that um I was just holding it because she handed it to me um I I think

204maybe my takeaway is just um trying to think already about who as far as our board member roles um who we want to be in rooms how many rooms we want to create for getting people um engaged in this outside of our schools and so um I was already kind of brainstorming that and I'm eager to have those conversations I know it's difficult to do that um as a whole given our public meeting requirements um but I think we can still make it happen I I would love to see some space for that at some point for us to be able to at least have that conversation as the five of us because I feel like it's important and could take up some space on a on a future meeting um at least in getting

205some some groundwork laid for that so that we're all on the same page on what we might want that to look like and then if it means like a smaller group of us kind of taking on different tasks for that then that's fine I think I can help you with that too there is a group that's going to be leading an action project to host a series of governance sessions which are three to four hours um but they're going to visit with the five districts those of you that are doing the work they're going to come to you first because they want to highlight for the rest of the county what this is supposed to look like and the benefits of it um you don't have to engage with that group you could end up

206totally doing one on your own but this isn't going to be a oneoff thing this is going to be a continuous once you find your own Cadence maybe it's two times a year that you host it but again even what you've done with your students recently um there'll be another one for that as well right to get their feedback get their input but again that's how you get to that doto part and doodo still got they haven't done the student one yet but they're about to do that one as well and they are vetting their new gos and their new guard rils right now because they want to adopt them by next month because they Dar are expiring in May so yeah thank you for lifting that up other final Reflections and thoughts just the

207last reflection that I have and I'm going to end it with with this I know I said it earlier but this work is more critical now than ever obviously we've always needed to be on top of it making sure that our students are receiving what they need but with everything going on around I am just so thankful that I am in a space where we're all aligned we are united to making sure that we're doing everything that we can in this institution to make sure our kids are thriving because at the end of the day I personally see myself as the last last line of defense for these students and if I'm not and if I'm not consistently asking the questions and finding out what's working and what's not for them then for some of

208our students this is it there's other students in our system that are going to be okay regardless of what happens at a federal local level and we have students that are not and those are the students that we really need to continue collaborating and working for because they wake up and this is all they have based off of the decisions that the adults in these institution make so as long as we're keeping to that common theme of it's because of our students our students we want what's best for them is how this work will continue moving forward so I'm just really thankful for everybody especially on a Saturday morning I I'm excited about um the collaboration of this group and the focus and I really want to um as a as a team figure out

209how we're going to reach more stakeholders in our organization um to have this same collaboration and focus and I do appreciate that Vanessa and I had a chance to go to the cohort together because we've been able to collaborate and align our Resources with what we need to accomplish the goals and so I really appreciate that opportunity and your understanding of what we're trying to do with the inputs and supporting that um but the main thing is how we get it to all stakeholders how do we do that together I I think my reflection you know doc Dr Ramos asked us to think about what meetings looked like you know two years ago um I'm closing in on a decade of sitting in meetings in this room and I've sat in in meetings in um

210quite a number of other districts as well and um the collaboration today the collaboration that happens when we do our progress reporting um I've not experienced that any place that I've been and I am very thankful and feel very fortunate to get to be part of this team to engage in that work um I also am so appreciative for you know the members of our executive team Vanessa Eric Joel Emily um that like lock themselves in a room with me every Tuesday to try to keep this moving forward um and I'm particularly appreciative of Dr pombo and her team because one of the things I'm always very nervous about is the rule of if you really need something done give it to a busy person and her team works so hard and they're running all

211the time anytime there's a fire whatever that fire might be they're running towards it and then you know we're calling them on a Tuesday well we got some questions from board members and I'm feeling guilty because it's like okay well we're going to drop this burden on them that was my original perception and watching the delight and getting to be part of the conversations with them as they Delight I'm not kidding Eric you like honestly there there have been conversations where people are literally giddy because of the things they discovered while trying am I exaggerating Lissa maybe I'm maybe I'm being too polyana but yeah I mean you can see it like you can go back and watch our meetings watch Marie up at the up at the deis here talking about the math stuff

212I mean they are they are really engaged and excited and their um my experience has been they've been kind of locked away in a dungeon for years and years right to kind of do their work and and have nobody have a conversation with I not nobody right but um but they're they yeah they it's not an HR problem I've gone in a really terrible place with this whole analogy as I frequently do but but the point is they're they're up here and they're part of that conversation we're excited to begin to engage our principles as part of that conversation Dr Amy Burgess I think joined the conversation at our last progress monitoring and so as we're able to engage more and more of our teams I really think the work will go further and further

213and the conversations we had today and that some of us have had prior to this meeting about um making sure that the training and this work permeates all the way through the system so that way are our partners with CA are engaged our teachers are engaged our support staff are engaged I think we'll just continue to create more synergies and more um opportunities for us to to be able to build off of the work that's been done so far and create a flywheel effect so that way the the progress we've made so far will be dwarfed by the progress that we're able to make moving forwards of spes Wheels with lots of spokes the more we do this work with Integrity the less my leadership will be wobbly no doubt any other closing thoughts Reflections

214the only way y Hilda yes Heather I guess I'm just fortunate um that I work that I get to interact with people here to see the potential of what it could look like in a District um and then unfortunately work in a district where it's like falling apart and crumbling um like I'm so thankful that we care so much about our students here um on all levels not just like one group of people but like all groups of people are on the same like we're getting like in the same alignment and I think it helps for all adults to be in alignment so our kids are affected by like have a we affect change within our student population which is why school public schools exist um and the focus should always be on them and

215I think that it isn't always in every single District um unfortunately and I think sometimes that's what makes public schools look bad um is things that are happening so I I'm just proud to be a part of this group of people that care so much about kids because that's what that's what I love I love I love being an educator and I and I've loved being a board member too and and being able to affect change in a different way um than just being in education so I'm just really happy that we're doing this work and I can't wait to see like the positive changes we're going to have on on our students thank you anyone else any other closing thoughts or Reflections I'll just say that I really appreciate it being here today uh

216you know obviously in a time of much despair it's easy to become a cynic um you know but seeing the work that you all are doing and I I was aware of it and I know but seeing just hearing the conversations and a level of dedication and commitment authenticity to this work is hopeful and we need hope in these times we need it um it'll that hope will help drive all the work to get to the outcomes we want for our kids um and I believe what y all do here your success here is going to only certify confirm that this framework works I think a lot of folks are watching what is happening here so your success no pressure I think good launch could really launch this thing off and and it ought and

217you guys are doing it the right way and so just kudos to everyone here um it's not easy obviously or else everyone would be doing it right now yeah so just again thank you for allowing me to be here thanks for being here so Kudos team that to this point the Milestone that we've been describing you as a collective team have manifested something that did not exist you took a chance on something that not too many people around you were doing and you've elevated your game to a point where you have new board members and new board members you are running with what was set up for you and you're investing your time and your energy for that again I want to thank you for your commitment and your time on a Saturday to be

218here to invest in your professional development as a team and I think that the the evidence that we have for yourselves and for others is becoming more and more apparent the last one it's I want to thank you for the mindset work that you did this morning and you're leaning in um we've always said it that that great coaches go back to replay the video after the game and we've talked about it they go do that because they want to go see what worked and what didn't work you and asence have done the same thing again today you've replayed the video of your leadership of how you're showing up what patterns you have that are working for you and what patterns you have that may not be working for you so I would submit to

219you that as you become more and more conscious and aware of the ones that are not you have opportunities to change them and push them in a new direction as we've done before you can create a new future by choosing to change something that is not proven to be working for you yet so you have an opportunity to do so main part of what I think Devon just has described it's your ability to be self-reflective it's your ability to be able to be true with yourself and there's the Three A's that we always talk about the first one is awareness which you all have done wonderfully the second one is acknowledgement when you say this is the benefit to me this is the cost and this is a pretending that's acknowledgement to the 10th degree

220and then the last one is what you're doing also you're modeling it's the action you are living and doing things radically different than a lot of other people I suspect that we're gonna have some pretty amazing results as long as you keep this Synergy going for that thank you for your time our time has ended today I will stick around oh I do want to visit with the board members that are not in the platform that I want to invite you into so I can share board meeting videos with you and you can make comments and annotations um if that's something you so choose that you want to do I could send you some really cool clips of what not to do and I can send you some really cool clips of what we probably

221want to entertain thank you for your time I don't know you didn't have to open or Clos right no okay thank you thank you for